Chicago (2002) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error Murderesses Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC a list of 30 titles created 19 Mar 2013 a list of 29 titles created 30 Jun 2014 a list of 26 titles created 05 Nov 2014 a list of 47 titles created 28 May 2015 a list of 25 titles created 11 Jan 2016 Search for " Chicago " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 6 Oscars. Another 49 wins & 121 nominations.

See more awards » Videos A young Shakespeare, out of ideas and short of cash, meets his ideal woman and is inspired to write one of his most famous plays. Director: John Madden A poet falls for a beautiful courtesan whom a jealous duke covets. Director: Baz Luhrmann Two youngsters from rival New York City gangs fall in love, but tensions between their respective friends build toward tragedy. Directors: Jerome Robbins, Robert Wise Stars: Natalie Wood, George Chakiris, Richard Beymer At the close of WWII, a young nurse tends to a badly-burned plane crash victim. His past is shown in flashbacks, revealing an involvement in a fateful love affair. Director: Anthony Minghella A silent movie star meets a young dancer, but the arrival of talking pictures sends their careers in opposite directions. Director: Michel Hazanavicius Los Angeles citizens with vastly separate lives collide in interweaving stories of race, loss and redemption. Director: Paul Haggis An old Jewish woman and her African-American chauffeur in the American South have a relationship that grows and improves over the years.

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Director: James Cameron A Mumbai teen reflects on his upbringing in the slums when he is accused of cheating on the Indian Version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" Directors: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan Stars: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Saurabh Shukla Edit Storyline Murderesses Velma Kelly (a chanteuse and tease who killed her husband and sister after finding them in bed together) and Roxie Hart (who killed her boyfriend when she discovered he wasn't going to make her a star) find themselves on death row together and fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows in 1920s Chicago. Written by Debpp322 It began with a hit... See more » Genres: Rated PG-13 for sexual content and dialogue, violence and thematic elements | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 24 January 2003 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Chicago: The Musical See more » Filming Locations: £113,386 (UK) (27 December 2002) Gross: Catherine Zeta-Jones added Velma's pose for the photographers in the Cell Block Tango.

See more » Goofs There are 50 stars on the US flag in the courtroom (should be 48). See more » Quotes Roxie : You want some advice, well here's a piece of advice from me to you, lay off the caramels. [She winks] The end credits are written in Broadway lights. See more » Connections All I Care About Is Love (1975) Charged, exhilarating, a treat and a surprise. 8 December 2002 | by sw-12 (Venice, CA) – See all my reviews I thoroughly enjoyed the current Broadway stage revival of Chicago -- the Kander and Ebb original, with Bob Fosse choreography, opened in 1975, starring Gwen Verdon (Roxie), Chita Rivera (Velma) and Jerry Orbach (Billy), all proven musical theatre talents. I saw the revival fairly early in its current run, starring Ann Reinking (Roxie), Bebe Neuwirth (Velma) and James Naughton (Billy), who are all proven in musical theatre as well.

The casting of this new film adaptation had me wondering -- Renee Zellwegger (Roxie), Catherine Zeta Jones (Velma) and Richard Gere (Billy)? Sure, they can act, but can they sing and dance? Big time. The strength of their performances alone is almost enough to carry the film. Whether the stars come by these moves and voices easily, or were rehearsed within an inch of their lives, it's clear they come by them naturally -- they each perform their own songs, and the dance moves are both fluid and stylistically true to the Fosse choreography. Attention to choreographic integrity in this film is to be expected: director Rob Marshall is a choreographer by trade. The sizzling staging of Velma's and Roxie's "Finale" is practically a Fosse quotation from beginning to end, and is razzle-dazzling beyond the stage version, via the cinematography and editing techniques that only the film medium provides. I was prepared for a watered-down Hollywood take on the wildly popular, 6 Tony Award-winning Broadway revival, but sans the stage talents that got it there. But I actually liked the film BETTER.

The film's screenplay adaptation, by Bill Condon, fleshes out the narrative to allow an emotional connection to the characters in a way that I didn't experience in the theater. The film integrates the songs to the story by cutting between an electrifying staged rendition and the 1920's Chicago world of the narrative. This technique gives the characters space for an inner emotional life thus letting the audience better connect with them. I did have a few quibbles. The song "Class", a personal favorite, was cut, likely to keep the momentum up as we rush toward Roxie's sensational jury trial, which delivers several musical treats of its own, and is the dramatic apogee of the story. And, while I found John C. Reilly a most pathetic but sympathetic Amos, I felt that Joel Grey evoked those qualities much more effectively in his Broadway rendition of "Mr. Cellophane." The story, while providing an opportunity for some juicy songs and sharply funny characters, is more than just eye candy. Its portrayal of cynical manipulation of the criminal justice system by creating a celebrity-hungry media circus (the raison d'etre of Richard Gere's Billy Flynn) is more than apt today.

But if there's any moralizing going on here, it's with a wink and a flash of leg. Chicago is a treat. 87 of 139 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Lucy Lawless will star in 'Chicago' at the Hollywood Bowl - CSMonitor.com Lucy Lawless will star in 'Chicago' at the Hollywood Bowl Latest News Save for later Saved Lucy Lawless is coming to “Chicago.” Lawless, who starred in a Broadway revival of "Grease" and is best remembered for her starring role as Xena the Warrior Princess on the 1995 show of the same name, will star as one of the lead characters in the Kander and Ebb musical. The show will run for three days at the Hollywood Bowl later this month. “I could not believe that they had cast Lucy from New Zealand in this iconic musical, a classical American art form, on a hallowed stage like the Hollywood Bowl and they let me [be involved],” Lawless told Fairfax New Zealand News . Recommended: The 25 best movie musicals of all time Lawless will portray Matron “Mama” Morton, a prison matron who accepts bribes from those in the jail.

"Les Miserables" actress Samantha Barks will play criminal Velma Kelly, while Stephen Moyer of “True Blood” will be portraying the amoral lawyer Billy Flynn and Drew Carey of “The Price Is Right” will be playing dimwitted Amos, husband of the show’s protagonist, Roxie Hart. The show will run from July 26 to July 28 and will be directed by actress Brooke Shields, who played Roxie Hart in the show on Broadway in 2005. Lawless and Shields both starred in the 1994 Broadway revival of "Grease," both playing the role of Betty Rizzo at different points in the production. Photos of the Day Photos of the Day 01/17 Lawless was seen most recently on the NBC sitcom “Parks and Recreation” where she guest-starred as Diane Lewis, a love interest for Nick Offerman’s character Ron Swanson, and the 2010 series "Spartacus: Blood and Sand" as well as the show's spin-offs. “Chicago” premiered on Broadway in 1975 and was famously choreographed by Bob Fosse.

