Like the musical Chicago that won the Best Picture Academy Award and five other Oscars in 2002, this original 1927 version descends from a 1926 hit Broadway play by Maurine Watkins. It's a terrifically entertaining mix of humor and melodrama as well as a pungent critique of trash journalism. Frank Urson signed Chicago as director, although it is substantially the work of Cecil B. DeMille and his A-list technical staff. (DeMille apparently judged it unseemly to take full credit for this cynical and secular story while his religious spectacle The King of Kings was still in theatres!) Chicago is silent filmmaking at its peak, with an outstanding score for this edition by the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra. The 1927 Chicago was long believed a lost film, but a perfect print survived in Cecil B. DeMille's private collection. Restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2006, it has since been widely performed to rapturous audiences.
The films
Chicago - USA 1927 - Directed by: Frank Urson - Written by: Lenore J. Coffee, nach dem Bühnenstück von Maurine Watkins - Cinematography by: Peverell Marley - Music by: Rodney Sauerl - Cast: Phyllis Haver, Victor Varconi, Virginia Bradford, Robert Edeson, Eugene Pallette, Warner Richmond - Produced by: Cecil B. DeMille Pictures Corp. - Premiere: December 23, 1927
The Golden Twenties - USA 1950 - Directed by: Richard de Rochemont - Written by: Frederick Lewis Allen, Samuel Wood Bryant - Music by: Jack Shaindlin - Produced by: The March of Time
The Flapper Story - USA 1985 - Directed and written by: Lauren Lazin - Photographed by: Karla Ciement - Music by: Elizabeth Barifal - Produced by: Stanford University
Chicago: The Real-Life Roxie Hart - USA 2010 - Directed by: Jeffery Masino, Silas Lesnick - Written by: David Pierce - Music by: Rodney Sauer - Produced by: Flicker Alley
DVD features
DVD 1
- Chicago 1927, 119'
- Chapter selection
- Production stills and promotion material
- Orginal newspaper articles as ROM features
- Chicago: The Real-Life Roxie Hart 2010, 8'
DVD 2
- The Golden Twenties 1950, 64'
- Chapter selection
- The Flapper Story 1985, 29'
- Chapter selection
- 16 page booklet with essays by Thomas H. Pauly, Robert S. Birchard and Rodney Sauer
Edition by: Flicker Alley
DVD authoring: Brian Peterson
DVD supervision: Jeffery Masino, David Shepard
