Movie musicals rarely exhibit as much self-aware razzle-dazzle as Rob Marshall's 2002 adaptation of a long-running Broadway hit. Plinking banjos and wah-wahing trumpets provide a syncopated, sassy take on Prohibition-era Chicago as Hollywood stars sing about sordid doings ripped from tabloid headlines. Showstoppers include "Cell Block Tango,” the immortal rundown of husbands who "had it coming"; the clever courtroom wordplay of "We Both Reached for the Gun"; and Queen Latifah proving who's the boss in "When You're Good to Mama."
More By John Kander
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- Apple Music
- Forbidden Broadway
- Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II, Barbara Cook, Stephen Douglass, Constance Towers & William Warfield
- Lotte Lenya & Pierre Fournier
- Richard Adler & Jerry Ross
- Charles Strouse
- Irving Berlin, Ethel Merman, Marilyn Monroe, Donald O'Connor & Dan Dailey