The best-known adaptation of the musical “Chicago” is the 2002 film version, which won Best Picture for the year and a Best Supporting Actress statuette for actress Catherine Zeta-Jones. Renee Zellweger played Roxie Hart, a woman who kills her boyfriend and goes to jail, where she discovers that being a female criminal makes you a celebrity in 1920s Chicago. Zeta-Jones played Velma Kelly, a fellow famous figure who is accused of killing her husband and sister, while Richard Gere played Billy Flynn, Queen Latifah took on the role of Mama Morton, and John C. Reilly played husband Amos. Next up Get the Monitor stories you care about delivered to your inbox. Daily Renée Zellweger — The Movie Database (TMDb) Report Biography Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996) in which she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character.

Zellweger later won acclaim in One True Thing (1998) opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman. The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards.Subsequently She received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001), which she reprised in its sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004) and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002), and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).She has won three Golden Globe Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009, and has established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses in recent years.Zellweger has been dating actor Bradley Cooper since 2009.

CHICAGO, An Analysis by Scott Miller an analysis by Scott Miller Bob Fosse assembled his cast for Chicago in 1975, and during the very first week of rehearsals he was rushed to the hospital for pains in his chest. They found he had almost had a heart attack and needed open heart surgery, which was not as common then as it now. The producers decided they'd have to postpone the show. Miraculously, they managed to keep the cast together until Fosse could go back to work. But though his taste had always tended toward the dark side ï¿½ lyricist Fred Ebb referred to him as the Prince of Darkness ï¿½ it had now gotten darker. Before the open heart surgery, the darkness had been a kind of caricature; now it was real. Fosse had seen death and it had changed him. And it changed Chicago. Like Oliver Stone's 1994 film Natural Born Killers, Chicago takes the form of that which it criticizes. A scathing satire of the how show business and the media make celebrities out of criminals ï¿½ and thereby make crime attractive ï¿½ the story is told through a succession of vaudeville acts.

Fosse was saying, okay you've been lied to long enough ï¿½ we're gonna pull back the curtain and let you see what's really going on. Like much of Fosse's other, later work, Chicago is a show overflowing with raw sexuality, creating a world that is shocking, frightening, dangerous. When Chicago opened in 1975, there had not been a musical of such savage satire since Brecht and Weill's Threepenny Opera. Fosse made theatre pieces about the decadence of our world, the lies and conceits and compromises, the deals with the devil we all make, and as in Sweet Charity, Pippin, and Fosse's film version of Cabaret, Chicago is a show which makes the audience uncomfortable. This was the third time Fosse would use the false glamour of show business ï¿½ the lie at its core ï¿½ as a metaphor for life. He did it first with the film of Cabaret (1971), then with Pippin (1972), and he'd return to this idea pushing it to its furthest extreme with the autobiographical film All That Jazz (1980).

He attacked hypocrisy wherever he saw it, even in his own work. He knew the world of Chicago, in which killers are made into stars, isn't far at all from the real world. The primary premise of Chicago is that the world of crooked lawyers and a public who craves violence is as frightening in its own way as the crimes themselves. Fosse, composer John Kander, and Fred Ebb created a show with an attitude that never softened. Unlike other musicals about show business, this one never tempers its cynicism with compassion. Like the works of German writer/director Bertolt Brecht, this show breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience; indeed, because the entire show is written as vaudeville acts, the audience actually becomes a part of the show (as they were with Pippin and Cabaret). In fact, the more we enjoy the show, the more we like Velma, Roxie, and the other ï¿½Merry Murderessesï¿½ in the Cook County Jail, the more we prove the show's point. We find decadence entertaining, seductive, tantalizing.

Throughout the show, we laugh at the jokes, we cheer the dance numbers, we join in the ridicule of Amos, the one moral character, and then at the end, the show stops and says (though more subtly), ï¿½Do you understand what you've been cheering all night? Murderers!ï¿½ The audience is actually a character in the show. Like Assassins and Sweeney Todd, this show points the finger of blame at us, and some of us may having too much fun to notice. When Maurine Watkinsï¿½ non-musical play (upon which Chicago is based) premiered in 1926, Brooks Atkinson, in The New York Times, called it ï¿½a satirical comedy on the administration of justice through the fetid channels of newspaper publicity ï¿½ of photographers, of ï¿½sob sisters,ï¿½ feature stunts, standardized prevarication, and generalized vulgarity.ï¿½ At that time, one study estimated that fully sixty percent of the news stories in major American papers were provided by paid publicity agents. Though Fosse always said Chicago was his reaction to Watergate, it is perhaps more relevant now than ever before.

In 1996, Newsday called the showï¿½s revival ï¿½so prescient about '90s justice, the press and celebrity that it's almost eerie.ï¿½ The media continues to make celebrities of criminals, while the public rebels against attempts at legislating morality. It was alcohol in the 1920s, but today it's sexuality, prayer in school, drugs, and marriage. And with the advent of the Court TV cable network, and the media circuses surrounding the trials of O.J. Simpson, Lorena Bobbitt, the Menendez brothers, Susan Smith, Andrea Yates, and others, we've seen the media make a mockery of our judicial system. With the right lawyer, enough money, the right clothes, and a modicum of acting ability, anyone can be acquitted in our society today. At the end of Chicago, the two murderesses thank the American people ï¿½ the audience ï¿½ for our belief in their innocence as they throw flowers to us. We know they're not innocent, but by enjoying their performances, we acquit them. Fosse goes for the jugular.

Velma says, ï¿½You know, a lot of people have lost faith in America . . . But we are living examples of what a wonderful country this is.ï¿½ Ouch. The Road To Chicago The original non-musical play, Chicago, was written in 1926 by Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins, based on two actual 1924 murder cases. The case against Beulah May Annan, the model for Roxie, was very close to her story in Chicago. Beulah was a jazz singer, whose husband Albert worked in a garage. She was having an affair and when her lover threatened to leave her, she shot him dead. She then played some jazz on her victrola before phoning her husband to tell him. As in the show, her story of the shooting kept changing. She had three stories at various times: that her lover was dumping her and she killed him out of anger; that she dumped him, he tried to rape her and she had to defend herself; and that they quarreled, things got out of control, and they both reached for the gun laying (inexplicably) on the bed.

