The Real Women and Murders that Inspired 'Chicago'

Chicago journalist Maurine Dallas Watkins spent considerable time inside a Cook County courtroom covering the trials of two accused murderers in the roaring 1920s—so much so that she was inspired to write and release a play in 1926 about the killers, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner.

Watkins loosely based the play’s characters off the people involved in the courtroom proceedings she covered for the Chicago Tribune. Annan’s trial actually marked Watkins’ first byline in the newspaper that wanted her to provide a woman’s angle on the cases.

Decades later, Watkins’ play would inspire composer John Kander to write Chicago the musical with Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse. The musical premiered on Broadway in 1975. 

In March 1924, Gaertner, a cabaret singer, was accused of killing her lover, married car salesman Walter Law. He was found dead in the front seat of her car with a bottle of gin and a .32 caliber automatic pistol lying beside him. Gaertner was soon arrested and charged with Law’s murder.

Gaertner met Annan while awaiting trial on “Murderesses Row” in the Cook County Jail. Both she and Gaertner dominated headlines, often fighting for the limelight.

Annan and her husband, Albert, moved to Chicago in the early 1920s. Annan worked as a bookkeeper for a local laundry and began having an affair with her co-worker, Harry Kalstedt. In April 1924, Annan had Kalstedt over to her South Side apartment while her husband was at work. 

Annan later claimed that she and Kalstedt had been drinking wine when they began to fight and she shot him in the back with a gun around 2 p.m. Police weren’t called to the apartment for another three hours, when Albert returned home. Annan changed her story numerous times, including admitting to the murder but justifying it by saying she feared for her safety during the fight. 

Both murders were covered in depth by every Chicago-area paper. 

Gaertner was acquitted of her murder in June 1924. She later married William Gaertner and the couple moved to Europe. When he died in 1948, Gaertner moved to Los Angeles and lived with her sister until she died in 1965.

Annan was acquitted on May 25, 1925. She and Albert divorced a year later. Annan married twice more before she died of tuberculosis in 1928. 

On stage, Annan is portrayed as Roxie Hart and Gaertner as Velma Kelly, two rival murderers who are detained at Chicago’s Cook County Jail. The women vie for the attention of flashy lawyer Billy Flynn in hopes of gaining fame and being acquitted of their crimes. 

The Chicago writers also took inspiration from Chicago’s active crime scene during that era. Police records suggest that 265 women killed their husbands or lovers between 1870 and 1930, and only 24 of them were convicted. 

Hart and Kelly were influenced by the other women who committed similar crimes, some of whom are featured in the song “Cell Block Tango,” where they sing about how each man was killed because he “had it coming.”

In jail, Kelly becomes the cell block’s most popular murderer and basks in the media attention, so she gets angry when Hart comes in and steals her lawyer. Flynn takes Hart's case and spins it into a better tale for the press, which includes columnist Mary Sunshine. They lay out Hart's supposed side of the story in “We Both Reached for the Gun,” a song based on Annan's real-life defense strategy.

Both Hart and Kelly are acquitted in the show.

Hart has proven to be  a popular role for those looking to make a Broadway debut and was the first or only Broadway role for actress Mira Sorvino, model Ashley Graham, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Erika Girardi, model Pamela Anderson and Love Island USA host Ariana Madix, who was cast after a run on Dancing with the Stars. Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and “MomTok” influencer Whitney Leavitt will follow Madix’s footsteps, joining the Broadway cast as Hart in February 2026 following a turn on DWTS season 34.

Chicago is the second-longest running show on Broadway and has played continuously for 28 years. The musical has won six Tony Awards, two Olivier Awards and a Grammy. 

In 2002, the musical was made into a movie by the same name. Catherine Zeta-Jones played Kelly and Renée Zellweger portrayed Hart.