Roxie Hart

Roxie Hart, also known as Chicago or Chicago Gal, is a 1942 American comedy film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, Nigel Bruce, Phil Silvers, William Frawley and Spring Byington. The film is an adaptation of the 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who had found her inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press. The play had already been adapted once before, as the 1927 silent movie Chicago, and it would later be adapted as the 1975 musical Chicago, which in turn was adapted as the 2002 film Chicago. The screenplay, by Nunnally Johnson, focuses on a Chicago showgirl who confesses to a murder in the hope the publicity will propel her faltering show business career. In the original play, and its other adaptations, Roxie Hart was guilty but acquitted of her crime. However, in order to conform to the Production Code, which regulated moral guidelines for Hollywood films at the time, this version portrayed Roxie as innocent but misguided in her attempt to achieve fame.