Creativity Quote by Mel Torme

Chicago gets framed here not as a “nice place where shows happened,” but as a machine room: the city as an ecosystem that manufactures culture. Mel Torme’s analogy is doing double duty. On the surface it’s a neat bit of explanatory shorthand - Hollywood equals movies, Broadway equals theater, Chicago equals radio. Underneath, it’s a claim about power: where an industry’s center sits is where taste gets standardized, careers get made, and the national conversation gets routed.

The line works because it borrows prestige from two already-mythologized capitals. Hollywood and Broadway aren’t just locations; they’re brand names that signal gatekeeping, glamour, and a ruthless talent pipeline. By placing Chicago in that company, Torme elevates radio from “background noise” to a major cultural engine and insists the medium had its own capital city, with its own bosses and mythologies.

Context matters: for much of the early-to-mid 20th century, Chicago was a broadcasting powerhouse, anchored by major stations and networks and fed by the city’s vaudeville circuits, jazz clubs, and unionized live performance culture. Radio wasn’t merely transmission; it was live entertainment, comedy, music, news, all performed under tight schedules and tighter standards. Torme, a working musician, is also sneaking in a professional truth: if you wanted to be heard everywhere, you often had to be vetted somewhere specific. In an era before the internet flattened geography, “hub” meant destiny.