Month: March 2020

Evelyn Nesbit, 1924

Joanne Yeck

In 1924, when Dan Blanco’s Northern Lights Café was making headlines in Chicago’s newspapers, Evelyn Nesbit struggled to stay solvent and maintain her career as an entertainer.

At her home base, Hotel Martinique in Atlantic City, Nesbit was consumed with the on-going sanity hearings of her ex-husband, Harry K. Thaw. Simultaneously, she was battling with her current husband, Jack Clifford, seeking a divorce that was long overdue.

In between discussions with lawyers, Evelyn Nesbit performed in, of all things, a Yiddish play entitled “The Dance of Death.”

In Miami, Florida, she was scheduled to perform at a roadhouse when the Ku Klux Klan threatened to make her stay in the city very unpleasant. The management canceled her booking.

Never a dull moment in the life of Evelyn Nesbit.

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If you enjoy local history, especially the world of entertainment, follow me at joannelyeck.com or on the Facebook page: The Blackest Sheep.

The Blackest Sheep: Dan Blanco, Evelyn Nesbit, Gene Harris and Chicago’s Club Alabam is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other online bookstores.

Dan Blanco’s Northern Lights Café

Joanne Yeck

In 1924, Dan Blanco became the proprietor of a Chicago roadhouse called Northern Lights Café.  Its mob connections were well-known.

Within months, Northern Lights became a crime scene and Blanco witnessed a shootout that resulted in the death of gangster Johnny Phillips.

Learn more about the sensational story here: Shootout at the Northern Lights

You can read the full story in my newest book, The Blackest Sheep.

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If you enjoy local history, especially the world of entertainment, follow me at joannelyeck.com or on the Facebook page: The Blackest Sheep.

The Blackest Sheep: Dan Blanco, Evelyn Nesbit, Gene Harris and Chicago’s Club Alabam is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other online bookstores.

Club Alabam Presents Mildred Harris Chaplin

Joanne Yeck

In October of 1933, Mildred Harris Chaplin, the former Mrs. Charles Chaplin, followed Evelyn Nesbit on stage at the Club Alabam. The petite entertainer was Chaplin’s first wife and a familiar face to Chicago’s vaudeville audiences.

That autumn, Mildred toured with her own “Hollywood Revue”—a troupe of twenty—and her California Syncopators. Delivering a few songs and impersonations of famous motion picture stars, Mildred Harris Chaplin’s multiweek engagement at Club Alabam ended in November and she was followed by a big-eyed, blonde entertainer, Irene Duvall.

To learn more about Irene Duvall, click here: Irene Duvall At Club Alabam

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If you enjoy local history, especially the world of entertainment, follow me at joannelyeck.com or on the Facebook page: The Blackest Sheep.

The Blackest Sheep: Dan Blanco, Evelyn Nesbit, Gene Harris and Chicago’s Club Alabam is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other online bookstores.

Fashion Club Pony Farm

Joanne Yeck

By the mid-1950s, Gene Harris, owner of Club Alabam, had become known as the “Pony King,” owning farms in Illinois and his hometown of Lyon, Iowa, where he bred Shetland ponies.

In 1957, the Des Moines Register published a cover story about Harris’ lucrative Fashion Club Pony Farm in its Sunday supplement, “Picture.”  His breeding farms had become a full-time occupation, while business at Club Alabam hummed along the background.

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If you enjoy local history, especially the world of entertainment, follow me at joannelyeck.com or on the Facebook page: The Blackest Sheep.

The Blackest Sheep: Dan Blanco, Evelyn Nesbit, Gene Harris and Chicago’s Club Alabam is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and many other online bookstores.