At one point early on, Albert claimed to have killed him upon discovering him attacking Beulah, but that story was soon forgotten. Many of the things Roxie says in Chicagoï¿½s courtroom scene come directly from Beulahï¿½s trial, including a sudden revelation of a pregnancy which mysterious disappeared after her acquittal. After she was set free, she left her husband, married a garage owner, and moved to Indiana. There she found her new husband was already married, so she divorced him, had a nervous breakdown, and died a year later. The case against Belva Gaertner, the model for Velma, is less like Velmaï¿½s story in Chicago. Belva killed her lover while he sat in her car, down the street from her apartment. Like Velma, Belva and her victim were both drunk, and Belva claimed she couldnï¿½t remember a thing about the murder. Belva was a cabaret singer rather than a vaudeville performer like Velma, though her fellow inmates said she was a great dancer.

In Watkinsï¿½ articles about Beulah and Belva, other murderesses in the Cook County jail are mentioned that have some relation to the ï¿½Cell Block Tangoï¿½ girls in Chicago. There is a foreigner, Sabella Nitti (who Belva paid to make her bed and do her laundry), who is hanged for chopping up her husband, and a woman who had poisoned her husband. In the clear inspiration for Chicagoï¿½s song ï¿½Class,ï¿½ when Belva was acquitted and released, the other inmates were quoted as saying that the Cook County Jail would be losing a lot of class, that Belva was ï¿½the most stylishï¿½ of the women on Murderessï¿½ Row. When Watkinsï¿½ play Chicago came to the Windy City after its Broadway run, Belva attended with her former lawyer (the model for Billy Flynn), W.W. Oï¿½Brien. Both of them loved the play and were delighted to see themselves onstage.

Oï¿½Brien reportedly called it ï¿½the finest piece of stage satire ever written by an American.ï¿½ In 1942, a film version was made called Roxie Hart with Ginger Rogers in the title role, a greatly revised plot, and some hilariously inappropriate tap dance sequences. Sometime in the 1950s, actress and dancer Gwen Verdon saw the movie on television and thought it would make a great musical. But Watkins would not release the rights to the play. It wasn't until Watkins died in 1969, that Verdon finally got the rights from the playwright's estate. Verdon convinced Fosse to do the show, and they brought it to the song writing team of Fred Ebb and John Kander, who Fosse had worked with on the film version of Cabaret. It was Ebb's idea to tell the story in the language of vaudeville, not only to establish period but also create the metaphor of show business as life, a metaphor Fosse had become obsessed with.

(In fact the show's title has a double meaning because there was an actual vaudeville theatre called The Chicago.) With Verdon playing Roxie, they cast Chita Rivera as Velma Kelly, Jerry Orbach as Billy Flynn, and Barney Martin as Amos Hart. Though Fosse had always had a very dark side that expressed itself in his work (see the movie of Cabaret or a good production of Pippin), that dark side was now getting significantly darker because of his operation. During the song ï¿½Razzle Dazzleï¿½ Fosse initially staged couples simulating sex on both sides of the stage while the lawyer Billy Flynn sang about flimflamming the court and the public ï¿½ in other words, we're getting screwed. Eventually, Fosse was convinced by Kander and Ebb that that was too dark and he re-staged the song. Despite some minor out-of-town troubles the show came to New York in good shape, and it opened in 1975. The show garnered eleven Tony nominations but lost all of them to A Chorus Line.

Fosse's dancer girlfriend and sometime muse, Ann Reinking, stepped into Chicago late in its Broadway run, before going on in 1978 to wow Broadway in Fosse's anti-musical Dancin'. She also appeared, pretty much playing herself in Fosse's All That Jazz (in which you can see a fictionalized account of all the events surrounding Chicago and the bypass operation). In 1992, Reinking choreographed Chicago for the Civic Light Opera of Long Beach with Juliet Prowse and Bebe Neuwirth. A few years later, the Encores! Series in New York asked Reinking and director/performer Walter Bobbie to stage a concert reading of Chicago. It was so well received that it was transferred in 1996, with virtually no changes, into a Broadway house for a regular run. Reinking used Fosse's dance vocabulary for the choreography but took a different, much lighter approach to the material. The cast included Bebe Neuwirth, Reinking, James Naughton, and Joel Grey.

But in this newer version, the show was taken out of its period context and much of Fosse's nastiness and brutal but legitimate cynicism was rejected in favor of a more light-hearted feel. The show suffered for it. Concept Musicals ï¿½Concept musicalï¿½ is a term used too much and with too little precision. It has as many definitions as there are people using it. Shows as diverse as Company, Hair, and Pacific Overtures have all been called concept musicals. Most shows people call concept musicals are either musicals built on a central concept or issue instead of a linear story, musicals that have a story but whose central concept is more important than the story, musical character studies with no linear plot (like A Chorus Line), or musicals that just don't fit into any other category. The concept musical's development, from Love Life in 1948 to Wise Guys in 2000, has been a complicated one, and its evolution has taken a very meandering route.

Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner (on the shoulders of Bertolt Brecht) took a giant step in 1948 by discarding every device of linear storytelling with Love Life, and provided the model for the commentary songs to come in Cabaret, Company, Pippin, and Assassins. Eighteen years later, Cabaret (1966) with a score by Kander and Ebb, and direction by Hal Prince, partially followed the lead Love Life had set, providing the model for the narrator/devil figure in Pippin and the use of limbo in Follies and Assassins. Two years later, Hair (1968) set the precedent for the (mostly) plotless musicals like A Chorus Line and Working. Stephen Sondheim and Hal Prince's Company (1970) did not follow Hair but instead followed closely the model created by Love Life and greatly refined it, solving many of its problems, and becoming a commercial and critical success. The next year, Follies (1971), with Michael Bennett joining the Sondheim-Prince team, followed Company's lead but focused on deeper character development and provided a genuine resolution at the end of the show.

In 1972, Bob Fosse began his experiments with high concept design and staging with the film version of Cabaret and the Broadway production of Pippin, which took the narrator/host figure in Cabaret, and further integrated him into the story. In 1975, A Chorus Line added a unifying dramatic situation (an audition), while Chicago continued Fosse's experiments with plot-driven concept musicals. As he had done with Pippin and the film of Cabaret, Fosse escaped the problem of balancing form and content; with Pippin, Cabaret, and Chicago, form became content. Show business was a metaphor for life, and so the show as a whole, the very fact that an audience was in a theatre watching a performance, became a self-referential metaphor in and of itself. After Chicago, Sondheim and Prince continued the form's evolution with the Kabuki-inspired Pacific Overtures in 1976, this time with book writer John Weidman. Two years later, Stephen Schwartz's Working tried to imitate A Chorus Line but failed. In 1990, Sondheim and Weidman (without Prince) created the ultimate concept musical Assassins.

