[Nelson Algren various]

Assorted archival footage of Nelson Algren.

0:21Copy video clip URL A narrator reads an excerpt from Algren’s Chicago: City on the Make over shots of archival photographs.

3:00Copy video clip URL The title “A Walk on the West Side” appears over color footage of a residential Chicago neighborhood. A narrator describes Algren and his works; a 64-year-old Algren emerges from a house and walks onto the sidewalk. Over footage of himself walking through various street scenes, Algren explains that his first book, Never Come Morning, was not well received in his neighborhood, but his reputation recovered after a later book (presumably The Man with the Golden Arm) was adapted into a movie.

4:15Copy video clip URL Algren narrates the history of ethnic migration in the various Chicago neighborhoods, still in a voice over accompanying footage of him walking down the street. He laments that all of the original European character of these places has gone, and all of the residents are now “become Americanized.”

6:43Copy video clip URL Speaking on camera, Algren surveys some of the 19th century houses at what was once the city limits.

7:30Copy video clip URL Algren walks down Milwaukee avenue, and says (in voice-over) that the businesses there are very transient in nature. Algren says that he remains in the city “because of economics,” but claims that the city has changed greatly.

9:40Copy video clip URL On camera again, Algren says that “this is no longer Mayor Daley’s Chicago, or Marshall Field’s Chicago, or Hugh Hefner’s Chicago.”

10:40Copy video clip URL Video ends.