Night Life in Chicago

This James FitzPatrick Traveltalks shorts series entry looks at the nightlife in the town I was born in and lived my first six years in-Chicago. First, we get a glimpse of what its downtown area looks like in the dark. Then it's on to various hotel floor shows with the last segment having a horse and its rider doing a dance to "Pop Goes the Weasel". In summary, Night Life in Chicago was an okay short doc.

Night Life in Chicago (1948)

*** (out of 4)

TravelTalk short from MGM takes a look at what goes on in Chicago during the nighttime, at least that's what the title says. This here really plays more like a hotel promo because we're basically looking at a lot of hotels and what they offer. There are some very interesting scenes including a dinner where Charles Dawes, former Vice-President, is sitting at a table with the then mayor of Chicago. We get to see a couple show room dance floors, which wasn't too interesting but this builds up to a dancing horse, which I must admit, was pretty entertaining to me. There's another sequence where we see the Chicago Theatre and it's showing Joan Crawford's Possessed. I've seen dozens of these shorts and to me this here was one of the better entries in the series.

This Traveltalks takes a night out on the town in Chicago. It's a fascinating time capsule. It does stick to the high class main establishments meaning the white city establishment. The only black people is one guy in a fantastical uniform in a restaurant, probably a doorman. Even the servers and performers are white. I think there are a few black musicians in the band. It's still a fascinating time capsule, more so for what's not on it.

James A. Fitzpatrick must have made over a hundred of these documentary shorts. This is about the 10th or 11th I've seen. They run the gamut, from the mildly boring, to the incredibly boring. This is one of most boring I've seen. In Night Life in Chicago we are taken on a trip through various Chicago hotels and their popular floor shows. We are introduced to many of the fascinating people who frequent these shows, like Charles Dawes, who was vice President of the USA sometime in the 1920's. I don't think anybody remembered him when this short came out in 1948, and he's certainly no less memorable today (eye roll).

And here we are in another show room (let's call it The Money Waster), and here are some women in garish costumes thrashing around on stage to the dulcet tones of Chip Dickweed and his Band of the Undead. Now on to the Pump Room, where more women in garish costumes bang into each other on stage to the music of some other, nameless local band. And if that is not entertaining enough for you, here's 90 seconds of film showing Pump Room waiters serving food and pouring water. Fascinating. Then we get to see a horse hop around in step with Pop Goes The Weasle. If I ever wanted to visit Chicago, this short has convinced me not to go.

When you went to the movies back in the 1940's, you got a cartoon, a short or two, like this one, a movie, then a full second feature (and if my Dad is to be believed, this all cost you only a nickle, and they gave you six cents change). Nobody went to the movies to see these shorts, but they filled time. When these shorts are shown on TCM, you might wonder why everyone didn't show up late to theaters in the '40's. I'll tell you why; it's because it was 110 degrees outside and theaters were the only places that had the new, modern, air conditioning.

James A. Fitzpatrick sends the Technicolor cameras to shoot pictures of what Chicagoans get up to when the sun sets. He uses two cinematographers for this one, Virgil Miller and Robert Sable, and alternates pictures of the exteriors, which are not very good because -- surprise! Surprise! -- it gets dark at night in Chicago, and the interiors of night clubs and restaurants.

Given the late date of this entry in the Traveltalks series, I was disappointed with the poor condition of the print that runs on Turner Classic Movies. Of course, many of them seem to be a bit fuzzy, betraying the fact they are drawn from TV prints rather than original 35 mm. Elements. This one also suffers from some oddities of color and bad registration. I suspect it was made from a cheaper, non-Technicolor print. That made watching the variety acts in the movie difficult and not very amusing.