Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [100]
Andy Frain ushers also contribute their services. Record distributor Lennie Garmisa furnishes hundreds of records. Arthur Sideman, of Davidson Bakeries, donates two mammoth cakes with Purple Heart decorations.
Other gifts include hundreds of paperback books from circulator Charles Levy, candy in great quantities from Curtiss Candy and drug magnate Lou Zahn, all the ice cream the vets can eat from Phil (“Goldenrod”) Sang and Harry Bresler, and cigars, cigarettes, playing cards, and sunglasses.
There is also an all-star stage show, through the co-operation of the musicians’ union and the American Guild of Variety Artists, and dozens of individual entertainers. Over the years, the shows have included stars such as Eartha Kitt, Buddy Hackett, Shecky Greene, Larry Storch, Ronnie Graham, Virginia de Luce, June Carroll, Meg Myles, Forrest Tucker, Al Hirt, David Le-Winter and his Pump Room orchestra, the Dukes of Dixieland, Guy Cherney, Connie Mitchell, and Frank York.
In 1961, Chicago Fire Commissioner Robert Quinn’s men participated in the Cruise by giving the S.S. North American a hero’s salute with streams of colored water shot from the fireboats Joseph Medill and Fred Busse, while special fire crews demonstrated skin-diving techniques from new jet-propelled speedboats.
Thanks to the readers of “Kup’s Column,” it is always a glorious day on the water – which makes five hundred wonderful veterans glow inwardly for days afterward.
But this is not the only man-made “miracle” that I am lucky enough to have a part in. Every November, the Sun-Times sponsors a combination amateur night and all-star talent show that has become nationally known in the entertainment field as “The Sun-Times Harvest Moon Festival.” To America’s largest indoor arena, the Chicago Stadium, this gala event annually attracts the largest theater audience in the nation – as many as twenty-five thousand persons. And it’s all for charity.
Besides raising money for the needy and the blind, the Harvest Moon Festival alone has financed the purchase of eight $14,500 special buses for wheel-chair patients at the Hines VA Hospital, a $46,000 picnic-and-recreation pavilion, and a $46,000 therapeutic greenhouse at the Downey VA Hospital, as well as a number of improvements normally not available through government appropriations, such as library furnishings, folding wheel chairs, theater-type TV projectors, new chapel facilities, and an intercom system to carry radio and record broadcasts into the wards.
Because of the Festival’s national prestige and the drawing power of the professional headliners who pack each show, its talent contest has become a major springboard to success for many young entertainers. In addition to generous prizes in cash and merchandise, winners in various talent categories are also eligible for bookings ranging from engagements in leading Las Vegas hotels to appearances in prominent Chicago radio-TV shows.
Vocalist Bob Vegas, a 1958 winner, played two weeks at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas (and then was signed for twenty more) and won a recording contract and a regular slot on a WBBM radio show in Chicago. Al Baca, a 1960 winner, won a two-week booking at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, and from there went on to other café and TV appearances. Ron Husmann, former Northwestern University student who was a 1957 winner, won so many plaudits for his leading role in the musical Tenderloin that he is now an established Broadway actor.
In 1945, when the Festival was first held, the line-up included George Raft, Danny Thomas, Virginia Mayo, June Havoc, Marie McDonald, Willie Shore, and Olsen & Johnson. In 1946