The bar at Ullman's Ding-A-Ling Supper Club in Mercer, Wisconsin.
Few experiences represent Wisconsin culture like a Friday night fish fry at a supper club, and there’s a documentary to prove the point. Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club is a treat from director, producer and editor Holly De Ruyter.
Old Fashioned recently appeared on Wisconsin Public Television, and it premiered in 2015 at the Wisconsin Film Festival to a sold-out crowd. “I could not have asked for a better audience to share that experience with,” says De Ruyter. “I could feel the energy and excitement when I was at screenings and events.” De Ruyter continues to travel around the Midwest for film screening events.
De Ruyter, who grew up in Oneida and currently works as a producer at Wisconsin Public Television, first began to think about the place supper clubs hold in Wisconsin culture when she was living in Chicago in 2009. “Growing up in Wisconsin, and in the Midwest, you’re told you’re vanilla all your life — that there is nothing of interest happening here,” says De Ruyter. When she had arrived in Chicago to attend Columbia College several years earlier, she was surprised to find as Fridays rolled around that there were no fish fries anywhere — and no supper clubs. “I didn’t feel that sense of community in Chicago,” says De Ruyter.
Her 51-minute documentary dives deep into supper club history, providing personal stories from Wisconsinites on the importance of the restaurants and what makes the experience of dining in them special.
The film opens with a quote from George Gogian, who opened the Turk’s Inn in Hayward, Wisconsin. “Eating should be an unhurried pleasure…” the voice-over muses over cut-out animations that resemble 1940s advertising. It immediately prepares the viewer for a fun trip down memory lane into the history of supper clubs and their hold on Wisconsin food culture.
Swearingen's Al-Gen Dinner Club in Rhinelander, Wisconsin.
Finishing the film took six years. “At the time supper clubs didn’t have websites or Facebook,” says De Ruyter. She searched for supper clubs using a phone book. “I just looked for restaurants, and anything with club or supper club in its name I would look into.” De Ruyter collected so much material that she would meet with a friend to put scenes and themes on note cards, shuffling the structure around on the floor. After one of these sessions, she had her breakthrough moment where everything started to click.
“It was supposed to be a short,” De Ruyter says, noting that projects often grow during the filmmaking process.
Old Fashioned: The Story of the Wisconsin Supper Club is available on Wisconsin Public Television via WPT Passport, and will be screening in Lake Geneva on May 24.
