The famous Winston smoking billboard was on the northeast corner of State & Randolph streets in Chicago. Circa 1967. A billboard like this was featured in the movie "Take the Money and Run (1969)," where the smoke rings were blown directly into Woody Allen's apartment window.
Take the money and run.
Smoking Billboard Scene at 3:45
If I recall correctly, this sign was a steaming cup of coffee advertising a brand of canned coffee before it was the Winston sign. The same principle as Leave it to Beaver's Steaming Bowl of Soup Billboard.
If anything in Illinois history fits the “believe it or not” category, this is it. Richard J. Daley; future Democrat boss; future Chicago mayor, future father of a future Chicago mayor; was elected to his first political office... as a Republican on November 3, 1936. The election was for the Illinois House of Representatives from the 9th district. In 1936 the state was divided into 51 legislative districts. Each district sent three reps to the state House.
The Republican and Democratic parties had a cozy arrangement back then. In each of those 51 districts, the Democrats would run only two candidates, and the Republicans would run only two. That way, whichever party wound up in the minority would get at least one-third of the total seats. The 9th district was the area around Bridgeport, heavily Democrat. David Shanahan had held the “Republican” seat without much effort since 1894. Fifteen days before the 1936 election, Shanahan died.
David Shanahan Statue
It was too late to print new ballots. Shanahan’s name would stay. So the Republicans named Robert E. Rogers as their replacement candidate, and organized a write-in campaign. With Shanahan dead, the Democrat leadership felt free to mount their own write-in campaign for the Republican slot. Their candidate was Cook County Treasurer Joe Gill’s 34-year-old private secretary. That was Richard Joseph Daley.
Richard J. Daley, 1936
The Republicans screamed that the “gentlemen’s agreement” was being violated. But there wasn’t much they could do about it.
On November 3, 1936 President Franklin D. Roosevelt won a second term in a landslide. The Democrats were triumphant almost everywhere. Buried among the returns were the write-in results from the Illinois 9th. Daley outpaced Rogers, 8539 to 3321. The Tribune noted that even though he’d run as a Republican, “it is understood that Daley will caucus with the Democrats.” When the House convened the next January, the Democrats offered a resolution asking that Daley be seated on their side of the aisle. The Republicans were still angry about how they had been out-maneuvered. “I don’t care about the resolution,” the Republican leader declared. “I want to know where Representative Daley wants to sit. Where do you want to sit, Representative Daley?” The rookie rep pointed to the Democrat side of the chamber and softly said, “There.” Then he walked over to join his new colleagues and never looked back. Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
In 1923, the original Home Run Inn location opened as a small tavern on Chicago’s South Side.
Founded by Mary and Vincent Grittani, the tavern received its’ name one fateful day when a baseball from the neighborhood park smashed through one of the tavern’s windows, a home run for some young slugger on the sandlot.
In 1947, Mary Grittani and her son-in-law, Nick Perrino, formed a partnership and together developed the recipe for their pizza, and still used today, best known for saucy thin crust pies.
Since then, hundreds of pizzerias have popped up all over the city and suburbs.
John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) was the most sought-after portraitist of his generation on both sides of the Atlantic, creating powerful, vibrant likenesses of his models. Best known for his portraits, Sargent nevertheless excelled in a variety of genres, including landscapes, watercolors, and murals. Born in Florence to American parents, he lived his life abroad, traveling the world in search of his subjects and working professionally for more than 50 years. A truly cosmopolitan artist, Sargent’s Chicago story has yet to be told. The first major exhibition of the painter’s work at the museum in over 30 years, John Singer Sargent and Chicago’s Gilded Age presents the full range of Sargent’s talents, tracing his Chicago connections while also illuminating the city’s vibrant art scene at the turn of the 20th century. Sargent first showed at the Art Institute—at the time located at Michigan Avenue and Van Buren Street—in 1890, the year Chicago officially became the nation’s “second city” in terms of population. Among his paintings on view was La Carmencita, a striking portrait of a Spanish dancer that is at once old and new—a tribute to Old Master painting that is also an Impressionist exploration of color and brushwork. The composition drew crowds of visitors to the museum, helping to put Chicago on the map as a recognized center for contemporary art and culture.
