POWER COUPLE OF 1800s
Documentary puts spotlight on Chicago visionaries Potter & Bertha Palmer
Chicago is what it is today thanks in no small part to deep-pocketed visionaries Bertha and Potter Palmer, a 19th-century power couple depicted in a new documentary Sunday on WTTW-Channel 11.
Produced by River Forest-based Corn Bred Films, the half-hour program tells two love stories: one between young socialite Bertha Honore and the self-made millionaire 23 years her senior, and another between the Palmers and the muddy Midwest outpost they helped transform into a world-class city after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.
“Love Under Fire: The Story of Bertha & Potter Palmer” also chronicles Potter Palmer’s massive role in the retail business and how he shaped the way we shop today. It’s a timely topic. PBS is about to launch “Mr. Selfridge,” an eight-part series about an ambitious American who spent 25 years working his way up the ladder at Chicago’s Marshall Field & Co., which got its start as a dry goods store opened in the mid-1800s by none other than Potter Palmer.
Evanston native Jeremy Piven stars as Harry Gordon Selfridge, who took everything he learned — and the piles of cash he earned — and hopped the pond to London to open his eponymous department store. The “Masterpiece Classic” period drama, co-produced by Britain’s ITV, debuts on WTTW with a two-hour premiere at 8 p.m. March 31.
“Selfridge probably wouldn’t have been Selfridge if it wasn’t for Potter Palmer,” said Amelia Dellos, who cofounded Corn Bred with her screenwriter husband, Eric Anderson.
Dellos wrote and directed Corn Bred’s first completed project, the Palmer documentary, which works as the perfect appetizer before digging into multi-course “Mr. Selfridge.”
“The whole concept of modern-day shopping as we know it — Palmer was the father of that,” Dellos said.