The Green Mill

4802 N. Broadway, Chicago, IL 60640

Charles E. “Pop” Morse opened a saloon and inn at this site in 1897. Prizefighters trained at the roadhouse, which hosted at least one boxing match. It was a regular stop for Catholic Chicagoans heading north to Calvary Cemetery in Evanston, and it reputedly served the best corned beef cabbage in Chicago. In 1914, Greek American Tom Chamales tore down the place and built a more lavish entertainment venue called Green Mill Gardens, with a rotating windmill on the roof. The property extended all the way over to Magnolia Avenue, with an outdoor garden with a stage and dance floor. The building originally was horseshoe-shaped, with a front courtyard facing Broadway, but that section was filled in in 1922. The owners sold off the garden area when the Uptown Theatre was built in the mid-1920s. During the Prohibition Era, the space at the corner of Broadway and Lawrence — where the Green Mill jazz club and Birrieria Zaragoza are today — was actually occupied by a drugstore and a jewelry shop. Green Mill Gardens was in a much bigger, two-story space with second-floor balconies, back in the northwest part of the building. The entrance was at 4806 North Broadway, where the Fiesta Mexicana was located until it recently shut down. The restaurant’s sign hides the writing on the concrete underneath it, where it says “Green Mill Gardens.”

Green Mill Gardens, which repeatedly shut down and reopened during the 1920s, changing owners and names. For a while, it was called the Montmartre Cafe. There are many legends about famous entertainers who supposedly performed here, some of which are hard to verify. Research confirms that Sophie Tucker, Texas Guinan, Benny Goodman, and the father of stride piano, James P. Johnson, did play here. Johnson was the bandleader in 1922 for Plantation Days, one of the first widely publicized shows with an all-African-American cast. Johnson performed his rollicking piano song “Carolina Shout.” A year after he played here, Johnson wrote one of the most famous songs of the Roaring Twenties, “The Charleston.”

When Joe E. Lewis was the master of ceremonies here in 1926 and 1927, Sol Wagner and His Orchestra often played “Chicago (That Toddling Town),” a song by Fred Fisher. After Lewis left the Green Mill for another venue, he was attacked and nearly killed by three thugs. But he recovered and made a comeback, adopting that song “Chicago” as his entrance music. Journalist Art Cohn told this story in his book The Joker Is Wild. When Frank Sinatra starred in a 1957 movie based on the book, the melody of “Chicago” was on the soundtrack. Sinatra also made a record of “Chicago” — bringing the song back into popularity. So, in a roundabout way, the Green Mill played a role in making that song famous.

In 1933, a fire broke out in the corner drugstore and spread through the building. The damage was so extensive that newspapers initially said the building would have to be torn down. But it was renovated, and in 1935, the Green Mill Tavern opened at the spot where it is today. For a while, the Green Mill Ballroom continued operating on the second floor in the back part of the building. The cocktail lounge wasn’t especially famous for its music. “It was a local hangout” featuring “old people music,” according to Jonathan Brend, whose father, Steve Brend, owned the Green Mill from 1960 to 1986. Studs Terkel often hung out at the Green Mill. When Dan Rather profiled Terkel on 60 Minutes in 1980, CBS filmed Terkel sitting at the bar. 1980 is also when director Michael Mann filmed scenes inside the Green Mill for his debut movie, Thief, starring James Caan. The movie shows the front windows of the Green Mill exploding.

Other movies filmed on location at Green Mill. According to the Green Mill website, the following movies, in addition to Thief, used the Green Mill: Next of Kin (1989), V.I. Warshawski (1991), Prelude to a Kiss (1992), Excessive Force (1993), A Family Thing (1996), Soul Food (1997), Kissing a Fool (1998), High Fidelity (2000), Ocean’s 12 (2004), The Lake House (2006), and The Dilemma (2011). Many television shows have used The Green Mill as a filming location, as well.

