I walked up Wabash Avenue to the Sun Times/Daily News Building, which looked like a snub-nosed ship on the bank of the Chicago River. – Roger Ebert, “Life Itself” Perhaps you’ll find yourself with time today, after the indigestion has passed and before the game in the swamp begins, to begin a new book. If that’s the case, I’ll recommend “Life Itself,” by Roger Ebert.
I went out and bought it after reading an excerpt in “The Last Word,” which appears at the end of every issue of “The Week.” Ebert, as most of you likely know, is the long-time film critic at the Chicago Sun-Times, who became popular in the late seventies when he aired with Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune in their film review TV program, “Sneak Previews,” and are remembered for their “thumbs up/thumbs down” summaries.But what many may not realize is that Ebert was the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize.
He went to work for the Sun-Times in 1966. In the book, he tells that on his job interview, he was taken out to lunch at Riccardo’s, the landmark that opened on Rush Street in 1934, in a former speakeasy. Sean Parnell said about Riccardo’s – “When Murray Burnett wrote ‘Everybody Goes to Ricks,’ later filmed as ‘Casablanca,’ he could have meant Riccardo’s in Chicago.” Sometime during the lunch with editors Jim Hogue and Ken Towers, Ebert was offered a job. Thus began a daily “general emigration,” to Riccardo’s with other newsmen of the day. I discovered there was nothing like drinking with the crowd to make you a member.When New Year’s Day of 1967 rolled around, Ebert said he looked up at 6 p.m. and saw only two lights on in the building: his and Mike Royko’s.
Royko, the now legendary Chicago columnist, was 35 then and already the city’s “most famous newspaperman.” Ebert said that a huge snowstorm was about to hit town, and Royko came over and asked him how he was getting home. When he replied on the train, Royko told him, “Come on kid, I’ll give you a ride to the station.” He chain-smoked Pall Malls and spoke in a gravelly poker-player’s voice. He drank too much, which to me was an accomplishment.
The pair of newspapermen found their way to a bar under the tracks and, on Royko’s lead, made their way inside, where the veteran ordered “two blackberry brandies and short beers.” Ebert says he had only been in Chicago four months, and he was sitting in a bar under the L tracks drinking with Mike Royko. “I was a newspaperman,” he says.
When the Daily News shut down in 1978, Royko went over to the Sun-Times. In 1984, Rupert Murdoch, for whom Royko said he would never work, bought the paper. Royko commented that, “No self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.”
Later that day, Ebert writes, he found his friend sitting in Billy Goats, having a drink.
Royko looked up and said, “Well, I guess I resigned.”
“Murdoch doesn’t care what you say about him,” Ebert replied.
“It’s not what I said about him,” Royko told him. “”It’s after describing a Murdoch paper that way, how can I work there?” Royko moved over to the Chicago Tribune. During his 30-year career he would write over 7,500 columns. He died from a brain aneurysm in 1997.
As for Ebert, he suffered post-surgical complications related to thyroid cancer, leaving him unable to speak. He still writes movie reviews and essays for the Sun-Times, and based upon his memories recanted in “Life Itself,” still knows how to turn a phrase with the best of them.
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You’ve read about my friend Fred often here through the seasons, so I need to share some of his latest adventure. My phone rang early Tuesday as I sat in my driveway, in my old black Caddy, trying to wish it to start. I was glad to see it was Fred calling.
“Heyyyyyyy bud,” I said.
“I’ve got to be serious for a minute,” he said quickly. “I’m at Washington Regional, and they are telling me they need to do emergency bypass surgery on me – that it’s a matter of life and death.”
To be continued.