HISTORY MADE: 500 See Blues Brothers Inside Old Joliet Prison

JOLIET, IL — History was made Friday night at a place that was built before Abraham Lincoln became a U.S. president. Marking the 40th anniversary of the iconic musical comedy filmed in Joliet, the Joliet Area Historical Museum showed the Blues Brothers inside the Old Joliet Prison on Friday night. The movie began playing around 8:15 p.m.

Because of the pandemic, the museum limited the outdoor movie event to 500 tickets. The Blues Brothers showings for both Friday and Saturday have sold out, explained Greg Peerbolte, the museum's executive director.

Tickets were $35 for adults and $20 for children 13 and younger. The event is a major fund-raiser for the Joliet museum. The revenue is used for ongoing upkeep and restoration of the massive Old Joliet Prison property that dates back to 1858.

The prison property fell into neglect for more than 15 years after it was left abandoned when the Illinois Department of Corrections closed the prison in 2002. In 2018, the Joliet City Council partnered with the museum to revive the prison as a world-wide tourist attraction.

Thousands of volunteer hours donated by local tradesmen and volunteers helped clean up the property to get it ready for tourists in 2018.

Making social distancing a high priority, the museum assigned Friday night's ticket buyers to marked off areas inside the prison yard to watch Blues Brothers on a 45-foot-tall movie screen. It was quite an event. Hundreds of visitors also toured several of the Old Joliet Prison's most famous buildings and cell blocks as part of the event.

Representatives from Crystal Head vodka products, the company launched by Dan Aykroyd, otherwise known as Elwood Blues, were at the prison Friday night selling alcoholic drinks.

The museum will be showing Blues Brothers again Saturday night.

"This is a pretty good crowd," Peerbolte told Joliet Patch on Friday night. "I'm really happy with everyone who's following our social distancing guidelines. Everyone's behaving and the people who are coming out are realizing we have a lot to see. "