Maxwell Street - Maxwell Street in History and Popular Culture

Maxwell Street in History and Popular Culture

• Maxwell Street is where the Maxwell Street Polish Sausage sandwich originated.

• The famous direct-sales entrepreneur Ron Popeil began his career as a street vendor at the Maxwell Street Market.

• The clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman was born in 1909 near the Maxwell Street neighborhood and spent most of his youth there.

• The Maxwell Street Police Station, at Maxwell and Morgan Streets, was "Hill Street Station" in the 1980s television series Hill Street Blues.

• Maxwell Street was featured in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, in which it was portrayed as a thriving ethnically African-American community. The scene opens with John Lee Hooker playing his song Boom Boom on the street before the film's stars, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd, enter a restaurant owned and operated by Aretha Franklin looking for Matt "Guitar" Murphy and "Blue" Lou Marini.

• In February, 1988, United Artists filmed an occult thriller, Child's Play, featuring sets on Maxwell Street, including a disabled bus with the word "Auto" spray-painted on it which had been sitting in the lot at 709 Maxwell since 1984. Scrap wood was purchased from Maxworks Cooperative for a bonfire which occurs in the movie in front of the old bus.

• Professional wrestler Colt Cabana is billed as being from "Maxwell Street in Chicago, Illinois".