Overview

Jake Callahan, exhalting in his great fortune at finding the story of ""the most beautiful murderess,"" precisely characterizes Watkins's satirical take on murder and its aftermath--a view she formed while covering two similar and equally sensational murder trials for the Chicago Tribune. Watkins opens this comic drama with a brutal dramatization of the same situation the women in her articles faced: a vengeful Roxie has slain her lover for mistreating her. And then the fun begins. A boring, run-of-the-mill murderess until her frank confession creates an opportunity for profit, Roxie begins a transformation to rival that of Pygmalion's statue. She becomes, as Thomas H. Pauly points out in his introduction, a ""tabloid Cinderella.""

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9780809321292

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""This one’s got the makin’s: wine, woman, jazz, a lover,"" says Jake Callahan, a reporter in Maurine A. Watkins’s Chicago, a Broadway smash hit in 1927.

This one's got the makin's: wine, woman, jazz, a lover, says Jake Callahan, a reporter in Maurine A. Watkins's Chicago, a Broadway smash hit in 1927. <br>

Author Information

Maurine A. Watkins was a Chicago Tribune reporter whose play was derived from her bright, humorous coverage of the murder trials of two women remarkably like Roxie. Thomas H. Pauly is a professor of English at the University of Delaware and the author of a critical study of the career of Elia Kazan.

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