Remember Mister Kelly’s?
Boxes of stuff from Chicago’s great, bygone nightspot have just landed at the Newberry Library
There is, inside the cleanly chiseled granite walls of the Newberry Library, a historical wonderland. In this stately building at 60 W. Walton St., you will find thousands, perhaps millions, of items of interest to historians, authors, academics and, indeed, every ordinary one of us.
Mike Royko’s books and papers are there for keeps, as well as an ashtray filled to the brim with his cigarette butts. My father’s papers are there too with, I think, a couple of his hats.
People give things to the Newberry and moving in last week were new “residents” of both the digital and physical kind. There are more than 100 oral histories with singers, musicians, and comedians such as — ready for parade of 20th century entertainment giants? — Barbra Streisand, Dick Gregory, the Smothers Brothers, Sarah Vaughan, Joan Rivers, Eartha Kitt, Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, Redd Foxx, Oscar Brown, Mort Sahl, Chick Corea, Bette Midler, Dick Cavett, Herbie Hancock, Lily Tomlin, and on and on.
There are books, periodicals, posters, live recordings, newspaper clippings, photographs, and such artifacts as menus, matchbooks, ashtrays and dinner plates. And there is a bar tab run up by comedian Lenny Bruce.
Now if these items — collectively known as the Mister Kelly’s archives — don’t seem intellectually hefty enough for the scholarship for which the Newberry has rightly and long been renowned, the institution’s new president, Daniel Greene, welcomes the newcomers. Though it will be some months before he and members of the staff have catalogued the materials, he has grasped the substantive importance of the collection.
“It all makes me wish I could have been there,” he says.
It would not have been a long walk.
Mister Kelly’s (named after its first manager, Pat Kelly, the “Mister” added for class) opened in 1953 at the southwest corner of Rush Street and Bellevue Place (where Gibsons now resides), owned by brothers Oscar and George Marienthal. It served good food, but its main attraction was a stream of stars and not-yet-stars, many appearing in Chicago for the first time.
Kathy O’Malley Piccone remembers. She is a managing partner of Gibsons Restaurant Group.
“Mister Kelly’s?,” I asked her one recent icy night at the restaurant.
Her eyes twinkled. A smile crossed her lips and she said, “I went to two proms and my dates took me there afterward. I saw the Mamas & the Papas one time. And then there was the night I saw Bette Midler. Her backup singer was Melissa Manchester and the piano player was … it was Barry Manilow. Mister Kelly’s was just the ultimate treat.”
This sort of happy memory is common to those of a certain generation. They and younger folks will brighten at the mention of Kelly’s or Pepper’s Lounge, Earl of Old Town, Gate of Horn, the Gold Star Sardine Bar, Club DeLisa, Quiet Knight, Theresa’s, Byfield’s or any of the other members of that once thriving urban species known as nightclubs.
There are still a few places that would qualify, I suppose, such as the Green Mill or Zanies, clubs devoted exclusively to one form, whether jazz or comedy or blues or … I hesitate to imagine the nightlife landscape as we crawl from enforced hibernation but I am fearful that we are, at least for a while, doomed to an era of rooftop bars, DJs and craft cocktails.
That is one of the reasons why the Mister Kelly’s archive is important. Not only does it offer a vivid look at its style and influence on the arts and entertainment scene, but it also provides a look at the role it had on the city’s cultural scene and pioneering efforts at racial equality.
Yes, there are many celebrated people among the 100-some interview subjects but there are also chats with former employees, customers, neighbors and others. One of the threads through these conversations was the way in which the Marienthals treated not only Black performing artists (many making their first appearance in front of predominantly white audiences) but also Black members of their staff and customers, most not used to encountering friendly civility when going “downtown.”
There is no one alive more aware of all this than David Marienthal.
It was eight years ago that he and I sat at a saloon and he first told me his Mister Kelly dreams. We had known one another a bit in high school but had not seen one another in decades.
