If you were into celebrity spotting before the 1950s, you would have made your way to Chicago’s six main train stations. There you would have seen leading man Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920s, actress Jean Harlow in the 1930s and heartthrob Gary Cooper in the ’40s. For about 100 years, the transcontinental railroad routed all these entertainers through Chicago on their way to their destinations.
The railroad was built at the behest of President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. Through about 1915, the first entertainers stopping in the Windy City would have been opera singers, theatrical groups, vaudeville acts and Buffalo Bill and his entourage traveling nationwide to perform at theaters. They were likely to be greeted at train stations by journalists and illustrators with pen and paper in hand ready to get stories and drawings ready for the afternoon edition.
“Chicago was the hub of the continent,” says Arthur Miller, curator of a major collection of vintage train photos, maps and timetables at Lake Forest College’s Donnelly Library. “You had to switch in Chicago. Nobody got past it.”
So travelers ended up at the Union, Chicago & North Western, Grand Central, Illinois Central, Dearborn Street and LaSalle Street Stations. The last two were prime celebrity-spotting stations from the 1920s through the ’40s. Los Angeles entertainers got off the Super Chief at Dearborn Street and boarded the 20th Century Limited to New York at LaSalle.
Actors and actresses began converging on the City of Big Shoulders in 1896, as Chicago was was on its way to becoming a movie-making mecca. In the early days of film, there were mostly one-minute documentaries, such as State Street at noon with a street car running and pedestrians. It was not unusual to see Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and other silent-film stars in the train depots.
Seizing an opportunity, train companies hired photographers to snap pictures of celebrities, which they passed along to newspapers. Photography firm Kaufmann & Fabry did brisk business in such candids.
Even when movie-making began to shift to Los Angeles in 1915, the flow of movie stars to Chicago continued, though now they were on their way to another part of the country or coming to Chicago to promote a film.
A 1927 Rock Island Lines photo shows a beaming Will Rogers, his hands pushed in his pockets, upon arrival at LaSalle Street on the Golden State Limited. Another photo taken that same year shows Miss America, Dorothy Britton, and a friend in their cloche hats, waving from the steps of the caboose of the Golden State, which was operated jointly by the Southern Pacific and the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroads between Chicago and Los Angeles. Al Jolson mugged for the cameras in 1928.
The Notre Dame football team headed by Knute Rockne, dressed in fedoras and trenchcoats, posed for photos in Union Station in 1931. Edward Windsor, who abdicated as King of England, and his wife, Wallis Simpson, posed on the Pennsylvania Limited in 1941.
Snagging celebrities en route became even more popular in the late 1930s, when radios became more readily available. Sports broadcaster Bob Elson launched a popular radio program, “On the 20th Century,” sponsored by Cranks shave cream in the 1940s. He and his broadcast team would head to LaSalle Street Station in the afternoon five times a week to catch entertainers getting off the 20th Century Limited train.
“He’d talk to them for two or three minutes, finding who they were, where they were going,” says Chuck Schaden, host of “Those Were the Days” radio show on WDCB-FM 90.9. “They weren’t so overloaded with celebrity exposure the way we are today. People weren’t seeking exposure, but they weren’t hiding out either.”
Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Gracie Allen and George Burns were among the entertainers who stepped up to Elson’s microphone. “He was a good guy, a fine interviewer,” Schaden says of Elson. “He wasn’t just out to get a 30-second sound bite.”
“During my years [in the 1930s] with the Pullman Co., I had many Hollywood stars on the sleeping cars that I worked,” said Arthur Burton, Sr., 99, a retired Pullman porter who lives in south suburban Phoenix. “Most of my years were spent on the Santa Fe Railway between Chicago and Los Angeles. Some of the stars I remember were Bob Hope and his entourage; Jack Benny and his entourage; Jimmy Durante; Paul Newman and his wife, Joanne Woodard; Joe E. Brown; Jimmy Stewart; and Helen Hayes. Sometimes the regular customers would tip better than the Hollywood stars. Bob Hope was a very generous tipper as I remember.
“The funniest incident I remember was the time I had Jack Benny, who wasn’t a good tipper, and his entourage. Jack ran his hand through my hair, and told his black comic sidekick, Eddie `Rochester’ Anderson, who was nearly bald, `Don’t you wish you had a head of hair like the porter’s?'”
