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The second screen version of Maurine Watkins' play (the first, Chicago, was released in 1927) and the inspiration for the Bob Fosse musical and its Oscar-winning 2002 film is a snappy little comedy. Producer/writer Nunnally Johnson cleverly begins the story in the present day, with veteran reporter Homer Howard (George Montgomery) recalling the good old days, 15 years before, when Chicago was a wide-open "city of opportunity," replete with charismatic gangsters like Al Capone and sensational trials like the one involving an aspiring dancer, her boyfriend, and her jealous husband. A bartender (William Frawley) eggs him on to tell the story of Roxie, and in another clever touch, the barkeep shows up in the flashback in a key role. Ginger Rogers gives a one-note performance, though an enjoyable one at that, as the gum-chewing Roxie, and Adolphe Menjou, as her mouthpiece, Billy Flynn, rumples his hair and suit for the trial until he looks like John Barrymore. Rogers does get to dance twice, once in a jailhouse number accompanied by a gang of reporters (including Spring Byington as Sunshine Mary), and again in a solo number on the jail's iron steps to impress the smitten Homer. There are other pleasures, including Phil Silvers as Babe, who orchestrates his fellow tabloid photographers as they frequently interrupt the trial to take posed photos (which the judge always seems to sneak into) and the reactions of Roxie's farmer parents to her arrest (Pa: "They're gonna hang Roxie." Ma: "What did I tell you?"). Director William Wellman keeps things moving along, though there are still some dry patches, and the ending, forced by the Production Code, is a limp joke. For the record, Roxie has two jailhouse rivals, though neither of them are as strong as the musical +Chicago's Velma Kelly.