Should Chicago be defined by its celebrities

[Ron]

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainmen...0,6930894.story

 

People always ask me why

I still live in the city

Seems half the population

Took the bus to Hollywood

I just smile at them

And say "Baby I like the weather"

Maybe it's courage

Maybe it's fear

Hell all my friends are here

This town is a habit

I can't break

The city on the make

(quotation added)

City of 1,000 stars: Should Chicago be defined by celebrities?

Should Chicago be defined by its celebrities?

 

November 29, 2009

by Rick Kogan

 

Gertrude Lawrence, appearing in the play "Susan and God" at the Harris Theater, walked into the Pump Room after her performance on the night of Oct. 10, 1938. She proceeded to show up there on 90 consecutive nights, igniting Chicago's ongoing affair with celebrities.

 

Gertrude Lawrence?

 

The walls of the entrance to the Pump Room are lined with framed photos of hundreds of the thousands of celebrities who have visited the restaurant in the Ambassador East hotel over the last seven decades, and there are very, very many you do not know: celebrities yesterday, ghosts today.

 

I bring this up because of Oprah Winfrey's recent announcement that in 2011 she will end her talk show filmed in Chicago, and presumably move elsewhere. The city was the launching pad of her fame and fortune, and the base of her operations for the past quarter-century. There has not been, with all due bowing and scraping to Michael Jordan (born in Brooklyn and raised in North Carolina), Mike Ditka ( Pennsylvania), Carl Sandburg ( Illinois), Jane Addams (Illinois), Barack Obama ( Hawaii) and a few others, anyone who has given Chicago a gloss of spurious self-esteem -- and given the city a tourist association that goes beyond Al Capone ( New York) -- of deeper, more enduring magnitude than Winfrey ( Mississippi).

 

But her announcement spurs a question: Does it matter?

 

I remember meeting and interviewing and seeing her around town in her early Chicago years, and even having lunch with her at the Near West Side Harpo Studios in a vain attempt to persuade her to give me the access necessary for a long magazine story about her. But over the years she has become, with some justification, increasingly isolated, distrustful of all but a close circle of friends and associates, and remote. She has been, all Michigan Avenue tapings aside, a prisoner of sorts in her hometown.

 

That is no way to live, and all manner of "stars" have split town for similar reasons, taking off to remote places or to cities where celebrities do not attract the constant glare of the spotlight. Most, though, leave town for economic or meteorological reasons, going where the jobs are and where winters are warm.

 

Those who decide to stay -- actors Bill Petersen ( Evanston) and John Mahoney (England) quickly come to mind -- do so for simple reasons (they love it, their friends and families are here), even knowing the pitfalls.

 

"My wife and I were taking some relatives for a walk, showing them the sights," says Petersen, who moved back to Chicago with his wife, Gina, last year after a decade in LA, where he starred in the top-rated "CSI." "By the time we got downtown, there was a pack of people following us. It was uncomfortable."

 

Petersen fits under the large umbrella of local celebrities, elbow to elbow with others who are there for actual accomplishments, by accident, ubiquitousness or infamy: Look, there's Tom Skilling (Aurora) next to Ernie Banks ( Texas) next to Patti Blagojevich (Chicago), dozens of athletes, some politicians, a few radio jocks, TV newsreaders, a couple of writers, architects, musicians and the Empire Carpet guy.

 

Those in the arts have always had an easier time hiding in plain sight than those in TV or the movies.

 

"It's not hard to keep a low profile or to become a celebrity in Chicago. We are so much more provincial than LA or New York," says Dennis DeYoung, a native of the Roseland neighborhood and the leader of the rock group Styx until going off on a successful career as a solo artist and composer for musical theater. He has always lived in the Chicago area. "And that's because there are so few here who qualify as national or international celebrities. Oprah, Obama, Jordan." He pauses. "I travel all the time and people in other cities don't know Mayor Daley (Chicago). Here we grab on to what we can and we grab a lot."

 

For the majority of us, our relationships with celebrities are without intimacy, without direct contact. They are not flesh and blood. So, does it (or should it) matter to us, collectively, who we can claim as our own?

 

I don't think that some people, trying to scrape by in Englewood or Austin, or working the overnight shift at a Pilsen bakery, care much about this. Oprah doesn't put food on their plates. Former Chicago cop Dennis Farina (Chicago), currently filming a movie in town, can't keep trouble from walking through the door.

 

The new immigrants to the area couldn't tell you the difference between Bill Kurtis ( Kansas) and Billy Corgan (Elk Grove Village). And though there is some undeniably large collective identification with and ego boost from local sports teams -- "We won!" -- I can't imagine the same reaction to the latest from Chicago-born novelist Scott Turow: "We havea best-seller!"

 

Most people don't concern themselves with the city's image, are not burdened by insecurities born of the Second City tag slapped on Chicago by New Yorker magazine writer A.J. Leibling more than a half-century ago.

 

But we still love the fact that stars walk among us, don't we, whether homegrown or just visiting?

 

The man who invited (implored? begged?) Gertrude Lawrence (England) to camp out for those three months in the Pump Room was Ernie Byfield (Chicago), the owner of the hotel and its restaurant. He had an innate understanding of the public's attraction to stars, and for decades his creation lured the biggest celebrities to Booth One, the harbinger of today's VIP room, where their presence was duly noted by the newspapers, pioneering architects of the notion of celebrity.

 

It was Leibling who captured the vibe, writing, "The well and gratuitously advertised presence of celebrities keeps the Pump Room crowded with less illustrious but more profitable guests, who come in the hope of recognizing the current attraction."

 

Now our appetite can be sated -- or is that stuffed? -- by a smorgasbord of celebrity and tabloid publications, reality TV shows, 24-hour cable news, YouTube, blogs and whatever is around the next Internet corner.

 

When Byfield died in 1950, it was front-page news. Irv Kupcinet (Chicago), the newspaper chronicler of all that was celebrity and the inventor of the boldfaced name, wrote that Byfield would become, in death, "one of those legendary figures ... about whom stories will be told as long as there are good people around to tell stories."

 

Now, he's a ghost.

 

It's unimaginable that the same fate will befall Winfrey.

 

"It's a fairly safe bet that Oprah Winfrey will always have a significant place in Chicago's history as an innovative broadcast center, as well as in the larger scope of media history," says Tim Samuelson (Chicago), the cultural historian for the city. "But as time gradually takes away the people who regularly experienced her presence as a broadcaster, intangible parts of her living presence will disappear as well. Even when Oprah herself goes to the great beyond, it's interesting to imagine her comparing notes on immortality with other Chicago stars like George D. Hay ( Tennessee) or Dave Garroway (New York)."

 

Never heard of them?

 

Celebrities yesterday, ghosts today.

 

rkogan@tribune.com

 

[Wasaabi]

Chicago should be defined by its' food...deep dish pizza, Superdawgs, neon green relish, brats...ha ha, the list goes on and on.

[Ron]

But NY-style pizza is the real thing. That "thing" they sell in Chicago and call pizza.....

[Rubulator2k]

Sad to say but when I think of Chicago, after Styx, the first thing that comes to mind is corrupt politicians... And I'm from Jersey so thats saying something.

[Ron]

Sad to say but when I think of Chicago, after Styx, the first thing that comes to mind is corrupt politicians... And I'm from Jersey so thats saying something.

I think even Boston thinks of that when they think of Chicago