Danger, Disease, and Despotism: Balancing on the Tightrope of Chicago

Abstract

In the 1920s, when Harry Minturn ran his own stock company in Chicago, Al Capone was one of his chief subscribers. During his brief time as director of the Chicago FTP, Minturn bemoaned the changes he observed in theatre. He explained, “The theatre’s too safe now. It used to be quite a dangerous pastime in Chicago—you never knew when you’d get mixed up with a first-class shooting.”² Capone, an ardent supporter of the theatre, always purchased 16 tickets, two for himself and 14 strategically placed throughout the theatre for his bodyguards. During the 1920s, theatre in Chicago was, quite literally, fraught with danger. Capone’s 1929 arrest coincided with a meteoric shift from the wild age of jazz, prohibition, and gangsters to the joblessness, economic despair, and grim reality of the Great Depression. Chicago theatre reflected this shift as well; by the early 1930s, Chicago theatre had been stripped of its political (and physical) “danger.” In many ways, Chicago was a political minefield for theatre during the Depression era. Topics such as crooked politicians, organized crime, and the city’s economic collapse—even worse in Chicago than in many other cities nationwide—required careful treatment. As a result, city officials began a censorship campaign to end immorality in the theatre. Experimental, controversial, and otherwise edgy works gradually disappeared in this environment.

Chicago Federal Theatre started like a detective thriller with farcical elements, worked up through a series of what Mr. Webster’s dictionary calls “sensational incidents and startling situations,” and reached magnificent heights of absurdity over the Swing Mikado.¹

—Hallie Flanagan