John Owens

Dig through the archives of the Chicago Tribune, and you’ll always find some interesting gems. Here’s one from 52 years ago today on October 14, 1973, when a young reporter laid out exactly why Chicago was a terrible place to make a movie. That reporter’s name? Gene Siskel . Years before his famous on-air sparring with Roger Ebert, Siskel could be a sharp-eyed arts reporter, and in his article “Filmed in Chicago,” he painted a bleak picture. (Click on the image below for the full article). Back then, if you wanted to shoot a film here, you’d face a mountain of red tape and a City Hall that viewed cameras with deep suspicion. Siskel highlighted the 1973 crime film "The Friends of Eddie Coyle" —a story set in Chicago that was filmed in Boston simply because it was easier and cheaper. The city, he wrote, just didn't know "what part of its face to put before the movie camera." The main reason for the cold shoulder came from the top: Mayor Richard J...

  The Regal Theatre at 47th Street and South Parkway during the week of April 19-25, 1963. (Getty Images) From April 19 th to April 25 th , 1963 – literally 60 years ago this week – the Motortown Revue moved into Chicago’s legendary Regal Theatre at 47 th Street and South Parkway (now Martin Luther King Drive), where some of the Motown label’s most popular artists had a week-long engagement, doing five shows a day in the 3,000-seat theatre. Audiences that week got the full Motown experience, with performances from Mary Wells, The Contours, the Marvelettes, Marv Johnson, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Marvin Gaye, MC Bill Murray (not the actor/comedian!), Choker Campbell and His Orchestra and a 12-year-old wunderkind who the label signed the previous year, Little Stevie Wonder. The Regal, along with the nearby Tivoli Theatre (at 63rd Street and Cottage Grove), was the last of the Chicago movie palaces to offer stage shows with their movies. An...

I was watching Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations on the network morning shows, and when I saw the 96-year-old woman make her appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, one thought immediately came to mind: I wonder how often she listens to the musical suite that Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn wrote for her — “The Queen’s Suite”. Ellington’s orchestra had been touring in England and the European continent in late 1958, and met Queen Elizabeth at that time. Prince Phillip had seen Ellington perform in a theater in Leeds — the Prince went with composer Benjamin Britten to see Duke’s band. The Queen, however, never got a chance to see Ellington perform. But Ellington did meet the woman who would become Britain's longest serving monarch at a reception at Leeds Civic Hall later that evening in 1958. Duke wrote about the meeting in his 1973 memoir, "Music Is My Mistress: "The tension in one respect was while waiting in the entrance. You are...

Earle Lavon “Von” Freeman Sr. would have been 96 today, as hard as that is to believe. That’s because the great “Von-ski” (as many of his friends and fans called him) continued to be a key player on the Chicago jazz scene up until his death in August 2012 . Von was one of the founders of the post-war “Chicago school” of tenor sax – a school that included greats like Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons and Clifford Jordan. But while he came of age as a tenor sax force in the 1940s, he kept his ears open to any post-bop sounds that he heard, including the avant-garde jazz championed by Ornette Coleman and others. The video above was produced 10 years before Freeman’s death, in 2002. The great Chicago Tribune arts critic Howard Reich knew (and knows) everyone on the Chicago jazz scene by first name. And he arranged for an extremely rare on-camera interview with “Von-ski” at one of his favorite haunts at that time, the Green Mill Lounge in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood.   I p...

Split screen showing corner of Randolph and LaSalle Streets in 1936 and 2019. See photo slider version at bottom of blog post. (Vintage ad/John Owens) The recently-launched James R. Thompson Center Historical Society made a unique entreaty to Chicagoans this week. The group --composed of an architect, real estate reporter and architectural historian in the city-- encouraged Chicagoans to "visit the building and contribute to the ongoing discussion of the past, present and future in Chicago," according to this story from the Sun-Times' Tina Sfondeles. This reminded me of the recent Twitterverse suggestions about turning it into a hotel, which seemed like a feasible idea for this unique Helmut Jahn building. Of course, doing so would bring the location back to its roots, since the legendary Hotel Sherman/Sherman House occupied this space in one way or another from 1837 to 1973. The last iteration of the Hotel Sherman, designed by the ubiquitous Chicago architect...

Hall of Fame shortstop/first baseman Ernie Banks made his Chicago Cubs debut on this date in 1953 at Wrigley Field. It was a historic appearance: the future "Mr. Cub" was the team's first African-American player to play for the Cubs, who were the eighth team in Major League Baseball to integrate with black players. By comparison, the crosstown White Sox were sixth, introducing Minnie Minoso and Sam Hairston in 1951. Banks was one of three rookies to make their debut on May 17, 1953. Pitcher Don Elston and outfielder Bob Talbot joined Ernie that day. A Chicago Tribune photographer captured the three before the game in the Wrigley Field locker room: Elston, who would have a decent 11-year career, mostly on the North Side, got hammered in his debut, as the Cubs lost to the Phils 16-4: The historic nature of Ernie's debut was totally lost on Ed Prell, the veteran Tribune sportswriter covering the event. Instead, he was dismissive of the 22-year-old shortsto...