Publisher's Weekly Review
This jaunty retrospective of two Jazz Age trials introduces us to the real-life originals of the killer ladies of the musical Chicago-and to the society that adored them. Journalist Perry (The Sixteenth Minute: Life in the Aftermath of Fame) revisits the 1924 cases of Belva Gaertner, a swanky divorcee, and Beulah Annan, a beautiful married woman, both accused of shooting their lovers to death. They were the most photogenic on Cook County jail's "Murderess' Row" of defendants in a spate of woman-on-man killings that inflamed the press and captivated a public grown bored with gangland murders. (Perry's third heroine is skeptical female reporter Maurine Watkins, who bemoaned the inability of all-male Chicago juries to convict killers with pretty faces.) The author gives an entertaining, wised-up rundown of the cases and the surrounding media hoopla, which the defendants and their lawyers cannily manipulated. (Annan hired a fashion consultant for court appearances and falsely declared herself pregnant to win sympathy.) Beneath the sensationalism, Perry finds anxieties about changing sex roles as feisty flappers and aggressive career women barged into public consciousness; his savvy, flamboyant social history illuminates a dawning age of celebrity culture. Photos. (Aug. 9) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
A chronicle of the wild spring and summer of 1924, when Chicago was afflicted with a seeming epidemic of female murderers.The hit Broadway play Chicago has its roots in the night of March 12, 1924, when Belva Gaertner was arrested for drunkenly shooting her boyfriend Walter Law. The daily newspapers instantly seized on the story in part because Gaertner was the ex-wife of a well-known industrialist, but also because a female killer was an appealing target for Prohibition-era conservatism. The moralizing only intensified a month later, when Beulah Annan stood accused of shooting her loverdancing to a jazz record while his body lay cold, some reportedand a young bohemian named Wanda Stopa was on the run from authorities for killing a man in jealous fury. Oregonian online features editor Perry (co-author: The Sixteenth Minute: Life in the Aftermath of Fame, 2005) provides consistently entertaining back stories on these women and others in the Cook County Jail, but more interesting is the author's exploration of the sexist attitudes that turned the women on "Murderess' Row" into odd celebrities. (One female inmate was likely saved from hanging simply by making herself look more attractive at a court appearance.) Perry also captures the hypercompetitive newspaper culture that fueled the alleged trend, following the cases through the eyes of Chicago Tribune reporter Maurine Watkins. Breaking through a sexist newsroom culture to deliver slyly satiricalif not entirely accuratedispatches on the women's trials, Watkins occasionally pushed the bounds of journalistic integrity to argue that Gaertner and Annan were guilty. After both were acquitted and public interest moved elsewhere, she abandoned journalism to skewer scandal-sheet culture in her play Chicago. In a similar manner, Perry critiques the newspapers for being ruthlessly eager to play loose with facts and reduce the women to news fodder. But his prose sometimes echoes the papers' pulpy tone, reflecting his comment in the endnotes that the media tended to overdramatize events.A lively history, though better at describing media sensationalism than the women who were caught up in its whirlwind. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Maurine Watkins, a girl reporter with the Chicago Tribune in the 1920s, was the first to cover the sensational story of two Jazz Age women who killed their men with the insouciance they gave to filing their nails or rolling their stockings. Decades later, Bob Fosse made the pair of stylish killers internationally famous through his hit musical Chicago. In this account, journalist Perry illuminates both the murderesses who held court at Cook County Jail and the newspapers writers who showcased them. This is as much a book about journalism and social history as it is about crime. Perry re-creates the world of Front Page with vivid details from the era, including the workings of the Linotype machine, which allowed papers to expand from only a few pages in the late nineteenth century to several multipage editions a day. In Chicago, six papers engaged in vicious competition. At the center of the fray were the headling-grabbing stories, often concerning crime and especially women committing murder, a phenomenon that increased 400 percent in 40 years. We follow shy Maurine Watkins, who left graduate school in classics at Radcliffe, as she is hired by the Tribune on a fluke and then goes on to get in-depth interviews and complete trial coverage of Beautiful Beulah Annan and Stylish Belva Gaertner, the models for Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly. This is a well-researched, fast-paced story behind the story.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Jazz Age Chicago was well known as a town where a pretty woman couldn't be convicted. In 1924, prim Maurine Watkins walked away from Radcliffe and into a job as the Chicago Tribune's police reporter just in time to observe the freak run of homicidal wives and girlfriends that made up Chicago's Murderess's Row. Her disgust at a system, in which all-male juries let beautiful women literally get away with murder, caused her to work tirelessly for justice and to write a viciously satirical play, which morphed into the musical, Chicago. VERDICT The real lives and crimes of these deadly women, as well as the story of Watkins's moral crusade, make for a spellbinding read for history, crime, and theater fans.-Deidre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
