Green Mill
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The Green Mill, located at 4802 N. Broadway in Chicago, is one of gangster Al Capone's former speakeasies from the Prohibition-era roaring '20s. The bar was also a favorite of Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson.
The bar was opened in 1907 as Pop Morse's Roadhouse. At that time, the bar served as a stopping place for mourners before proceeding to St. Boniface Cemetery. A scant three years later, new owners converted the roadhouse into the Green Mill Gardens. Lantern-lit outdoor dancing ran into the wee hours, carried by headliners like Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and Sophie Tucker. Actors Wallace Beery and Broncho Billy Anderson "also visited the Gardens, hitching their horses to the outdoor post and settling down for a drink after a days work filming westerns at nearby Spoor and Anderson Studios (known as Essanay Studios)," says the Mill's Web site.
As the twenties roared, The Green Mill became mobster territory when Capone's henchman, "Machinegun" Jack McGurn, gained a 25% ownership of the club. Manager Danny Cohen had given McGurn the 25% stake to "persuade" comedian/singer Joe E. Lewis from moving his act south to the New Rendezvous Café at Clark and Diversey. McGurn managed to convince Lewis by slitting his throat and cutting off his tongue. Miraculously, Lewis recovered, but his songs never regained their lush sound. The incident was later immortalized in the movie The Joker is Wild, with Frank Sinatra as Joe E. Lewis and a Hollywood soundstage as The Green Mill. Of course, his interest piqued, Sinatra had to visit the club.
Throughout the 1930s, '40s, and 50s, The Green Mill continued to pack people in with a heady mix of swing, dance and jazz music. Uptown crowds from the Aragon Ballroom or Uptown and Riviera Theaters would "stop in for one" before or after shows. Business began to slip in the mid-seventies, and in 1986, present owner Dave Jemilo bought The Green Mill and restored it to its prohibition-era, speakeasy décor.
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