Piltdown Painting Party

Chicago's near north side stretches over a square mile area just outside the city's Loop, but its spiritual roots stretch to Greenwich Village in New York and to the Left Bank of Paris. On the edge of the city considered the capital of Midwest conservatism, a restless, rebel community thrives: writers, artists, radio, TV, magazine and newspaper people, with a mind, a mood and a morality distinctively their own.

In the Twenties and Thirties, Chicago writers like Hemingway, Sandburg and Farrell set the literary world afire and Ben Hecht drank in Rush Street dives and lived the Hechtic newspaper life he immortalized in his Broadway play, Front Page.

The Dill Pickle Club, favorite hangout of earlier bohemian literati, is now an art and photographic studio, but a dozen similar bistros have sprung up in its place. The really off-beat meet in a dingy bar named, most appropriately, the College of Complexes, presided over by an old Dill Pickle bartender; James Jones and Willard Motley, authors of From Here to Eternity and Knock on Any Door, became drinking companions in the East Inn on Superior Street; Nelson Algren, The Man with the Golden Arm, spends his evenings playing poker at the bar in the Art Center run by Ellen Borden Stevenson (Adlai's ex-wife); Dave Garroway, Burr Tillstrom, Studs Terkel, and many of the others responsible for the much-copied casual "Chicago style" TV of a half dozen years ago, spent their leisure hours in the drinking places up and down Rush Street; editors, promotion men, advertising agency executives, show people, imbibe and converse in Larry's, the Dunes, Easy Street, Scotch Mist and The Gate of Horn, eat a midnight meal at Milano's, listen to jazz at Mister Kelly's and Cloister Inn.

Playboy is published on Chicago's Near North Side and so are such contrasting publications as Poetry magazine and the Chicago Tribune; stations WBBM, WGN and WGN-TV are there; so are most of the city's commercial art and advertising agencies; bums and bohemians indulge in soap box oratory in Bug House Square, Gold Coast society gathers at the plush Pump Room and conventioneers can still find strippers and prostitutes in the dives along Clark Street.

One Sunday afternoon not too long ago, a group of Near Northites were lying uneasily in the sun at Oak Street Beach, disturbed because nothing very exciting (by Near North standards) had occurred that week. Several suggestions were made to improve the situation: A handsome lawn in the area carried a sign warning that the grass had been chemically treated and was poisonous to dogs, but the idea of borrowing four or five dead animals from the local pound and laying them about the lawn was dismissed as a bit too grisly; the idea of putting colored filters over the lights that illuminate the Wrigley Building at night, giving the appearance that someone had painted the edifice green, was set aside because St. Patrick's day was nine months away; it was an out-of-work TV script and promotion girl named Joyce who came up with the suggestion that met with most general approval.

There is an underpass beneath Lake Shore Drive that permits bathers to reach the beach. It was, Joyce pointed out, a very drab, uninteresting passageway that could do with a bit of decoration. With all the art talent available on the Near North Side, why not throw a tunnel painting party and brighten those dull gray walls with colorful pictures and designs? The more the group talked about the idea, the better they liked it.

The tunnel is not unlike a cave and so it was decided that the party should be given a prehistoric cave painting theme. During the next week, signs announcing the Piltdown Painting Party appeared in local late-night places and word spread throughout the Near North Side that on the following Friday, at 3 A.M., all those interested in improving the appearance of their environs should be at the Division Street underpass with brush and paint (those expecting to be too drunk to manipulate a brush were advised to bring roller or spray-gun) and dressed as their favorite prehistoric personality.

Joyce was certain the Chicago Park District would approve of this scheme to beautify city property and so, midweek, she visited park headquarters and requested a letter of permission. When it was refused, she asked one of the secretaries seated in the outer office for some Park District stationery, took it home and wrote a letter of her own.

On Friday night a dozen prehistoric pranksters strode down Rush Street, gathering recruits from bistros along the way. A large banner across the underpass entrance announced: Welcome Stoned Age. A magazine publisher and a kindergarten teacher arrived wearing burlap bags, a muscular bank executive showed up in a leopard skin, a member of the Canadian consulate donned a rented gorilla costume.

The party was just getting under way when the first policeman showed up. He stared up at a Piltdown painter who'd brought a ladder in order to paint the ceiling.

"What are you doing up there?" he demanded.

"Painting," said the painter, continuing at it.

"Come down from there." The policeman was brusk in his certainty that no one had any business painting a city underpass at 3 in the morning, especially not wearing an old sheet and a mink mustache.

"We've permission," said the painter.

Right then, someone produced Joyce's letter. It was enthusiastic in its approval of the plan to paint the tunnel and though it was signed by a wholly fictitious "official," the Park District stationery gave it a look of authenticity. The policeman retreated to his patrol car, returning with a fellow officer, who also carefully considered the letter. The two policemen surveyed the situation for a time from outside the tunnel, then went in search of their superiors.

