Chicago (1928)

Reported “lost” by many, but actually surviving on 35mm nitrate stock in the Cecil B. DeMille family collection, this original film incarnation of the story that would become the 2002 Best Picture winner is finally returned to the public screen after a decades-long absence with a new restoration by the UCLA Film and Television Archive of the original full-length roadshow version. Maurine Watkins’s 1926 Broadway play Chicago was based on the pithy articles she wrote for the Chicago Tribune about two murderesses, Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan. Both women were accused of killing their lovers in cold blood, giving Watkins plenty of juicy material to work with.

This “contemporary” film version of Chicago was produced by DeMille Pictures (director Frank Urson was a Chicago native and frequent assistant director to Cecil B. DeMille) and retains much of the playwright’s wit and ribald humor. A vivacious Phyllis Haver plays Roxie Hart, the spoiled flapper who’d rather party all night than wait at home for her adoring husband, Amos. When Roxie’s sugar daddy (Eugene Pallette) tries to give her the air, she bumps him off and winds up on the infamous “murderess row” awaiting trial. Her only chance for acquittal is the mercenary Billy Flynn, a lawyer who is particularly skilled at saving the necks of trigger-happy young women. Flynn paints the “jazz slayer” as a virtuous girl overcome by the sin and speakeasies of the big city. With the help of Flynn and the scandal sheets, Roxie becomes a media darling, and her sensational trial a city-wide obsession.

Two subsequent versions of Watkins’s play have been filmed: William Wellman’s Roxie Hart (1942) starring Ginger Rogers, and Rob Marshall’s multi-Oscar-winning Chicago (2002), based on the 1975 Bob Fosse Broadway musical.

Cast: Phyllis Haver, Victor Varconi, Eugene Pallette, Virginia Bradford, Robert Edeson.

Directed by Frank Urson. Produced by DeMille Pictures Corp. Scenarist: Lenore J. Coffee. Based on the play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins. Cinematographer: Peverell Marley. Editor: Anne Bauchens. 35mm, silent, 120 mins.

Presented in conjunction with the UCLA Film and Television Archive Festival of Preservation. Preservation funded by The Cecil B. DeMille Foundation. Preserved from Cecil B. DeMille’s personal 35mm nitrate print.

Also showing:

Movie Night (1929)

Silent short subject accompanied on piano by Michael Mortilla.

Cast: Charley Chase, Eugenie Gilbert, Spec O’Donnell, Edith Fellows, Tiny Sandford, Harry Semels.

Directed by Lewis R. Foster. Produced by Hal Roach Studios/M-G-M. 35mm, silent, 20 mins.

Preserved by UCLA Film and Television Archive and the Academy Film Archive, in cooperation with Film Preservation Associates, from the incomplete 35mm nitrate original negative and a 16mm fine grain master positive. Preservation funded by the Stanford Theatre Foundation and the Silent Society of Hollywood Heritage, Inc.