Champion of the Gabfest
Brundage made good on his word in 1951 when he used a $6,000 workman’s comp settlement to open the original College of Complexes, a tavern at 1651 N. Wells. He named himself “janitor,” and billed his bar as a “playground for people who think.” The place consisted of two rooms with black walls, which customers were encouraged to deface with white chalk. On the ceiling, Brundage wrote this description in two-foot-high letters: “No television, no jukebox, no 26 game–just beer, booze and bull-oney.”
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The bull-oney was a mixture of art, poetry, music, and political debate delivered with a healthy dose of humor. Operating every night of the week, the College brought in speakers and visitors like novelist Jack Conroy, labor activist Burr McCloskey, Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, Alderman Leon Despres, Congressman Sidney Yates, United Nations delegate Archibald Carey, and Ziegfeld Follies star Frances Stuart Kenyon. Brundage welcomed judges, university professors, lawyers, poets, nudists, strippers, female wrestlers, black separatists, integrationists, and communists, all to speak on their areas of expertise. The College was also known for art exhibits, plays, and poetry readings. Live music ranged from jazz to folk to Tin Pan Alley.
Brundage’s College of Complexes served much the same purpose, bringing together free spirits with divergent views, especially during the height of its popularity in the late 50s. “In the 1950s ‘beat’ did not refer to a trend in literature but to a social movement,” says Rosemont. “There was a tremendous amount of antibeat stuff in the media and the term was used as a slur for radical youth. A number of places in Chicago, frequented by people who were called beats, were visited by police and told that if they wanted their liquor license renewed, they should clean up the place and stop playing jazz. A lot of places started playing classical music and having little rules that kept these ‘less respectable’ people out. Slim was aware of that, and decided to go in the other direction.” A March 1960 schedule at the College of Complexes included such debate topics as “Are Beatniks Operating in the Past Tense?,” “The Chicago Police Department and Its Terrible Record of Civil Liberty Violations,” “You Too Can Be Reincarnated,” “The Psychology of Sex,” and “W.C. Fields and Charlie Chaplin.”
Rosemont says the College of Complexes helped provide a launching pad for new forms of artistic rebellion such as improv comedy and guerrilla theater. When the College ended its day-to-day operations in May 1961, the beat craze was waning, and Brundage was closed down by the IRS for–what else?–back taxes. Brundage returned to painting houses before moving to Mexico in 1975. He died in California, but his remains are buried near the Haymarket monument at Forest Home Cemetery in Forest Park. Rosemont will take part in a College of Complexes “class reunion” this Saturday at 2 PM at the Conrad Sulzer Regional Library, 4445 N. Lincoln. Other speakers include Leon Despres, labor historian William Adelman, peace activist Kathy Kelly, and folk singers Allen Schwartz and Ella Jenkins.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photos/ Charles H Kerr Publishing Company.
