Arthur Klug was an unreconstructed 1950s hipster whose eclectic style and taste became the hallmark of the Old Town Ale House, a neighborhood bar that for 40 years has been a gathering place for writers, artists, musicians, comedians and eccentrics.
Mr. Klug, 79, who for decades was one of the most familiar figures of the North Side’s nightlife scene, died of congestive heart failure Saturday, Jan. 29, at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Born in Burma in 1925, Mr. Klug spent much of his boyhood in South America. He came to Chicago in the early 1950s hoping to become a writer. Instead, to pay the rent he became a bartender. His quick intelligence and gift for words drew an impressive following, especially from show business.
After a couple of years tending bar at the Union League Club, one of the city’s most exclusive private clubs, Mr. Klug went to work at Figaro’s, a legendary show-business hangout at 7 W. Oak St.
Figaro’s was a small saloon with a round bar that in the 1950s and 1960s was the place hipster jazz musicians and stand-up comedians went to after their shows were over.
“When guys like Lenny Bruce were in town, Figaro’s was where they spent their off time,” said Bruce Elliott, a longtime friend. “The repartee down there was fast, funny, intelligent and often insulting, and Arthur was right in the middle of it, holding his own, the star of the show.”
In the late 1960s, he moved on to run the Old Town Ale House at 219 W. North Ave. At the time Old Town was the city’s center for the hippie scene, but the Ale House was largely ignored by the long-haired, bell-bottom trouser crowds that thronged nightly along North Avenue.
“He brought that same sensibility that was at Figaro’s to the Ale House,” said writer Jim Touhy, another longtime friend.
Soon an intriguing melange of artwork began gracing the tavern’s walls, and Mr. Klug installed a jukebox with a selection of jazz and opera so sterling that it has long attracted people to the bar who come for the music.
The ambiance has also attracted a loyal clientele of writers, artists and show-business people. With its location around the corner from the Second City comedy club, generations of comedians have been Ale House regulars, including George Wendt, who often filled a bar stool there before becoming a famous neighborhood bar patron on the television series “Cheers.”
“Both of the Belushi brothers, John and Jim, were in the Ale House a lot when they were at Second City,” Elliott said. “Dan Aykroyd still stops in when he’s around. Chris Farley was there a lot, right up to just before he died.”
Mr. Klug, who was for many years married to the owner of the Ale House, was the son of an American oil company executive. Following his father to foreign postings, he spent the first five years of his life in Burma (now Myanmar) and another five years in South America, where his father was posted.
He often told friends that, as a small boy, he met Mohandas Gandhi during a steamship voyage, mistook the Indian pacifist leader for a waiter and asked him to bring him a bottle of water. During World War II, after attending high school in Downstate Olney, he joined the Navy. During the Battle of Leyte in the Philippines in late 1944, he survived the sinking of the landing ship he served on.
Mr. Klug graduated from the University of Iowa in 1950 after attending its famed Writers’ Workshop, where he became friends with future literary star Flannery O’Connor and playwright Tennessee Williams.
“He wanted to be a writer,” Elliott said. “But if he ever did any writing, he never let anybody see it.
“He also wanted to be known as a bon vivant, boulevardier and raconteur, and certainly he was. He was amazingly knowledgeable. All his life he was a voracious reader. His whole house is nothing but books, more than 20,000 of them.”
Mr. Klug is survived by a brother, Theodore, and his ex-wife, Beatrice. A memorial celebration will be held at 3 p.m. Feb. 13 at the Ale House.
