Arnie Morton, the Chicago restaurateur who gave his style and his name to Arnie's and Morton's steakhouses, which now have about 65 venues from Singapore to Los Angeles to New York, has died. He was 83.
Morton, who sold the seven-restaurant steakhouse chain in 1987, died Saturday in a care facility in Deerfield, Ill. He had suffered from Alzheimer's disease and cancer.
A native of Chicago, Morton was born to his profession as the son of a Hyde Park restaurateur. He opened his first restaurant, Walton Walk, near Michigan Avenue in the 1950s. In 1960, he joined Hugh Hefner and Victor Lownes to start the first Playboy Club.
Morton stayed with Playboy as head of food services for a decade, helping to pioneer a new trend of combining good food and drink with stylish decor and merchandising -- selling drink glasses and other items with the Playboy bunny symbol.
Morton then opened several clubs on Chicago's State Street before starting Arnie's in the early 1970s. That restaurant closed on New Year's Eve 1993. He also launched Zorine's, a seafood eatery later named La Mer and then the Maple Street Pier.
The first Morton's, elegantly decorated with pewter pig lamps on the tables and photos of local personalities lining the walls, opened in a basement in 1978. The restaurant featured prime aged steaks, superb service and a personal greeting by the owner.
Morton's struggled to survive, however, until Frank Sinatra happened in after a concert. The celebrity visit was a boon to business, and Morton was soon marketing what he touted as his "steakhouse for the rich" in other major cities, beginning with Washington, D.C.
"People gravitated to my father. He had a certain magic," Morton's son Michael, also a restaurateur, told the Chicago Tribune on Saturday. "No one worked a room like Arnie Morton. He would go from table to table with his one-liners. He had an incredible ability to connect."
In 1980, Morton joined then-Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne to launch the annual food fest called Taste of Chicago.
But not all of his ideas materialized. The imaginative Morton also suggested Chicago attract more tourists by staging a Grand Prix, installing slot machines at O'Hare International Airport and enclosing Navy Pier and State Street in glass.
