Chicago Landmark: Gladys' Luncheonette

If you drive thru the Bronzeville neighborhood, you'll run by this abandoned restaurant on 4527 S. Indiana. I wonder when this place closed but the owner, Gladys Holcomb passed away in 2003.  She served her soul food on the south side of Chicago for 52 years.

The Illinois General Assembly passed a resolution recognizing Gladys' Luncheonette:

WHEREAS, Gladys' Luncheonette became one of the most popular "soul food" restaurants in the Midwest, known for its delicious fried chicken, smothered chicken, smothered pork chops, peach cobbler, "melt-in-your-mouth" biscuits, and other down home, southern delicacies; many famous people were known to dine at the Luncheonette including Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Lou Rawls, Redd Foxx, Governor Jim Thompson, Della Reese, Reverend Jesse Jackson, Gladys Knight, and a host of others...

Mrs.  Holcomb was born in Brownville, Tennessee in October of 1906; she moved to Chicago in  1935  where  she  married Kinnard Holcomb in 1945. Mr.  and Mrs. Holcomb first established Gladys'  Luncheonette on State Street and after ten years, the restaurant moved to a basement location at 4541 S.  Indiana. The couple soon outgrew  that  space  and  moved up the street to the present location of the restaurant at 4527 S. Indiana in November of  1963.

Willpower didn`t stand a chance at Gladys`. When your waitress arrived at your table with biscuits and corn muffins, warm, sliced and buttered, you knew you in for a treat. Eating at Gladys" was serious business.  The line--there`s always one--moves quickly. Sorry, no cuts, either. Whether you`re in jeans or silver lame gown and arrive in a cab or a limo, you wait. Everyone waitscause they knew it would be worth it.

Mrs. Holcomb owned Gladys' Luncheonette until 1997 when she was no longer able to operate it on a day-to-day basis and sold it to her daughter and a group of investors. Gladys' Luncheonette has been closed for years and decayed to the point where rehabbing it would have cost as much, if not more, as buying the lot outright.

I'm happy that I got a chance to visit Gladys' many times throughout my time as a Chicago resident. The thing I'll remember most is the "melt in your mouth" biscuits, which sometimes were a meal in themselves. They'll remain in my memory forever.

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The Funniest Woman in the World: Jackie "Moms" Mably

March is Women's History Month so why not revisit the life of the Jackie "Moms" Mably, billed "The Funniest Woman in the World".

Moms was born Loretta Mary Aiken in Brevard, North Carolina on March 19, 1894. (Happy Belated Birthday, Moms.) She claimed to be one of a family of twenty children, but she was actually the youngest of five children. Her biracial father owned and operated several businesses. He died when Moms was eleven. Her mother, Bettie, was able to read and write in the 1870 census, five years after the abolition of slavery. This suggests that she was a free woman of color.

By the age of fifteen, Moms had been raped twice and had two children who were given up for adoption. She ran away to Cleveland, Ohio and joined a traveling minstrel show when her stepfather tried to pressure her into marrying an older man. She took her stage name, Jackie Mably,  from an early boyfriend and became known as "Moms" while fostering young talent on the "Chitlin Circuit".

These were the performance venues that were safe and acceptable for African American entertainers, musicians and comedians during the age of segregation in the U. S. from the early 19th Century through the 1960s. The name derives from the soul food item "chitterlings" (stewed pig intestines). "The Circuit" hosted many notable performers in addition to "Moms"Mably, including The Supremes, The Temptations, Billie Holiday, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Smokey Robinson .

Moms recorded 20 albums between 1961 and her death and her appearances on talk shows made her one of the most popular comedians of the 1960s. She came out as a lesbian at the age of twenty-seven.  Moms tackled topics too edgy for many other comics of the time, including racism, becoming one of the first triple-X rated comedians on the comedy circuit.  One of her regular themes was a romantic interest in handsome young men rather than old "washed-up geezers". She got away with it using her stage persona, appearing toothless and bedraggled in a house dress with her signature floppy hat. She added an occasional satirical song to her jokes and at 75 years and 4 months, Moms Mably became the oldest person ever to have a U. S. top 40 hit with "Abraham, Martin and John" which hit #35 on July 19, 1969.

Moms had four children, aside from the two who were given up for adoption when she was a teen, and five grandchildren. She died in White Plains N.Y. on May 23, 1975 of heart failure after six weeks in the hospital. Her funeral services were held at Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church and she was interred at Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, N.Y.

Although largely forgotten today, Jackie "Moms" Mably is still one of the funniest women to work a stage.

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Juan Williams' Plagiarism Case

Juan Williams, journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel, also writes for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.

Alex Seitz-Wald of Salon recently outed Williams about his February 18 th column for The Hill, titled "Dispenspensing with a new 'dagger' against immigration reform. The reporter found passages that were lifted from a publication of The Center for American Progress. After the discovery of the plagiarism, The Hill affixed a note to the bottom of the column stating "was revised on March 2, 2013, to include previously-omitted attribution to the Center for American Progress.”

After a further review  of Williams' archives, Hugh Gurdon, editor-in-chief of The Hill, stated "There is nothing to suggest that this was anything other than an isolated incident".

Williams blamed his research staff for the plagiarism, which is not unusual. He told Salon:

I was writing a column about the immigration debate and had my researcher look around to see what data existed to pump up this argument and he sent back what I thought were his words and summaries of the data. I had never seen the CAP report myself, so I didn’t know that the young man had in fact not summarized the data but had taken some of the language from the CAP report.
 

If this is true, why was the researcher not included in the credits?

 

 

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Hottest "As Seen On TV" Products

Flex Seal, Bark-Off, Ped-Egg, Insta Bulb-we've seen the television commercials and we know the products. The question is which of the "As Seen On TV Products" are selling and do they work. WSJ's Market Watch reviewed six of the best selling TV products and presented reviewers feedback on product price and customer satisfaction.

Take a look at some of the most popular products and their market achievements.

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