Famous Milwaukeeans (or People with Cream City Roots)

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Milwaukee History

The number of notable people from Milwaukee, or those with a significant connection to the city, may be close to 1,000. Some are familiar, like Brian “Kato” Kaelin, whose path to fame began with his involvement in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1994. Billionaire media queen Oprah Winfrey won a scholarship to attend Nicolet High School, where she felt out of place as the only Black student. Former Wisconsin senator Herb Kohl and the commissioner emeritus of Major League Baseball Allan “Bud” Selig who were best friends at Washington High School. 

But there are surprises along the way, and here are just a few.

Harrison Ford, once the number one box office star in the world, attended college in Ripon in 1960. During the summer break he applied his carpentry skills repairing houses on Sherman Boulevard on Milwaukee’s West Side. He also got married in Mequon. Ford flunked out of Ripon and along with his new bride, headed to Los Angeles to see if he could make it in the movies.

Other actors from the city include Marc Alaimo (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine); Peter Bonerz (The Bob Newhart Show); Willem Dafoe (from Appleton, and studied in Milwaukee); Chris Farley (from Madison, and graduated from Marquette); Heather Graham (Boogie Nights); Gilda Gray (sexy silent film star who created the “Shimmy” dance); Jeffrey Hunter (The Searchers); Kristen Johnston (3rd Rock from the Sun); Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle); Tom Laughlin (Billy Jack); John McGivern (too many to mention!); Pat O’Brien (Angels with Dirty Faces); Wauwatosa’s Nancy Olson (Sunset Boulevard); Spencer Tracy (Bad Day at Black Rock);Judy Tyler (Jailhouse Rock); Charlotte Zucker (The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear) and Mark Rylance (Don’t Look Up)

And then there’s Hattie McDaniel, who called Milwaukee “her springboard to Hollywood”. McDaniel was working as a ladies’ room attendant at Club Madrid, a roadhouse on Bluemound Road owned by gangster Sam Pick. One night when a performer was unable to go onstage, the management needed an act. McDaniel stepped in brought down the house singing “St. Louis Blues.” She performed at Club Madrid for two years, and then encouraged by myriad actors, politicians, sports stars, and other visitors to the club, hopped on a bus to Los Angeles. McDaniel became the first person of color to win an Oscar, and it was for her role in Gone with the Wind.

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Musicians with history include Paul Cebar; Howie Epstein (Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers); Danny Gokey (“American Idol)”; Jerry Harrison (Talking Heads); bandleader Woody Herman; Al Jarreau; Liberace; legendary guitarist Les Paul; Steve Miller (The Joker); the Violent Femmes; and Jane Wiedlin (the Go-Gos), 

Writers of distinction with Milwaukee roots include Robert Bloch, who lived at 620 East Knapp Street from 1929 to 1953. During his career, Bloch wrote nearly 400 pulp magazine stories and 20 novels, but he is best remembered for the shocker that breathed new life into horror films forever. Bloch wrote Psychowhile living near Plainfield, Wisconsin. His book was based on the infamous Ed Gein murders and was made into one of Alfred Hitchcock’s best-known films. Another local horrormeister, Peter Straub, was born here in 1943. He attended Country Day School and went on to teach English at UWM. His novel, Ghost Story, was made into a popular film in 1981.

Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Edna Ferber was a reporter at The Milwaukee Journal before World War I. Her 1926 novel, Show Boat, became one of Broadway’s biggest hits. The imaginative Jack Finney was born here in 1911 but left to attend college in Galesburg, Illinois. Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Time and Again remain reader favorites. Mequon native John Ridley adapted 12 Years a Slave into a 2014 film that won three Academy Awards, including one for himself. Carl Sandburg, poet, biographer, and novelist was a college dropout in 1907 when he began reporting for The Milwaukee Journal. He also invested himself in the city’s Socialist movement and was tapped to work for Mayor Emil Seidel.

The incomparable titans of brewing Jacob Best, Valentin Blatz, Adam Gettelman, Frederick Miller, Captain Frederick Pabst, Joseph Schlitz used their breweries to dominate the country’s beer sales for decades.

And controversial figures made their way through town, like Lawrencia Bembenek. Her life was turned upside down in 1981 when she was found guilty of murdering Christine Schultz, the estranged wife of her lover, Fred Schultz. Bembenek was adamant about her innocence up to 2010 when she died at age 52;  Chicago mobster Al Capone was seen in town multiple times during the Roaring Twenties, often at Sam Pick’s Club Madrid; Vice lord Vincent Crupi ran brothels east of the river until he was deported to Sicily in 1933: the less said about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer the better; Bernadine Dohrn, co-founder of the revolutionary group Weather Underground, was a graduate of Whitefish Bay High School. She was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List in the 1970s for bombing civic buildings and banks; Upon being ordained in 1959, Father James Groppi directed much of his energy to elevating African American civil rights and ending segregation in the public

schools. When Groppi’s community outreach began to involve pickets, public marches, and protests, he incurred the wrath of the diocese leaders. He resigned from the priesthood in 1976; Future Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was born here in 1898. She helped run her family store and attended the Fourth Street school that now bears her name; Kittie Williams was Milwaukee’s most famous madam who ran one of the most expensive brothels in town. Today, Red Arrow Park occupies the site of her illicit operation; Malcolm Little, who would become a 1960s advocate for black civil rights, lived on West Galena Street in Bronzeville from 1926 to 1929. Years later, the area that contained their home was cleared for freeway construction.