|
Chicago (musical)
''Chicago'' is a 1975 American musical with music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb, and book by Ebb and Bob Fosse. Set in Chicago in the Jazz Age, the musical is based on a Chicago (play), 1926 play of the same title by Maurine Dallas Watkins about actual criminals and crimes on which she reported. The story is a satire on corruption in the administration of criminal justice and the concept of the "celebrity criminal". The world premiere of the musical was a Broadway tryout from April 8, 1975, to May 3, 1975, at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia. The original Broadway theatre, Broadway production opened on June 3, 1975 at the 46th Street Theatre and ran for 936 performances, until August 27, 1977. Fosse directed and choreographed the original production, and his style is strongly identified with the show. It debuted in the West End theatre, West End in 1979, where it ran for 600 performances. ''Chicago'' was revived on Broadway in 1996, and a year later in the West End. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Kander
John Harold Kander (born March 18, 1927) is an American composer, known largely for his work in the musical theater. As part of the songwriting team Kander and Ebb (with lyricist Fred Ebb), Kander wrote the scores for 15 musicals, including ''Cabaret (musical), Cabaret'' (1966) and ''Chicago (musical), Chicago'' (1975), both of which were later adapted into acclaimed films. He and Ebb also wrote the standard "Theme from New York, New York, New York, New York" (officially known as "Theme from ''New York, New York''"). The team received numerous nominations, including eleven for Tony Awards (won four, followed by a Lifetime Achievement Award for Kander), two nominations for Academy Awards, and five for Golden Globe Awards. Early life John Kander, the second son of Harold and Bernice (Aaron) Kander, was born on March 18, 1927, in Kansas City, Missouri. He has stated that he grew up in a loving, middle-class Jewish family and maintained a lifelong close relationship with his older bro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playbill
''Playbill'' is an American monthly magazine for Audience, theatergoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most copies of ''Playbill'' are printed for particular productions and distributed at the door as the show's Programme (booklet), program. ''Playbill'' was first printed in 1884 for a single theater on 21st Street in New York City. The magazine is now used at nearly every Broadway theatre as well as many Off-Broadway productions. Outside New York City, ''Playbill'' is used at theaters throughout the United States. its Magazine circulation, circulation was 4,073,680. History What is known today as ''Playbill'' started in 1884, when Frank Vance Strauss founded the New York Theatre Program Corporation specializing in printing theater programs. Strauss reimagined the concept of a theater program, making advertisements a standard feature and thus transforming what was then a leaflet into a fully designed magazine. The new format proved popu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roxie Hart
Roxanne "Roxie" Hart is a fictional character. She is the main character of the 1926 play ''Chicago'' and its various remakes and derivatives. Development 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 husband Albert to pay for her successful defense, only to dump him the day after the trial. For the play, Annan was fictionalized as Roxie Hart, Kalstedt became Fred Casely, and Albert became Amos Hart. Some of the details of Gaertner's crime, including her past as a vaudeville singer (Annan was a bookkeeper) and blaming of her misdeed on getting drunk, were also applied to the Roxie character. The 1975 musical adaptation bases Hart's mannerisms on Helen Morgan. Character backgrou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sob Sister
Sob sister was an American term in the early 20th century for reporters (usually women) who specialized in newspaper articles (often called "sob stories") with emphasis on the human interest angle using language of sentimentality. The label was coined in 1907 during coverage of a scandalous murder trial that became known at the time as the " Trial of the Century". Origin The term "sob sister" dates to 1907, when Irvin S. Cobb derided the women reporters who were covering the trial of Harry K. Thaw for murder. ''Sob brother'' was less commonly used for male reporters who wrote similar articles. By 1910, sob sister was in common use to describe any woman reporter and was sometimes used to describe women novelists such as Fanny Hurst. Years later, a review of Truman Capote's '' In Cold Blood'' described the book as "sob sister gothic". The term was usually intended to imply that the sob sister was less than a "real" reporter, was an amateur, and that they "manufactured tears fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hearst Corporation
Hearst Corporation, Hearst Holdings Inc. and Hearst Communications Inc. comprise an American multinational mass media and business information conglomerate owned by the Hearst family and based in Hearst Tower in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. Hearst owns newspapers, magazines, television channels, and television stations, including the ''San Francisco Chronicle'', the ''Houston Chronicle'', ''Cosmopolitan'' and ''Esquire''. It owns 50% of the A&E Networks cable network group and 20% of the Walt Disney Company's sports division ESPN Inc. The conglomerate also owns several business-information companies, including Fitch Group and First Databank. The company was founded by William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner most well known for use of yellow journalism. The Hearst family remains involved in its ownership and management. History Formative years In 1880, George Hearst, mining entrepreneur and U.S. senator, bought the '' San Francisco Daily Examiner.'' In 1887, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cook County
Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40 percent of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. the population was 5,275,541. The county seat is Chicago, the most populous city in Illinois and the third most populous city in the United States. The county is at the center of the Chicago metropolitan area. Cook county is also the sixth largest county in Illinois by area. Cook County was incorporated in 1831 and named for Daniel Pope Cook, an early Illinois statesman. It achieved its present boundaries in 1839. Within a century, the county recorded explosive population growth, going from a trading post village with a little over six hundred residents to four million, rivaling Paris by the Great Depression. During the first half of the 20th century it had the absolute majority of Illinois's population. There are more than 800 local ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago Tribune
The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and WGN-TV, WGN television received their call letters. It is the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region, and the List of newspapers in the United States, sixth-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States. In the 1850s, under Joseph Medill, the ''Chicago Tribune'' became closely associated with the Illinois politician Abraham Lincoln, and the then new Republican Party (United States), Republican Party's progressive wing. In the 20th century, under Medill's grandson 'Colonel' Robert R. McCormick, its reputation was that of a crusading newspaper with an outlook that promoted Conservatism in the United States, American conservatism and opposed the New Deal. Its reporting and commenta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belva Gaertner
Belva Eleanora Gaertner (née Boosinger; September 14, 1884 – May 14, 1965) was an American woman who was acquitted of murder in a 1924 trial. She inspired the character of Velma in the 1926 play ''Chicago'' created by Maurine Dallas Watkins; Watkins reported on the trial for the ''Chicago Tribune''. The Velma character became Velma Kelly in the 1975 musical based on the play. Early life Gaertner was born Belva Eleanora Boosinger on September 14, 1884, in Litchfield, Illinois to Mary Jane (née Clark) and Charles M. Boosinger. She was a three-time divorced cabaret singer who used the professional name Belle Brown. Her first marriage was July 11, 1901 in Montgomery Co, IL to Harry W. Peepo (divorced before 1905), then to a Mr. Overbeck. In 1917, she married William Gaertner, who was 20 years older and a wealthy industrialist, in Crown Point, Indiana. Five months later, William Gaertner successfully sued to have the marriage annulled, claiming that Belva's divorce from Overbeck ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beulah Annan
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 character who Annan inspired. Early life Beulah May Sheriff was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Mary () and John R. Sheriff. While living in Kentucky, she married her first husband, newspaper Linotype operator Perry Stephens. They soon divorced, and Beulah then met car mechanic Albert Annan. They went to Chicago together, where they got married on March 29, 1920. In Chicago, Albert found work as a mechanic at a garage and Beulah eventually became a bookkeeper at Tennant's Model Laundry. At the laundry she met Harry Kalsted isspelled Kalstedt by the press and the two began an affair ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Award For Best Picture
The Academy Award for Best Picture is one of the Academy Awards (also known as Oscars) presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) since the awards debuted in 1929. This award goes to the producers of the film and is the only category in which every member of the Academy is eligible to submit a nomination and vote on the final ballot. The Best Picture category is traditionally the final award of the night and is widely considered the most prestigious honor of the ceremony. The Grand Staircase columns at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, where the Academy Awards ceremonies have been held since 2002, showcase every film that has won the Best Picture title since the award's inception. There have been 611 films nominated for Best Picture and 97 winners. History Category name changes At the 1st Academy Awards ceremony held in 1929 (for films made in 1927 and 1928), there were two categories of awards that were each considered the top award of the ni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago (2002 Film)
''Chicago'' is a 2002 musical black comedy crime film based on the 1975 stage musical, which in turn originated in the 1926 play. It explores the themes of celebrity, scandal, and corruption in Chicago during the Jazz Age. The film stars an ensemble cast led by Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere. ''Chicago'' centers on Roxie Hart (Zellweger) and Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), two murderers who find themselves in jail together awaiting trial in 1920s Chicago. Roxie, a housewife, and Velma, a vaudevillian, fight for the fame that will keep them from the gallows. The film marks the feature directorial debut of Rob Marshall, who also choreographed the film, and was adapted by screenwriter Bill Condon, with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. ''Chicago'' received critical acclaim, with particular praise for the performances of the cast. The film went on to win six Academy Awards in 2003, including Best Picture, making it the first musical to win Best P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cats (musical)
''Cats'' is a sung-through musical theater, musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is based on the 1939 poetry collection ''Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats'' by T. S. Eliot. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicle cats, Jellicles and the night they make the "Jellicle choice" by deciding which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. As of 2024, ''Cats'' remains the List of the longest-running Broadway shows, fifth-longest-running Broadway show and the List of the longest-running West End shows, eighth-longest-running West End show. Lloyd Webber began setting Eliot's poems to music in 1977, and the compositions were first presented as a song cycle in 1980. Producer Cameron Mackintosh then recruited director Trevor Nunn and choreographer Gillian Lynne to turn the songs into a complete musical. ''Cats'' opened to positive reviews at the New London Theatre in the West End theatre, West End in 1981 and then to mixed revi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
