Chicago: When Beulah Annan met Belva Gaertner

Also made into a film of the same name in 2002, the musical black comedy starred Hollywood legends Richard Gere, Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones in the lead roles of lawyer Billy Flynn, chorus girl Roxie Hart and vaudeville star Velma Kelly.

Fans may not know the glittering Hollywood show is based on a true story: a 1920s murder mystery that gripped public interest, with the leading characters Roxie and Velma being glamorised versions of real women, Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner.

The actual people who became embroiled in a courtroom drama more than a century ago were just as sensational as their fictional versions, their trials attracting unprecedented press coverage and sparking public fascination.

Synopsis of Chicago the musical

Set amid the razzle dazzle of the 1920s jazz scene, Chicago tells the story of Roxie Hart, an aspiring nightclub dancer who shoots her lover during a heated argument after he threatens to end their affair. Desperately trying to avoid conviction for murder, she meets cellmate Velma Kelly while awaiting trial.

Velma is accused of killing her husband Charlie and sister Veronica after finding out they’re having an affair, but she denies the murder. Both women are incarcerated on the notorious Murderess Row.

However, the devious Roxie manages to dupe the public and the media after hiring top criminal lawyer William “Billy” Flynn to defend her in court. The crime and trial are turned into a barrage of salacious newspaper headlines.

Velma Kelly and Roxie Hart both become notorious celebrities after being acquitted but ultimately argue. However, they discover they need each other more than they imagined, setting the stage for a traditional glitzy Hollywood ending.

Chicago the Musical story is based on a 1926 play, Brave Little Women, by US screenwriter and playwright Maurine Dallas Watkins. Working as a court reporter for the Chicago Tribune in 1924, she covered the trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner.

Later, aged 28, Watkins wrote the satire as a class assignment while studying at Yale Drama School. It was snapped up by Broadway producer Sam Harris and renamed Chicago, premiering in December 1926 at the Music Box Theatre, where it ran for 172 performances. This provided inspiration for the 1975 musical Chicago. The original play, renamed Play Ball, is still performed in theatres.

Who were Beulah Annan and Belva Gaertner?

Born Beulah May Sheriff in Owensboro, Kentucky, in 1899, Annan had married and divorced her first husband, newspaper print worker Perry Stephens, by the time she was 21. She married Albert Annan, a mechanic, in 1920 and they moved to Kentucky, where Beulah became bookkeeper at Tennant’s Laundry. Bored with married life and her job, she soon began a passionate affair with coworker Harry Kalsted.

On 3rd April 1924, Beulah took her lover for a secret rendezvous in her marital apartment. After both drinking wine, they began to argue in the bedroom, as Kalsted tried to end the affair. According to newspaper reports, a gunshot was heard at around 2pm, but it wasn’t until 5pm before the police were called to a fatal shooting, after Albert arrived home.

Initially, it was suggested Kalsted was an unwelcome intruder who had barged into Beulah’s apartment and attacked her, so she had shot him in self-defence using her husband’s revolver. Shooting him in the heart, she said he had tried to grab the gun during a struggle. However, a more sinister version of events emerged, amid claims Beulah had shot Kalsted in the back because he tried to leave her. Forensics were unable to determine the sequence of events.

She panicked on discovering her lover was dead and phoned her husband at work claiming she had shot a burglar. Albert rushed home and called the police, heralding the start of the media circus. Reports focused on how attractive Beulah was, rather than the fact she had just shot someone. One newspaper declared she was “the prettiest woman ever accused of murder in Chicago; young and slender, with wide set, appealing blue eyes and translucent skin.”

Belva Gaertner was born Belva Eleanora Boosinger in September 1884 in Litchfield, Illinois. She grew up to become a cabaret singer, who married and divorced in her 20s. In 1917, aged 33, she met a wealthy pioneer of the US scientific industry while out horse riding on bridle paths around Washington.  William Gaertner and Belva shared a common interest, as William had 15 horses.

After they married, Belva began an affair with Edward Lusk. William hired eight private detectives to follow her, subsequently divorcing her in 1920. She soon began a relationship with married father-of-one Walter Law. After three months of “wild gin parties and jazz”, Law’s body was found in Belva’s car on 12th March 1924. With an empty gin bottle next to him, he had been shot in the temple. Police later found Belva at her apartment, covered in blood, although she had “no recollection” of what happened, due to blacking out when drunk.

The two men’s deaths led to the first meeting between Beulah and Belva, who were both incarcerated at Cook County Jail awaiting trial.

Murder trials

While the suspects met in prison, the story of subsequent events that formed the plot of Chicago was fictional, although playwright Watkins used a press quote from Belva’s trial, when Law’s death was blamed on “jazz, liquor and guns”.

The trial began in March 1924, when Belva admitted she had been out drinking with Law, around various jazz clubs, on the day he died. She said a gun in her car was carried for protection against robbers, something they had discussed before she blacked out drunk. She later recalled running home, terrified, after seeing his body “slumped over the wheel.”

The prosecution claimed she had shot Law in a jealous rage after he threatened to end their affair. Declaring herself a “victim of the evil jazz scene”, and with insufficient evidence to convict her of murder, Belva was acquitted in June 1924. She later told reporters, “Walter was just a kid – 29 and I’m 38. Why should I have worried whether he loved or left me?”

She remarried William Gaertner in 1925 and was widowed following his death in 1948, eventually passing away herself in 1965, aged 80, in Pasadena, California.

Beulah hired Chicago Attorney William Scott Stewart who had notoriously represented The Mob for her murder trial in April 1924. Despite admitting she knew Kalsted, she insisted she had feared for her safety when they had a violent argument, leading to his accidental death. The jury acquitted her on 25th May 1924. She and Albert separated, and Beulah married third husband Edward Harlib in 1927, before she passed away, aged 28, from tuberculosis in March 1928.

Their stories still captivate audiences a century later, with the stage show, Chicago, having toured all over the world. Following high-level discussions at London meeting rooms in 1997, co-producers Barry and Fran Weissler, a husband and wife theatre team, brought the show to the UK for a record-breaking 15-year run. In 2012, after the final performance, Barry commented, “Bringing Chicago to the West End was a pivotal moment in Fran’s and my career. It has been a dream come true.”