In 1992, Kander, Ebb, and Prince came back together for Kiss of the Spider Woman, which continued Fosse's work with form as content. Prohibition Chicago is set in the middle 1920s, a time of public rebellion (mostly against prohibition, but against other legislated morality as well) and tremendous lawlessness. The 1996 Broadway revival of Chicago jettisoned the period setting, but when it did, it lost the irony of how much America today is like America in the 20s, and it lost the show's central metaphor of the story being told through the language of vaudeville, which was at its peak at that time. In 1920, the U.S. Constitution was amended to make alcohol illegal. Throughout the 1920s a significant portion of the public defied the law at every opportunity. The ï¿½speakeasiesï¿½ of that time period were secret clubs hidden behind innocent-looking storefronts, through false walls, and with the right card, knock or password, you could enter and buy alcohol and sex.

In 1929, it was estimated that there were between 35,000 and 100,000 speakeasies in New York City alone. And some legitimate restaurants and night clubs might, if you knew the right person, slip some bootleg liquor into your tea or coffee. In Manhattan, a divorcï¿½e named Texas Guinan ran one of the most notorious and outrageous speakeasies. By 1928, she had had four out of five of her roving clubs raided and closed, but a fifth was still going strong. Perched atop a piano, Guinan entertained her patrons with dirty jokes and emceed performances by singers and dancers from 11:00 p.m. until 7:00 a.m. She became famous for her battle cry, ï¿½Curfew shall not ring tonight!ï¿½ as she greeted her customers with a police whistle and a derisive, ï¿½Hello, Suckers!ï¿½ (just like Velma does at the top of Act II of Chicago).

And she wasn't kidding ï¿½ at Guinan's club a bottle of bootleg scotch or champagne cost twenty-five dollars or more, equivalent to a week's salary for many people. Cover charges ranged from $5 to $25, and even plain water was two dollars a pitcher. (A film about Texas Guinan called Hello Suckers! is currently in pre-production, to star rocker Courtney Love.) Liquor for the speakeasies was smuggled into the country from Canada and from the open seas. Ships carrying illegal liquor would anchor just outside the U.S. in international waters, and ï¿½rum runnersï¿½ in speedboats would carry the cargo to the mainland under the cover of night. (Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. was one such rum runner.) Unfortunately, by the late 1920s, organized crime had taken control of the highly profitable liquor trade (approximately two billion dollars in sales per year) and in many major cities, murder and other crime skyrocketed. Finally in 1933, prohibition was repealed.

Vaudeville The story of Chicago is told in the language of vaudeville, with almost every song in the style of a specific vaudeville performer or tradition. Chicago's central premise, that crime and lawlessness are glamorized by our culture and can too easily become popular entertainment, is communicated through the most popular entertainment form of the time: vaudeville. In 1919, there were about nine hundred operating vaudeville houses in America, but by 1931, there was only one left ï¿½ the Palace in New York City. Chicago is set in 1924, during vaudevilleï¿½s heyday. The idea of Roxie and Velma becoming vaudeville stars because of their crimes was only a slight exaggeration of reality. Anyone who was famous ï¿½ for any reason ï¿½ could be a vaudeville star. Charles Lindbergh turned down an offer of $100,000 a week to appear in vaudeville. Evangelist Amy Semple McPherson accepted $5,000 a week to appear in vaudeville and she bombed.

Temperance crusader Cary Nation appeared in vaudeville in sketches showing her destroying saloons, and she handed out souvenir axes to the audience. Both Babe Ruth and Helen Keller appeared in vaudeville. Vaudeville had emerged at the end of the nineteenth century from beer gardens, honky-tonks, variety shows and British style music halls. People forever argue over the genesis of the name vaudeville, but it most likely comes from the French phrase voix de villes, or voice of the cities, and that certainly applies to Chicago. Vaudeville perfectly captured the wide variety of cultures and traditions in 1920s America. The specialty and novelty acts that populated the vaudeville stage evolved from minstrel shows, burlesque, and the feature specialties of the hippodrome (the largest theatre in New York). Vaudeville took everything from every corner of popular entertainment and crammed it all into one brand new entertainment form. Some of the stars of this new form included Emma Trentini, Rosa Ponselle, and Schumann-Heink from grand opera; Sarah Bernhardt, Mrs.

Patrick Campbell and Lillian Langtry from serious drama; acrobats, aerialists, wire walkers and animal acts from the circus; musicians from the legitimate music community; physical comedians from the European pantomimes; and banjo players and blackface comics from minstrel shows. There were also hundreds of specialty acts, including trick cyclists, magicians, rope spinners and whip snappers, jugglers and equilibrists, dancers, monologists, ventriloquists, novelty musical acts, sister teams, dialect comedians, piano teams, and comedy sketch artists. This form was just called ï¿½varietyï¿½ until the 1890s, when producer George Lederer first used the label ï¿½vaudeville.ï¿½ Then B. F. Keith built a chain of palatial theatres designed especially for vaudeville shows. The new form was developed by impresarios like Tony Pastor, F. F. Proctor, Percy Williams, Oscar Hammerstein (the famous lyricist's grandfather), Harry Davis, and William Morris. And vaudeville thrived from 1900 to 1930, when radio, talking pictures, and the depression destroyed it.

Chicago as Vaudeville Fosse knew vaudeville. Though he wasn't born until 1927, when he came of age as a performer in his teens, the people he learned from were all vaudeville veterans, and many of the performers he shared the stage with in the sleazy burlesque theatres he worked were old washed-up vaudevillians. He danced old vaudeville numbers himself. He knew this world. And perhaps it's his teen years in those burlesque houses that created in him a profound distrust of show business, even though it was his chosen profession. He hated it even as he worshipped at its shrines. Before the song ï¿½Razzle Dazzleï¿½ in Act II, Billy Flynn says to Roxie, ï¿½These trials ï¿½ the whole world ï¿½ all show business.ï¿½ And he's right, after all. The trials, his and Roxie's whole world, is all a musical called Chicago, and they're all vaudeville acts. They are literally just show business. And yet, they're also far too real.

Almost every song in the show is modeled on an actual vaudeville act or star. In ï¿½All That Jazz,ï¿½ Velma is playing Texas Guinan, inviting the audience in to drink and have a good time. She is our host for the evening. ï¿½Funny Honeyï¿½ starts out being an homage to torch song queen Helen Morgan's song ï¿½Billï¿½ from Show Boat, a song about an ordinary man, who's nothing special, but she loves him anyway. Roxie even sits atop a piano, like Helen Morgan often did. But then Kander & Ebb turn ï¿½Billï¿½ on its ear, as Amos finds out just who the murder victim is and rats Roxie out. As Roxie gets drunker and drunker, as Amos finally tells the cop how it really happened, the lyric changes its tone and it ends with her calling Amos ï¿½That scummy, crummy dummy hubby of mine.ï¿½ A perfectly cynical Fosse moment.

