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Jimmy Fazio's Supper Club
In the 1940s and ‘50s, stage shows were part of the entertainment at the Palace, Wisconsin and Riverside theaters. Each of the downtown movie palaces had more than 2,000 seats along with large stages to accommodate the Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman orchestras and other superstar performers of the era. But several local music promoters used their ballrooms for performers on the way up as well as those whose careers were tapering off.
James “Jimmy” Fazio’s entry into the nightclub business began in 1933 when he converted the family grocery store at Jackson and Pleasant Streets into a popular Italian restaurant. In less than 10 years he made Fazio’s a brand name that offered outstanding dinners, first-class service and live entertainment at a reasonable price. Fazio was a friendly, outgoing host who circulated through the restaurant, greeting familiar customers by name.
After World War II he opened a second club in the Towne hotel on Third Street. His first show was singer Patti Page, who got $150 a week. Fazio was thrilled when former heavyweight boxer Jack Dempsey dropped in one night and asked to be the emcee. Before he retired to Florida in the mid-1950s, Fazio counted Rosemary Clooney, Les Paul and Mary Ford, Perry Como, and Guy Lombardo among the acts who performed in his clubs.
Million Dollar Ballroom
In the middle of the Great Depression, George Devine used every cent he had to open the Million Dollar Ballroom at 24th Street and Wisconsin Avenue, and for five decades, generations of city residents enjoyed shows by popular jazz, swing, and rock bands of the time.
Devine quit school in 8th grade to work at the Hippodrome skating rink on Seventh and Wells. He got 5-cents for lacing a pair of skates on customers’ feet. Devine was promoted several times and learned the business of running an amusement hall from the ground up. When the Jazz Age dance bands attracted young people who wanted to drink bootleg liquor and party until dawn, the hall was renamed Dreamland.
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In 1924, Devine ran a large dance hall on the roof above the Saxes brothers’ Wisconsin theater. He also managed the Palma ballroom at the Modjeska and the Roseland dance hall on Seventh Street.
Devine’s Million Dollar Ballroom lost $19,000 in the first year. He sold his home and beloved Packard automobile to cover his debts. Business picked up and when World War II began, Devine’s was attracting up to 7,000 people a night who danced to the biggest bands in the country. Harry James, Woody Herman, and the Dorsey brothers were among the bands who entertained there. When television in the home affected social ballroom dancing, Devine booked rock and roll bands like the Everly brothers, Fabian, and Bobby Darin for teenagers. Buddy Holly headlined the Winter Dance Party in 1959 and died in a plane crash a few days later. In 1964, a concert by the Dave Clark Five played to 11,000 fans standing shoulder to shoulder in a room approved for 2,500 persons.
George Devine died in 1964 after bringing music to town for 50 years.
The Brass Rail
Isadore “Izzy” Pogrob was a 320-pound man who always had a smile and a kind word on his lips. Pogrob ran the Brass Rail, a jazz nightclub on Third Street near Wells. A music lover’s dream, the venue had 200 seats, all close to the small stage. Beginning in 1956, Pogrob booked nationally known jazz musicians for week-long engagements. Billie Holiday, Gene Krupa, Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong were just a few of the iconic performers who once graced Pogrob’s stage. Each night after closing the club, Pogrob went to the nearby Belmont hotel’s all-night café for breakfast.
On January 6, 1960, Pogrob ordered a meal and flashed a roll of $100 bills at the waitress. Afterward he squeezed himself into a late-model white Cadillac parked and drove away. The waitress was last person to see him alive. The next day his car turned up, the interior splattered with blood and brain matter. Pogrob’s body was found lying face-down in a drainage ditch alongside Hwy 167 in Mequon. The corpse had nine bullets in the head and upper back. The Belmont café waitress told a newspaper reporter that three men she’d never seen before watched Pogrob from across the room and left when he did.
An examination of the Brass Rail ledgers showed Pogrob had dozens of overdue invoices for liquor, cigarettes, food and salaries, yet his bank balance exceeded $50,000. Detectives assigned to the case were told that Pogrob had been skimming cash from the club. Others said at least a thousand cases of liquor disappeared during Pogrob’s tenure at the nightclub.
Adding to the mystery of Pogrob’s murder was a Brass Rail stripper’s body found outside Peoria, Illinois. Christina Calligaro, 22, was still wearing her stage costume, now drenched in blood from four bullet wounds.
After Pogrob’s murder, local tavern owner Frank Balistrieri became the off-the-record owner of the Brass Rail until the building was demolished in 1984. The Calligaro and Pogrob murders were never solved. The reasons behind Izzy Pogrob’s brutal killing have been lost to history. Still, the Brass Rail’s newspaper advertising showed him to be a brilliant promoter who gave jazz enthusiasts the chance to see Dinah Washington, Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton and Count Basie up close and personal.