The musical “Chicago” has a killer track record of guessing who the next name on everybody’s lips is gonna be.
Whether it’s Melanie Griffith, Brooke Shields, Pamela Anderson, Christie Brinkley, Ariana Madix or Usher, producers Fran and Barry Weissler have long embraced hiring untested stars who have not only never been on Broadway, but have no association with theater whatsoever.
Can they sing? Can they dance? Can they sell?
The couple’s risky strategy has paid off — well, most of the time — turning the revival of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s 1970s musical about a pair of Windy City murderesses into the current longest-running show on Broadway and second-longest of all time after “The Phantom of the Opera.” It’s an $800 million machine.
Every time “Chicago” starts to sag and the sharks smell blood, in goes a famous face.
So, who’s given the box office the old razzle dazzle and who’s given it the fizzle fizzle?
The Weisslers’ latest gamble is Whitney Leavitt.
Far from Lea Michele or Idina Menzel, Leavitt, 32, is the star of “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” the Hulu reality TV show, and a “Dancing with the Stars” Season 34 contestant. She came in 6th.
But she’s firmly in first place in this race. Earlier this month, Leavitt drove the 29-year-old production — nearly as old as she is — to its highest-grossing week ever with $1.4 million in ticket sales.
An usher at the Ambassador Theatre who’d never heard of her till now said of the fans’ cheers, “It’s like Yankee Stadium in here!”
Leavitt’s run has been extended until May 3.
The first major celeb to prove “Chicago”’s stunt casting model really could work was the “Working Girl” herself.
In 2003, when the musical was a spry seven years old and had already been adapted into the 2002 Oscar-winning hit film starring Renée Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones, Melanie Griffith was tapped to play Roxie Hart.
Why would a movie star with no stage resume take on the role of the unhappily married flapper who shoots and kills her lover and claims self-defense with the help of her slick lawyer Billy Flynn?
Griffith was in a career slump, and her personal life had become gossip column fodder. But then-husband Antonio Banderas was appearing across the street in “Nine,” and the time commitment was less than three months.
Rehearsals weren’t easy, The Post’s Michael Riedel reported. Choreographer and original Roxie, Ann Reinking, had to adjust the Bob Fosse dances for her. And at one point Griffith wanted to delay her start date by a week.
But one day before she was set to begin, she performed the show for an audience of three — Banderas, Chita Rivera and Barry Weissler — and got the confidence to go ahead.
The headline on Clive Barnes’ Post review read “Melanie can’t sing, dance or act, but she’s a star.” All the critics loved her.
That’s key. Griffith established an important precedent for future bold-facer Roxies: To be great, you don’t need to be a triple-threat. You can even be a no-threat. Just be you.
The actress proved a huge draw, and everybody agreed she was Roxie. Griffith sold more than $1 million in tickets before her first night, and then played to standing-room-only houses for her entire run.
Who should come next? And why stop at Roxie?
Other established screen actresses followed, though traditional thespians have turned out to be one its least fruitful pools money-wise.
There was Brooke Shields, fresh off of the sitcom “Suddenly Susan,” who first played Roxie in London.
While she was performing across the pond in 2005, Tom Cruise, then 42, went on the “Today” show and attacked her anti-depressant use, which she’d openly discussed in her memoir “Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression.” Cruise, being a Scientologist, called Shields “irresponsible.”
They both reached for the gun. She shot back at Cruise, who was dating 26-year-old Katie Holmes at the time, saying, “If he wants to see ‘Chicago’, I’ve left him two tickets — one adult, one child.”
The West End loved the drama.
When Shields hoofed it over to Broadway that September, she didn’t quite do Griffith’s numbers. The actress was less of a surprise stateside as she’d already appeared in “Grease,” “Cabaret” and “Wonderful Town.” But she boosted the house to 90% capacity for some of her stint.
Drama is clearly a draw. So, in 2006, well-liked rom-com actress and Tom Hanks’ wife Rita Wilson was not the most reliable Roxie. Her grosses hovered around $450,000 a week — respectable for a decade-old show 20 years ago, but half the business that “Mamma Mia!” was doing. Still, audiences enjoyed her.