These celebrities were likely to be whisked to the Pump Room in a limousine provided by Pump Room host Ernest Byfield. “He was no slouch in getting publicity; he was more than happy to do these things for celebrities,” Schaden says.
These movie stars would dine at the Pump Room, perhaps getting interviewed at their table by Elson for his Pump Room radio show.
The height of passenger travel occurred in World War II. Americans traveled in unprecedented numbers during this time, including stars crisscrossing the continent and making pit stops in Chicago to raise money for the war bond drive. Some 900,000 passengers traveled by rail in the peak war years.
In the mid-’40s to early ’50s, some entertainers had private Pullman cars switched from one train to another in Chicago. “For celebrities it was a little like being on a cruise ship,” Miller said. “They were protected, they didn’t have to do anything once they were in Chicago.”
Even with the growth of air travel, many celebrities still took the train. Yul Brynner in a double-breasted coat and hat posed for train photographers in 1957. He was on his way to Milwaukee, where he helped celebrate the opening of his latest film, “The Ten Commandments.” A preppy Doris Day posed with her glasses in hand on the City of Los Angeles train sometime during the 50s.
By the early 1960s, O’Hare Airport had become more popular with celebrities than Chicago’s train stations. Still, comedian Phyllis Diller was caught coyly kissing a train window while in Chicago in 1962.
One of the last celebrity photos taken in a Chicago passenger train depot shows Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton boarding the City of Los Angeles in 1965 at Union Station. Taylor, wearing a pillbox hat and a crisp suit and carrying a pair of gloves, gazes adoringly at Burton. The two were heading home to Hollywood after doing publicity for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in New York.
By 1970, Amtrak had taken over the transcontinental passenger trains. The C&NW depot was demolished in 1987 and replaced by a modern edifice that serves commuters. Grand Central was razed in 1971, Illinois Central in 1974 with a smaller facility for commuters on the Metra electric line.
A downsized facility in the Chicago Stock Exchange has replaced the LaSalle Street Station to serve commuters on the Metra Rock Island line. Dearborn Station was converted into a shopping mall in the 1980s. Only a downsized Union Station remains for train passengers coming from New York and Los Angeles, with few celebrities among them.
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Chicago stations
Here are the six Chicago stations that operated during the heyday of rail travel and the railroads (with destinations) they served:
Grand Central Station
Harrison and Wells Streets
– Baltimore & Ohio (New York, Washington, and Baltimore)
– Pere Marquette (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
– Chicago Great Western (Minneapolis and Iowa)
– Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie, or the Soo Line, (Twin Cities)
– Chesapeake & Ohio after acquiring B&O in 1962.
North Western Station
At turn of century on site of Merchandise Mart
– Chicago & North Western (Iowa, Twin Cities, Green Bay, Milwaukee)
– C&NW-Union Pacific operations (Denver, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles 1930s to 1955)
LaSalle Street Station
LaSalle Street at Van Buren Street
– Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific (Peoria, Kansas City, Iowa, Denver)
– New York Central (Cleveland, Buffalo, New York City)
– Nickel Plate Road (Buffalo and New York City via the Lackawanna)
Union Station
Canal and Adams Streets
– Pennsylvania Railroad (Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New York City, Washington)
– Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (Twin Cities, Kansas City, Denver with joint operations with other roads to Seattle and San Francisco)
– Chicago & Alton (St. Louis, Kansas City)
– Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, with Pacific added after extension to Seattle in 1909 (Twin Cities, Omaha, and, after 1909, Seattle)
Dearborn Station
Dearborn and Polk Streets
– Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (Texas, Kansas City, Los Angeles)
– Wabash (Decatur and St. Louis)
– Erie (Buffalo and New York City)
– Grand Trunk Western (Montreal and Toronto)
– Chicago & Eastern Illinois (St. Louis and Evansville with joint through service to Nashville, New Orleans, Atlanta, Miami);
– Monon (Indianapolis and Louisville)
– Chesapeake & Ohio (Washington)
Central Station
12th Street (Roosevelt Road) and Michigan Avenue
– Illinois Central (New Orleans, St. Louis, Iowa, Florida)
– Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis (the Big Four) (Indianapolis and Cincinnati)
– Michigan Central (Detroit with connections to New York City)
Source: David Young
