Inside Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon’s Chicago Power Struggle
Bob Fosse had been insecure even before his heart attack—but the medical emergency left him weaker, ..
Bob Fosse had been insecure even before his heart attack—but the medical emergency left him weaker, less confident, and suddenly without Dexedrine, the drug that fueled his work obsession. “He couldn’t be as alert and creative for eight hours,” Chicago actress Pam Sousa told Fosse biographer Sam Wasson. And that showed in his choreography—with dancers moving slower than in past Fosse productions, a transition played out in Tuesday’s Fosse/Verdon episode, “Nowadays.”
Fosse had agreed to direct and choreograph his latest show, Chicago, as a favor to his wife, Verdon, who had suffered through his myriad infidelities.“[T]hrough the early stages he wore his duty comfortably,” wrote Wasson, “but returning to rehearsal after surgery, he seemed to resent the obligation.”
One issue was that Verdon had signed a deal that gave her unprecedented control over the production—including star billing, prominent promotional placement, and approval of all creative elements. “He gave her an enormous percentage of it,” wrote Verdon biographer Peter Shelley. “Fosse also left the royalties for it to Verdon in his will.” There were other complications that shifted the power balance between the pair—including the fact that Verdon was not as spry as she had been in her younger Broadway days. “He was trying to get Verdon to dance her best but he wasn’t yet completely fluent in her older body,” wrote Shelley. “He could be impatient with her and once she responded by saying, ‘They can pack his heart in sawdust for all I care.’”
Fosse’s assistant choreographer, Tony Stevens, told Shelley that the hurt and pain the pair inflicted on one another was apparent in rehearsals. Stevens was surprised, for example, that Fosse asked Verdon to do seemingly degrading routines—but she did them, like a “Funny Honey” routine in which Fosse made Verdon’s character, Roxie, look inebriated. In “Razzle Dazzle,” Fosse staged his wife in the midst of dancers “groaning and humping.” According to Shelley, Chicago co-star Chita Rivera did not approve: “That’s the great Gwen Verdon up there, and look what they’re doing,” she commented to another production member.
The tension culminated with an argument over the show’s ending. Verdon battled for a triumphant final moment for Roxie, but Fosse resisted. “One could say he wanted Roxie to wind up wounded, like Pippin,” wrote Wasson. “One could say he wanted to wound Gwen, either to keep her from walking away with the show. . . or to keep her fighting, fighting as Roxie Hart fought, for her own moment.”
But as cold as the treatment seemed, Verdon could on occasion rationalize her husband’s cruelty.
“Bob inflicts pain,” she told Bob Arthur, according to Fosse biographer Read More – Source
