The Girls of Murder City (54 page)

bootleggers and

Quinby, Ione

advice column written by

Annan and

book published by

Malm and

Nitti and

Stopa and

Quinn, Morris

radio

Rascoe, Burton

Reilly, Tom

Reinking, Ann

Revelry

Ricca, Paul

Rivera, Chita

Robertson, H. H.

Rogers, Ginger

Rogers, Will

Roosevelt, Theodore

Ross, Ishbel

Roxie Hart

Rubel, Richard

Saltis, Joe

Scoffield, Harriet

Scott, Owen

SEX

Sharpe, H. M.

Shepherd, William D.

Sheriff, John

Simpson, O. J.

Smith, Vieva Dawley “Doodles”

Smith, Yeremya Kenley

Snyder, Ruth

Sob Sister
(Gilman)

Solberg, Marshall

Springer, Joseph

Stefano, Rocco de

Steffen, Walter

Stensland, Paul

Stephens, Perry

Stevens, Ashton

Stewart, William Scott

Annan and

Chicago
and

gangsters defended by

Stopa, Harriet

Stopa, Henry

Stopa, Walter

Stopa, Wanda Elaine

Chicago
and

disappearance of

drug use of

epilepsy of

Forbes and

funeral for

husband of

law career pursued by

in New York

press and

Quinby and

shooting by

Smith and

suicide of

Watkins and

Strictly Dynamite

“Summer People” (Hemingway)

Time

Tinee, Mae

Torrio, Johnny

Touhy, Roger

Tracy, Spencer

Treadwell, Sophie

Tribune Plant Building

Tunney, Gene

Unkafer, Elizabeth

Chicago
and

conviction of

Urson, Frank

Valentino, Rudolph

Van Bever, Julia

Van Bever, Maurice

Vanity Fair

Verdon, Gwen

Virgin Man
,
The

Walther, Elsie

Wanderer, Carl

Wanderer, Ruth

Washington Post

Watkins, Dorotha

Watkins, George Wilson

Watkins, Maurine

adaptation work of

Annan and

background of

Browning divorce and

Chicago move of

Chicago Tribune’
s hiring of

death of

drama studies of

fame of

Florida move of

Franks (Leopold and Loeb) case and

Gaertner and

Malm and

as movie critic

myth and misunderstanding about

in New York

physical appearance of

play written by,
see Chicago

Quinby and

reporting style of

resignation from
Chicago Tribune

screenwriting career of

short stories written by

Snyder-Gray trial and

Stopa and

withdrawal of

Way of All Flesh
,
The

Weiss, Hymie

West, Mae

Wezenak, Mary

WGN

White, Stanford

Wilcox, W. W.

Wilde, Oscar

Wilson, Edmund

Wilson, Edward

women jurors

Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom

Woods, Ernest

Woods, Roy C.

Woolf, Virginia

Woollcott, Alexander

Wright, Frank Lloyd

1

Ninety years before Maurine, Jefferson Davis studied the same texts in the same classrooms.

2

Jennings had been a notorious train robber in the late 1890s. After serving five years in prison, he worked on silent-film Westerns and later ran for governor of Oklahoma.

3

The nicknames had nothing to do with Kitty’s alleged crime. They simply made for good headlines.

4

Maurine never named her tough West Side gunman, but it may have been Myles O’Donnell (of the West Side O’Donnells), who was shot three times in November of 1924 but survived.

5

Photographs of the suspect in her revealing attire had to be cropped at the collarbone to run in Friday’s newspapers.

6

The story inspired a leering cartoon strip in the next edition. “Harry has bought some booze—some red wine—prophetically red, like blood. Al is forgotten—shoved into the discard,” a caption read, under a drawing of a giddy, tipsy Harry and Beulah in the midst of undressing.

7

Her given name was Isabella and her nickname Sabella, yet most of the papers insisted on calling her Sabelle.

8

The
Los Angeles Times
dramatically undercounted Chicago’s murderesses. One hundred two husband-killers alone were tried in Cook County between 1875 and 1920. Sixteen were convicted, nine of them African American.

9

Wanda, like William Scott Stewart before her, graduated from the John Marshall Law School.

10

The inmates were allowed to use makeup only on days they appeared in court.

11

Maurine could be rather careless with names. It took her more than a month to spell Harry Kalstedt’s name correctly. She also initially flubbed Belva Gaertner’s and Walter Law’s names.

12

The $350 rent they paid when they moved into the Temple Building in 1925 is comparable to more than $4,000 eighty years later.

13

Nor were Alvin Goldstein and Jim Mulroy of the
Chicago Daily News
. Their dogged detective work would lead to valuable evidence, for which they would be awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

14

It’s possible that they missed it, as the Leopold-Loeb case pushed Maurine’s story back to page 4. The
Daily News
and the Hearst papers managed to find places on their front pages for Belva, even with banner headlines devoted to the Franks killing.

15

Roxie Hart was the name of a woman who’d been involved in an extramarital affair gone awry near Maurine’s hometown when Maurine was in high school. Roxie’s boyfriend murdered a man in an attempt to keep the affair a secret, leading to a trial that was widely reported in Indiana.

16

The raves may have helped. There’s no record of the play jury offering comment on
Chicago
.

17

Chicago
was indeed filled with awful swearing, which embarrassed Maurine. As she was the author, she was now hard-pressed to claim no acquaintance with such language. She tried, though: A rumor floated around that she had left blank spaces in the script where the swear words were supposed to go, to be filled in by the director and actors.

18

On the first day of the trial, Maurine highlighted her own celebrity status by taking
Chicago
star Francine Larrimore with her to the Long Island City courthouse to watch the proceedings.