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Watkins used Gaertner's story as part of the inspiration for her play Chicago; Roxie Hart, the lead character in Chicago, is a former entertainer who blames her crime on jazz, liquor and guns (Hart's backstory was adapted from an unrelated murder case, that of Beulah Annan). Gaertner attended the 1927 opening of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.
Beulah May Annan (née Sheriff; November 18, 1899 – March 10, 1928) was an American suspected murderer.Her story inspired Maurine Dallas Watkins's play Chicago in 1926. . The play was adapted into a 1927 silent film, a 1975 stage musical, and a 2002 movie musical (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), all with that title, and a 1942 romantic comedy film, Roxie Hart, named for the ...
Chicago is a play written by Maurine Dallas Watkins.The play, while fiction, is a satire based on two unrelated 1924 court cases involving two women, Beulah Annan (the inspiration for Roxie Hart) and Belva Gaertner (the inspiration for Velma Kelly), who were both suspected and later acquitted of murder, whom Watkins had covered for the Chicago Tribune as a reporter.
The playwright, reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, was inspired by the trials, both of which ended in acquittals, of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner (for separate crimes), which she covered for the Chicago Tribune. Annan's story served as the basis for the play: she had killed her paramour Harry Kalstedt and was able to convince her auto mechanic ...
The musical Chicago is based on a play of the same name by reporter and playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins, who was assigned to cover the 1924 trials of accused murderers Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner for the Chicago Tribune. In the early 1920s, Chicago's press and public became riveted by the subject of homicides committed by women.
File:Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner, 1924.jpg cropped 47 % horizontally, 35 % vertically using CropTool with precise mode. File usage. The following page uses this file:
Velma Kelly's character was based on a woman named Belva Gaertner. Belva was a cabaret singer who had been married and divorced twice. After those men had come and gone, she had a lover named Walter Law, who she thought was the right man for her. On March 11, 1924, Belva allegedly shot Law, who was already married with one child.
Beulah Annan became "Roxie Hart"; Belva Gaertner, "Velma"; Albert Annan, "Amos Hart"; and the two lawyers, William Scott Stewart and W.W. O'Brien, were combined into the composite character "Billy Flynn". Watkins' rival reporters, who were far more sympathetic to the women's causes, were parodied as "Mary Sunshine," the easily manipulated ...