And if that isnï¿½t cynical enough, we find out in the courtroom scene later that Roxie has cheated on her husband and murdered her lover on Valentineï¿½s Day! ï¿½Cell Block Tangoï¿½ is a tribute to the ethnic numbers that were sprinkled throughout a vaudeville bill. When Matron Mama Morton enters, with a big ring and a fur, she's playing one of the biggest stars of vaudeville, Sophie Tucker, and she sings ï¿½When You're Good to Mama,ï¿½ a conscious parody of Sophie Tucker's equally racy ï¿½You've Got to See Mama Every Night.ï¿½ In scene 6, as Roxie metaphorically tap dances around Amos, lying through her teeth, trying to get him to pay for her lawyer, male dancers enter and do a literal tap dance throughout the scene, in tribute to the hundreds of tap dance specialty vaudeville numbers. Billy's ï¿½All I Care About is Loveï¿½ is in imitation of band leader Ted Lewis, who would begin his act by saying ï¿½Is everybody here?

Is everybody ready?ï¿½ But when the chorus girls appear to dance around him with giant feathered fans, the song also becomes a tribute to the famous fan dancer Sally Rand. Mary Sunshine, played by a man in drag in the original 175 production, and her terribly optimistic ï¿½A Little Bit of Good in Everyoneï¿½ was (in that production) an imitation of Julian Eltinge, a famous turn-of-the-century drag queen and vaudeville star, and Bert Savoy, his less classy successor. Interestingly, many recent productions have completely discarded the idea of Mary Sunshine being played in drag. Perhaps this ï¿½jokeï¿½ has seen its day, and can be retired. Many people seeing the show already know the surprise long before it happens and it often becomes a distraction throughout the show. And it's only barely connected to the central themes of the show (i.e., things not always being what they appear, people ï¿½performingï¿½ their lives, etc.).

Perhaps the drag was funny and naughty to Fosse in 1975, but in this day and age when cross-dressing is far less ï¿½shocking,ï¿½ when transgendered folks are fighting quite seriously for legal rights, the moment loses what impact it once had, even for the folks who don't know the surprise. Also, in a way, it equates cross-dressing with lying and immorality, which seems pretty silly in the new millennium. Just because sheï¿½s a cross-dresser, Mary Sunshine becomes grouped with the liars and murderers who populate the rest of the show? Perhaps itï¿½s enough that she parodies the many ï¿½sob sisterï¿½ reporters of the 1920s. And even without the drag, Mary Sunshine still has her models in vaudeville. Legitimate opera singers like Rosa Ponselle frequently appeared on vaudeville stages singing arias from famous operas and operettas, in an attempt to lend some class to the proceedings. ï¿½A Little Bit of Goodï¿½ is a parody of over-wrought operatic singing.

ï¿½We Both Reached for the Gunï¿½ recalls vaudeville's requisite ventriloquist specialty acts. ï¿½I Can't Do It Aloneï¿½ recalls sister acts (in which the performers were rarely actual sisters) and acrobatic specialty acts. Velma continues her role as Texas Guinan as she opens the second act with Guinan's famous line, ï¿½Hello Suckers!ï¿½ Roxieï¿½s ï¿½Me and My Babyï¿½ is sung in the style of an Eddie Cantor, banjo-and-tambourine cakewalk. ï¿½Mr. Cellophaneï¿½ is an imitation of Bert Williams, the well-known Black vaudeville and Ziegfeld Follies star, and his famous song ï¿½Nobody,ï¿½ right down to Williams' famous costume of oversized clothes and white gloves, and consciously imitating the musical style of ï¿½Nobody,ï¿½ alternating, freely moving verses, with slow ragtime refrains.

ï¿½When Velma Takes the Standï¿½ and the entire courtroom scene is an imitation of the many courtroom comedy sketches, a staple of vaudeville and burlesque. ï¿½When Velma Takes the Standï¿½ is also modeled on the many vaudeville acts that showcased the latest dance crazes, in this case, the Charleston. Denounced by moralists as the devilï¿½s dance, the dance from hell, and other similar names, the Charleston found its roots in African dance and became popular in the American South around the turn of the century. Some ï¿½Christianï¿½ groups tried to have it outlawed, but it soon swept the nation, becoming one of the most popular dances of the twentieth century, and tunes dedicated to the Charleston were popping up everywhere. Fosseï¿½s use of the Charleston in ï¿½Velma Takes the Standï¿½ and in other numbers in Chicago is not just a tribute to period dance but also a reminder of the moral climate in America in the middle 1920s ï¿½ a climate in which anything popular and fun was denounced as immoral and dangerous.

That Velma would express herself and her ï¿½innocenceï¿½ in terms of the Charleston only further underlines her position as moral subversive. It also provides a kind of shorthand when Fred Casely appears during the trial, dancing the Charleston as he talks to Roxie, underlining his (false) role as ï¿½corrupter.ï¿½ ï¿½Nowadaysï¿½ and Velma and Roxie's dance number ï¿½Hot Honey Ragï¿½ are tributes to Ted Lewis and his band. Lewis was a jazz clarinet player and band leader, known for his battered top hat and his cheerily forlorn songs. Vaudeville as Life Velma is the link in Chicago among the plot, the structure of the show, and its central theme of people performing their lives. She is a former vaudeville performer in the story as well as acting as a kind of host. She takes on the role of host at the beginning of each act by quoting famous lines from Texas Guinan. She killed her own vaudeville act by killing her sister, paralleling the death of vaudeville itself in the late 1920s.

She's the only one who performs a vaudeville style song, ï¿½I Can't Do It Alone,ï¿½ while knowing that that's what she's doing. None of the other characters know that they're doing vaudeville acts; that's merely the style of storytelling the authors chose. Her song ï¿½When Velma Takes the Stand,ï¿½ is also a song about performing. Roxie is a housewife, Billy Flynn is a lawyer, Mary Sunshine is a reporter, but Velma is a vaudeville performer. And by positioning her as our hostess, starting out each act not only quoting Texas Guinan but also singing the first song of each act, Fosse eases us into the convention of all the songs being full-front, ï¿½performedï¿½ vaudeville-style numbers. In the non-musical play Chicago, Velma is only a minor character. But Velma also links us to the central theme of the show ï¿½ that everyone in Chicago, except Amos, ï¿½performsï¿½ their lives. No one ï¿½ except Amos ï¿½ is genuine.