Chamales’s son, Tom T. Chamales Jr., was a successful novelist—both of his novels were adapted to major Hollywood films. Never So Few, directed by John Sturges, featured an all-star cast, including Sinatra, Gina Lollobrigida, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, Peter Lawford, and even George Takei. Lollobrigida also stars in the second film, Go Naked in the World. That novel, a bestseller, like the first, explored a veteran’s relationship with his Greek immigrant father, who just happened to be the former owner of a Chicago nightclub known as “the Mill.” Chamale allegedly wrote an outline for a screenplay called The Mill, about his father’s nightclub, and discussed a collaboration with composer Jule Styne. Chamales’s early death, at age 35, prevented that project from ever coming to fruition.

The Green Mill really became the renowned jazz club that we know today when Dave Jemilo bought the business in 1986.

Almost at the same time, the Uptown Poetry Slam, now in its 38st year, came to the Green Mill. Marc Kelly Smith, whose nickname is “Slam Papi,” is considered the founder of the Slam Poetry movement. Smith was a socialist construction worker and a poet who met with like-minded spoken word artists to perform outside the elitist world of literary poetry. In 1984, he started a kind of arts variety show called Monday Night Poetry Reading at the Get Me High Lounge in Bucktown. This event became the first slam in 1986, emphasizing poetry as performance of experience by and for ordinary people. The next year, 1987, the event migrated to the Green Mill, where the Uptown Poetry Slam has been ever since. The Sunday event includes an open mic at seven o’clock, featured performers at eight, and slam contest at nine. Randomly selected audience members, including cops, bartenders, and professors, serve as judges. “Highfalutin metaphors got no place here,” Smith was quoted as saying in a 1988 The New York Times feature. The Green Mill quickly became the epicenter of an important movement. Somewhere between a cult and popular entertainment, The Slam nurtured art and artists, and helped many achieve literary success. Dispensing with the usual niceties of audience protocol and performer expectations, each week’s event tends to be unique. The Slam evolved into national competitions with local organizers selecting teams to perform at each ascending event up to the nationals. There are now poetry slams in more than 500 cities across the globe that follow the performative style Smith and his group introduced at the Green Mill. “There are slam shows in cities throughout Europe, Australia, Mexico, Africa, South America, Asia, and Canada,” Smith said. “Many slammers from those cities have travel to Chicago to perform at the Green Mill Uptown Poetry Slam.”

There is a long list of poets who got their start as performers and/or writers at the Green Mill. It includes Tyehimba Jess (Pulitzer Prize winner), Mark Turcotte (current Illinois Poet Laureate), Regie Gibson (first Massachusetts Poet Laureate), Julie Cameron (author of The Artist’s Way), Patricia Smith (CLHOF Fuller Award recipient), E. Donald Two-Rivers (CLHOF inductee), Billy Lombardo, and Tony Fitzpatrick. Nationally-renown poets who’ve performed or attended Slam shows at the Green Mill include Edward Hirsch (MacArthur Fellow), Robert Pinsky (three-term United States Poet Laureate), Kevin T. Stein (former Illinois Poet Laureate), avery r. young (current Chicago Poet Laureate), and Ernest Cline (author of Ready Player One). The early Slam audiences were also a Who’s Who in American artists; it brought out people from every art form, including: Ira Glass, Frank Orrall, Ed Paschke, David Sedaris, Mark Strand, Kurt Elling, and Michael Shannon. Important international poets, such as Bini (Madagascar), Yopo & Zurg (France), Filippo Capobianco (Italy), and Roberta Estrela (Brazil) have also performed as part of the Slam shows.

Richard Guzman, who spent much time in the audience and some on the stage at the Green Mill, wrote a nice 2016 essay about Smith and the Slam. He wrote, “I’ve never failed to have at least a great evening at the Uptown Slam, and sometimes they’ve gone beyond that to being transcendent, the poetry and the crowd’s energy lifting everyone pretty high above where language usually operates.” In that essay, Guzman quotes New York poet Bob Holman as saying that the Slam is “the most active grass-roots arts movement in the country.”

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