They brought back a couple of sergeants. By then more than 200 paleolithic partisans were crowding the underpass: a gentleman in white tie and tails was busy painting the likeness of a girlfriend on the wall with a full palette of oils; a well known TV songstress, wearing a potato sack, was putting the finishing touches on a giant game of tick-tack-toe; and a few had tired of painting the passageway and started painting one another.

The sergeants looked at the letter wishing the painters well and commending them on their civic spirit, then they looked at the walls, then at one another, then back at the letter; finally, shaking their heads, they also departed.

As dawn came over the city, the cave doodlers left their cans of paint for an early morning dip in Lake Michigan.

By Saturday afternoon, the police were fairly well convinced that this Piltdown affair had also been a hoax and they began looking over the bathers on Oak Street Beach for any telltale signs of paint. In this way they rounded up six of the cavern culprits, and one of them fingered Joyce as the chief dinosaur of the whole deal. The very unamused cops hustled the half dozen off to the pokey and they would have spent the night there, if they hadn't come up with bail.

All four of Chicago's papers gave the story front page attention and Monitor broadcast a portion of the trial. The judge looked over photographs of the tunnel and agreed that the painting had very little artistic merit. A lawyer for one curvy miss caught in the dragnet insisted that his client didn't realize the letter of permission was a fake and that she had assumed all the while that the painting really had been authorized by the Park District. The judge refused to believe that any normally intelligent adult could think a city official would authorize such a wanton defacing of public property.

"But, your honor," the lawyer protested, "the police thought so."

"Yes," said the judge, "and I'm not pinning any medals on them, either."

In the end, the city agreed not to press charges if the defendants raised enough money to pay for a repainting of the tunnel. The city wanted it a dull gray.

Friend of the urban man in time of trial as well as pleasure, Playboy sponsored a Piltdown Painting Party Benefit at the Walton Walk, paid the fine and turned the additional proceeds over to the Chicago park fund. The entire affair ended on an especially pleasant note, as Joyce received a job with a public relations firm impressed with the amount of publicity she had gotten out of the party. After that the. Near North Side settled back to normal, but the caretaker at the dog pound is keeping an eye on his animals and they aren't letting anyone suspicious get too near the Wrigley Building at night.

Kindergarten teacher, TV singer, V.P. of a time-lock company, copywriter, the wife of a news commentator and the publisher of a magazine stroll down Rush Street on their way to 3 A.M. painting party dressed smartly in potato sacks.

At left, the first policeman arrives and wants to know what an advertising executive wearing a torn sheet and a mink mustache is doing up on a ladder painting the ceiling of a city park underpass. The ad exec went right on painting and after the cop read the phoney letter of permission, he wandered off, while the cave people painted prehistoric hieroglyphics on the tunnel walls.

At right, a dancer brightens the ceiling

extreme right, chief dinosaur Joyce admonishes ad exec for his sloppy mastodon mural.

Several dozen Near North Side writers, artists, advertising execs, newspaper men and their assorted friends crowd Chicago's Division Street underpass to paint murals, abstracts, self portraits and other nonsense on walls.

Above, on the street, two policemen reconsider the phony letter authorizing the painting and wonder why an official would permit such a motley mob to decorate city property. Meanwhile, the revelers continued painting and, at right, tiring of the tunnel, begin on each other.

Above, on the street, two policemen reconsider the phony letter authorizing the painting and wonder why an official would permit such a motley mob to decorate city property. Meanwhile, the revelers continued painting and, at right, tiring of the tunnel, begin on each other.

A member of the Canadian consulate stalks through the tunnel wearing a gorilla costume, a pretty Near Norther beautifies a bare bit of cement, a bank exec and girlfriend attack the problem from two levels.

A member of the Canadian consulate stalks through the tunnel wearing a gorilla costume, a pretty Near Norther beautifies a bare bit of cement, a bank exec and girlfriend attack the problem from two levels.

A member of the Canadian consulate stalks through the tunnel wearing a gorilla costume, a pretty Near Norther beautifies a bare bit of cement, a bank exec and girlfriend attack the problem from two levels.

The cave dwellers eventually come out of the tunnel and begin applying their paleolithic painting to the cement walk of the beach itself. A few enjoy a pre-dawn swim in Lake Michigan with the Chicago skyline for a backdrop; others went to Ricketts Restaurant for a hearty breakfast and then finally returned to their Near North lairs in the not-too-early morning.

The cave dwellers eventually come out of the tunnel and begin applying their paleolithic painting to the cement walk of the beach itself. A few enjoy a pre-dawn swim in Lake Michigan with the Chicago skyline for a backdrop; others went to Ricketts Restaurant for a hearty breakfast and then finally returned to their Near North lairs in the not-too-early morning.

Below left, two sergeants look over the letter and, like the officers before them, conclude the painting was properly authorized

below right, a painter in white tie and tails and his burlap clad girlfriend are the last to leave tunnel.

below right, a painter in white tie and tails and his burlap clad girlfriend are the last to leave tunnel.

The painting party ends on a romantic note at the edge of Lake Michigan.

The court proceedings below, were less fun. The judge looked over photographs of the tunnel decoration, concluded that it definitely was not art, and fined those caught with cost of repainting it gray.