Roxie Hart (film)

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Roxie Hart is a 1942 film directed by William A. Wellman and starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou, George Montgomery, Nigel Bruce, Phil Silvers, William Frawley, and Spring Byington.

Nunnally Johnson's screenplay focuses on a showgirl who confesses to a Chicago murder in the hope the publicity will propel her faltering show business career. The film was a remake of the 1927 silent movie Chicago, which had been based on a play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who had found her inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press.

In the original, Roxie Hart was guilty but acquitted of her crime. In order to placate the Hays Code, which regulated moral guidelines for Hollywood films at the time, this version portrayed Roxie as innocent but misguided in her attempt to achieve fame. The same subject is treated in the 1975 musical Chicago.

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