“When is the Vampire Ball at the American Writers Museum?” by S.M. O’Connor

Next Chapter: The Vampire’s Ball at The American Writers Museum (A.W.M.) will be on Saturday, October 19, 2019 from 7:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. Guests will enjoy food, drinks, a live auction, and vampire stories in the Readers Hall.

W.G.N.’s Nancy Loo will host the event, which is the Chicago Council of the American Writers Museum’s fundraiser for education initiatives. Guests are invited to dress in Gothic attire.

An individual ticket is $150. For $500, one can get two Bronze Level tickets; for $1,000, one can get four Silver Level tickets; for $2,500, one can get six Gold Level tickets; and for $5,000, one can get ten Platinum Level tickets. Click here to purchase tickets.

The Platinum Sponsors are Calibur Advisors and Tricia Bedi. The Robert R. McCormick Foundation is a Gold Sponsor. Mitchell Gordon and Kristen Prinz are Silver Sponsors. Kruse Asset Management, Mark Smith and Sarah Ferrill, and Art Garwin are Bronze Sponsors.

Pro Tips on Interpreting Vampire Costumes

If a fellow is dressed the way Hungarian movie star Bela Lugosi (1882-1956) did to play Count Dracula on Broadway and in Dracula (1931), but with a top hat, he is either going for the look of (a) Spanish actor Carlos Villarías (1892-1976), who played Conde Drácula in Drácula (1931),[1] or (b) Lon Chaney, Senior (1883-1930) as the fake vampire in the lost silent mystery film London After Midnight (1927). From a distance, a fellow dressed as Barnabas Collins[2] may be indistinguishable from someone dressed as Count Dracula, but the giveaway is the inclusion of an Inverness cape-type overcoat and a walking stick. Just don’t go as the “space vampires” from Lifeforce (1985) or you’re liable to get arrested… and cold.

The American Writers Museum is located on the second floor of the building at the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Lake Street in downtown Chicago. The address is 180 North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois 60601.

ENDNOTES

[1] Drácula (1931) was a Spanish-language film Universal Pictures produced at night on the same soundstage as the more famous English-language production.

[2] Canadian actor Jonathan Frid (1924-2012) played Barnabas Collins in the A.B.C. daytime soap opera Dark Shadows (1966-1971), which M-G-M Television made for A.B.C. He reprised the role, in a way, when he played Barnabas Collins in the horror film House of Dark Shadows (1970) which gave an abridged version of the Barnabas Collins storyline up to that point while the show was still in production. English actor Ben Cross played Barnabas Collins in the N.B.C. nighttime soap opera Dark Shadows (1991), a lavish production which M-G-M Television made for N.B.C. Dan Curtis (1927-2006) created the gothic soap opera and produced both the original series and the revival. He also produced and directed both the first and second spin-off theatrical films House of Dark Shadows (1970) and Night of Dark Shadows (1971), both of which were released by M-G-M. American movie star Johnny Depp starred as Barnabas Collins in Dark Shadows (2012), a theatrical feature film that Tim Burton directed for Warner Brothers. It was more of a black comedy than a horror film.

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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.