Marshall Rosenthal, 71, Chicago writer of counterculture era, local Emmy winner

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Obit photo of Marshall Rosenthal, 1960s counterculture Chicago journalist

Updated: February 7, 2012 6:31PM

Perhaps the best way to illustrate Marshall Rosenthal’s acerbic wit and lucidity is to let Abe Peck tell the story about writing to Mr. Rosenthal when Peck was — in the 1960s counterculture terminology of the time — “finding himself.”

Peck was traveling around Greece, “kind of on the ‘Hippie Trail,’ ’’ he recalled, when he sent a letter to his good friend in Chicago, who was freelancing in the world of mainstream journalism.

“ ‘Marshall, I’d like to get going with the rest of my life, but I have demands,’ ’’ Peck wrote. “I lay out my terms for returning to society: The job has to be flexible. It has to be meaningful. It has to have a social purpose.”

Peck will never forget Mr. Rosenthal’s letter in response.

“I have seriously deliberated over your terms for returning to society. If you hurry back,” Mr. Rosenthal wrote, “Marshall Field’s is hiring department store Santa Clauses.’’

It was a “Zen knock on the head,’’ said Peck, once editor of the Chicago Seed, an influential underground Chicago newspaper of the 1960s. He is now a professor emeritus at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Mr. Rosenthal, a witty writer and conversationalist who moved with a circle of journalists who made salons out of the legendary saloons O’Rourke’s and Riccardo’s, died Monday of liver cancer at his Evanston home. He was 71.

“Countless people who worked in Chicago journalism knew and liked Marshall Rosenthal,” Chicago Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert said in an email. “He wrote for newspapers and television news and essentially co-founded Chicago’s alternative press. When I learned he had moved home for hospice care, the news hit me like a blow. I wrote a blog entry saying the first memory that came into my mind was of him laughing.”

Mr. Rosenthal was the chief arts and amusements writer for the Chicago Daily News. He free-lanced for the Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Reader, where he originated the Hot Type media column. Mr. Rosenthal worked as a producer and writer for WMAQ-TV and WBBM-TV and won two local Emmys for investigative reporting and spot news.

Later, he handled communications for the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs; Evanston/Skokie School District 65, and the Golden Apple Foundation.

One of his choicest writing gigs evolved from rejection. He covered an infamous 1970 Sly and the Family Stone concert in Grant Park that disintegrated into rioting when Sly was late. But the Chicago Seed would not print his account.

Seen through the kaleidoscope of the 1960s, “Marshall wrote a piece which we felt was insufficiently revolutionary,” Peck recalled. “We wanted to blame the system instead of the kids.”

“The kids in the back started throwing rocks, and Marshall described it quite accurately,” said his friend Ron Dorfman. “Marshall said it wasn’t revolutionary — it was thuggish.”

But Rosenthal didn’t give up. “Marshall turned around and sold the piece to Rolling Stone, and he became the Chicago writer for Rolling Stone,” Peck said.

Mr. Rosenthal was born in the Chicago Housing Authority’s Jane Addams Homes, grew up on the old Jewish West side and attended Roosevelt High School. He earned a bachelor’s degree from DePaul University and an MBA from Michigan State University. He was teaching at UCLA — and had almost completed his Ph.D. in finance at MSU — when he decided to switch to writing.

“Marshall was a ‘New Journalism’ pioneer in Chicago,” said Better Government Association chief Andy Shaw. “He was a kind and gentle soul, a political ‘lefty’ with generous dollops of culture, wit, charm and endless optimism.”

He was a man secure in his opinions. When he visited his friend Jack Altman in Paris, other companions oohed and aahed over its Opera House. “In a low voice so as not to offend their sensibilities,” Altman wrote in an email, “Marshall said of the gaudy, 19th-century wedding cake architecture: ‘That’s a piece of s---.’ In our last conversation, he asked me: ‘Have they torn it down yet?’ ”

A laser-like focus emerged when things intrigued him, whether it was peering into tavern windows to check for Pac-Man machines during what friends dubbed his “Pac-Man Phase,” or insisting on frequent trips to a favorite Chicago eatery for the shrimp dumpling soup.

He often accompanied his friend, political strategist Don Rose, when Rose visited restaurants to write about food for the Sun-Times. For his schtick of always finding a flaw, Rose jokingly referred to him by the pseudonym “The Groaner.”

But when he took ill, “He did not make a single complaint,” Rose said. “He faced it so bravely.”

He sent friends a graceful email that helped them to accept the sad news. “I am in surprisingly good spirits, have no pain; and my appetite has returned,” he said. “I thank you for your concern and support. I feel very lucky to have good friends and wonderful children.”

Mr. Rosenthal, who was married and divorced three times, is survived by his daughter, Alisa; his son, Daniel, and his brother, Jerome. He did not want a traditional funeral service, but friends are planning a celebration of his life.

— Sun-Times Media