It sounds, at first, like a story from 20 or 30 years ago: ”Pianist George Shearing and vocalist Mel Torme open supper club in Chicago luxury hotel.”
But everything old will be new again this Tuesday night-which marks the simultaneous debut of the Fairmont Hotel, at 200 N. Columbus Dr., and its 450- seat Moulin Rouge Supper Club, where the duo of Shearing and Torme will be followed by the likes of James Brown (Dec. 15-20), Billy Eckstine (Dec. 22-Jan. 3), Lou Rawls (Jan. 5-17), the 5th Dimension (Jan. 19-31), Lola Falana
(Feb. 2-14), Jerry Butler (March 1-13), 4 Girls 4 (March 15-27), Tony Bennett (April 12-17) and Peggy Lee (April 19-May 1).
Supper clubs, attempting to combine ”name” entertainment and fine dining, are commonly considered as anachronistic as the dinosaur-which is why there hasn`t been a fancy hotel supper club in the Chicago area since the heyday of the Palmer House`s Empire Room and the Conrad Hilton`s Boulevard Room.
Indeed, entertainment costs have risen so much in recent years that, even without the complications that a food-and-entertainment package can bring, we have seen the demise of both the comfortable Mill Run Theatre and the Blue Max at the Hyatt Regency O`Hare and the resulting restriction of ”name” acts to the Chicago area`s various concert halls.
But even though Richard Swig, the ebullient, 62-year-old president of the Fairmont Hotel Management Co., has some sentimental feelings about the supper- club concept-having been present when the elegant Venetian Room made its debut in the original Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco in 1947-he is no starry- eyed idealist.
”Yes,” Swig says, ”supper clubs are all red ink; there`s no kidding about it. You just can`t make money in an entertainment room today, I don`t care who the entertainer is. If the act is a real draw, it costs more than you can possibly make from it. And if the cost of the act is low, that means that it doesn`t draw enough to even pay for itself, let alone for the orchestra behind it.”
So why is the Fairmont chain still in the supper-club game, with venues of that sort in their San Francisco, New Orleans, San Jose and Chicago hotels? ”Well,” Swig says, ”they`re loss leaders. My feeling is that if you`re going to run a luxury hotel, the hotel has to be luxurious. And our supper clubs are an essential part of that package.”
In the final stages of construction last week, the Moulin Rouge promises to be a gem of its type. Hexagonal in shape, with an airy, high ceiling and a stage that juts out from the bandstand about a third of the way into the room, it should bring the audience into intimate contact with the performers. And after each evening`s show, the cover charge will be reduced to $5, and there will be dancing until midnight to a 15-piece big band, led by trombonist Bill Porter-which is, as Swig says, ”a pretty good deal.” (The cover charge for shows is $22 per person on weeknights and $25 on weekends, with no minimum. Dinner is extra.)
”If there`s one thing we have to offer in the Moulin Rouge, it`s intimacy,” Swig adds. ”You can go to the Chicago Theatre to see a show, and it`s wonderful in many ways. But you`re not really in touch with the entertainers, and they really aren`t in touch with you. In a supper club like the Moulin Rouge, though, the audience is really there with the entertainer. It`s a very different feeling.”
As the lineup for the Moulin Rouge suggests, Swig plans to present
”basically music acts. In the old nightclubs, comedians used to do great;
but in a supper club we do have children, we do have families, and a lot of the comedians today are a little on the heavy side for that kind of audience.”
Contrary to what one might expect, though, Swig anticipates that Moulin Rouge will draw most of its patrons from the Chicago area.
”In every one of our supper clubs-the Venetian Room, the Blue Room (in New Orleans) and the Club Regent (in San Jose)-it`s seldom that a hotel guest can get in to see the show, because the rooms are all booked up with local patrons. And we hope that`s what will happen here.”
The Venetian Room has been in operation for 40 years without a break, so the Fairmont chain obviously is in the supper-club game for the long haul. But Swig is aware that his commitment to such venues, even as loss leaders, is a chancy proposition.
”Whenever we open one of our supper clubs,” he says, ”we say a little prayer.”
