It happened here

Hotel from hell Now a single-room-occupancy hotel for low-income residents, the Northmere Hotel, 4943 North Kenmore Avenue, was smack in the middle of the roaring Jazz Era Uptown. In 1927, novelist and screenwriter W.R. Burnett landed a job as a night clerk at the Northmere, where he met hoodlums, boxers and other night creatures who inspired him to write the gangster novel Little Caesar in 1929. It was an immediate success in print and on screen. An Ohio native, Burnett moved to Chicago when he was 28 and apparently soaked up enough Chicago grit to last his lifetime. He penned source novels for the films High Sierra and The Asphalt Jungle, and numerous screenplays. In his last years in California, the elderly Burnett—who died in 1982—walked his dog carrying a golf club to fend off muggers.—Jack Bess