Mark Youngblood posted these two items from the Gramophone Cafe – I have no idea if it had music, but with a name like that, it counts, okay?  I also tried to find out where exactly it was, but given just an intersection and no earthly idea when it existed (no hits on the Minneapolis newspaper database), my best guess is the newish building at 590 Park Street.

What was interesting was when I did a search for W.R. Frank.  He turned out to be a movie theater mogul, who, by 1944, had interests in 17 theaters around town and was building more.  Bored with that, and apparently getting quite rich from that, he was also producing movies, starting with 1944’s “The Life of Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels,” (renamed “The Enemy of Women”), 1945’s “A Boy, a Girl, and a Dog,” and 1949’s “The Great Dan Patch.”

“Bill” Frank also got into the restaurant business, pairing them with his theaters.  These included the Boulevard Twin and the West Twins.  First you ate, then walked over to see the movie.  No entertainment – the movie was the entertainment!

One of the last ventures I found was a place called the Inferno, a club at the Tremont Plaza in Hopkins that opened in about 1972.  These ads featured little devils…

Anyway, here’s to W.R. Frank, and his Gramophone Cafe!

From the collection of Mark Youngblood

From the collection of Mark Youngblood