When Hollywood went looking for old Chicago and found it (sort of) in Milwaukee

Chris Foran
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In 1965, the Milwaukee Public Museum opened its Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit, offering a window on the city at the turn of the 20th century.

Three years years later, a Hollywood movie crew turned parts of Milwaukee into the streets of old Chicago. 

Mirisch Co., one of Hollywood's top independent movie producers, announced in April 1968 that Milwaukee would be the location for about a month of filming for "Gaily, Gaily," a comedy set in the freewheeling Chicago of 1910. 

The movie — based on a memoir by Chicago newsman turned Hollywood big-wheel Ben Hecht, who grew up in Racine — was being directed by Norman Jewison, whose most recent movie, 1967's "In the Heat of the Night," took home the Oscar for best picture. 

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Jewison had his heart set on filming in Chicago, but only shot there for a couple of weeks. Chicago "has some nice, old streets, but behind every one of them, there's a 70-story skyscraper," Jewison told The Milwaukee Journal's Jo Sandin in a story published July 19, 1968.

"In Milwaukee, we've found the old buildings without the modern monsters." 

While Jewison's crews spent nearly a month shooting around Milwaukee's old buildings, they also added new bits to Milwaukee's landscape along the way.

Actors Brain Keith (left) and Beau Bridges rehearse a barroom scene from "Gaily, Gaily" on location at State Fair Park in West Allis on June 25, 1968. Part of the Hollywood movie, about a young Chicago newspaper reporter at the turn of the century, was filmed during the summer of 1968 in multiple locations around Milwaukee.

In the movie, Beau Bridges plays a fledgling reporter, with Brian Keith, then the star of the popular TV sitcom "Family Affair," as a hard-bitten newsman who shows him the ropes.

Also in the cast: Melina Mercouri as a savvy brothel operator; recent Oscar winner George Kennedy and Hume Cronyn as rival politicians; and a young Canadian actress named Margot Kidder, making her Hollywood debut. 

Some of the staging took place at State Fair Park in West Allis. But most of the filming, from late June through late July, was done around the edges of downtown Milwaukee. 

More than once, the production crew made something old out of something new. 

For a pivotal scene in which Bridges gets in a fight and is chased across the Holton St. bridge, production crews built the weathered facade of an "old" sausage factory, parking it behind the A.F. Gallun and Sons tannery at 1753 N. Water St. 

For a street scene in the Third Ward, set designers painted a six-stories-tall advertisement for Sen-Sen breath freshener. (The faux advertisement is faded but still visible on the northern side of the Broadway Theatre Center, 158 N. Broadway.)

A block-long stretch of N. 5th St., between Vliet St. and McKinley Ave., is transformed into a 1910 green market for scenes being shot for "Gaily, Gaily," a big-budget Hollywood movie, on June 28, 1968. Seen at top left: the old Ambrosia Chocolate factory. This photo was published in the June 28, 1968, Milwaukee Journal.

And, to create a bustling street market, the movie makers filled N. 5th St. between Vliet St. and McKinley Ave. — which 60 years earlier had been a street market — with faux produce carts, storefronts and wagons. 

After filming the bridge scene June 24, rain the next day forced Jewison and his crew to take the filming indoors on covered sets at State Fair Park. The Journal's Robert W. Wells reported that Keith and Bridges played a drinking scene in a bar called the Bucket of Blood on the fairgrounds. 

Despite occasional rain, filming on "Gaily, Gaily" seemed to be light on drama. 

Director Norman Jewison sets up a shot on the set of "Gaily, Gaily" during filming in Milwaukee in June 1968. Two months earlier, Jewison's "In the Heat of the Night," a drama about crime and race starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, won the Oscar for best picture.

On June 30, about 500 bales of hay being used as a backdrop for the film went up in flames in "a fire of undetermined cause" at N. 6th and W. Vliet streets, according to a Journal story July 1, 1968.

Later, scenes behind shot on a railroad bridge near Buffalo St. and Plankinton Ave. were interrupted when a coal freighter on the Milwaukee River blared its horn for the bridge to be raised. (Milwaukee Sentinel columnist Buck Herzog reported on July 15 that Jewison, sizing up the delays in moving cameras, lamps and other equipment from the bridge, sent the crew to lunch, "although lunchtime wasn't near.") 

Some of the 200 or so locals recruited as extras ended up playing supporting roles. Joe Mojto, who owned a farm in Sullivan, was tabbed to play the bodyguard of Cronyn's political boss character in a party scene after dropping off a couple of hitchhikers who were going to a casting call. 

A couple of weeks later, he told a Journal reporter in a story published Aug. 24, 1968, he got a call from Hollywood: They needed him for more scenes being shot there. 

"It pays big money but not big enough to bring my family here," he said from Hollywood.

Production on the movie continued through 1968 and into 1969. Considered a prestige release by United Artists, "Gaily, Gaily" premiered in New York on Dec. 16, 1969, to make it eligible for that year's Academy Awards. 

The Milwaukee-area premiere, scheduled for Jan. 21, 1970, at the Fox-Bay Cinema in Whitefish Bay, was a fundraiser for what became the Milwaukee Art Museum, with Jewison in attendance. 

The night of the premiere, however, Jewison was a no-show. It might or might not have had to do with the fact that "Gaily, Gaily" was already tanking at the box office.

Jewison's $8 million period comedy wound up taking in just $1 million. While it did earn three Oscar nominations, including for art direction/set direction, the movie was one of Hollywood's biggest flops that year. 

"Milwaukee's debut in the world of modern big-time movies turns out, in 'Gaily, Gaily,' to be something of a bomb," Milwaukee critic James Arnold wrote in a review in The Journal on Jan 18, 1970. "The city is photogenic enough, and the local extras are all beautiful, but there is a lot wrong with the movie. But don't eat your heart out. Vince Lombardi has been known to start slow."  

It would be a few years before another Hollywood movie filmed any scenes in Milwaukee, and two decades before one — a little baseball comedy called "Major League" — would use Milwaukee as its prime filming location.  

As for "Gaily, Gaily," the movie largely has been out of circulation for years, and is not readily available on DVD, VHS or streaming video.

Our Back Pages: 1968 

About this feature 

On Wednesdays this year, the Green Sheet's Our Back Pages will look back at 1968 in Milwaukee, sharing stories of the events that shaped and reflected a changing city as reported and photographed by the Journal Sentinel's predecessor newspapers, The Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel.  

Special thanks and kudos go to senior multimedia designer Bill Schulz for finding many of the gems in the Journal Sentinel photo archives.