An afternoon with Nelson Algren and some seniors as part of CPD’s ‘Chicago in Film’ series

Wednesday afternoon, in a small room inside the Chicago Police Department 24th District, a couple dozen people, free popcorn and water in hand, sat through an old movie about a guy dealing with a drug addiction.

There he was, a character named Frankie Machine, played by a young Frank Sinatra, doing drugs in the 1955 Otto Preminger-directed “Man With The Golden Arm,” which was based (loosely) on the 1949 novel by Nelson Algren.

The movie was projected on a large screen at one end of a darkened room, as some two dozen people sat on folding chairs and watched, to varying degrees of enjoyment they would later say, the one hour and 59 minute film.

This event was part of an ongoing program titled “Chicago in Film,” a series of monthly film screenings for senior citizens who live within the 24th district, which covers parts of the Rogers Park and Edgewater neighborhoods.

It was created in 2017 by Sgt. Shawn Sisk, then it became the responsibility of Officer Hank Kline and, following his retirement in July 2022, was one of the many duties of Officer Caroline DeWinter, who has the title of senior liaison officer in the Office of Community Policing in the district.

“I just love it,” she told me the day after the movie screening. “There is such a very good rapport among the people who attend. And I have taken groups to a Loyola basketball game, to play pickleball, all sort of things and I can see their enjoyment.”

She’s right. A native of Boston, she has been a CPD officer for more than two decades, some of those years as a hate-crimes investigator. She knows that most people encounter police only during trouble or duress or tragedy. But what she and other officers are doing through the department’s various outreach efforts across the city goes a long way to making them feel important parts of the city’s communities.

“I am not sure there is another movie series like ours. But each district does have an ‘Older Adults Unit’ that develops activities and services for the older adults in their district,” says volunteer Carleen Szafraniec Lorys, a native Chicagoan who had a long career as a special education administrator for the Chicago Public Schools. “The police need to be recognized for their positive contributions.”

She is one member of a small committee that helps select the films, reserves and retrieves each from a public library branch, and persuades people to speak and answer questions after screenings. Some of those who recently fell for her charming persuasiveness —there is no money involved — have been novelist Sara Paretsky (on 1991’s “V.I. Warshawski”); Chaz Ebert, businesswoman, author and widow of Roger Ebert (2014’s “Life Itself”); restaurateur Hecky Powell (2015’s “Soul Train”); Chicago Film Office Director Rich Moskal (1993’s “The Fugitive”) and left-handed pianist Norman Malone (2021’s “For the Left Hand,” produced and written by my former Tribune colleague Howard Reich).

That’s why I was there last week, watching a movie that I had not seen in many years, perhaps 20 years, and sharing a few thoughts about it and Algren.

I told the crowd that other actors (among them John Garfield and Marlon Brando) tried to get the role that eventually went to Sinatra; that Algren ventured to Hollywood and toyed with a screenplay, which Preminger rejected; how Algren thought he was cheated out of money, threatened a lawsuit and had nasty things to say about the film, even as it was nominated for three Academy Awards, including one for Sinatra as best actor.

I went beyond the film facts, telling the story of Algren’s friendship with my parents and some of the shabby details of his romance with my mother’s sister.

“Nelson was very thin-skinned,” I said.

Few if any in the crowd had seen this film before and fewer had read the novel on which it was based, and that won the first National Book Award. I told the crowd that they might want to read my favorite Algren novel, “Never Come Morning,” or what I consider his most accessible book, “Chicago: City on the Make.” I also suggested the biography by my former Tribune colleague Mary Wisniewski, “Algren: A Life.”

I mentioned two documentaries about his life and marveled that he remains celebrated. Indeed, his birthday is being marked on April 6 by the Nelson Algren Committee at 2418 W. Bloomingdale, where the Bloomingdale Trail crosses Western Ave. It begins at 7:30 p.m. and will feature Wisniewski; musicians Melodie Magnuson and Mike Fenton; the great filmmaker/photographer Tom Palazzolo; and the presentation of an award to my Tribune colleague Ron Grossman.

A couple of people in the audience for “The Man with the Golden Arm” said they might attend. One older man asked me if Algren had been addicted to heroin.

I explained that in the novel, Frankie Machine’s drug of choice was not heroin but morphine and since I happened to be carrying a copy of the book, I read this passage: “Heroin got the drive alright— but there’s not a tingle to a ton — you got to get M to get the tingle-tingle.”

The old man shook his head, said, “Huh,” and walked out into the late afternoon sun.

rkogan@chicagotribune.com