Winter Dance Party 1959: Revisiting three days before "The Day the Music Died"...

Today is the anniversary of the Winter Dance Party Tour in Duluth on January 31, 1959,  three days before "The Day the Music Died." I've written my account of attending that historical event (along with famed Bob Zimmerman, now known as Bob Dylan) many times, most recently here on this blog. Buddy Holly and tour musicians died in a plane crash shortly after they performed in Duluth, sadly and abruptly ending the tour.

Click HERE to connect to my most recent blog post about this concert.  Kevin Pates, retired DNT sportswriter and preserver of pop history, ran a wonderful and comprehensive story in the DNT for a past anniversary of that concert. You may find related photos and his story HERE in the Attic of the Duluth News Tribune.

The Duluth National Guard Armory where this event took place is under renovation with hopes to resurrect to it's former days of glory. The Winter Dance Party Tour in Duluth on January 31, 1959 was promoted by and emceed by my old friend, Lew Latto. Latto, now deceased, was a youthful entrepreneur and radio personality while in college.

Where East Was East and West Was West, in Duluth...

What follows is one of several columns I wrote for the on-line magazine Zenith City Online, started and edited by Duluth publisher Tony Dierckins. ZCO is still active as an area history blog but no longer uses regular posts in a magazine format so Tony graciously allowed me to repost here on my blog. I was its "western neighborhoods correspondent" (also labeled "Denfeld Boy") on ZCO and wrote monthly about growing up in Duluth. Thus, virtually all of my monthly columns for Zenith City had some connection to Duluth's West End and West Duluth, back before they were called Lincoln Park and Spirit Valley. I've decided to put a few of them on my blog from time to time.             Jim Heffernan 

Where East Was East and West was West
By Jim Heffernan

For decades atop the Point of Rocks, the commanding rock outcropping just west of downtown Duluth at the foot of Mesaba Avenue, a huge sign advertising Master Bread dominated the skyline.

It was more than an ordinary billboard. It appeared to have been fashioned to fit the surroundings, long and narrow at the peak of the outcropping, and it was animated, showing a loaf of bread with slices pouring out of one end. Done with sequentially lighted neon tubes, it was attention grabbing and impressive for its day. 
Its day, hard to pinpoint exactly, did encompass the years from my childhood in the 1940s until sometime in the 1970s. [editor’s note: Photo borrowed from Andrew Kreuger’s wonderful News-Tribune Attic.]

And it had greater significance than the bread wars between Master and Taystee, both baked in Duluth’s West End neighborhood (now referred to as Lincoln Park). The Master Bread sign came to symbolize the western end of “East End” (including downtown) and the beginning of “West End” including West Duluth. Only on the map did Lake Avenue divide Duluth’s east from its west. In Duluthians’ minds, the Point of Rocks, with its Master Bread sign, did. 

The prevailing perception in Duluth was that the rich people lived in the East End, the working classes lived in the western precincts, and never the twain shall meet, except when their high school sports teams vied to prove, once and for all, which section of the city was best.

It was a fallacy, of course, to believe everyone in East End was rich. Far from it. But all of the mansions in town were there; the mining and lumber tycoons lived there, cheek by jowl with bankers and most doctors and the powers that were in Duluth. Never mind that the Central Hillside, a bit east of the Master Bread sign, was for decades considered Duluth’s poorest neighborhood. 

Image from ZCO, originally in UMD Library Archives

In the 1970s, a colorful priest, Father F. X. Shea, was engaged as president of the College of St. Scholastica. In one of his many pronouncements about civic life, Shea called for the Master Bread sign to be torn down. He wasn’t expressing a preference for bread or disgust with advertising’s often intrusion on natural beauty; as a recent arrival here he had come to realize that the sign was a line of demarcation between east and west in Duluth that stifled the city’s social, business and cultural life. (The Master Bread billboard can be seen at the top of photo on right.)

I grew up on the “poor” side of the Master Bread sign that so brightly lit the Point of Rocks after the sun went down. Not that we were actually poor, nor were most of the others in the western neighborhoods. Far western Duluth had a steel plant, after all, together with other substantial industries, and the thousands of jobs they provided allowed workers—including immigrants and many who hadn’t completed high school—entry into what most people regarded as the middle class. Being middle class roughly meant owning a home, having a car and providing for your family.

My role here at Zenith City will be to write about the western Duluth neighborhoods as I recall them in the decades after World War II. My precise neighborhood was the West End, right in the heart of it, about half way between the Point of Rocks and the ore docks at 35^th Avenue West. Informally, the ore docks have always represented the dividing line between West End and West Duluth.