Fosse loved this theme (and perhaps was obsessed with it), and it showed up in most of his work. In Sweet Charity, Charity tries (unsuccessfully) to ï¿½performï¿½ respectability. In Damn Yankees, Lola ï¿½performsï¿½ the role of seductress and, later, friend to Joe. In the film version of Cabaret, Sally ï¿½performsï¿½ the role of exotic femme fatale, and later, she and Brian ï¿½performï¿½ the roles of domesticated straight couple. In Pippin, Fosse took his favorite metaphor to the furthest extreme yet ï¿½ everyone in Pippinï¿½s life is actually a traveling player performing the roles of Pippinï¿½s father, stepmother, stepbrother, grandmother, and lover in a play just for Pippin. And as part of their literal performance, Pippin plays the parts (unsuccessfully) of soldier, lover, politician, assassin, monk, artist, husband, farmer, and father. In Chicago, Velma, Roxie, and the other Merry Murderesses play the role of Innocence.

In the courtroom, Billy plays the role of The Common Man Fighting for Justice. Mama Morton plays the role of dedicated public servant. Mary Sunshine and the other reporters play the role of Objective Reporter. Everyoneï¿½s life is a performance. Only Amos really is what he seems. But unlike Fosseï¿½s earlier shows, in Chicago, everyone gets away with it. Only Amos, who isnï¿½t performing his life, gets screwed. Fosseï¿½s cynicism was growing. Roxie Roxie Hart is one of the most interesting characters Fosse ever fashioned. Though she retains much of the character created by Maurine Watkins, Fosse gives her greater moral (or amoral) and emotional heft than her model. We see, through all the shallowness of ï¿½Funny Honeyï¿½ and in the monologue before ï¿½Roxie,ï¿½ that she does actually love Amos. Perhaps itï¿½s only platonic love, and maybe it was never more than that, but he represents safety to her. He may be the first person who has ever shown her unconditional love.

At the end of the show, when she reveals to him that she is not actually pregnant, he tells her he still loves her and wants her back. Unfortunately, by that time, her ambition has outpaced her love for Amos. Throughout the show, no matter what she and Billy do to Amos, his love for Roxie remains. As Roxie says, ï¿½You could love a guy like that.ï¿½ Will Roxie return to Amos after the events of the show? Probably not. She and Velma get their vaudeville tour and Roxie will at last have financial security. Amos wonï¿½t be able to compete with the world of show business. We can wonder if Roxie returns to him once her vaudeville career ends (after all, vaudeville only has another six years or so left), but we hope that Amos has found someone else by then. Roxie is a child-woman, terribly innocent and naï¿½ve in some ways, too worldly in others. She is not very bright and never thinks about the consequences of her actions before she says or does things.

She operates exactly like a child of five or six, perceiving the world only as to how it affects her. Every move is selfish, every idea foolish and ill-considered, and yet she remains strangely sympathetic because we know her selfishness is not malicious; itï¿½s childish. And that somehow seems more forgivable. Chicago is largely absent any kind of genuine emotion. After Fosseï¿½s heart attack, his darkness was growing, and his aversion to real emotion was becoming almost comic. Amos is the only character in the show who demonstrates real love and heï¿½s the only one who acts absolutely selflessly. But Roxie is redeemed at the end because she does learn something about herself ï¿½ and sheï¿½s the only one who does. ï¿½Nowadaysï¿½ is her Eleven O'clock Number, that song in many musicals right before the finale in which the central character finally understands/realizes/learns something about herself.

Roxie finally understand the absurdity of all she's been through, how stupid and how phony it all was, and it's not until she can learn her lesson that the Universe will give her the prize, her dream of performing in vaudeville. Unlike her real life model, Roxie has finally learned her lesson, and has (for the first time in her life) learned something about herself as well. For the first time, she can step back from the circus and see it for what it really is. And in a way, she returns to her original world view. She is finally able to enjoy her life again on a very simple, basic level, just as she did at the beginning of the story. She starts out the show a simple, straightforward (though amoral) woman who wants nothing more than to have fun. As she gets swept up in the events surrounding her crime, she learns to scheme, manipulate, lie, cheat, and steal.

She becomes a tiger, scratching and clawing her way to the top (well, the top as she sees it, anyway) ï¿½ she becomes Velma, stealing from Velma not only Mamaï¿½s attentions, her lawyer, her trial date, and her rhinestone shoes, but also her ruthlessness, her celebrity and her ambition. Finally, at the end, stripped of everything and everyone, Roxie returns to the simple life she had before, once again interested in nothing more than having a good time. She has hit rock bottom and is finally able to step back and look rationally at where sheï¿½s been and what sheï¿½s done. And ï¿½Nowadaysï¿½ becomes her new anthem of Lifeï¿½s Simple Joys ï¿½ booze, men, sex, and fun. Balance is restored to her universe, whatever we may think of that universe.

Interestingly, in the film Roxie Hart, the screenwriter Nunnally Johnson went to great lengths to make sure we understood that Roxie didnï¿½t actually kill Fred Casely (Amos did), and Johnson added in some idiotic tap dancing and a handsome young love interest for Roxie to end up with. The movie ï¿½ and Roxie ï¿½ lost all the grit and edgy humor of the original. But along the way, it also lost Roxieï¿½s humanity. Mr. Cellophane Amos is the only character in Chicago whose motives are entirely pure, never selfish. He's the only character who really loses ultimately. Perhaps he can be seen as the show's moral center, but we can see what Fosse thinks of the rewards for morality. Amos represents us, the American people, who keep losing while O.J. and the Menendez Brothers win ï¿½ because we let them, because, when all is said and done, we're really the suckers. We allow them, even encourage them, to get away with their crimes, and yet who knows which of us will be the next victim of a murderer who hires a high profile lawyer and goes free?

Amos is an average guy, not very good looking, not very smart. Roxie says about him ï¿½that whole is a whole lot greater than the sum of his parts.ï¿½ In other words, he's rotten in bed; his ï¿½partsï¿½ don't work all that well. But we see Roxie's real feelings for Amos in ï¿½Roxieï¿½ ï¿½ she does care about him (ï¿½you could love a guy like thatï¿½). But does she love him? She obviously isn't attracted to him, but is she in love with him? What was their earlier married life like? After years of dating bootleggers and gangsters, Amos was ï¿½safeï¿½ and ï¿½sweet,ï¿½ but for a girl like Roxie, who dreams of fame and fortune, safe and sweet only last so long. She got bored so she started screwing around with Fred Casely. And yet even though Amos is hurt and humiliated, he still comes up with the money for her defense. When he thinks she's having a baby, he immediately agrees to take her back.

