Library Video of the Week, March 18, 2013

Chicago, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rene Zellweger and Richard Gere. Directed by Rob Marshall.  Library Call Number: PN1995.9.M86C55 2003.

            Velma Kelly, a one-time club singer, found her boyfriend and sister in bed together and shot them both.  Roxie Hart’s boyfriend said he’d make her a star, but all he wanted was her body.  When she found out she wasn’t going anywhere with the bum, she shot him, too.  Now Velma and Roxie are on Death Row together with an ace up their sleeve: high-rolling lawyer Billy Flynn.  He’s never let a pretty woman burn in the chair for murder and he won’t start now.
            Originally a monster Broadway play by Maurine Watkins (see the Browsing Book of the Week), Chicago was made into a musical after her death.  Though based on 1920’s event, the newspaper sensationalism and overwhelming sexism linger in the 21^st century.  Winner of six 2002 Oscars—including Best Picture—as well as top awards in 2003 from the American Film Institute, the American Choreography Award, the highest awards in Japan, Norway Great Britain and over 35 other honors, Chicago is a satirical gem.

Browsing Area Book of the Week, March 18, 2013.

The Girls of Murder City: Fame, lust and the beautiful killers who inspired Chicago by Douglas Perry. HV6517.P475 2010.

In 1924, with Prohibition the law of the land, booze in Chicago was more prevalent than ever.  Speakeasies, illegal gin joints and jazz clubs were everywhere, well supplied by Dion O’Banion, Johnny Torrio and Johnny’s lieutenant, Al Capone.  It was also a time when women journalists were hired for the Sunday articles—home and fashion—and the men did the hard news. 

But Maurine Watkins, a preacher’s daughter from Indiana was determined to make it as a newswoman; she started at the Tribune covering homicides.  Chicago, after all, was rich with murder, even before the gang wars, and nothing was more peculiar than the tendency of women in the Second City to get drunk and shoot their boyfriends; nothing, that is, except the other peculiar fact that all-male jurors seemed to find an attractive young woman accused of murder “Not guilty.”

          For Maurine, with her religious morals, this was unconscionable.  Two beauties, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner were both coming to trial, both of them guilty as hell.  Maurine tried to become the voice of justice and morals for the city, all the while swimming against the tides of sexism and sensationalism. 

But eventually, she would get a hit Broadway play out of it.

 

Browsing Area Book of the Week, December 3, 2102.

City of the Big Shoulders: an anthology of Chicago Poetry, edited by Ryan G. Van Cleave.  Library Call Number: PS572.C5C58 2012.

           Rather than a compilation of poets from Chicago (though most hail from there), Van Cleave has collected poems from 100 writers with the same thematic impulse: to pull a piece of Chicago out for poetic examination.  Notable poets such as Joy Harjo, Barry Silesky and Bob Hicock and Nina Corwin all represent the past, present and future of the Windy City in their work.

           As in any collection, some of the poems are more successful than others, but the best evoke the spirits of Carl Sandburg, Gwendolyn Brooks and the hundreds of other past artistic voices of America’s Second City, while capturing the unique and vibrant neighborhoods, lakefront views, open spaces, hidden corners and individual characters of some of Chicago’s citizens.  One of the more encompassing descriptions of the town, by Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz:

I want to eat

in a city smart enough to know that if you

are going to have that heart attack, you might

as well have the pleasure of knowing

  you’ve really earned it.