There was competition between those two neighborhoods too, but socio-economically they were similar. Each had a thriving business district, providing residents with everything they might need from groceries to hardware to banking to household and personal needs, not to mention a stiff drink. J.C. Penney operated department stores in each neighborhood, as did Bridgeman’s ice cream parlors. The West End had more furniture stores; West Duluth more movie theaters (two) while each had two funeral homes for most of the years my memory encompasses.

Each neighborhood had numerous churches representing most of the mainline Christian faiths, but no synagogues. West Duluth had a small hospital, long-since dissolved, but people from the western precincts who needed hospital care depended, as did the entire city, on St. Mary’s (Catholic) and St. Luke’s (Protestant), both on the eastern edges of downtown.

Commandingly, West Duluth had Denfeld High School, for generations bringing together students from both neighborhoods whose earlier education had been provided at Lincoln Junior High (West End) and West Junior High. Until 1950, the West End educated its younger pupils at elementary schools scattered throughout the neighborhood—Adams, Monroe, Bryant, Ensign and Lincoln. West Duluth had Longfellow and Irving and others farther west, but short of Morgan Park and Gary New-Duluth, with their own schools, including a high school.

In future columns I’ll try to extract from these neighborhoods glimpses of their colorful past life —a life I knew as a youngster and much younger adult, when Master Bread meant more than the staff of life in this small corner of our world at the head of the largest freshwater lake in that world.

Previously published on Zenith City Online on January 15, 2016 and 2012.

Looking back on You'll Like My Mother movie filmed in Duluth...

Christa Lawler quoted me in a story she wrote in today's Duluth News Tribune recalling Duluth's movie premiere of You'll Like My Mother, a thriller filmed at Duluth's historic Glensheen mansion on November 4, 1972, nearly forty years ago. (Read her story HERE) You'll Like My Mother, starring Patty Duke, Richard Thomas and Rosemary Murphy, will be screened for the public for the first time on the grounds of the mansion at 7 pm this Wednesday, August 15.

As a reporter for the Duluth News Tribune, I covered the Duluth premiere in 1972 and the quote was from my write-up. Of course there's always more. After the premiere at the NorShor, the Junior League held a reception -- party -- at the Hotel Duluth Ballroom (Greysolon Ballroom now). They tried to get Patty Duke to come to the premiere and party but she couldn't make it. Rosemary Murphy was the only "star" here for the premiere, and she didn't seem too happy about it at the post-screening party. What struck me as funny was that she carried her little dog with her throughout. I met her and she seemed kind of aloof. Meeting hix from the stix wasn't her forte. They recruited a charming Duluthian who had been fairly recently widowed to be her escort -- the late Max Oie. He escorted Murphy and her embraced dog around introducing her to attendees. I noticed Murphy died fairly recently.

Cast and crew frequently ate dinner at the restaurant (either the Black Steer or Zelda–can't remember which it was at the time) now occupied by the India Palace on Superior Street between Third and Fourth Avenues West. At the time it was a full-service restaurant. A few night-side News Tribune staffers -- including me -- used to eat there just about every night. One time exiting the men's room, I just about ran over Patty Duke as she headed for the women's room. Very short, petite woman. Nice tolerant smile at this big galoot almost knocking her over.

One other factoid: Former Mayor Gary Doty got a job as a driver for the movie company. And a fact that can't be corroborated is that Patty and her family rented the home next to the Catholic Diocese of Duluth residence in Eastern Duluth while filming here. My wife recalls this and so do I... but we're not sure on our memory or facts. So if you know, write and let us know.

There are some wonderful pictures and more lore in the Duluth News Tribune Attic–March 2012–about the event. Check it out HERE. 

Rio Pardo remembered...

Here's another link to the Duluth News Tribune Attic (March 6). Rio Pardo, a well known Duluth entertainer of the 70's, was the focus of my very first newspaper column (1972). Learn more about Rio Pardo HERE in the Duluth News Tribune Attic's Area Voices and check out my comment below to learn about the evolution of my newspaper columns. It's always fun to look back!

Jim Heffernan says:

March 7, 2011 at 8:34 am

Well now, what a pleasant surprise to find my very first News Tribune column reproduced in the Attic. I had interviewed Rio between sets during his show at Hotel Duluth’s Black Bear Lounge (now Greysolon Plaza’s Blackwater). He was quite a gentleman, very soft spoken, hugely talented. Regarding the run-on first name — Jamesearl: I don’t recall that part of the interview, but I doubt I would have written that and made a point of explaining it if he hadn’t told me. When I started writing my personal column for the paper, I thought it was going to be weekly interviews with interesting people like Rio Pardo — first-person feature stories. I soon ran out of people and time to do interviews so I began making them up.

Remembering UMD's Old Main....

