Themes: Clearing One's Name, Lawyers, Actor's Life
Main Cast: Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, Lynne Overman, Nigel Bruce
Release Year: 1942
Country: US
Run Time: 75 minutes
Plot
Based on the Ben Hecht/Charlie McArthur play Chicago, Roxie Hart is a short-but-sweet satire of highly publicized court trials. Ginger Rogers plays showgirl Roxie Hart, whose no-good husband kills a man and insists that Roxie take the blame, since juries seldom send a woman to the chair. She agrees, figuring that the publicity will be beneficial to her career. Roxie's case is taken by grandstanding attorney Adolphe Menjou, who regards the sacred halls of justice as his own three-ring circus. George Montgomery plays the reporter covering the trial, who falls in love with Roxie and eventually marries her after she dumps her cowardly hubby. Roxie Hart plays fast and loose with legal ethics, but is no less hilarious because of it. Some of the best moments belong to Iris Adrian, as an imprisoned "Bonnie Parker"-type killer who's jealous that Roxie is stealing all the headlines. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The second screen version of Maurine Watkins' play (the first, Chicago, was released in 1927) and the inspiration for the Bob Fosse musical and its Oscar-winning 2002 film is a snappy little comedy. Producer/writer Nunnally Johnson cleverly begins the story in the present day, with veteran reporter Homer Howard (George Montgomery) recalling the good old days, 15 years before, when Chicago was a wide-open "city of opportunity," replete with charismatic gangsters like Al Capone and sensational trials like the one involving an aspiring dancer, her boyfriend, and her jealous husband. A bartender (William Frawley) eggs him on to tell the story of Roxie, and in another clever touch, the barkeep shows up in the flashback in a key role. Ginger Rogers gives a one-note performance, though an enjoyable one at that, as the gum-chewing Roxie, and Adolphe Menjou, as her mouthpiece, Billy Sullivan, rumples his hair and suit for the trial until he looks like John Barrymore. Rogers does get to dance twice, once in a jailhouse number accompanied by a gang of reporters (including Spring Byington as Sunshine Mary), and again in a solo number on the jail's iron steps to impress the smitten Homer. There are other pleasures, including Phil Silvers as Babe, who orchestrates his fellow tabloid photographers as they frequently interrupt the trial to take posed photos (which the judge always seems to sneak into) and the reactions of Roxie's farmer parents to her arrest (Pa: "They're gonna hang Roxie." Ma: "What did I tell you?"). Director William Wellman keeps things moving along, though there are still some dry patches, and the ending, forced by the Production Code, is a limp joke. For the record, Roxie has two jailhouse rivals, though neither of them are as strong as the musical Chicago's Velma Kelly. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Nunnally Johnson's screenplay focuses on a showgirl who confesses to a Chicago murder in the hope the publicity will propel her faltering show business career. The film was a remake of the 1927 silent movie Chicago, which had been based on a play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who had found her inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press. It was originally supposed to star Alice Faye but pregnancy prevented her from taking on the role.
In the original, Roxie Hart was guilty but acquitted of her crime. In order to conform to the Production Code, which regulated moral guidelines for Hollywood films at the time, this version portrayed Roxie as innocent but misguided in her attempt to achieve fame. The same subject is treated in the 1975 musical Chicago.
