Chicago: The Movie

Two months after her trial, Beulah (who was married before) divorced her husband Albert and married a young publicist named Harlbit. Within months she also divorced him.

Four years after her murder acquittal, Beulah (using an assumed name) checked into a sanitarium. She had tuberculosis. Before the end of 1928, she was dead. Her body was returned to her family home in Owensboro, Kentucky.

Watkins, meanwhile, had returned to Yale. She wrote her play Chicago for a class assignment with the famous Professor George Pierce Baker. (Eugene O'Neill had also been his student). Belva and Beulah became Velma and Roxie, but their crimes remained the same.

On 30 December 1926, Watkin's play opened on Broadway with George Abbot directing. It ran for 172 performances and helped to make Maurine a wealthy woman.

She refused to sell the rights to Chicago - even to Bob Fosse who approached her in the 1950s - because she never wanted the play performed again. It is said she thought her Tribune articles had helped to set two killers free.

In later years, Watkins (be sure to check out this linked resource) often left home with a heavy veil over her face. Because of that, people thought she was eccentric. The truth is the writer had cancer which had deformed her nose and one cheek. She died of lung cancer on 10 August 1969. She was 73 years old and left a fortune worth about $2.33 million.

After her death, Bob Fosse negotiated with Watkins' estate and was able, with his colleagues, to buy the rights and turn the play into his famous musical. Chicago, the movie, is based on Fosse's musical.