If you’re a fan of the musical Chicago, as I am, you’ll know the story of Foxy Roxie Hart. However, did you know that the Roxie we know and hate to love was inspired by an actual woman from Chicago? I certainly didn’t! Then I came across the book The Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry. A whole lot of that book is based off the writings of Maurine Watkins, a no-nonsense reporter for the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s. So sit back, put on some big band, and let me regale you with the tale of the real Roxie Hart. (Note – expect a lot of quotes from the book, seeing as that’s where most of this information comes from.)
She was known to Chicago papers as Beautiful Beulah Annan, “the prettiest woman ever charged for murder in Chicago”. But before she was a notorious ‘girl gunner’, she was born Beulah Sheriff, daughter of John Sheriff – a prosperous Kentucky farmer – on November 18th, 1899 in the Ohio River Valley. As a teen, Beulah had a habit of getting into trouble. So much so her father refused to help her out of her jams, making her live with the consequences of her actions.
As a result, she married young, at the age of 17. She married Linotype operator Perry Stephens and gave birth to a son. Beulah discovered that motherhood wasn’t quite her cup of tea. Soon enough, she divorced her husband and left him with their son, never to make contact with them again.
Not one to sit still for too long, Beulah found a new man. She married Albert “Al” Annan on March 29th, 1920 and the couple moved to Chicago shortly thereafter. Al found work as a mechanic and Beulah worked as a bookkeeper for Tennant’s Model Laundry. And that’s where her troubles began (or continued, rather). She met Harry Kalstedt and fell head over heels. It didn’t take long for an affair to start up between the two colleagues.
Everything went absolutely wrong for Beulah on Thursday, April 3rd, 1924. It was a little after noon when Harry came knocking on Beulah’s apartment door asking for money. Beulah gave him a dollar and sent him on his merry way, knowing he’d be back soon enough. A short while later, Harry returned with two quarts of wine.
Beulah relished in the attention and affection that Harry was bestowing upon her. She snuggled up close to him on the couch, touching and kissing as much as she pleased. Harry was so handsome, and he was all hers. For the moment. But Beulah wasn’t 100% happy. She wanted to pick a fight.
Harry had made promises, you see. He promised to lavish her, take her places, and throw his money around. But Harry never did those things. He never seemed to have money to spend on her. And Beulah had had enough. She fully intended to make Harry keep his promises, one way or another.
In her infinite wisdom, Beulah employed a tried and true tactic. She tried to make Harry jealous. She wanted to get a rise out of him. And so, she boasted about another fictitious man named Johnny who’d come around to call on her. The ploy worked. Harry demanded to know if they’d slept together, calling her a “vile name” (pg. 85) and shouting as he did so. Beulah shouted back. Their fight escalated quickly. Harry stepped toward her.
Two hours after the fight, at 4:10 PM, Beulah called the laundry where they both worked. She acted like she hadn’t seen Harry all day, wondering where he was. She put on a record, Hula Lou, her favourite, playing it over and over again. She hung up the phone and started the record over again.
Drunk and manic, Beulah began dancing. She stopped. She focused. And she began to cry. Harry was still on the floor.
She picked up the phone and called her husband at the garage where he worked. “Come home, I’ve shot a man. He’s been trying to make love to me” (pg. 86) she said. Al rushed home, where he found Beulah sobbing and hysterical. She told him her story – a man came in and tried to make love to her, but she fought him off and shot him with a gun.
Al believed her – his beautiful Beulah must have been so frightened! He called the police. Officers arrived at the small apartment at 817 East Forty-Sixth Street, took note of their surroundings, and paid close attention to where the body was lying. Al handed them the gun right away upon arrival.
Al said he kept the gun in the bureau of the bedroom. “I cam come and found this guy going after her. It was me that shot him” (pg. 89) he told police in a rush. Al was desperately trying to save his wife. She seemed to be having none of it in her state of drunken mania.
Harry belonged to her, she said. She didn’t want to give him up. But Harry had said he was going to quit her, and she couldn’t have that. If Harry left her, then she’d only have Al.
She’d warned Harry that she’d shoot him, but he kept coming forward. What choice did she have but to shoot? Beulah didn’t hear the officer ask her: “In the back?” (pg. 89). She collapsed in a dead faint.
She came to to the sight of Assistant State’s Attorney Roy C. Woods in her apartment. She knew him. He was a customer of the laundry. He told her not to be afraid, she’d shot an intruder. Beulah liked the sound of that. She asked if they could make it look like an accident. Woods took a shocked step back. That was not what he had been expecting.
