Frankenstein Lunch Lab & Boogie Castle was a few doors west of the Fish Keg.
I went there most Thursday nights in 1979-80. I got in even though the legal drinking age for beer and wine in Illinois had just changed from 21 years old to 19 years old. I'd often stop at the Fish Keg, pick up a pound of fried shrimp, fried perch or some other delicious fresh fried fish, 1/2 order of French fries and go into Frankenstein's, sit down at a table or the bar and order a beer with dinner. YUMMY! They had a nice-sized dance floor, a pinball machine, and played good music.
The Magic Door (aka The Magic Door Television Theatre) was a Jewish educational television series that provided kiruv (outreach) to Jewish children in the Chicago, Illinois, metropolitan area.
Tiny Tov and his Acorn House in Torahville.
Temmie Gilbert was an inspirational theater teacher, arts patron, and civil rights activist who won three Emmys for her TV work, one of them for producing one of Chicago's longest-running children's programs, "The Magic Door."
Temmie Gilbert
The goal of the show was teaching without preaching.The show was focused more on Jewish culture. The idea was to give children good moral values by having themes from jealousy to litterbugs. Ninety-five percent of the audience wasn't Jewish. The funny thing is that countless non-Jewish Chicagoans loved the show without knowing what they were watching.
The half-hour show was produced by the Chicago Board of Rabbis, premiered on January 1, 1962, and ran weekly until the 1980s. It aired at 8:30 AM (floating between 7 AM and 9 AM, depending on the year) on Sunday mornings on WBBM-TV Channel 2.
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While it's difficult to pinpoint a single "creator" for "The Magic Door," the combined efforts of Irv Kaplan, Henry Mamet, Mindy Soble, Alan Secher, the Chicago Board of Rabbis, and WBBM-TV all contributed to its success and lasting impact.
There were two main theme songs for the Magic Door. The first was based on an Israeli Children's song, "A Room Zoom Zoom."
"Ah room zoom zoom, ah room zoom zoom, gily gily gily gily gily a sa sa. Come through the Magic Door with me, just say these words and wondrous things you'll see."
The second theme song was written by Charles Gerber and was set to a melody from Beethoven's "Pastorale" Symphony No. 6:
"Open, come open the Magic Door with me, with your imagination there's so much we can see. There is a doorway that leads to a place. I'll find my way by the smile on your face."
Set in "Torahville," the main characters of the series included "Tiny Tov" (a character "reduced" to appear as a kind of miniature elf) and his cousin "Tina Tova." Tiny lived in a nicely decorated house made of an acorn; the entrance was called "The Magic Door."
Before Tiny would enter his dwelling, he would sing "A Room Zoom Zoom." Go ahead, sing it loud and proud!
In addition to Tiny and Tina, there were other puppet characters, including Boobie Beaver, Icky Witch, Rabbi and Mrs. Moreh, Deedee, Max the Mailbox, Rumplemyer Dragon, Bunny Rabbit, Buddy, Worthington Warlock, Scrunch, and human characters also participated. All of the characters were Jewish except Reverend Raymond from nearby Chapeltown.
Tiny Tov would travel back to biblical times in the series' early days by riding on his Magic Feather. Tiny would say, "Aleph bet, gimel hay, magic feather, move away!" Later on, the program evolved into moral topics. A "Hebrew Word of the Day" would be related to whatever values were taught. Each week, Tiny would educate children on Jewish history, sharing stories from the Torah and discussing Jewish tradition. Every episode would include a brief Hebrew lesson, stepping through the Aleph-Bet (Hebrew alphabet). The character of Tiny Tov was created by Irv Kaplan, who later moved to Israel and was instrumental in creating Israeli Public and Educational Television. Only one Tina Tova was played by Fran (Uditsky) Moss. There were three Tiny Tovs in all. From 1970, Tiny Tov was portrayed by Emmy-nominated actor Jerry (Jerome) Loeb until he moved to California in 1973. The second Tiny Tov was played by Charles Gerber, who also created the song lyrics. The third Tiny Tov was played by (Rabbi) Joe Black.
The Magic Door Theme Song
WBBM TV The Magic Door 25th Anniversary Show.
Rabbi Joe Black as Tiny Tov on "The Magic Door." Circa 1979
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I received an email on May 11, 2019, from Marty Zitlin, co-producer of The Magic Door show from 1977 to 1981. He included this picture of their 1980-81 Chicago Area Television Emmy Award for The Magic Door Series.
Isaac Woolf was born in London, England on January 4, 1852. He came to the U.S. as a child with his parents and they settled in Lafayette, Indiana. His family was poor, and he began his business life as a newsboy. From that, he went to stripping tobacco, but he found time to attend school and also to enroll at a business college. He spent several years in Cincinnati learning the clothing business and then came to Chicago where he was employed as a retail salesman by the Barbe Bros. clothing house. In 1880 he embarked on the clothing business on his own account with his brothers at 183 W. Madison Street in Chicago. In 1896 he opened his establishment at 160 S. State Street. His brothers Benjamin, Edward, and Harry took employment at Woolf's Clothing Store. Isaac Woolf decided it was time to give something back. He decided to provide a full Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings for any and all newsboys in Chicago who wanted to attend. The tradition began in 1882 when owner Isaac Woolf invited about a hundred newsboys to join him for Thanksgiving dinner. Called “newsies,” the boys were employed as the main distributors of newspapers to the general public. Typically earning about thirty cents a day, they were wretchedly poor, often sleeping on the streets. Having been a penniless newsboy himself, Woolf understood their plight and that of others who were impoverished. Paying for the meals out of his own pocket, the kind-hearted retailer expanded his annual dinner to include other poverty-stricken families and destitute elderly couples, as the ranks of the poor swelled during the severe economic depression called the Panic of 1893.
By 1895, Woolf was providing over 10,000 dinners each year to those in need on Thanksgiving evening. Everyone was welcome. On March 17, 1898, Isaac Woolf opened his grandest store yet at the southwest corner of State and Monroe, Chicago. He billed his store as "The store with a horseshoe over the door and the Palmer House over the way."
In the afternoon of November 28, 1900 it was unseasonably cold; the temperature had already dropped into the teens when the store clerks sprang into action. In what had become a well-orchestrated ritual, they stored away the goods and removed the counters from the main floor. Next, the tables were brought in, covered with marbled oilcloth, and decorated with flowers, fruit, and pyramids of small cakes. After carefully arranging a thousand place settings, reportedly with as much precision as you would find at a fine hotel, the clerks donned white aprons and jackets just before opening the doors at 6 PM, ready to serve old-fashioned turkey dinners to the multitudes who would begin filing in from the frigid weather.
For twenty-four years Woolf, president of Woolf's Clothing Store closed early on the day before Thanksgiving, as it had done for years, in order to get ready to serve a holiday dinner for the poor of Chicago.
Woolf died after 2 days of sickness on October 21, 1906. Woolf Clothing Company was in trouble without Isaac at the helm. Within two years, Woolf Clothing Company filed for bankruptcy.
Chicago Examiner, December 31, 1908
This impressive monument marking his burial place can be found in Section L of Rosehill Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois.
Copyright © 2017, Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
