Daley on Chicago Movies - 'If it's not Mary Poppins, the mayor doesn't want it'

And Cecil Adams quotes film historian Arnie Bernstein, author of Hollywood on Lake Michigan: 100 Years of Chicago and the Movies, in his answer...

To this day, Daley's contempt for Hollywood portrayals of his beloved city is legendary. Hizzoner, as Daley was often referred to, couldn't stand to see Chicago or its police department portrayed in a negative light and for many years made it difficult for out-of-town filmmakers to use Windy City locations. Said one Chicago policeman who occasionally dealt with Hollywood crews, "If it's not Mary Poppins, the mayor doesn't want it."

The second Gapers Block link is to a stunningly well done Forgotten Chicago post, "Drama, Documentation & Discontinuit," which considers the importance of "place" in film by juxtaposing screen shots from classic Chicago movies to pics of more recent Windy City locales while bringing into sharp focus the structural and cultural changes of our urban landscape in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

It's pretty rad.

A short history of parking beating in its pulse. Municipal parking facility enjoys some screen time in Bad Boys prior to enjoying the wrecking ball.

But neither article can seem to speak of Chicago movies at any length without mentioning that buried treasure of guerrilla cinema, Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool. Both agree the film accurately and authentically captures Chicago at a time when Mayor Richard J. Daley's bourgeois tastes dictated how and under what circumstances his town would be projected into the popular consciousness.

Because the technique Wexler used to shoot Medium Cool took the kind of Hog Butcher's boldness that can only be described as "Chicago." Just the plot and a few focal characters portrayed by the film's only players are fiction. The Chicago you see erupting in late 1960's violence is real.

The Reader says --

Then again, if we turn our attention to Chicago, the movie from roughly the same period that comes immediately to mind is Haskell Wexler's Medium Cool (1969). Much of it was filmed during the riotous Democratic National Convention held in Chicago in 1968. Despite the passage of 40 years I vividly recall the shots of National Guard troops and the famous off-camera line, http://www.thestickingplace.com/film/films/look-out-haskell-its-real/introduction/ I think anyone who was around will agree that flick nailed the Chicago experience at the time.

And Forgotten Chicago, too --

On the other hand, there are some films where Chicago plays more of a lead role – when the specificity of location is integral to the plot. The best example of this is Medium Cool (1969), a film that sets a fictional story about a romance between an Appalachian mother and an amoral cameraman against the backdrop of the 1968 Democratic Convention. During the final act of the film, the actress portraying the mother, Virginia Bloom, is filmed wandering about, in character, amidst actual violence in the streets during police riots. Because of this, Medium Cool is uniquely valuable as a historical document in ways that far exceed its impact as a work of fiction.

And wouldja believe it? I just so happen to have a bunch of screen shots from Medium Cool tucked away in a file on my desktop. No kidding. Total coincidence. Swear to god.

My treat to you, Windy Citizens - here's a selection of the best:

Does this guy look like he want to lay into some hippies or what?

Look! There's John Hancock in the background! Actually, it's only 90% done being built at this point in time, late Aug. of 1968. Would have been done sooner but - you guessed it - credit problems with the developer, Jerry Wolman, and unexpectedly expensive structural issues that arose out of a faulty caisson, froze construction in the winter of 1966. (Remind you of anything?) So, Wolman was forced to take a loss when his partner in the venture, John Hancock Life Insurance Co., bought him out and cast him aside like a fallen Icarus. And the Hancock Building reached ever skyward! But, upon its official completion in 1969, it still came up short of world's tallest, a record New York's pre-war, art deco icon, the Empire State Building, still clung to with a strong monkey's grip.

In the spirit of the Forgotten Chicago piece, here's a google street view of how that exact same spot on Columbus Dr. looks today. Pretty striking difference. So much new construction has gone up in the last forty-odd years, you can't even see John Hancock from the South Loop anymore. So I had to use the Prudential Building as my point of reference, which, until Hancock, was the tallest building in Chicago. Appropriately, only the goddess Ceres - the three-story art deco statue that caps the Chicago Board of Trade - was perched high enough to look down upon it. (and speaking of movies, the Board of Trade building served as Wayne Enterprises in the film Batman Begins)

Admittedly, The Prudential looks pretty plain, ugly even, when compared to either the art deco Board of Trade, or the modern John Hancock. But it was the first addition Chicago made to its skyline since the dual crisis of the Great Depression and World War II put a moratorium on all large scale commercial building in the city. Mayor Daley I was a builder-king and, like the Pharaohs of Egypt, the Prudential Building was only the first in a series of structures he'd erect to immortalize his legacy.

Standing around looking like cops. The real deal. You couldn't find a couple of actors who do it this good

Ten bucks says that cop doesn't REALLY need to tie his shoe.

This is up in Lincoln Park. Most to the other screen shots are from down in Grant Park.

Cops on the march

Dig that old squad car. That girl in yellow, by the way, is one the few actual actors in the movie. She plays a pretty big role.

Real cops. Real hippies. Real mayhem!