CBA Record May-June 2024

100 Years of the Bar Show By Adam Sheppard T his year marked the 100 th anniversary of The Chicago Bar Association’s annual Bar Show (formerly known as Christ mas Spirits). The production is written and performed by

talented members of the CBA, many of whom have experience in the performing arts. It is a comedic revue comprising musical parodies and skits that satire – good-heartedly, but with biting wit – local and national politicians, sports and other celebrity figures, current events, and the legal profession itself. Hence, the show’s most famous song, “Junior Partners”: Verse: A bankrupt client wants to save a few bonds and stocks He wants you to preserve them in your safe deposit box. When on this base proposal you have properly enlarged. In whose box do you keep the stocks until he is discharged?

Chorus: The junior partners! The junior partners! They’re the ones that bring in all the fees! They are the aces, they win the cases – They change the appellants to appellees!

Perhaps the most controversial show was in 1969, which fea tured a courtroom skit alluding to the notorious, then-ongoing trial of the Chicago 7 arising out of protests at the 1968 Demo cratic National Convention. In the show’s skit, a character defen dant sat, bound and gagged, at the defense table, while an actor resembling the actual judge, Julius Hoffman, repeatedly shouted, “Off with his head!” The Association received many complaints and issued a public apology, but they refused to censor the show going forward. (For more details, see the January-February 2024 issue of the CBA Record .) By the 1970s, the show played to more than 5,000 people over a five-night run. Longtime cast member Jacqueline Caroll

The song was written in 1929 by George Swaine and first sung by Judge Howard Hayes. In the modern era, it is performed as part of an extravagant encore with the current CBA president (and often past presidents) taking a verse. Past CBA President Steven Elrod states, “The Bar Show has long been one of the pil lars of the CBA, reflecting and fulfilling the Association’s key mis sion of providing collegiality and good cheer among its members. No other bar association in the country has a tradition as highly regarded, beloved, and long-standing as our own Bar Show. I’ve never missed a show since the year I entered law school!” The first production of the

states, “It is amazing how the Bar Show has evolved over the span of 100 years from dinner theater roast to full theatrical performances, but what is truly amazing is what has stayed the same. Fred Lane and Joe Stone. Well not just Fred and Joe, but a cast that comes back year after year to sing and dance with their bar show family. We pivot and adapt and even change our songs, lyrics, and monologues to address breaking news situations.” The show has had many

show in 1924 was performed at the CBA (then at the old Burnham Building) for its members. “The cast of that first show consisted of a few brave souls, and the stage was a telephone booth which the characters would enter to carry on imaginary conver sations with departed breth ren; hence the title, “Xmas Spirits,” writes Past CBA President Joseph Stone, a cast member for over 50 years.

28 May/June 2024