The mob financed and populated places like the Guest House at 2409 N.

“The strip’s proximity to O’Hare field and the network of tollways and expressways that serve the Chicago area are providing the crime syndicate with one of the biggest bonanzas in years,” Wiedrich wrote in June 1962. “Glitter Gulch,” as Wiedrich called it in the Trib, started turning on the lights in the late 1950s just as O’Hare Airport was being transformed into an international commercial airport served by a pair of new highways – the Kennedy Expressway and the Tri-state Tollway. The Sahara Inn North may have been one of the glitziest hotel/nightclub venues to be built on Mannheim Road near O’Hare Airport, but it certainly wasn’t the first. In this case, judging by the attention the Sahara Inn North received in the press in the weeks prior to and after its opening, they surely did not. Among those who did make an appearance that night were Rocco DeGrazio and Gus Alex, whom Wiedrich described as “gambling bosses for the mob crime syndicate.”Īnnoyed by the number of law enforcement officers, Skar – whom Wiedrich repeatedly referred to in newspaper articles as a “thrice-convicted felon” - complained to a detective, “What’s the matter with you guys? Don’t you believe in rehabilitation?” Wiedrich made it a point to note that “hoodlums” known to associate with Skar were in short supply on opening night. “Platoons of policemen,” including “detectives from the state police, state’s attorney’s office, police intelligence unit and the Federal Bureau of Investigation almost outnumbered the guests,” wrote Wiedrich, who chronicled organized crime of the era for the Tribune. Second on the bill was all-around entertainer George Kirby, a singer/piano player/comedian, a black man who had an uncanny ability to do impressions of white Hollywood stars like John Wayne and of jazz singers as diverse as Joe Williams, Louis Armstrong and Sarah Vaughan.Īlso, on opening night, the place was lousy with cops.

Inside the main nightclub, the Club Gigi, the headliner on opening night was popular singer Bobby Darin, who had just released a new single, “Things,” a country-tinged side that would shoot to No.

A mural on one wall of the bar was covered with caricature drawings of big and once-big stars - singers, comedians and entertainers – many of whom graced the nightclub stage.

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