Albert Allen – police stenographer – didn’t miss Beulah’s slip. He was recording every word she said. He took it upon himself to ask her why she’d done it, why she’d shot Harry Kalstedt. Crying uncontrollably, Beulah replied that she didn’t know why she’d done it. This statement was enough to make an arrest.
At the station – a little more composed but still wide-eyed and teary – Beulah repeats her story again. But this time, there are reporters surrounding her, waiting on baited breath to hear from Chicago’s latest gunner girl. Maureen Watkins of the Chicago Tribune is in attendance. She seemed the be the only one not won over by Beulah’s big doe-eyes. In fact, Maureen didn’t believe Beulah’s story at all.
Then the police began to question Beulah. Why were there empty wine bottles and empty glasses in the apartment? Why was Harry shot in the back? Why was there such a delay before Beulah called the police? Her story simply didn’t add up.
Beulah simply couldn’t take it anymore! She came clean – she and Harry had been fooling around for two months. They drank the wine, and he said he wanted to leave her. She couldn’t stand that. She shot him, sat by him, and cleaned up his face. Then she put on the Hula Lou record. “I was nervous, you see” (pg. 93), she told them.
Assistant State’s Attorneys Bert Cranson and William McLaughlin, as well as police Captain Edward Murname were in attendance of this confession. They were pleased as punch. Beulah Annan “had all but put a noose around her neck” (pg. 94). The attorneys were determined to crush the notion that a jury couldn’t convict a beautiful woman. This was their chance. All the papers ate it up.
However, the prosecution hit a snag. Defence attorneys William Scott Stewart and his law partner W.W. O’Brien took up Beulah’s case. For a fee.
Al was determined to save his wife’s life, despite her adultery. He quickly began trying to found up the funds to cover Beulah’s legal expenses. He even called Beulah’s father, but he refused. She’d gotten into enough trouble over her lifetime for his liking.
As Al was saving his wife’s ass, Beulah was living it up. She was loving all the attention. She was no longer the sobbing mess officers had first brought into the Hyde Park police station. She’d washed up and changed clothes. By some accounts, she looked ravishing. But, she wondered, would this alone be enough to get her off the hook?
Roy Woods had laid out his evidence at the Coroner’s Inquest piece by piece. Harry had said he was done with Beulah. Beulah would not, could not, let him walk out. She grabbed the gun from the bureau in the bedroom, and she shot him.
“‘Both went for the gun!’ W.W. O’Brien called out” (pg. 101). He and Stewart presented Beulah as a “virtuous working girl”, dredging up the time Harry had spent in prison in Minnesota. The prosecution rebutted, stating that:
“The inquest established that almost three hours passed from the time of the shooting until Beulah called her husband at five in the afternoon. Dr. Clifford Oliver testified that he arrived at the apartment at 6:20; he said Kalstedt had been had been dead about half an hour. Woods made clear what that meant: Beulah had watched her boyfriend succumb to a slow, agonizing death” (pg. 101).
The inquest concluded that Beulah was responsible for Harry’s death. The case would then go to a grand jury before certainly going to trial. After the inquest’s conclusion, Beulah was moved to the infamous Cook County Jail, taking up residence on Murderess Row.
This is when her story began to change, at the advice of her lawyers. Harry wasn’t leaving her after all, and the gun wasn’t kept in the bureau. Harry was still cross over their fight, and he came toward her. The gun was in plain sight. Beulah got to it first. Harry wasn’t shot in the back, he’d been shot in the arm. This was the version of events Steward and O’Brien decided to stick to.
Even behind bars Beulah didn’t seem to believe that this was her reality. She waxed poetic to anyone who would listen about her affair with Harry, her marriage to Al, and even her first marriage to Perry Stephens. She simply loved being the centre of attention, and the reporters were keen to keep Beautiful Beulah happy. If she was happy, she was talking. And if she was talking, she was making them money with their headlines.
O’Brien made it clear that Beulah would be pleading self-defence. He reiterated that Harry Kalstedt had spent five years in prison for assaulting a woman. Surely he wouldn’t have had a second thought about assaulting another woman.
The papers loved this storyline. And Beulah made for a sympathetic interviewee. She was repentant of her actions. She was simply another woman scorned by jazz and liquor, leading her dreadfully astray. She was a fallen woman who could be saved!
Maureen Watkins saw right through every layer of O’Brien’s and Beulah’s bullshit. The Tribune called Beulah Annan exactly what she was – an attention-starved drunk who murdered a man rather than let him leave her. “Beulah didn’t seem to notice Maureen’s cynicism. She was too busy revelling in the clamouring attention” (pg. 111).
Before Beulah’s trial could even begin, she encountered a slight problem. The papers weren’t as interested in her anymore. There was a new gunner girl in town. Beulah wouldn’t stand for it. She’d already lost Harry, she couldn’t lose this as well. And so, she changed her story again.
