In 1975, Nelson Algren left Chicago, where he wrote "The Man with a Golden Arm" and "Chicago City on the Make," and to general astonishment moved to Paterson, N.J. In this rare film from a Chicago house party in 1975,…
This photo was sent to me by a reader, Chris Aiello. At first I processed it as an atmospheric street scene with a movie theater. Then I read the marquee. That placed it in the early 1960s, and I remembered…
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- Roger Ebert / April 23, 1995 For the centennial of cinema, 100 great moments from the movies: Clark Gable in "Gone With the Wind": "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Buster Keaton standing perfectly still while the…
On Red Arrow Highway, the old road along the Eastern shore of Lake Michigan from Chicago to Detroit, the past coexists with the present. There are old-fashioned pleasures, and not everything is in a strip mall and belongs to a…
• • •I had no idea these were online until a reader told me. The YouTube users gradepoint and DistinguishedFlyer have uploaded these, for which I am most grateful. I've looked at my lists many times, but seeing the posters…
• • • Harry Stephen Keeler was the most prolific Chicago novelist of all time -- and perhaps the most forgotten, although perhaps we may have forgotten an even more forgotten novelist. Not even the devoted, even fanatical, members of…
• • • Singer-songwriter Bill Withers had an unusual path to musical acclaim and he was born an asthmatic stutterer who was often told "you can't do nuthin'." He did not own a guitar until he was 32 years old,…
By Roger Ebert / July 20, 1986 If Rock Hudson had collapsed in Los Angeles instead of in a Paris hospital, he would have died with all of his secrets still intact. Knowing he had only weeks or months to…
I have seen Nestor Torres play three times at the jazz concert convened every year by Dave and Don Grusin at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado. Like all the famed professional musicians at the CWA,…
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