Roxie Hart is a 1942 American comedy film directed by William A. Wellman, and starring Ginger Rogers, Adolphe Menjou and George Montgomery. A film adaptation of a 1926 play Chicago by Maurine Dallas Watkins, a journalist who found inspiration in two real-life Chicago trials she had covered for the press. The play had been adapted once prior, in a 1927 silent film. In 1975, a hit stage musical premiered, and was once more adapted as the Oscar-winning 2002 musical film.
Ginger Rogers as Roxie Hart
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and military pilot. He was known for his work in crime, adventure, and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well-regarded satirical comedies. His 1927 film, Wings, was the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony.
Wellman filming The High and the Mighty (1954)
Wellman and Celia, his Nieuport 24 fighter, c. 1917 (one of several aircraft named for his mother)
Wellman in a captured German Rumpler (image from his 1918 account Go Get Em!...)
Wellman as a flight instructor at Rockwell Field, 1919