Harry was harassing her, you see. He found out that she was with child. But it had to be kept secret. Harry insisted. Once again, Beulah was headline news. Which was exactly what she wanted to be.
Her trial was scheduled for Thursday, May 22nd, 1924. All eyes in the courtroom were on the ‘expectant mother’. The papers were all over the place, waiting to catch a glimpse of Beulah. Once they did, they wistfully described her as a ‘modest little housewife’ in appearance. She’d really gone above and beyond for her façade.
While all the papers were mesmerized by Beulah’s demure appearance, Maureen Watkins kept to her cynical guns. She seemed to be the only reporter in attendance at the trial who remembered the fact that Beulah had murdered a man.
Maureen was known to be particularly vicious and critical of Chicago’s justice system. Douglas Perry states: “What any decent defence attorney in Chicago wanted in a jury, she believed was ‘twelve good morons’ – and she was convinced, and horrified, that W.W. O’Brien and William Scott Stewart were going to get them” (pg. 162).
As the trial progressed, the defence was dealt a serious blow. The judge allowed for Beulah’s first drunken, sobbing confession to be admitted into evidence. But this didn’t deter them one bit. The prosecution was in trouble. Woods removed himself from the case so that he could testify. This meant he could also be cross-examined.
The defence got to work. They engaged in an emotional and theatrical opening statement, O’Brien working his magic as he spun their version of events for the jury. He was very convincing. Beulah, tears in her eyes, even believed the web he was artfully weaving.
The prosecution battered back. They had witness after witness who could testify for them. They called policemen who had first been at the scene to the stand in order to recount what they’d seen and heard in Beulah’s apartment.
Another witness recounted how Beulah had first asked Woods to ‘frame’ it as an accident. They stated that they heard Woods reply: “You don’t frame anything with me”. Evidence, witnesses, and statements continued to pile up against Beulah.
The prosecution brought up the call Beulah had made to the laundry at 4:10 PM, making sure the jury understood that Harry had been dying on the floor when it happened. This painted Beulah as cold and uncaring. The hope was to ruin any favour Beulah had over the jury. But the real test was about to come.
Beulah took the stand in her own defence on Saturday, May 24th, 1924. She was the picture perfect image of an innocent victim. Maureen Watkins described her best – “Under the glare of motion picture lights – a news weekly – Beulah took the stand. In another new dress – navy twill tied at the side with a childlike moiré bow – with new necklace of crystal and jet, she made her debut as an actress” (pg. 177). This is what everyone in the courtroom had piled in to witness.
Stewart, the calmer of Beulah’s two defence attorneys, started her off with easy to answer questions. He asked her her name, her age, and the like. He wanted to make her steady, solid, convincing and credible for the jury.
Once that task had been accomplished, he followed up with questions to establish her character – whatever character Beulah wanted to play that particular day.
From there, he moved on to what happened that dreary day in April. The entire courtroom was silent. The only sound to be heard was the buzzing of the lights and cameras.
Beulah launched into her tale. Harry had showed up drunk, she told the courtroom. He was begging for money. She gave him a dollar to make him go away. But he came back around 2:00 PM with wine. Then a struggle ensued. She wanted him to leave but he wouldn’t go. They both reached for the gun, but she got it first! She pushed at his right shoulder with her left hand, and that’s how she ended up shooting him in the back, she said. She truly believed that he’d meant to do her harm.
Before all that transpired, she had been begging Harry to leave. She informed him that she was pregnant. That’s what started the whole struggle for the gun, she said.
Then she lost all reason! The call to the laundry was a wrong number – dialled out of habit, perhaps. She finally managed to get ahold of her husband at the garage. He arrived, followed by the police. Then they took her to Hyde Park police station for questioning.
With the tale told, Stewart had established Beulah’s version of events, craftily skewering the credibility of many witnesses with his careful phrasing. Beulah was excellent on the stand. He was satisfied.
Then the prosecution launched into their cross-examination. They hoped to catch Beulah in all her lies and fabrications. They did not miss the fact that the story she’d just told was not the version of events she’d first confessed to.
Right away, McLaughlin went for the cracks in her story. Why would she sit with a man like Harry if she didn’t want to? Why would she admit him into her apartment? In order to hold onto her own narrative, she was forced to concede that she willingly did those things.
He then tried desperately to get Beulah to admit – as she’d done more than a month prior – that she was fooling around with Harry on the couch. If she broke here, it would be a major blow to her fabricated reputation. It would create a large rift in her argument for self-defence.
Despite this, and despite her first recorded admission to police and reporters alike, Beulah never wavered, frustrating McLaughlin to no end. Regrettably, she stuck to her version of events.