Madame X, John Singer Sargent
Summer Women, John Singer Sargent
Miss Elsie Palmer, John Singer Sargent (1890)
This dramatic early showing was followed by many more Chicago exhibitions. Between 1888 and 1925, Sargent’s paintings were included in more than 20 public displays in the city, among them the Inter-State Industrial Exposition, the World’s Columbian Exposition, exhibitions at the Arts Club of Chicago, and the Art Institute’s American Annuals.
Bridge of Sighs, Venice, Italy, John Singer Sargent watercolor
In a Levantine Port, John Singer Sargent watercolor (1905-6)
The artist’s presence in Chicago owed much to local businessman Charles Deering, who built an important collection of his work over a lifetime of friendship. Other Art Institute supporters such as Martin A. Ryerson, Annie Swan Coburn, and Robert Allerton helped establish a Sargent legacy for the city. Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
Businesswoman, educator, inventor and philanthropist Annie Turnbo Malone was born to Robert Turnbo and Isabella Cook in Metropolis, Illinois, on August 9, 1869. Her parents were former slaves, and her father joined the Union Army during the Civil War. Malone attended school in Peoria, Illinois, but she never finished high school. Instead, she practiced hairdressing with her sister. When she and her family moved to Lovejoy, Illinois, Annie decided she wanted to become a "beauty doctor." At age 20, she had already developed her own shampoo and scalp treatment to grow and straighten hair. Taking her creation to the streets, she went around in a buggy, making speeches to demonstrate and promote the new shampoo. By 1902, Annie Malone's home shampoo venture thrived, and she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, home to the nation's fourth-largest African American population, to expand her business. She was largely successful and trademarked her beauty products under the name "Poro." sidebar
Annie Malone called it Poro, a West African (Mende) male secret or devotional society ─ an organization located throughout Liberia and Sierra Leone dedicated to disciplining and enhancing the body spiritually and physically. There were some elements of the term that seem to indicate beauty. Even though it was not in vogue during that era, Annie wanted to connect her "Poro Agents" to their African roots, and this was her way of doing that. She and her assistants sold her unique brand of hair care products door to door.
She had launched her hair care business four years before Sarah Breedlove (later known as Madam C. J. Walker). In the early 1900s, Madam Walker worked as a "Poro Agent" for Annie for about one year. Turnbo married in 1903, but soon after her marriage, her husband sought to control her business venture, and she divorced him. She married again on April 28, 1914, to school principal Aaron Eugene Malone. The marriage lasted 13 years but ended in divorce, but they kept the name Malone. In her lifetime, Malone became one of the nation's wealthiest black women. She became a leading cosmetic entrepreneur and a leader in the St. Louis black community. In 1918, Poro's success allowed Malone to build a four-story, million-dollar factory and beauty school complex in the historic black neighborhood of "The Ville" in St. Louis. It employed over 175 people and enabled young black women to pursue their high school and college educations by providing them with jobs and lodging.
She donated the first $10,000 to build the St. Louis Colored Orphan's Home new building in 1919 and served as board President from 1919 to 1943. During the 1920s, Malone's philanthropy included financing the education of two full-time students in every historically black college and university in the country. Her $25,000 donation to Howard University was among the largest gifts the university had received from a private donor of African descent. She also contributed to the Tuskegee Institute. She donated thousands of dollars to educational programs, universities, the YMCA, and nearly every black orphanage.
In 1930, Malone relocated her business to Chicago; the St. Louis Poro College and Malone's fortune declined. At the time of her death in Chicago on May 10, 1957, Poro Beauty Colleges still operated in over 30 cities nationwide. Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.
