* Thursday is generally Morlock Kimberly’s territory, but she is taking a brief break. I know her fans will miss her, but I will do my best to fill her blogging shoes.
When I was a college student working the graveyard shift at a truck stop, a movie crew stopped by one morning to have breakfast. The crew was on their way to dress the set for Harvest Home, a TV mini-series starring Bette Davis. Being one of those flirtatious truck-stop girls, I was invited to come onto the set to watch the filming. I am sure the crew member thought it was his idea all along! It was exciting to watch as the town square in tiny Kingsville, Ohio, morphed into a thriving New England farming village. The experience gave me a life-long fascination with visiting movie locations, a pastime that I parlayed into a book a few years ago titled Florida on Film: The Essential Guide to Sunshine State Cinema.
As part of their agenda to entertain and educate the public about classic cinema, Turner Classic Movies has put their own spin on movie tourism by offering the TCM Movie Location Tour in Los Angeles and the TCM Classic Film Tour in New York City. While no one at Turner has asked my opinion on these matters, I whole-heartedly suggest Chicago for their next movie-location tour. From the pioneering efforts of Colonel William Selig to the slapstick antics of Charlie Chaplin to the overblown atrocities of Michael Bay, Chicago has been an active center for movie-making. Few people realize Chicago’s importance, because writers and documentarians too ingrained in the canon of film history regularly leave out the city’s contributions. (Film historians Michael Smith and Adam Selzer hope to compensate for this oversight with their upcoming book Flickering Empire: How Chicago Invented the U.S. Film Industry, soon to be published by Wallflower Press).
ESSANAY STUDIO’S BEAUTIFUL DOORWAY REMAINS INTACT.
To showcase Chicago’s illustrious cinematic past, I would start my tour at the old Essanay Studios on Argyle Street on the city’s North Side. Essanay was named after founders George Spoor (the “S”) and William Anderson, better known as Broncho Billy (the “A”). In 1914, Anderson hired Chaplin away from Keystone to make films for Essanay, but when the comic actor arrived in Chicago in December 1914, he was less than enthusiastic about the cold weather. He directed and starred in one film in Chicago, His New Job, before returning to Essanay’s California branch to complete his contract. A thriving studio where Gloria Swanson, Francis X. Bushman, and Wallace Beery also started, Essanay closed its doors to filmmaking in 1917. The facilities are now part of St. Augustine College, but the main entrance still includes the Essanay name and Indian head logos. Be sure to drive a few blocks south of Essanay to sit in Broncho Billy Park, a small playlot named after the first big cowboy hero. Located near Magnolia and Sunnyside, the park originally bore the name “Bronco Billy” before the city realized its error.
THE SELIG “S” IS STILL VISIBLE ON THIS BUILDING, WHICH IS NOW CONDOS.
A couple of miles west of Essanay is the intersection of Western Ave. and Irving Park Road, where the Selig Polyscope Co. once stood. Crowded with businesses, including a used car lot and rental-car company, the intersection would not be recognizable to Kathlyn Williams, Tyrone Power, Sr., and the other actors who made films for Colonel William Selig. The last remnant of the studio is a building one block away at Claremont and Byron. The large “S” above the transom of the entranceway stood for Selig Polyscope. Originally Selig’s offices, the building now houses residential condos. Selig Polyscope was one of the first movie studios in the world, with the Colonel producing The Tramp and the Dog, his first narrative film, around 1896. Compare this to the Lumiere Brothers and W.K.L. Dickson (Edison’s associate) who were shooting snippets of everyday life with their cameras, still in awe of their inventions’ capacity for capturing movement rather than its storytelling potential.
NOT MUCH LEFT OF THE EBONY PRODUCTION FACILITIES
An “S” is not much to look at, but it is more than what is left of the production facilities for the Ebony Film Corp., originally located across the street from the Roberto Clemente Post Office near N. California and W. Medill. Only diehard fanatics like myself would track down the Ebony location, because nothing is left of the facilities. However, the thrill is to understand that Ebony was part of the thriving race movie industry in which African American writers, directors, and actors created films of all kinds for black audiences around the country. The race movie industry was centered in Chicago till after WWI, and the former site of Ebony’s North Side production facilities offers a chance to talk about that on my tour. The studio was owned by a couple of white men but managed by an African American, Luther J. Pollard, who produced successful slapstick comedies in the mid-1910s, such as The Porters, Money Talks in Darktown, and A Black Sherlock Holmes. Though Pollard claimed to represent African Americans with dignity, his films did rely on black stereotypes of the era, causing some criticism from the Chicago Defender. (The most prominent and successful directors of race movie was Oscar Micheaux. The offices for the Micheaux Film and Book Company were located at 538 S. Dearborn, which is now the site of a new building.)
THE BIOGRAPH IN 1933 AND AS IT LOOKED FOR ‘PUBLIC ENEMIES’
Heading east on Fullerton, we would soon hit Lincoln Avenue, where Chicago’s impressive movie history meets its notorious gangster history. In 1933, John Dillinger (technically an outlaw, not a gangster) was shot down in the tiny alley beside the Biograph Theater after enjoying Manhattan Melodrama with his betrayer, the Lady in Red. Dillinger’s ghost still roams the alley, unable to pass on to the next world. In 2008, director Michael Mann recreated the shooting in the original alley for his film Public Enemies. However, interiors showing Johnny Depp as Dillinger watching the film were shot at the Portage Theater in the city’s Portage Park neighborhood.
