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When Buddy Ebsen met Al Capone
Jed Clampett shook hands with the Godfather of Chicago!
Long before he was Barnaby Jones, and years before he was Jed Clampett, Buddy Ebsen was just himself. He was born way back in 1908. Crucially (to this story at least), he was born in Belleville, Illinois, about five hours outside of Chicago by train. So, returning to the Second City as a performer might've felt like a homecoming.
Unfortunately for Ebsen, when he had the chance to revisit the Windy City to see it from the stage, it was under... suspicious circumstances.
For some time, he performed in New York City as a supper club dance act. He and his sister Vilma had a vaudeville routine, and would put on a show as "The Baby Astaires." They attracted crowds from all over, quickly becoming one of the most popular acts, and were eventually booked at the Palace Theater, the pinnacle of vaudeville.
A booking brought him to Chicago in 1931, in between Broadway shows. However, this commitment was different for Ebsen as his sister was disallowed from performing during the show. She wasn't even allowed in the venue.
That's because the guest of honor at this particular performance was to be notorious gangster Al Capone. Vilma, the act's manager feared, might attract some of the wrong attention. Looking to ensure that they didn't offend any of the wrong people, the evening's show would feature a solo performance from Buddy, instead.
"We arrived at Follies at 11:00 PM," Ebsen wrote in his 1993 memoir.
"The room looked exactly like the nightclub ambiance in any Cagney gangster movie set in the 1920s, except that these real characters seemed exaggerated.
"One at a time, we were presented to our host, who smiled and shook hands without rising. Mr. Capone's hands were soft, like from not doing much gardening. The pupils of his eyes were so large, and their color merged so perfectly into irises, that you found yourself looking into two pools of murky darkness. When he smiled I'm sure he intended it to be warm, but the effect was chilling. I felt like I was shaking hands with a smiling, scar-faced wolf!"
Although their host's "hospitality" was something for the history books, Ebsen's favorite memory of the evening was the main course.
"The dinner featured steak four inches thick; I found out years later that it was called Chateaubriand. It was superb and there was more than we could possibly eat, but we gave it a good try."
Well, he certainly wasn't in Kansas anymore!
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It was owned by the late Lavern Lewis Durant and previously along with her then-deceased brother.
One day she told me a great story...
At the time (the early to-mid 1940s), their business was located across the service alley in a different storefront on Lincoln Road.
One day some fellows came in and purchased a big stack of record albums. Keep in mind that "albums" in those years were collections of 78 rpm records housed inside album folders (where the record sleeves were bound together into one "book".
A day or so later, the same men came back to the store and wanted to return the albums. Lavern looked over the records and refused. She told them the records were now in well-used condition, and they must have had a party the night before, so she couldn't take them back.
The men told her to explain that to their boss who was sitting in the car outside. She carried the stack of records out to the car, said to the man sitting inside that she couldn't take the records back because they were well-used, and placed them in his lap.
Shortly thereafter, the car drove off. When she walked back into the store, her brother (who was watching everything from the back room) asked her "Don't you you know who that was?" She replid "No" and he said... "Al Capone!"...
