 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Apollo
and Peoria: a special place in show-business |
||
|
||
| As recounted elsewhere, some of the theater’s ground floor and backstage area were destroyed to make room for a parking garage, but in the 1990s attorney Tom Leiter rescued and restored what was left of the Apollo and local impresario Bob Brandes helped run the Apollo Fine Arts & Entertainment Centre, a nonprofit outfit incorporated in 1991. | ||
The
Apollo built on Peoria’s impressive heritage in arts and letters,
and its special place in entertainment. |
||
| The
cliché “Will it play in Peoria?” was a show-business
staple, a reply asking whether the tough, hard-to-please crowds in
Peoria would like the joke, the number, the routine or sketch or show
being readied elsewhere – and ideally destined for New York
or Hollywood some day. Peoria was a formidable market where entertainers had to succeed if they expected to go on. Peoria was not a city of rubes, but a demanding, even sophisticated, place that had seen hundreds – thousands – of shows and was a test for entertainers of all types. Besides the Apollo, entertainment on stage and screen were offered at the Duchess theater at Adams and Liberty, the Grand Opera House on Hamilton, the Orpheum on NE Madison, the Palace on Main, and the Majestic on Jefferson. |
||
| The
names alone conjure thoughts of bright marquees and crowded lines
awaiting the latest dog act or melodrama or singer or film starring
favorite celebrities: the Empress nickelodeon, the Hippodrome (which
became the Rialto) on Jefferson, the Madison on Main. There was Rouse’s Hall (later the Main Street Theater) and Weast’s Theatre (later called the Lyceum); the Deluxe, the Sangamo and the Star, the Elysium, and the Cort. There was the Warner (previously the Grand), the Garden and the Princess, all on Adams Street. There was the Columbia, the Imperial (which became the Avon), the Crest in Peoria Heights, and, later, the Beverly on Knoxville, and the Varsity on West Main. |
||
| The Palace, torn down to make room for Main Street’s Twin Towers, was the last of the theaters that presented vaudeville, and playing Peoria were many, many talents, from Dick Powell to Duke Ellington, Blackstone the Magician to Eddie Cantor, Spike Jones to Sally Rand, the Dead End Kids to the likes of the Marx Brothers. Before that comedy troupe’s success on Broadway and in Hollywood, they lived in La Grange, Ill., and played throughout Illinois, from Chicago down to Cairo, from Keokuk, Iowa, to Decatur and all points between. In fact, on one episode of Groucho’s 1944 half-hour radio show, Pabst Blue Ribbon Town, Groucho, co-star Leo Gorcey and guest star Gene Tierney all marked the sponsor’s 100th anniversary with a view of Peoria in the year 2044. | ||
| In 1934, the movie comedy 365 Nights in Hollywood starred Alice Faye as a star-struck Peoria girl who leaves Peoria for Hollywood, where misadventures and fame, misfortune and fun all ensue. Joe E. Brown starred in the comedy Earthworm Tractors, based on the Caterpillar line, and appeared at the movie’s Peoria 1936 premiere. | ||
| Famous
impresario Billy Rose co-wrote the song “I Wish’t I Was
in Peoria.” Classical performers played here, too: Artur Rubenstein, Isaac Stern, Itzahk Perlman, even mimist Marcel Marceau. In fact, the Peoria Symphony is one of the oldest such orchestras in the United States, having started in 1898. |
||
| The popular culture echoes with Peoria’s influences. Peoria natives Jim Jordan and Marian Driscoll became radio’s popular Fibber McGee and Molly. Peorian Charles J. Correll played Andy of radio’s popular “Amos ‘n Andy” series starting in 1929, and launched a family business of sorts. Charles Jr. became an accomplished cinematographer and director, and another son, Richard, was an actor (Richard in “Leave it to Beaver”), then a writer, producer and director. | ||
| Actor
Harold Goodwin was a Peoria-born veteran of 211 motion pictures from
1915-73, much of his work uncredited, but including box-office hits
such as Union Pacific and Joe Butterfly. Peoria twins Bobby and Billy Mauch co-starred with Errol Flynn in 1937’s The Prince and the Pauper, Peoria native Louis Bellson became a pioneer jazz drummer and Pearl Bailey’s husband, hometown genius Richard Pryor from the ‘60s on was a nightclub comedian, actor, concert entertainer and recording artist, writer and filmmaker, and East Peorian Sam Kinison in the ‘80s was a wildly popular standup comic, actor and recording artist. |
||
| Other
entertainers with roots in the Peoria area range from actress Susan
Dey (The Partridge Family, L.A. Law) to country singer Cristy Lane
(“One Day at a Time”), singer Elaine “Spanky”
McFarlane from Spanky & Our Gang and the Mamas & Papas to
actor Marshall Thompson (Battleground, TV’s Daktari), Mariclare
Costello (The Waltons, Providence) to familiar face Steve Vinovich
(Judging Amy, Wired). The TV series M*A*S*H featured three actors with ties to the area: David Ogden Stiers (Peoria), William Christopher (Chillicothe) and McLean Stevenson (Bloomington), and other talented actors came from Peoria: Tom Irwin, Amy Weber and Kathryn McGuire (who made 58 films from 1919-30, sharing top-billing with Gary Cooper, Hoot Gibson and other stars). |
||
| Besides comedy and drama, Peoria has been the birthplace or proving ground for many prominent bands, solo musicians and songwriters, including the Royal Filipinos and Tiny Hill & his Orchestra, both in the 1930s-40s, the Bill Hardesty Orchestra starting in the 1950s, and Jimmie Bell, Jimmy Binkley and Wild Child Gipson from the ‘50s on. Richard Whiting wrote such standards as “’Til We Meet Again,” “Ain’t We Got Fun” and “Too Marvelous for Words.” | ||
| Others one-time Peorians in entertainment or the arts and letters include rapper/actor Teck Holmes (from MTV and the film Van Wilder), country/pop singer Suzy Bogguss, singer/songwriter Dan Fogelberg, rockers REO Speedwagon and Mudvayne, feminist author Betty Friedan, science-fiction’s multiple Hugo Award winner Phillip Jose Farmer, mystery novelist Dorothy Cannell, Hollywood writers Hugh C. Weir (who worked on 14 pictures in the silent era) and Frank Wead (filmmaker John Ford’s friend who wrote They Were Expendable, The Hoodlum Saint and other movies). | ||
On
the radio, sportscasters including Jack Brickhouse, Vince Lloyd
and Chick Hearn all started in Peoria, as did one of broadcasting’s
pioneer pastors, Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. On TV, familiar
network faces including Bob Jamieson, Faith Daniels, Brian Christie
and Randy Salerno began their careers in Peoria. |
||
Richard
Pryor Jim Jordan and Marian Driscoll were Fibber McGee & Molly Marshall Thompson starred in the movies Battleground and To Hell and Back and CBS-TV's Daktari. The "math-metal" quartet Mudvayne |
||
|
||
The
Apollo
Theatre Building |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Copyright
© 2007 All Rights Reserved.