CHICAGO IN THE 1940s, COURTESY OF ‘CALL NORTHSIDE 777′
The Portage Theater is located on Milwaukee Avenue, which has been the center of the Polish neighborhood for decades. In the 1948 film Call Northside 777, a Polish man is falsely accused of killing a policeman and railroaded into a murder rap—a story based on a real-life incident. A crusading reporter, played by Jimmy Stewart, searches for evidence to clear his name by interviewing locals in the bars along Milwaukee Avenue. This riveting drama was filmed partially on location, which was not typical of the era, but the shots of the working class neighborhoods along Milwaukee as well as the area around Holy Trinity church on N. Noble give the film a gritty authenticity. Call Northside 777 captured an older Chicago—the blue-collar City of Big Shoulders identified more by its stockyards than its Magnificent Mile.
THE HIDEOUS BLUE AND ORANGE INTERIOR OF THE JAMES R. THOMPSON CENTER IN ‘RUNNING SCARED’
What’s the point of shooting in a major city if you don’t take advantage of the unique architecture? The historic skyscrapers in Chicago’s Loop have been used to great effect in many films. Most articles about Chicago’s movie locations inevitably include Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Fugitive, but I have decided to avoid the obvious and focus on lesser-known titles. The movies might not be classics, but the use of the architecture is interesting. The John Hancock Building in the Loop was the location for Poltergeist III, the third in the series about little Carol Anne who is pursued by evil entities from beyond the grave. This time, Carol Anne is staying with her aunt and uncle in an ultra-modern high rise in Chicago. The glass exterior of the building echoes the interiors, which feature a lot of reflective surfaces. Characters from beyond the grave appear and disappear in the mirrors and windows as though moving between dimensions. This sleight of hand is accomplished entirely by mechanical effects rather than trick photography in a feat that would never be attempted in today’s CGI-dominated industry.
CLIMBING OUTSIDE THE SMURFIT-STONE BUILDING–WELL, ACTUALLY A SET OF THE BUILDING
In 1985, an eyesore known as the State of Illinois Building opened on Randolph Street. A sloped glass structure that is reminiscent of a UFO, the building was later re-christened the James R. Thompson Center after the governor who is blamed . . . oops, I mean who is responsible for its construction. In the beginning, office workers complained that the building was stifling, because the air conditioning was not sufficient to compensate for the sun streaming through the glass—like a greenhouse. Later, some of the glass panels on the 17-story structure fell to the ground, luckily avoiding passersby. A year after it opened, the building played a part in the climactic sequence of a forgotten buddy-cop movie called Running Scared, starring Billy Crystal and Gregory Hines. Pursuing a drug lord, Hines’s character scales the outside of the building, while Crystal shoots it out on the inside, where the odd angles accentuate the funhouse quality. The building works well as a movie location but leaves something to be desired as an example of modern architecture.
Climbing the outside of glass skyscrapers makes for an exciting movie conclusion even in comedies such as Adventures in Babysitting, one of my favorite films set in Chicago. The premise is based on an old Chicago joke about the naivete of suburban residents who think the entire city is inhabited by drug addicts, mob bosses, and criminals so they rarely leave the safety of the ‘burbs. A suburban babysitter drives into the big-bad city with her three charges to rescue a friend stuck at the bus station. Their plans to rush back to the safety of the suburbs go awry when drug addicts, mob criminals, and others chase them through the city. The youngest finds herself pursued across the exterior of the diamond-shaped, slanted top of the Smurfit-Stone Building on Michigan Avenue. Surviving the escapade with the skyscraper becomes a symbol for overcoming the city’s dangers for the four characters.
INSIDE THE HALLS OF CABRINI GREEN, WHICH ACTUALLY LOOKED LIKE THIS EVEN WHEN RESIDENTS LIVED THERE
Chicago may be famous for its renowned modern architecture but it is infamous for its dangerous housing projects—which signify the opposite end of the economic spectrum. A highly effective location can be found in Candyman, a horror film set in the notorious housing project Cabrini Green. The Candyman is the monster of Cabrini Green—a relative term considering the drug dealers and gang members who preyed on residents in real life. In the film, the monster is conjured by calling his name five times while looking into a mirror. Virginia Madsen stars as a graduate student who is studying urban legends. She visits Cabrini Green, entering an abandoned apartment to look for evidence of belief in the legend. Looking behind a bathroom mirror, she discovers a tunnel leading to a shrine devoted to the Candyman. The tunnels actually existed in Cabrini Green; they were made by gang members who tore through the walls of empty apartments to create escapes and shortcuts from one part of a building to another. Cabrini Green has since been torn down, and the neighborhood redeveloped, though a quick tour through the area might reveal a glance of the Candyman.
The above locations are found in the Loop and the city’s North side; it represents only a fraction of Chicago movie locations. More can be found on the South Side and in the suburbs. I sure hope TCM knows that I’m available as a tour guide; if you see me riding a TCM bus in Chicago, just remember that tips are welcome!