At the beginning of the DVD commentary, Peter O'Toole relates his meeting with Anouilh in Paris a few years before this movie was made because he was being considered for the play. Anouilh told him that he had been looking for an idea based on a rift in the leftist Théâtre National Populaire between Gérard Philipe and Daniel Ivernel. He visited Canterbury and decided the Becket story would be a good vehicle. Philipe and Ivernel were cast as Becket and King Henry II, respectively for the Paris premiere of the play, but Philipe died during rehearsals.
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
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Originally budgeted at $236,417 for a thirty-eight day shoot. The production ran over-schedule to forty-five days and over budget to a cost of $264,397.
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Although Frank Urson is credited as the director, it was widely known (and even publicized) at the time that producer Cecil B. DeMille directed most of the film (including 11 days of re-takes). DeMille took his name off the picture because his Biblical epic, The King of Kings (1927) was also playing in theaters at the time. Reportedly, DeMille's friend, theater owner Sid Grauman, convinced the director that audiences wouldn't want to see an amoral crime drama with an adulterous heroine so soon after seeing DeMille's film about the life of Christ.
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The final budget of $264,397 in 1927 is equivalent to $3,566,716 in 2017. The original playwright, Maurine Dallas Watkins, sold the rights for $25,000 which would be $337,250 in 2017.
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This film opened on the same day that the famous musical "Show Boat", written by Jerome Kern' and Oscar Hammerstein II, and which has a lengthy sequence set in Chicago, first opened on Broadway.
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Rights to the Maurine Dallas Watkins play were bought by producer/director 'Cecil B. deMille' for $25,000.
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The Broadway play, "Chicago," which inspired this film, 1942's Roxie Hart (1942), and the Tony-award winning musical and Oscar-winning 2002 film, was based on a true story. The characters of Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly were inspired by the real-life cases of two Chicago women -- Beaulah Annan and Belva Gaertner -- who each murdered their lovers in 1924. Both women were tried in separate cases, which became media sensations in Chicago, and both were acquitted. Playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins covered both trials as a reporter for the "Chicago Tribune," and adapted her experiences into the play, "Chicago."
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The first stage version of Chicago opened at the Music Box Theater on December 30, 1926 was directed by George Abbott and ran for 172 performances. The opening night cast included Francine Larrimore as Roxy Hart. Robert Barrat, Charles Bickford, Ferike Boros, George Cowell, Juliette Crosby, Edward Ellis, Edith Fitzgerald, Charles Halton, Eda Heinemann, Charles Kuhn, Charles Slattery, G. Albert Smith and Dorothy Stickney were also in the cast.
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Presented by the San Francisco Silent Film Festival to a sellout house of 1400 at the Castro Theatre on Saturday December 2, 2006.
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
Chicago - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts
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