He just wants an ordinary, happy, domestic life. But that's not what Roxie wants, and once she gets her freedom, it's doubtful she'll ever return to Amos. (In real life, she divorced him.) He really is ï¿½Mr. Cellophane,ï¿½ a guy so ordinary, no one ï¿½ not even Roxie ï¿½ notices him. And Fosse is telling us that nice guys don't win in the real world; sometimes nice guys get dumped on, and the Billy Flynns of the world get it all. Crime and Punishment as Entertainment The lyric to ï¿½Nowadaysï¿½ shows us Fosse's conflicting feelings about show biz ï¿½ it's dirty and sleazy, and yet it's exciting (ï¿½there's life everywhere...ï¿½). Notice that in ï¿½Nowadaysï¿½ the announcer says his theatre is the home of ï¿½family entertainmentï¿½ as he introduces ï¿½Chicago's killer dillersï¿½...

Here we find yet another commentary on today's entertainment industry, as dozens of special interest groups complain that movies and television are corrupting our youth. The show's ï¿½family entertainment,ï¿½ the presentation of two murderesses as stars, is the equivalent of the ultra violent movies and TV shows, of shows like ï¿½When Animals Attackï¿½ and ï¿½World's Worst Police Chases.ï¿½ Fosse's message is that publicity subverts justice. Courtrooms have become circuses, as cameras in courtrooms have created a whole new breed of celebrity lawyers who perform for the television audience while they're presenting their case. Roxie is acquitted because of the media, the right clothes, good acting on the stand, a crooked lawyer, and a fake pregnancy, not because she's innocent. Fosse feels no sympathy for this heroine. As Roxie and Velma thank the American people ï¿½who made it all possible by believing in our innocence,ï¿½ they throw flowers to the audience. Chicago is about the blurred line between good and evil in America, even more prevalent today than in 1975, and the show biz in everything (especially the judicial system).

Fosse told one Pippin cast member that the show was an analogy for the Manson murders. Today, Chicago is an even more biting commentary on other, equally grisly cases, mothers who kill their children, young men who kill their parents, wives who mutilate their husbands, men who stab their ex-wives to death. Falseness and lies thrive in America. In the song ï¿½Roxie,ï¿½ she says ï¿½not that the truth really matters...ï¿½ Americans have a talent for shifting the blame. Roxie says it's ï¿½because none of us got enough love in our childhood.ï¿½ If it were only that simple. Cleaning Up Chicago When a director ï¿½cleans upï¿½ this show in order to make it more palatable to audiences, he or she loses one of the primary premises of the show ï¿½ that the world of crooked lawyers and a public who loves violence is as frightening in its own way as the crimes themselves. Fosse, Kander, and Ebb created a show with a brilliantly funny, often subtle, cynically hard-boiled, show biz attitude.

Despite the commercial success of the 1996 revival, stripping the show of its 1920s period, of it's references to vaudeville stars, also robs it of its soul. What's funny ï¿½ and important ï¿½ about the show is that it pretends it's about the 1920s and yet it's really about today. If you ignore the period, as the revival did, the show becomes only about today, and you lose the important message that things haven't changed, that America hasn't cleaned up its act, that this time of lawlessness and gangsters in the 20s looks pretty tame compared to today's world. And that's one of the show's main themes. It would be like taking Cabaret out of 1930s Berlin. Chicago is set in 1924, but unless America changes drastically, it will always also be set in whatever year itï¿½s being produced. Itï¿½s about real life murderers Beulah May Annan and Belva Gaertner, but also about O.J.

Simpson, Robert Blake, Lorena Bobbitt, Jeffrey Dahmer, the Menendez brothers, Susan Smith, and Andrea Yates. And just as important is the central metaphor of vaudeville. Chicago the musical wouldnï¿½t exist without an audience. Vaudeville wouldnï¿½t have either. And neither would the gavel-to-gavel TV coverage of the O.J. trial, or the endless cable news stories about the missing intern Chandra Levy, or the gruesome details of Andrea Yates drowning her five children, told over and over again on TV in excruciating detail. We ask for it, Chicago suggests. We are to blame. How else can we explain why we sat transfixed watching those planes crash into the World Trade Center over and over and over, or repeatedly watched screaming kids running out of Columbine High School? Itï¿½s something we needed. Is it a primordial bloodlust that just hasnï¿½t been civilized out of us yet? Is it a violent streak burned into our species millions of years ago that we should just accept as innately human? Or is it something to fight, to overcome, to rise above?

Or could our delight at watching and hearing about excessive violence be our collective way of working out that bloodlust so we wonï¿½t want to commit excessive violence against each other? In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on America in September 2001, as Arab Americans are being routinely beaten up and threatened on American streets, we have to ask if September 11th unleashed a new patriotism in America or if it unleashed our only barely contained bloodlust, always simmering just under the surface, ready to boil over. Is Bushï¿½s ï¿½War on Terrorï¿½ really about making America safe again, or is it about finding the bastards who did that to us and tearing them limb from bloody limb? Maybe itï¿½s about both. Because Chicago is very much about our world today but takes place in 1924 ï¿½ and is told entirely in the language of vaudeville acts ï¿½ one of the greatest challenges for any director and choreographer is in finding a contemporary physical and visual language that is equivalent to 1920s vaudeville.

In other words, to make the point that this story lives both in 1924 and today, each production has to find a language that lives not just then, but in both times. What would vaudeville look like today if it had survived and had more successfully competed with movies and TV? Probably a lot like it did then, but morphed a bit ï¿½ more sexual, more aggressive, more attention grabbing. After all American musical comedy hasnï¿½t changed much in a hundred and fifty years. American television hasnï¿½t changed much in the last sixty years. And thinking about all that raises another side issue. Vaudeville was one of Americaï¿½s most popular cultural forms for almost sixty years (which is why itï¿½s the perfect metaphor for Chicagoï¿½s murder-as-entertainment), but then it died. And here we sit today, in the fifty-ninth year of the Rodgers & Hammerstein model, the basis for our modern American musicals. And we have to ask if the Rodgers & Hammerstein-style musical is going to survive in this age of personal computers, high-tech special effects, interactive media, wireless web, and the MTV attention span.

Weï¿½re already seeing rumblings of new musical theatre forms in many of the shows New Line Theatre has produced ï¿½ Songs for a New World, Floyd Collins, A New Brain, Assassins, March of the Falsettos ï¿½ and many of the shows on and off Broadway, like Urinetown, Bat Boy, The Last Five Years, and others. When we think about vaudeville, we sometimes forget it lasted that long and yet disappeared that fast. Could that happen to Carousel and Hello Dolly! and Phantom of the Opera? Other Resources You can buy copies of the script through Samuel French, Inc. , who licenses the show, or through theatre bookstores, like the Drama Book Shop in New York. Vocal selections are available commercially, but the full score is only available when you produce the show. The original 1975 cast album is available on CD. The 1996 revival cast album is passable and contains two tracks and lots of dance music not on the original, but it just doesn't have the bite or fun of the original.

