“Hollywood Blvd. Cinema Awards-Viewing Party to Benefit St. Jude’s” by S.M. O’Connor

Hollywood Blvd.: A Cinema, Bar & Eatery in west suburban Woodridge, Illinois will host an Awards- Viewing Party that will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on Sunday, March 4, 2018.[1] The movie theater/restaurant/bar will project a live telecast of The 90^th Academy Awards on a big screen on Sunday, March 4, 2018. The event will include a silent auction, red carpet photos, a champagne toast, and a ballot contest.

Tickets are $40 ($35 before Saturday, February 10, 2018). Click here to purchase tickets online. [Please note this event is neither sponsored by nor affiliated with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.] Tickets cover appetizers, professional red carpet photos, a champagne toast, and a swag bag.

The event is from 6:00 p.m. until the end of the telecast (around 11:00 p.m.). Upon arrival, guests will enjoy one complimentary glass of champagne will be served to guests. Passed appetizers (bruschetta, meatballs, mini-quesadillas, and vegetables) will be served between 6:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. or while red carpet coverage is onscreen. Guests will take home swag bags and online access to red carpet souvenir photos.

For those attendees who think they can predict winners, there will be an Oscar Ballot Contest. [The nominees are listed here.] Representatives of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital will be selling ballots for $15. Premium gifts for the silent auction include luxurious hotel stays, movie memorabilia, and gift cards. To donate items for the Silent Auction, e-mail dana@hblvd.com.

They will also be on site to answer questions and accept donations. One can donate to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital online right now here. As the name indicates, the staff at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, do not “just” treat the health problems of children, they seek how to cure and prevent the spread of “pediatric catastrophic diseases.” In keeping with the vision of Danny Thomas (1912-1991), no child is turned down based on religion, race, or the ability of parents to pay for treatment.

Figure 1 Credit: Picture courtesy of Hollywood Blvd. Cinema Caption: US*99 D.J. Kimmie Caruba will be the hostess of Hollywood Blvd. Cinema’s Awards- Viewing Party that will benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital on Sunday, March 4, 2018.

Country music station US*99 is a sponsor. Pretty US*99 D.J. Kimmie Caruba will be the hostess. She was born in north suburban Evanston, Illinois and raised in west suburban Bartlett, Illinois. In 2012, Miss Caruba earned a broadcast degree from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York. She worked at a train station there briefly with side jobs as a bartender and a barista before she moved to Burlington, Vermont for her first full-time radio gig. Months later, she was hired as an “On Air Personality” by KMLE Country @ 107.9, a C.B.S. radio station, in Phoenix, Arizona from March of 2014 and August of 2016. For most of that time, she also worked for its sister station Live 101.5. She returned to Chicagoland to work for another C.B.S. station, US*99 (99.5 WUSN FM) in August of 2016. Her show is on nights from 7:00 p.m. to Midnight. She describes herself as “addicted to coffee and obsessed with tacos.” The other sponsors are Breakthru Beverage Group, Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2), Lionsgate, Sony, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, The Walt Disney Studios, *yelp, and the Volo Auto Museum.

This event often sells out. The management recommends attendees wear attire appropriate for a cocktail party, but is not enforcing a dress code.

Figure 2 Credit: Picture courtesy of Hollywood Blvd. Cinema Caption: Marvel artist Mathew Waite will be teaching guests how to draw two Star Wars characters on Saturday, March 10, 2018. Tickets are $15 and will include art materials.

Marvel artist Mathew Waite will be teaching guests how to draw two Star Wars characters on Saturday, March 10, 2018 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:01 p.m. Tickets for this Drawing Class are $15 and will include art materials. All ages and experience levels are welcome. Minors must be accompanied by an adult. To purchase tickets, click here.

Hollywood Blvd. Cinema is located in Woodgrove Festival, a large strip mall at the southwest corner of 75^th Street and Lemont Road. The address is 1001 West 75^th Street, Woodridge, Illinois 60517. The phone number is (630) 427-1880.

[1] I originally posted this article on Tuesday, January 30, 2018. I revised it on Monday, February 26, 2018 after I received additional material from a Hollywood Blvd. Cinema spokeswoman.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.