Inspired by Chicago - The truth in the satire

The musical Chicago is a famous, favorite musical. It may interest many to know that Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart were real people, but had different names. The woman reporter who covered these events wrote the show Chicago as a satire and wanted us, as the audience, to hate the characters portrayed. They weren't written to be related to, at all.

Maurine Watkins, 28,  wrote about Belva Gaertner (Velma Kelly) and Beulah Annan (Roxie Hart) as if they had been guilty and played the system. She was put on the murderess row beat because it was too boring for the men, apparently. Murder, boring? Ha!

What you have to know about a reporter's access to jails was that they had 24-hour access in 1924. They competed with police to solve crimes, in their minds. Watkins would go in acting like what they used to call a "sob sister". As a result, they talked to her and she could use their words against them.

Sob sisters were a way of playing the system and creating sympathy for the woman trying to get off for murder, rather than sympathy for victim. The "sob sister" would become upset over the "wrongly jailed woman", creating press coverage that made the woman look good to a jury. Think Mary Sunshine, if you need an illustration of this.

Another thing to note, in this time period in Illinois, was that all male juries were the, stubbornly common, normal. The Victorian ideal that women didn't become violent, but only became that way for good reason, was alive and well here. This created an easy way to play the jury, by being a weak looking female to get off for murder.

Belva Gaertner

She was a cabaret singer and divorcee, and a woman who was possessive of her men, dangerously possessive. Unlike the musical portrayal, she didn't do a double homicide. She shot Walter Law in her car after a cabaret gin party and claimed to remember nothing, except hearing an explosion and feeling him fall on her.  Belva Gaertner and William Gaertner divorced multiple times and it was he who divorced her for abuse the last time. Thus proving that women can be abusive, too. 

Beulah Annan

This one was almost the same as the musical, pregnancy claim and all. Except for one thing; she changed her story three times. 

She shot her lover Harry Kalstedt, whom she met while working as a book-keeper. Afterward, she left her husband's phonograph playing for hours, then finally called her mechanic husband to say she killed a man. She divorced her husband, whom she had used as a meal ticket, directly after the trial on grounds of desertion. She had faked a pregnancy for sympathy and broken down in front of the jury in the course of the trial. 

Her first story about the crime was that his advances caused her to shoot to defend her honor. The story morphed into him leaving and her shooting him for leaving. The story she settled on was self-defense. "They both reached for the gun", which was said at the actual trial and made into one of Billy Flynn's featured songs in the musical. 

What ultimately happened

These two women were acquitted, but did I even need to tell you these women were let off the hook? If you watched the musical, no, but I say it for the benefit of those who don't know. 

Annan died of tuberculosis at age 29. Gaertner lived to the ripe old age of 80 and lived with her sister after her husband died in 1948. 

As usual, check my facts and keep me posted on what you want to hear about. I aim to arm writers with truth and history.