There are three books about Bob Fosse that discuss Chicago, Martin Gottfried's All His Jazz: The Life and Death of Bob Fosse (Bantam Books, New York, 1990), Kevin Boyd Grubb's Razzle Dazzle (St. Martin's Press, New York, 1989), and Margery Beddow's Bob Fosse's Broadway (Heinemann Publ., Portsmouth, NH, 1996). There are also three great documentaries, if you can find them, a PBS Great Performances episode called Kander & Ebb, a documentary called Steam Heat, and an episode of E! True Hollywood Stories about Fosse, all three of which include footage from the original production of Chicago. There's also an A&E Biography about Fosse, which is interesting but doesn't contain much dance footage.

A film version of Chicago, once rumored to be in the works with Madonna in the lead, will finally be released in December 2002 starring Catherine Zeta-Jones (as Velma), Renee Zellweger (as Roxie), Richard Gere (Billy), Queen Latifah (Mama Morton), Christine Baranski (Mary Sunshine), and John C. Reilly (Amos). ___________________________ Renee Zellweger - YouTube Renee Zellweger 4,807 views Last updated on Jan 8, 2017 Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) and as Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago (2002), and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the drama Cold Mountain (2003).

She has won three Golden Globe Awards and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, was named Hasty Pudding's Woman of the Year in 2009, and has established herself as one of the highest-paid Hollywood actresses in recent years. While still in Texas, Zellweger appeared in several films. One was A Taste for Killing (1992), followed by a role in the ABC miniseries Murder in the Heartland (1993). The following year, she appeared in Reality Bites (1994), the directorial debut of Ben Stiller, and in the biographical film 8 Seconds, directed by John G. Avildsen. Zellweger's first main part in a movie came with the 1994 horror story Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, alongside Matthew McConaughey. She played Jenny, a teenager who leaves a prom early with three friends and ended up getting into a car accident, which leads to their meeting a murderous family, led by the iconic Leatherface. Her next movie was Love and a .45 (1994), in which she played the role of Starlene Cheatham, a woman who plans a robbery with her boyfriend.

The performance earned her an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance. She subsequently moved to Los Angeles, winning roles in the films Empire Records (1995) and The Whole Wide World (1996). Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character. Zellweger later won acclaim in One True Thing (1998) opposite William Hurt and Meryl Streep, and in Neil LaBute's Nurse Betty opposite Morgan Freeman. The role garnered the actress her first of three Golden Globe Awards, but she was in the bathroom when future co-star Hugh Grant announced her name. Zellweger later protested: "I had lipstick on my teeth!" In 2001, Zellweger gained the prized lead role as Bridget Jones, playing alongside Hugh Grant and Colin Firth, in the British romantic comedy film Bridget Jones's Diary, based on the 1996 novel Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding. The choice came amid much controversy since she was neither British nor overweight.

During casting, Zellweger was told she was too skinny to play the chubby Bridget, so she quickly embarked on gaining the required weight (20 pounds) and learning an English accent. Her performance as Bridget received praise from critics with Stephen Holden of The New York Times commenting, "Ms. Zellweger accomplishes the small miracle of making Bridget both entirely endearing and utterly real." This role won her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. Along with receiving voice coaching to fine-tune her English accent, part of Zellweger's preparations involved spending three weeks working undercover in a "work experience placement" for British publishing firm Picador in Victoria, London. In 2002, she starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in White Oleander. The same year, she appeared as Roxie Hart in the critically acclaimed musical film Chicago, directed by Rob Marshall, co-starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, and John C. Reilly. The movie won the Academy Award for Best Picture, and Zellweger received positive reviews.

The San Francisco Chronicle's web site SFGate commented, "Zellweger is a joy to watch, with marvelous comic timing and, in her stage numbers, a commanding presence." The Washington Post noted that even though Zellweger couldn't dance well in real life, the audience "wouldn't know it from this movie, in which she dances up a storm." She earned her second Academy Award nomination as Best Actress, as well as the Screen Actors Guild Award and Golden Globe Award. less Renée Kathleen Zellweger (born April 25, 1969) is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire (1996), and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best... more Caroline Flack 'auditions' for role of Roxie Hart in Chicago | Daily Mail Online She tangoed and twirled her way to ballroom glory on last year's Strictly Come Dancing. But it seems Caroline Flack is not quite ready to hang up her dancing shoes.

The 35-year-old is said to be preparing to audition for the iconic role of Roxie Hart in the West End musical Chicago after rediscovering her love for singing and dancing. Scroll down for video Vying for the role: Caroline Flack is said to be preparing to audition to play Roxie Hart in the musical Chicago Alongside hosting the X Factor and Love Island for ITV, the presenter is hopeful she will land the coveted role previously filled by Denise Van Outen. It comes after the starlet, who shot to fame as the host of the Xtra Factor, told of her desire to appear in the musical in 2013. RELATED ARTICLES Share 'I'm obsessed with musicals. I have always wanted to play Roxie in Chicago,' she said. After taking acting lessons from coach Tom Attenborough, she hopes to land the part at the Palace Theatre in the forthcoming weeks. Busy schedule: The 35-year-old will host The X Factor with former contestant Olly Murs but is hopeful she will win the stage part 'This is Caroline's absolute dream role. Her time on Strictly reignited her passion for performing,' a source told the Sun's Dan Wootton.

'That's why she's prepared to put herself through the audition. She is hosting X Factor and Love Island for ITV so it's not like she needs the work, it's just a project she's very passionate about,' they added. 'She understands the risk of the audition and the fact it means she might not get the role.' Previous stars to have filled the part are Denise Van Outen and former Destiny's Child songstress Michelle Williams. Renee Zellweger portrayed the character in the 2002 film version of the musical alongside Catherine Zeta Jones who played Velma. Stage actress Sarah Soetaert most recently filled the role at the Cambridge Theatre. MailOnline has contacted a representative for Caroline Flack. Dancing queen: Caroline twirled her way to glory on the last series of the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing Famous predecessors: Renee Zellweger (left) played Roxie Hart in the 2002 film Chicago while Denise Van Outen reprised the role on Broadway (right)

Question: Which American actress plays "Roxie Hart" in the film, 'Chicago'?
Answer: RENE ZELLWEGER