Kup's Chicago - Irv Kupcinet [30]
Even at the off-beat Chicago has been “on.” It was at the old College Inn that Eddie Shipstad and Oscar Johnson first put their Ice Follies together. And what they didn’t do for the frozen slab, Arthur M. (Chicago Stadium) Wirtz and Sonja Henie did. After Sonja’s clean sweep of all the world amateur skating titles, Wirtz clearly foresaw the money-making potential of an ice revue with the vivacious Norwegian as star. “Will you turn professional for $3,000 a night?” he wired her. Sonja wired back, “Anyone will turn professional for $3,000 a night.” Together both made fortunes; then Sonja’s displeasure over Wirtz’s seeking to sign Chicagoan Barbara Ann Scott as a co-star led to their split-up.
Many credit “Little Egypt” with originating the hootchy-kootchy dance in Chicago (at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, where the Ferris wheel was introduced for the first time). And Sally Rand unveiled her fan dance at Our Town’s centennial celebration, the Century of Progress Exposition, in 1933. Inspired by her press agent, Anne Jesselson, Sally decided to publicize her act by riding au naturel, undressed as Lady Godiva – on a horse, which she had had painted white on one side to accommodate the photographers. Though she started out fully clothed, a gate-man temporarily upset the plan with a no-horses-in-here order. Sally and Dobbin finally forced a water entrance, via speedboat – and Chicago’s most publicized amphibious invasion was history.
One of the modern era’s greatest showmen was a Chicago boy – former West Sider Avram Hirsch Goldbogen (who later changed his name to Mike Todd). He is now buried in our Waldheim Cemetery.
Chicago remembers Mike Todd for many things. It was here that this tireless genius made his first million dollars (on paper), as president of an apartment- and home-building firm, known as the Atlantic and Pacific Construction Company. Mike was eighteen at the time. Unfortunately, the year was 1928. The Depression hit and Mike went broke.
And it was here that Mike got his start in show business. Taking his cue from the success of Sally Rand at the Century of Progress, he conceived the idea of a “Flame Dance” strip tease. When the act was booked into New York’s Casino de Paree for $750 a week, Mike was on his way to making a second fortune. Eventually he lost that one, too. But in 1940, he was making headlines again with the world’s largest night club, the Michael Todd Theater Café on Chicago’s North Side. It had eight thousand seats. Unfortunately, one of Mike’s backers was a front man for Frank (“The Enforcer”) Nitti of the Capone Syndicate. When Mike discovered this, he promptly quit – wanted no part of the Syndicate. It cost him his bankroll. This was the last enterprise to bear Mike’s name in Chicago until his son, Mike, Jr., opened the movie house which is named for him.
The greatest monument to Mike, of course, is the spectacular success of his superb movie, Around the World in Eighty Days. In that connection, this story always has appealed to me, not only as being so typical of Mike’s flair for the dramatic, but as an illustration of his approach to life on the grand scale. The late Art Cohn told it in his entertaining book, The Nine Lives of Michael Todd.
One day during the shooting of the film, while standing on the paddle-wheel steamboat that was bringing Phileas Fogg back to England, Todd noticed that hundreds of sea gulls were following the ship.
“What are they doing?” landlubber Todd asked the first mate.
“Following us for food – the garbage,” replied the mate.
Todd was horrified.
“Garbage!” he shouted. “No sea gulls following my boat are going to eat garbage. Toss them some decent