ON JULY 1, 1979, JOHN BELUSHI FLEW TO CHICAGO. As a hometown hero and the unrivaled star of a movie in the works based on his and Dan Aykroyd’s Blues Brothers characters from Saturday Night Live, Belushi faced a crucial task: to convince the new mayor to let a film crew tear up her city.
Jane Byrne had taken office that spring as Chicago’s first female mayor. Before Byrne’s ascent, Belushi and Aykroyd would have stood little chance of filming their Chicago car-chase musical in Chicago. Precious few films had shot in the city, a prohibition that dated to the early years of Mayor Richard J. Daley. He had assumed office in 1955 and indulged film and television crews until 1959, when an episode of a now-forgotten series called M Squad portrayed a Chicago cop taking bribes. The city hosted almost no movies for the next two decades, while its urban peers reaped millions in tax dollars and priceless celebrity as cinematic settings: New York with Saturday Night Fever and Manhattan, San Francisco with Dirty Harry, Philadelphia with Rocky, Los Angeles with Chinatown.
“There wasn’t an official policy or anything,” the Chicago Tribune recounted later. “Movies did shoot here. Brian De Palma shot The Fury here [in 1977]. A lot of commercials were shot here. There was even a cottage porn industry in River North. But the cooperation needed for a large-scale Hollywood production — the kind Belushi, Aykroyd and director John Landis had in mind, only bigger — was out of the question.”
Now Daley was gone, and the new mayor had other plans. Byrne had agreed to host the Blues Brothers filming months before the summer shoot. But her power extended only so far. She could allow the crew to drive a convoy across Daley Plaza. She could not permit them to shoot inside the Daley Center itself — that building fell under the county’s purview. Nor could she corral the city’s powerful unions.
Landis had visited Sidney Korshak, an attorney and fixer whose friends included Frank Sinatra, Ronald Reagan, and Lew Wasserman, the Universal studio chief. Korshak had grown up in Chicago and made his name defending Al Capone before pivoting into a prosperous labor practice. His meeting with Landis could open doors that Chicago’s mayor could not.
“I was given his phone number,” Blues Brothers producer Bob Weiss says. “And I was told, ‘If you ever have a real problem in Chicago, call this number. But if you call it, make sure you’ve got a problem.’ He was a heavy, heavy hitter. And not somebody you spoke idly about or to.”
By the time Mayor Byrne summoned Belushi, Landis, Aykroyd, Weiss, and Universal junior executive Sean Daniel to her downtown office, the meeting was pro forma, more photo op than negotiating session. Before signing off on the project, though, Byrne wanted to make the filmmakers sweat.
“I WAS TOLD, ‘IF YOU EVER HAVE A REAL PROBLEM IN CHICAGO, CALL THIS NUMBER. BUT IF YOU CALL IT, MAKE SURE YOU’VE GOT A PROBLEM,’” SAYS PRODUCER BOB WEISS.
When the group arrived at City Hall, Belushi was already sweating. “I thought he looked sick, to be honest,” Byrne later told the Tribune. “To the point that his hair was getting wet. I was a fan of his. But, of course, I wasn’t going to say this right away.” She greeted the party as Boss Daley would have, “nodding like Buddha.”
“I know how Chicago feels about movies,” Belushi offered. The mayor nodded. Belushi said the studio wanted to donate money to Chicago orphanages.
“How much money?” the mayor asked.
“Two hundred thousand,” he replied.
She nodded. “So, what’s this movie about?”
“Well, it’s about these two characters, Jake and