Though frustrated, McLaughlin didn’t back down. He kept probing for known inconsistencies. He knew he was losing ground, and that he couldn’t afford to. Not if he wanted to convict Beulah for the murder of Harry Kalstedt.
Out of options, McLaughlin went for the gold. He brought up Beulah’s first confession. She denied it vehemently, blaming the liquor for clouding her mind.
“He went through her statements line by line, and Beulah, still calm, still with that sweet Southern accent, denied practically every word credited to her by the state” (pg. 187).
McLaughlin hammered at her, but she never got flustered. “She was so good on the stand that, even with the confident, evidence-packed case the state put forward, it was not impossible to guess which way the jury might be leaning” (pg. 189).
In closing arguments, McLaughlin went over all the evidence again with the jury, attempting to destroy Beulah’s new reputation. He was confident. He thought he had the jury on his side.
Then the defence worked their magic. The police bullied her, they said. That’s why she lied to them and gave them a false admission. She was shocked and distraught and they took advantage of that.
O’Brien, an expert sentimentalist, took over for Stewart to bring it all home. Beulah was a “virtuous, hard working girl, a loving and decent wife who had been ruthlessly slandered so that the State’s Attorney’s Office could rack up a conviction” (pg. 193).
At 8:30PM that Saturday night, the jury was sent out for deliberation. Surprisingly, Beulah didn’t want to speak to anyone. The reality of her situation must have hit her like a tonne of bricks.
At 10:20PM the jury had reached it’s verdict. Not guilty!
Spectators, reporters, and prosecutors “wandered in confusion, in ecstasy, in anger” (pg. 195).
Maureen Watkins was not quiet about her thoughts on the matter – “She was convinced Beulah was a cold-blooded murderer – and a devious, calculating defendant” (pg. 196).
Predictably, Beulah craved and adored the attention. She vowed to be a dear, devoted wife to Al.
That plan didn’t last. By Monday afternoon, “she appeared in a newspaper office with a divorce lawyer in tow” (pg. 198).
Her acquittal was very quickly overshadowed by the disappearance of Bobby Franks. The case took over the papers, reporters – including Maureen Watkins – fighting tooth and nail to get a look at, and interview, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb. (I’ll cover this case at a later date, I’m sure.)
Beulah was all but forgotten. Some people did notice, though, that she never gave birth to the child she claimed to be expecting while on trial. There was much speculation that this ‘child’ is what aided her acquittal – the jury didn’t want to see a pregnant woman hang.
By January 1927, Beulah had moved to Indiana and married a 26 year old man. The marriage lasted four months. She returned to Chicago and moved in with her mother.
Beautiful Beulah Annan died on March 14th, 1928 of Tuberculosis.
Now, you may be wondering how we went from Beulah Annan to Roxie Hart. And the answer is Maureen Watkins.
In 1926, after the trial, she met with theatre professor George Pierce Baker in order to partake in a seminar. The result is the story of Roxie Hart – a married woman who shot down her boyfriend when he tried to leave her. Sound familiar?
Roxie becomes a huge celebrity – willing to do anything and everything to stay relevant to the papers. It helps her case that she’s beautiful with a fine figure.
The play “endeavoured to expose the utter corruption of both the legal system and the newspaper industry – how lawyers and reporters were interested not in justice or truth but in making themselves look good” (pg. 231).
“Roxie was the moron triumphant, counting on her fellow morons – on the newspaper staffs, on the jury, everywhere in this twisted… America – to save her” (pg. 233).
The play garnered attention – both good and bad – and soon was consistently playing to packed houses. Maureen kept quiet about the fact that most of the characters and events were lifted from her own newspaper, modelling it all on real people and events. It was a hit when the play made its way to the city of Chicago. It even inspired a film adaptation in 1927.
After the death of Maureen Watkins in 1969, her family sold the rights to her play. It inspired another film in 1942 – “Roxie Hart” – starring Ginger Rogers in the titular role.
The musical adaptation came about in 1975, which reached Broadway quickly. This musical, which still tours regularly, then inspired the blockbuster film most of us are familiar with, 2002’s “Chicago”, featuring Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Richard Gere, to name a few.
And that is the sordid, steamy, unbelievable reality of the woman who inspired Foxy Roxie Hart in all her glorious itarations. It is astounding to me that after nearly 100 years, and through all the adaptations, Beulah Annan was so iconic, so unbelievable as she was, her character has remained more or less unchanged. I guess she really knew where the gin was cold, and where the piano was hot. And all that jazz.
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Sources:
Chicago murder – and all that jazz – Chicago Tribune article by Ron Grossman
The Girls of Murder City by Douglas Perry – available on Amazon
And Wikipedia for some background info