Dave Wood

In Eccentrical Treats Part I, Eddie Schwartz was the reporter who told me he preferred reporting on Houses of Ill Fame and dingy saloons. Today’s eccentric is an unsinkable man who ran a night club in Minneapolis called the Starlite Lounge close by the fleshpots of Washington Avenue. It was slightly dingy but that wasn’t his fault, which I’ll explain later.

After chores Dad turned on our radio to his favorite Minneapolis radio station and a show that he said made him thirsty. The show was called “Jimmy Hegg from The Starlite Lounge.’’ Hegg introduced the lounge’s evening entertainment, singing his way through and charming his audience with his irrepressible patter, his basso profundo and telling jokes as he went.

Thirty years later, Ruth and I moved to Minneapolis from little Bowling Green, Ohio, where food and entertainment was inexpensive in the Ohio rust belt. Not so in booming Minneapolis! Thus I bought a packet of 2 for 1 meal deals, I spotted a voucher for “Jimmy Hegg’s Starlite Lounge.”  Jimmy Hegg!? Could he be the singing Maître d’? Curiosity drove me and the B.W.to the lounge near the aforementioned fleshpots. As we entered, we noticed it was only slightly dingy, but was full of people, young and old. A tall, portly gent with hair that looked as if it were dyed red led us to a booth where the banquettes were sagging just a bit and called for a waitress. Soon after, the big gent returned and said he was indeed Jimmy Hegg. He asked if we had ever been at Starlite.  We said no, we just arrived and I was going to teach at Augsburg College.

“I’m certain you’re not going to be getting rich there,” he chuckled. “My father was a Lutheran preacher, so I know from bitter experience.” After we dined, I presented Jimmy with my lone voucher and he presented me with one hundred new ones.  “If you liked your meal, spread these around to your faculty friends and let me know if you need more.” 

Like the meal? You bet! The lone voucher amounted to $9.95, which bought us two aged strip steaks, two orders of hashed browns, two tossed salads. For $6 more we each received a very jumbo martini to wash it all down. For free was a 4-pound block of processed cheese and bowls of Ritz crackers with which you could serve yourself.

And his hungry actor customers wolfed that stuff down after returning from one of the town’s multitudes of live theaters, including his son Tom, who also tended bar and later asked my wife for editorial advice as he composed a book, “A Cup of Christmas Tea,” which was to become a bestseller. What a weird place![1] Was Jimmy eccentric? For sure. While other eateries in town were raising prices, Hegg was lowering his!

Back on campus the next day, we immediately made intimate friends with our new colleagues, who would come to enjoy the varied customer mix and bargains at the Starlite and its red-haired owner, who knew about economical Lutherans  So we came regularly, drank and ate but most of all traded tall tales told by Jimmy and his guests: struggling actors, WCCO’s Dave Moore, store clerks, Eddie Schwartz, chorus girls from year’s past, including Noel Neill who played Superman’s Lois Lane.

One night, as Jimmy stood at the cash register, another tall man emerged through the swinging kitchen door and shouted “Sit down Jimmy!  You make the place look shabby! It was Henny (“Take my wife, please” ) Youngman, who dropped in every time he was performing and explained he never missed visiting Jimmy when in town “Because I remember the days when he emceed and I performed at the old Starlite…”

The Old Starlite? Jimmy explained that in the 50s he purchased the original Starlite on Hennepin Ave. which he bought not realizing nightclubs were dying with the advent of TV. (“I worked nights!”). When it burned down Jimmy got nothing because he’d cancelled his insurance. “The place we’re in was empty, so I was able to stay in business on a slightly dingier level,” with a nod to Eddie “Dingy Bars” Schwartz at the next table. At that moment a disheveled old denizen of Washington Avenue’s skid row appeared. As he did Jimmy asked the crowd for their attention. “Johnnie is here to sing his nightly song, ‘Bread and Gravy.’ Take it away, Johnnie!” Johnnie belted out a sentimental tune about a hungry tramp, then sat down at the bar and was served a steak dinner. No voucher was needed.

So once again the unflappable Jimmy Hegg emceed the night’s entertainment. It wasn’t as glittering as the Jewel Box Review, a transvestite review he was slightly embarrassed to introduce at the old Starlite, but it surely was more charitable. Don’t forget-- Jimmy was a preacher’s kid.

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK For THE FINAL MEMBER OF THE TRIO OF ECCENTRICAL TREATS!