The shriners hat may be off one letter but I don’t think it matters, after all, it IS Allee. Allee is pictured here in her pink kitchen booth with a wallful of the famous Brown Derby drawings by Jack Lane behind her. This is one of my favorite places to hang while at Willis Wonderland. The hat has so many jewels on it that I felt like it weighed a ton!
Facebook
Twitter
Press
Contact
Allee Willis
I almost died when I found that fez. For all intents and purposes, it DOES bear my name.
Not sure who Jack Lane is, but the Brown Derby drawings were done by three separate artists over all the decades that the restaurant was open. The most famous one is ZEL. Is Jack lane one of the other two?
This is also one of my favorite places to sit in the house. It’s the little booth in my kitchen. I got all those Brown Derby drawings for a complete steal, $30 total, and Brown Derby collectors constantly call me to ask if I want to sell them. That will never happen. It feels very right to sit under them in my namesake fez.
Michael Ely
Yes, Jack Lane was one of the artists….
http://www.askart.com/askart/l/jack_lane/jack_lane.aspx
Allee Willis
I don’t think any of my portraits are by him. Of my 20 portraits in the house, all done in the 40s and 50s, they were drawn either by Zel or Eddie Vitch. But I have 24 more portraits that aren’t hanging up so perhaps some of those are Jack Lane.
tryads
Those are done by my Grandfather Eddie Levkovitch. Very interesting story how he ran away from Nazi Germany and went to America as a kitchen dishwasher at the original Brown Derby restaurant. He started doing sketches of the staff and then eventually started doing the patrons too. Soon he was famous around Vegas and now his caricatures are all around the world.
Allee Willis
Wow! That’s fantastic. The BD portraits are so iconic. I know thee were 3 primary artists who did the portraits. How did your grandfather sign his? Was he ZEL?
denny
So cool! Thanks for sharing such a wonderful story!
gamesman
Hi
Eddie Vitch was born in my dad’s home town Skierniewice
The surname has many family connections there
What was his parents names ?
Please mail me
Rab
I met Eddie Levkovitch(Vitch) In Victor Harbour South Australia I a was also friends with his two daughters Lisa and Regina Levkovitch(Vitch) in the mid 1970’s. Do you have any information on how I can contact either of these
two, after all these years.
Allee Willis
I have forwarded your comment to the producer who’s making a documentary on Eddie. We shall see!
tryads
Hey Gamesman,
His Dad was Hersh or Hertz Levkoitch (depending on wheterh you write in Polish phonetic or German) and his mum was Scheindel Riban or Shendle Rivan.
It would be interesting to find some other connections. There are some holes in the history about when he ran away from Poland. The whole family got separated and until recently some of his 8 or 9 brothers and sisters thought he was dead. Some of them ended up in Israel.
Also, Allee, his signature was Vitch.