Chicago - good, dark, serious
Finally saw "Chicago" recently. It's very good, unless you do not like musicals. It's hardly a musical comedy, although there are some funny moments. It's a "dramedy," I guess. Mucho seriousness. It did win the Oscar this year for Best Picture released in 2002. Richard Gere, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Queen Latifah are REALLY good.
When I was about eight or nine years old, I couldn't stand musicals. My dad ran them at the Strand Theater in Ransom, i.e. when they came out and as soon as he could get them. Well, OK, I DID like "Annie, Get Your Gun," with Betty Hutton, Howard Keel, and Louis Calhern, "way back when," but I saw no raison d'etre for "An American in Paris."
I like them, at least some of them, now. "Oklahoma!" is wonderful, either as a play or the 1955 movie starring the great Shirley Jones and the late Gordon MacRae. Such songs! "Kansas City," "I Cain't Say No," "Oh, What a Beautful Mornin'," "Pore Jud Is Daid," and "All er Nothin'" are part of the American iconography.
"My Fair Lady" and "The Sound of Music" have a lot of good songs, too. I have to confess, I've never seen either the stage or movie version of either one. But I used to own the 331/3 RPM vinyl (remember vinyl?) soundtrack recordings from both movies.
I did see "West Side Story" and loved it. Even played Officer Krupke at Ponca Playhouse in Ponca City, Okla., in 1986. (I had nine lines, I think.)
"Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" is also pretty cool. And "The Best Little (you know what) House in Texas." I was in that, too, playing the mayor of the little Texas town, at Ponca City.
Back to "Chicago." It's a murder-and-music thriller, featuring another "trial of the century" (20th). Or maybe "murder of the month" would be more like it.
"You're a phony celebrity; a flash in the pan. They'll forget about you in two weeks. That's Chicago," Gere's cynical criminal lawyer Billy Flynn tells Roxie Hart (Renee Zellweger), his client. He's defending her because she shot her illicit lover dead.
"We Both Reached for the Gun," featuring Roxie and Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones) was the highlight of the film for me. It features ventriloquism and human marionettes, complete with strings.
The world, life, is show biz, Gere says in another song-and-dance number. (Yes, he can dance.) The show is a tribute to the late Bob Fosse and his late wife, Gwen Verdon, as well as to another person whose name is unfamiliar to me.
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Speaking of musicals and good folks, the cast of "Annie, Get Your Gun" at Marion High School is to be congratulated on being nominated for three Jester Awards, annually handed out by Music Theatre of Wichita. Announcement of the award recipients will be Sunday at a ceremony at Century II in Wichita.
— Jerry Buxton
