Blues Brothers at the Dixie Square Mall

In the last entry, I wrote about the forthcoming demise of the Dixie Square Mall in Harvey, Illinois.

I looked the mall up in Wikipedia and found out this information about the filming of the "Blues Brothers" movie.

In January 1979, the interior of the mall closed and the city of Harvey gave the property that didn't still have stores in it to the Harvey-Dixmoor School District who used it as a temporary school while a new one was being built. The Turnstyle store's floor space was used as a gymnasium.

After the last store vacated the mall, Jewel, director John Landis rented the site for eight weeks in 1979 to film the famous car chase through the mall where Jake and Elwood Blues were chased by Illinois State Troopers.

Some former tenants refused to allow their storefronts to be used in the film so they were "dressed up." Walgreen's became Toys "R" Us and Penney's became a modern J.C. Penney with its interior becoming Jewel.

After film shooting, the interior was left in really bad shape (no big surprise after all that chase damage). As of the mid-1980s, the fake wall where the cars crashed through the Toys "R" Us store was still there.

The Harvey-Dixmoor school District sued Universal Studios for $87,000 in damages in 1981, but nothing came of it.

"We're on a Mission from Who?" --RoadDog