Today's Duluth News Tribune Attic (Area Voices blog) features a great history piece about the Old Main Building on UMD's former lower campus. Check it out HERE to see all the old pictures and stories about the weathered old building (1980) and of the Feb 23, 1993 fire that demolished it. Of course all that's left now are those famous arches used to enter the vintage college building. In honor of 18th year anniversary of the famous Old Main fire, I took this opportunity to reminisce on the DNT site about my experiences as a college student attending classes at Old Main (also see below). I know that many of the readers of this blog have connections to Duluth and UMD and I welcome your comments and memories here on the blog as well. What do you remember?

Remembering Old Main...
(Comments made by Jim Heffernan on the Duluth News Tribune's Attic on February 14, 2011)

When I started UMD in the fall of 1957, all of my classes were in Old Main. The “upper” campus was being developed, but it was pretty sparse. The “new” library (which has now been replaced) opened about a year before, and Kirby Student Center was quite new, maybe two years old. Otherwise, just a Science Building and the Phy-Ed Building (now Romano gym) were all that I recall up there at the time. Old Main had a decent-sized auditorium with a full stage where most of the college’s theatrical productions were staged. A memorable production of the musical “Guys and Dolls” in 1958 or ’59 starred students Jerry Music and Myrna Johnson, who later became his wife. Jerry went to Hollywood, changed his first name to Lorenzo, and had a good career before dying a few years ago. He was the voice of Carleton the Doorman on the “Rhoda” sitcom and also the voice of Garfield the Cat in that animated series.

Jack Benny in Duluth at first anniversary of Arena-Auditorium...

by Jim Heffernan
"When Jack Benny descended on Duluth in 1967 he didn’t seem that-all happy..."

Jim Heffernan (R) greets Jack Benny (9-13-67)
Photo by Charles Curtis–from Heff's attic

Don’t waste your time reading this unless you’re of a certain age, and it ain’t young. I don’t even want to guess at what age you might recognize all of the names. Well, my age, certainly

Don’t believe me? OK, Skitch Henderson. See what I mean?

But this is mainly about Jack Benny, who needs no explanation if you are old enough, although I once read a piece by Dick Cavett in which he wrote that he dropped Benny’s name to one of the Beatles – could have been John Lennon, no spring chicken himself were he still alive, but a Brit – and the Beatle asked “Who’s Jack Benny?”

Benny was brought to Duluth in 1967 to entertain at a civic celebration of the first anniversary of the opening of the Arena-Auditorium, which, at the time, consisted of the arena and the auditorium – nothing else. No Pioneer Hall, no Northwest Passage, no DECC moniker, no convention center and certainly no Amsoil Arena, having its grand opening as 2010 draws to a close. (Click HERE to view today's Duluth News Tribune story about the opening of the new Amsoil Arena.)

The revered comedian is pictured this week (Dec. 29) on the Duluth News Tribune’s entertaining web site blog, called the News Tribune Attic (click HERE), in which they cull old photos from the newspaper’s no-longer-used files (everything is electronically archived now). In a series on the early days of the Arena-Auditorium, the blog posting includes a photo of Benny cutting a large birthday cake commemorating the anniversary. Flanking him are Skitch Henderson (just Google him) and the late Monnie Goldfine of Duluth.


In the picture, Benny looks, at the very least, somber, even angry. Maybe he was not happy to be in Duluth, or not pleased to be cutting a cake, or not feeling that-all well. Who knows?

I wouldn’t bother to mention it, except that it brought back some memories for me. A News Tribune reporter at the time, I was assigned to cover the arrival of the great comedian at the Duluth airport – the old terminal, before they built the new terminal that they are now replacing.

So up to the airport a photographer and I went, with me giving the photographer strict instructions to be sure to get a shot of me interviewing Benny as a keepsake (not for publication). That’s one of the fringe benefits of newspaper reporting. And the photographer did. I have the photo – an 8-by-10 glossy of me in my tan raincoat standing beside Jack Benny, in a suit and tie, chatting, not posing.

In the picture, Benny looks, at the very least, somber, even angry. Maybe he was not happy to be in Duluth, or not feeling that-all well, or in no mood to be interviewed by the likes of me. Can’t say I blame him.

I don’t remember what he said, but I doubt it was funny. The next night I did attend his show in the Arena, and he was back in his old form. Never a laughing hyena, his style was subdued, with slow delivery and lengthy pauses as he folded his arms and looked to the right or left, himself the butt of his own jokes.

Checking Google, I see he was born in 1894 (I told you that you had to be old to care about this), so he was about 73 when he was in Duluth. He died in 1974 at age 80. Of course, to quote Benny himself, “Age is strictly a case of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”