Denny’s Adventures In Allee’s “Willis Wonderland” – July 2011 – Part 11

Submitted by denny July 31st, 2011
Certifikitsch Winner

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!

10 Responses to “Denny’s Adventures In Allee’s “Willis Wonderland” – July 2011 – Part 11”

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.