Not true of model and Billy Joel’s ex-wife Christie Brinkley, who took over Roxie in 2011 at age 57. Fans online slammed her performance. And the Daily News wrote “there was a vacancy sign over Brinkley’s blank interpretation.” Oh well. The “Uptown Girl” moved enough tickets that she was asked back in 2019, when she was 65.
A more recent movie star who didn’t make much of a dent with audiences or cash registers was Mira Sorvino last fall.
Word of mouth was dire for the “Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion” star, and some weeks the Oscar winner played to as low as 68% capacity — not what you want from a known entity.
That’s much better, however, than Miss USA Tara Conner, who has the unique distinction of selling $0 of tickets.
In 2007, the Weisslers were secretly rehearsing Conner as Roxie in a Chelsea studio.
Like some of her predecessors, Conner was embroiled in a scandal. Three months after being crowned in 2006, she was caught drinking underage and snorting cocaine in a New York nightclub. To avoid losing her title, pageant owner Donald Trump sent her to rehab.
And then, straight to dance class!
“They’ve been putting her through her paces to see if she’s up to it,” a source said at the time.
“Assuming both sides are comfortable, then this will be a win-win for all parties,” Barry told The Post after the news leaked. “We look forward to making a positive announcement about her joining the ‘Chicago’ family.”
They made no announcement. Conner was let go two weeks later.
Perhaps nobody has seen a sharper career turnaround after dancing the “Hot Honey Rag,” though, than “Baywatch” actress and Playboy Playmate Pamela Anderson.
At 54, she began her two-month run as Roxie in April 2022, setting the media ablaze when Broadway was still limping along post-COVID.
I was there at her first performance, and said in my review, “Pam might as well have been Ethel Merman considering the roars.”
A rush of initial enthusiasm that week shot grosses up by nearly $300K to $829K. Yet nobody realized this was the start of a showbiz second act.
Three years later, Anderson received her first Golden Globe nomination for the dramatic film “The Last Showgirl,” and co-starred with Liam Neeson in the acclaimed “Naked Gun” reboot. This spring, her new movie, “Rosebush Pruning,” premiered at the prestigious Berlin Film Festival.
But we can’t let the girls have all the fun.
Between Griffith and a recent run of successful TV stars, “Chicago”’s most energizing hire was a man — Usher.
The R&B star, who was 27 then, played Billy Flynn in summer 2006 — and hundreds of fans poured onto 49th Street to catch a glimpse of the famous musician getting out of a convertible at the stage door. Grosses skyrocketed, too, up to more than $800,000 a week.
When he caught strep throat and had to bow out of his final eight performances, the take plummeted by $400,000.
“We just hope Usher gets healthy soon,” Barry told The Post at the time. “He was one of the best Billy Flynns we’ve ever had.”
Could that be because he earned the show an estimated profit of $1.7 million in seven weeks?
Oscar winner Cuba Gooding Jr. also played Billy in 2018. Unlike Usher, ticketbuyers have said he was one of the worst Flynns they’d ever seen.
Meh. During his run, “Chicago” was nonetheless outselling “Kinky Boots,” “School of Rock” and “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.”
But for country singer and Miley’s dad Billy Ray Cyrus, the job broke his heart, his achy, breaky heart. The Ambassador stayed about 65% sold while he was performing “All I Care About Is Love.”
In recent years the show has been super-charged by a dose of reality.
The top three “Chicago” cash cows ever are, in fact, unscripted-series regulars, who, like Leavitt, brought a non-traditional, voracious fanbase to Broadway.
Jinkx Monsoon, who won Season 13 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” broke a box office record in 2023 playing Matron Mama Morton.
And Ariana Madix of “Vanderpump Rules” gave the show its highest non-holiday week in 2024 as Roxie.
“Chicago” could run another three decades on Bravo alone.
The revival of “Chicago” will celebrate its 30th anniversary in November, in large part thanks to shoving stars onstage — good, bad or downright unwatchable.
The musical’s stunt casting is so well-known it was parodied last week on the Season 3 premiere of HBO’s “The Comeback,” starring Lisa Kudrow as washed-up actress Valerie Cherish.
When an unprepared Valerie steps into the part of Roxie, it’s a much bigger challenge than she expected.
“Maybe I should’ve seen the show before I said, ‘Yes’,” she tells her husband. “The music never stops, song after song. It’s relentless!”
That’s “Chicago”!
