History in Printer's Row

No, Blackie's Restaurant & Tavern at 755 South Clark Street has absolutely no relation to, or affiliation with, the bankrupt "Boston Blackie's," a burger joint of far more recent vintage whose owner was apprehended while fleeing the country in the wake of a two million dollar check-kiting scheme.  This particular Blackie's has been around since 1939 and has no apparent history of dust-ups with the law.  As the story goes, Alex Dimilio opened the restaurant and asked his friend, bandleader Jimmy Dorsey, to help him make it a destination for Hollywood stars arriving at Dearborn Station, which was across the street.  Dorsey agreed, on the condition that Dimilio would hire a kid whose nickname was "Blackie" (because the irises of his eyes were pitch black).  Dimilio obliged, even naming the restaurant after the guy and making him the maitre d'.  Over the course of the ensuing decades, Blackie's served meals to such luminaries as Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Betty Gable, the Marx Brothers, and the Three Stooges.  During a whistle stop on his 1948 presidential campaign, Harry S. Truman reportedly stopped by and sang "The Missouri Waltz."  Even after Dearborn Station closed, St. Peter's Church was demolished, and many of the nearby printing companies fled the neighborhood, the restaurant forged on, seemingly nonplussed.  Sometime in the 1970's, Dimilio's grandson, Jeffrey Thomas, acquired and rehabbed the place, and, today, in a revitalized Printer's Row, it is still going strong.