Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
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F ront Runners Bette Davis was a big fan of the Pump Room and its bandleader, Stanley Paul. His new sideburns? Not so much. The Place to Be SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, THE AMBASSADOR EAST HOTEL BECAME THE TALK OF CHICAGO WITH THE OPENING OF THE LEGENDARY PUMP ROOM. BY TEGAN REYES W hen the Pump Room opened on October 1, 1938, it immediately became the celebrity haunt in the Gold Coast, and over the ensuing decades hosted everyone from Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner to Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, and Bette Davis. One person who had a front-row view of the action? Stanley Paul, the nightspot's bandleader from 1964 to '74. "You'd read in Irv Kupcinet's column that so-and-so would be in Chicago," says Paul, "and I knew they would be in the Pump Room." And when Bette Davis was there, he knew she wouldn't settle in the famed Booth One; instead, the legendary actress would join the bandleader at his piano while smoking cigarettes, requesting songs by Cole Porter, and offering career advice. On May 12, 1973 (the night before Davis received the Sarah Siddons Award), she went to see Paul at the Pump Room—and promptly screamed upon seeing her friend's new facial hair. "Where did you get those awful sideburns, Stanley Paul? You look ridiculous," he recalls Davis saying. Always taking the Academy Award– winning actress's advice (he even took vocal lessons at Davis's insistence, only for her to then tell him he had a terrible voice), Paul ditched the sideburns, but his friendship with Davis remained strong. And while he would eventually leave his post at the Pump Room to form the Stanley Paul Orchestra, the bandleader looks back fondly at the Chicago nightlife institution where he made his name, reflecting nostalgically, "I would meet the world through the Pump Room." MA 12 MICHIGANAVEMAG.COM 012_MA_FOB_FR_October13.indd 12 9/17/13 11:58 AM