Roxie Hart Roxie Hart Fox Home Entertainment 1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat full frame / 75 min. / Street Date April 20,2004 / 14.98 Starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, Lynne Overman, Nigel Bruce, Phil Silvers, Sara Allgood, William Frawley, Spring Byington Cinematography Leon Shamroy Art Direction Richard Day, Wiard Ihnen Film Editor James B. Clark Original Music Alfred Newman Written by Nunnally Johnson from the play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins Produced by Nunnally Johnson Directed by William A. Wellman
	Reviewed by Glenn Erickson This hilarious comedy saw Ginger Rogers solidifying her status as an actress and comedienne after winning an Oscar for Kitty Foyle two years earlier. It's the 1942 version of the play Chicago, a farce about slick lawyers winning not-guilty verdicts for incredibly guilty female murderers with the the help of the newspaper media system. It's from the same source as the musical version of a year ago. Ginger kicks her heels up in a couple of terrific dance scenes, but it's not a musical per se. And it's funny in the tradition of The Front Page - fast, cynical, and witty. It may not be a Studio Classics presentation, but it's a heck of a lot lighter-spirited than The Grapes of Wrath or The Ox-Bow Incident - a "classic" from the same director. This goes on the shelf next to My Man Godfrey and Sullivan's Travels. Synopsis: Reporter Homer Howard (George Montgomery) tells a true tale he witnessed in 1927, when wild girl Roxie Hart (Ginger Rogers) went on trial for the murder of her "theatrical agent" after her husband Amos (George Chandler) came home unexpectedly. A glamorous dame in a capital case makes for big news and reporters (Lynne Overman), columnists (Spring Byington) and photographers (Phil Silvers) turn the jailhouse into a circus. Slick lawyer Billy Flynn (Adolph Menjou) defends Roxie with a tactic that depends on snookering the jury with a combination of sex, sympathy and outright dishonesty. Roxie Hart must have been a dynamite morale booster in the early months of WW2: It pure escapism from contemporary problems. The constantly-funny script uses a flashback structure that reaches a mere fifteen years into the past to find Chicago a completely different world of gold-digging flappers. The news media is out of control and even the prosecutors and judges vie for publicity. The completely amoral newsmen use Dixie as a circulation builder and her fame snowballs accordingly. The husband is shut away from his own wife (can't have him mucking up the defense or the headlines), the jury foreman (William Frawley) falls immediately in love with the accused, and the young reporter (Montgomery) discovers that Roxie's fallback witness has died, throwing her absurd defense into a tailspin. Nunnally Johnson's delightful dialogue is just as witty but easier on the ears than the Hecht-MacArthur machine-gun patter style of ten years before. Adolph Menjou wraps himself around at least 50 great lines. Phil Silver's corps of jolly cameramen jump like vultures at every phony courtroom revelation. Reporter Lynne Overman covers the courtroom proceedings on live radio like a boxing commentator. Cadaverous Milton Parsons cuts in for frequent commercial announcements. Vivacious Ginger Rogers is introduced as a pair of legs sneaking down a fire escape. Chewing bubblegum with a game smile, she pushes the limits of what was acceptable to the Hays office, all the while summoning fake tears and sobs on cue and grinning slyly at her own delicious wickedness. There's some cheating with the original details to appease the censors, especially who actually murdered who. But the spirit is all there, even Roxie's opportunistic gambit for sympathy - when her publicity threatens to fade, she pretends to be pregnant. It's a necessary ploy to wrest the headlines back from a new media sensation, a Bonnie Parker-like rural gunslinger (in jeans, no less) called "Two Gun Gertie" (a wonderfully slummy Iris Adrian). Unlike the musical, the competition between gorgeous inmates is kept to a minimum. Roxie has an opening catfight (with cat yowls on the soundtrack!) with the previous star prisoner and spars a bit with Gertie, but hilariously tough prison matron Sara Allgood (Sara Allgood?!) intervenes like Wonder Woman and calmly konks the combatants out cold. The music is limited to real songs from the period and is nicely introduced in the 1942 wraparound bookend segment when a broken player piano suddenly revives and spits out a snappy 1927 tune. Ginger displays a little sexy dancing (The Black Bottom!) but wows us with a wonderful tap on the steel steps to the jail cells that integrate nicely with George Montgomery's growing infatuation. And then there's a silly number where Ginger and the press celebrate good times in the interrogation room with an all-out Charleston. Spring Byington (as gossip maven "Mary Sunshine"), Sara Allgood and a raft of square-looking newshounds cut a fancy rug. Seeing all the middle-aged actors dancing is a real treat ... they probably all learned the steps when they were brand new! Roxie Hart is so funny it gets to have its cake and eat it too. It neatly sidesteps the problem that Roxie is a tramp who'd sleep with practically any of her admirers. The wrap-up barely establishes who's bamboozled who and the final flash-forward to the present ends things on a strictly Tex Avery gag basis, which for this story is perfect.  2 William Wellman's direction is flawless - light and breezy but with a strong dose of nostalgia. Everyone in the cast gets their fair share of choice moments, with William Frawley receiving special attention - his character has a direct association with the present-day story. The picture moves so quickly we hardly have time to think that it stays confined to an apartment, the jailhouse and a courtroom. Ginger Rogers doesn't hog the center of attention as would any star in today's power-driven movie world: In the comedy dance number we get a dozen great angles of jazz-age dancing, but it isn't Ginger's scene alone.  1 Why Fox's DVD of Roxie Hart doesn't qualify as a Studio Classics edition I don't know, because the movie is more entertaining than many of their key titles. The transfer is stunningly good, with Leon Shamroy's crisp lighting coming through perfectly. The busy soundtrack keeps all those frantic comedy lines strictly audible. The only extras are a pair of effective teaser trailers. The photo of Rogers on the cover would make a great poster. On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Roxie Hart rates: Movie: Excellent Video: Excellent Sound: Excellent Supplements: teaser trailers Packaging: Keep case Reviewed: April 18, 2004 Footnotes: 1. Not to rag too heavily on last year's Chicago, but its one lousy joke (everyone's corrupt) wears off quickly in a welter of overdone songs and tiresome stylization that makes gangland Chicago look like something between Cabaret and Sweet Charity. Its singer-stars can barely sing and their dancing is so minimal they can't be shown doing more than a half step in any one cut. It's all flash that wants to be taken seriously. Ginger Rogers is far more entertaining in just two 2 minutes of light tap and showoff exhibitionism. And we also get a fast script with laughs to equal a Billy Wilder movie. Return 2. Avery would later return the compliment - Kitty Foyle was the subject of a Tex Avery gag in his anarchic 1949 cartoon Bad Luck Blackie. 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