John Clellon Holmes’ 1953 beat jazz novel The Horn contains a couple references to Duluth. In the 1988 edition by Thunder’s Mouth Press, the first mention occurs on page 131. I cite it below with a couple paragraphs for context, which make it clear “Duluth” is used synonymously with “some out-of-the-way city on the road.”
Last summer Lana Del Rey received the National Music Publishers’ Association Songwriter Icon award in Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. Her acceptance speech included a brief mention of Duluth.
Duluth keeps getting mentioned in the publicity tour for the Bob Dylan movie A Complete Unknown. At the 6:53 mark in the clip above Timothée Chalamet says, regarding singing live-to-camera in the film, “The worst thing we could have done with a Bob Dylan biopic is sanitize it, to make it sound clean … This is a man from iron ore country, Minneapolis, Minnesota; Hibbing, Duluth.” Not that Minneapolis is so dirty, but OK.
Duluth comes up throughout.
The television miniseries Category 6: Day of Destruction premiered on the CBS network on Nov. 14, 2004. Part one includes a reference to Duluth at the 21-minute mark.
Around the 43-minute mark, Timothée Chalamet talks for a couple minutes about visiting the region, specifically the Duluth-Hibbing axis. He made the trip alone while preparing to play Bob Dylan in the current biopic. The Bob Dylan house gets a mention around the 47-minute mark.
The DreamWorks animated television series Trolls: The Beat Goes On!, which aired from 2018 to 2019, featured a recurring character named Tug Duluth. Whether the orange-skinned, purple-nosed troll has anything to do with the city of Duluth, Minnesota, is not known, but nonetheless we present this recently released compilation reel.
It’s been 40 years since Wildrose, a feature film shot on Minnesota’s Iron Range, premiered in theaters. The full movie is available to stream in the video section of the Russian social media website Odnoklassniki, or ok.ru, and is embedded above.
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Season five, episode five, of the Vice-TV documentary series The Dark Side of the Ring delves into “The Life and Legends of Harley Race,” a world champion professional wrestler whose early career included a run in the Minneapolis-based American Wrestling Association. At the 13-minute mark in the episode, Race’s third wife, Evonna Hedbávný, tells the story of Race proposing marriage on a trip from Minneapolis to Duluth in the early 1960s.
Apparently, even the toughest guy in the rasslin’ business can’t resist the romance of Duluth.
[This post originally contained an embedded video that is no longer available at its source.]
Local author Phil Sher sent me a note asking me to share that the Lifetime cable channel original movie Stalked by My Stepsister was shot in Duluth. It was released in October.
I think I can see the Lakewalk and Leif Erikson Park. I think I can see the interior of Glensheen. IMDB confirms the Duluth shooting sites.
Has anyone watched it, or know anyone involved in the shooting?
The Looney Tunes animated short Design for Leaving was released on March 27, 1954 — 70 years ago today. One-minute into it, door-to-door salesman Daffy Duck shoves Elmer Fudd onto a nonstop bus headed to Duluth. Fudd returns moments later on a Duluth Van and Storage Company truck after Daffy has updated his home with futuristic appliances.
If climate change soon renders parts of the United States uninhabitable, then where are all the coastal elites supposed to go? The Daily Show‘s Michael Kosta took a trip to Duluth to investigate how Californian climate refugees and displaced New Yorkers might fare in this snowy sanctuary city.
Duluth is mentioned on the Hulu comedy mystery series Only Murders in the Building. In season 3, episode 3 — titled “Grab Your Hankies” — actress Linda Emond plays the role of Donna DeMeo, an investor in a Broadway musical who believes strongly in the importance of show-stopping songs that will draw in people like “Debbie from Duluth.”
Longtime PDD readers will recall that Steve Martin, co-creator of Only Murders in the Building, posted a clever Duluth tweet in 2012 after playing a concert at Bayfront Park.
Dave Wilton at wordorigins.org delves into a famous-though-probably-inaccurate Mark Twain quote in his latest article. “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” has of course also been spun as “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Duluth.” Wilton covers it all in detail, as did Tony Dierckins some years ago on zenithcity.com. Lake Superior Magazine also covered the subject in 2003.
Thirty years ago today — Sept. 18, 1993 — the sci-fi comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000 mentioned Duluth in “The Train Song” a.k.a. “What a Pleasant Journey.” Specifically referenced in the lyrics is the 1992 benzine spill in Superior known as “Toxic Tuesday.”
