Maurie and Flaurie are still missing.
When a crane plucked the couple off the roof at Superdawg Drive-In on Sept. 4, we were promised they would return after a “SuperSpa” experience in a few weeks. The figures have stood over the hot dog stand in Chicago for 76 years. A banner in their place reads, “MAURIE & FLAURIE WILL RETURN SUPER SOON!”
But where are these beloved culinary and cultural icons? What’s happening to them? And what’s taking so long?
First, we need to know about their history and secret lives.
“Originally, they went up 10 days before we were open,” said Scott Berman. He’s the son of late founders and figure namesakes Flaurie and Maurie Berman. Their daughter, Lisa Drucker, and her husband, Don Drucker, with her brother, are now the owners and operators of their original stand in the Norwood Park neighborhood and a second location in Wheeling.
These same Superdawg rooftop figures, according to Berman, were handmade by their father with an unknown artist from paper-mache around a chicken wire frame, and first went up on April 28, 1948.
“We opened May 8 of ’48,” Berman said. The stand was only supposed to last for one summer. Their mother and father had planned to become a teacher and CPA, respectively. But they opened again for a couple of years, and the rooftop figures came down at the end of the season in 1948 and 1949, then were held in the building during the winter.
And in 1950, they decided to open Superdawg year-round so the figures had to be weatherproofed.
“So they wrapped them in fiberglass and put them on the roof where they stood untouched for the next 25 or so years,” Berman said. In the mid ’70s and the late ’90s, they came down for a refurbishment, and now they’ve come down again. “So they’ve only been down officially three times in 76 years.”
But the figures almost came down unofficially during a storm in the 1980s.
“We climbed up on the roof,” he said. “And we, with my dad, all stood holding wires so they didn’t blow off.”
In 1998 they made sure that would never happen again.
“The really dramatic thing is we sunk four pylons from Superdawg Maurie and Flaurie on the roof all the way through the building, 30 feet into the ground surrounded by concrete,” Berman said. “Those pylons run through the old building that’s been there since 1948 so there is no shifting in the wind any longer.”
So was there something else going on with the Maurie and Flaurie figures on the roof this time around?
“No, it was just time,” Lisa Drucker said. “And it was timed after our busy summer season.” And before the weather turns inclement, she added, so the restorers don’t have to work in the winter.
“If you stand for 25 years, you probably want to get off your feet too,” Don Drucker said. “So they get to lie down and go to the spa and relax for a little while.”
So what do they call the Maurie and Flaurie on top of the building? Are they statues?
“Our mom and dad, Maurie and Flaurie, they said, ‘They’ve always been Maurie and Flaurie,’” Berman said. “They are sometimes the characters on the roof, the statues on the roof, but they are the Maurie and Flaurie figures on the roof.”
“I’ll tell you one thing we don’t call them, we never call them the dancing hot dogs,” said Lisa Drucker, laughing. “As you know, a Superdawg is not a hot dog. I’ve heard children refer to them as the dancing dogs, and I think that’s because she wears a ballerina skirt, kind of like a tutu.”
“He’s in love with her, she’s in love with him,” she added about the figures. “And they’re winking at each other.”
“It’s only the eyes that are facing each other that wink,” Berman said. “The outside eyes do not.”
The refurbishment includes new LED eyes replacing the incandescent eyes for the first time.
But the original paper-mache will remain.
“The last time they were down, we looked inside,” Berman said. “And there was old newspaper.”
What newspapers? Could they be old editions of the Chicago Tribune? We went behind the scenes at the secret SuperSpa.
“Orlandi Statuary is restoring two icons of Chicago food,” said Dani Orlandi. He’s the director of operations and vice president of the company, now located in Logan Square, founded in 1911 by his great-great uncle, Egisto Orlandi.
But Dani Orlandi’s connection to Superdawg is personal too. His family moved to the Norwood Park neighborhood in 1966, so he grew up three blocks away from the stand. His mother would walk him with his three siblings at the time just to see Maurie and Flaurie on the roof.
“We’d go there just to look at the Superdawgs,” Orlandi said. “It was just so amazing that we couldn’t believe it.”
But they didn’t go in to eat.
“We were very Italian and always ate at home,” he said about his family. “They were very intimidated, but we would enjoy going to see the Superdawgs. We would drive past, and then we’d ask my dad to go around and see it again, and he would.”
Orlandi was 15 years old when he first went into Superdawg.
“It was my date place,” he said. “I took my wife there on one of our first dates.”
On a recent visit to the warehouse space, filled with ghostly white figures, it was startling to find Maurie and Flaurie resting on their sides.
“There is newspaper in there,” Orlandi said. “But we looked hard and the ink was fully washed out, so I can’t say if it came from the Tribune.”
Every generation made the figures a little bit better, he said. So this time, while a sign company is rewiring them inside on-site, his company is making them smoother outside, so they’ll stay cleaner for longer.
“At this point, they’re going to outlast us,” he added. “Without a doubt.”
Was there anything that surprised him, seeing them up close and personal?
“No, it was exactly what we were expecting,” Orlandi said. “But I gotta say one thing.”
“We worked on the Ernie Banks statue and all this other famous stuff. And for some reason, for me and my employees, this is the greatest job we’ve ever been allowed to do,” he said. “This is something that really hits home.”
“I wish my mom and dad were around to come see them, you know?”
So when will Maurie and Flaurie will be finished and reinstalled?
He doesn’t know yet, but it will be at least a few more weeks. Meanwhile, the stand remains open.
And what is Orlandi’s go-to order?
“Just a Superdawg,” he said.
That order used to include a chocolate shake, but now he says if he has one, then he has to have one every day for a month.
“And there’s a way you tear the box down,” he added. “To make a little plate out of the box. You put the ketchup down, then you eat all the fries first, and then get to the hot dog.”
He means the Superdawg, of course.
And eventually Maurie and Flaurie will return to their rooftop, promised their family.
“Winking at each other as they did,” Berman said. “Blink, blink, blink, blink.”
6363 N. Milwaukee Ave., 773-763-0660, superdawg.com
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