I knew that his father was George Marienthal and his uncle was Oscar and that Mister Kelly’s
was the crown jewel of their nightclub kingdom that also included the London House and the Happy Medium. I saw their empire begin to unravel after Oscar’s 1963 death. George carried on until 1969 when he sold the clubs. He worked for the new owners but when he died three years later the clubs were sold again and closed for keeps in 1975.
By then David was gone, having left Chicago to get a college degree and work as an architect and builder in Sante Fe, New Mexico. He came back to open and run for 17 years the successful Blue Mesa restaurant on Halsted Street with brother Philip. He studied and received a teaching certificate at the School of the Art Institute and moved to California to teach and paint.
In 2010 he was back again, doing arts consulting and managing some real estate and a few years afterward, we met, and he explained his dreams of honoring the past.
He was already busy, researching, interviewing and gathering materials about his father and uncle’s clubs for what he hoped would be a book or a documentary or a TV series, which was being pitched to producers with this potent paragraph: “In the shark pit of Chicago’s 1960s Rush Street, two Jewish brothers struggle to build their dream of a glamorous, romantic nightclub that spotlights controversial young talent ... but first they’ll have to dance with critics, comedians, Irish cops, the IRS, Robert Kennedy, the color barrier and the mobsters who run the street. The brothers embrace a ragtag group of waiters, hat-check girls, bartenders, valets, musicians, chanteuses and playboys, who tell a fascinating story.”
He launched a Facebook page and websites and was active on Twitter and Instagram.
“The response has been not only gratifying but amazing, mostly from the 18- to 35-year-old crowd,” he said. He was from the start, and still is, aided in his efforts by an enthusiastic young archivist named Adam Carston, a Loyola University graduate with a degree in and passion for history who told me then: “This has been one of those things that was interesting to begin with. But as I keep digging, it just gets more and more interesting. It is an endless and wildly entertaining well.”
They were tireless. No one turned him down for an interview and all spoke of Mister Kelly’s with fondness.
“Bob Newhart told us that when he appeared at Mister Kelly’s it was his first big job,” says Marienthal. “He had just recorded his first album and wasn’t sure if he might have to go back to working as an accountant or advertising copywriter.”
He did not. He was a hit at Kelly’s and that album, “The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart,” was No. 1 on the Billboard mono album chart. Newhart told Marienthal that he always came back to play Kelly’s, saying, “I played San Francisco, I played LA, all the big cities, but to be a hit at Mister Kelly’s, that’s what it’s all about.”
Judy Roberts, the beloved pianist/singer, not only played Mister Kelly’s and the Happy Medium but her trio was the house band at London House for a time, playing five nights a week. “The Marienthal brothers had such great taste for talent, in music and comedy,” she said. “They had an eye and an ear for finding the next big thing. And they were also so wonderful, such highly moral men. I loved them.”
Marienthal and Carston and other people recruited from Loyola’s history department kept conduction interviews. They produced four successful tribute concerts held at City Winery, with local talents in musical homage to the voices of the past.
It was ever the intention to find a permanent home for the archives which had been piling up in Marienthal’s home office and though other local institutions might have had a crack at obtaining them, the Newberry is a perfect match. The arrangement came together through the efforts of many.
“They saw the value,” says Marienthal, who donated all the materials. “I am happy and excited.”
Greene is excited too. It’s been a rough tenure so far, since taking over the presidency from retiring David Spadafora in March 2019. “Yes, quite a two years,” he said. “It’s been strange, a lot of unexpected things but a lot of positives too. We have had the time not only to look at our own past but to look toward the future and what we can become.”
Hard to predict, that, but the Newberry has just reopened. It a wonderful place to visit and if you can’t yet have a look at Lenny Bruce’s bar tab, you’ll find plenty to interest you, even captivate. And about that movie? The documentary “Live at Mister Kelly’s” is scheduled to air at 8 p.m. May 27 on WTTW-Ch. 11 and there are plans for a nationwide PBS broadcast.