EDGEWATER — The Edgewater Beach Hotel might be long faded from the Far North shores of Chicago, but the enduring love shared by Terry and Teddy Tedesco, who honeymooned there in 1944, never did.
The couple's daughter, Nola Foulston, said her parents stayed at the historic hotel during their trip — and an endearing film from their honeymoon now posted online shows the neighborhood's glory.
In the now 71-year-old film (around the 2-minute mark), the "sunrise yellow" X-shaped hotel stands tall in the background as the couple take turns filming themselves celebrating their new lives together during a chilly October day.
[YouTube/Rubyslippers1950]
At the time, one of the hotel's biggest draws was its private beach (now Foster Avenue Beach), which later became separated from the hotel when Lake Shore Drive was expanded past Foster in the 1950s.
Foulston said her parents told her they chose the hotel because at the time it was a "pretty hot spot" that included rare amenities for those days, like room service.
Donning perfectly pressed coats and bold, unconstrained smiles, the couple first begin their trip Downtown exploring the streets of the city on and around Michigan Avenue before heading up north.
When they arrive at the hotel, they trade off cascading down the hotel's finely detailed cement balconies and stairways looking out to Lake Michigan.
Linze Rice details the touching story of the Tedescos:
They can also be seen walking out onto a pier adorned with two benches as they exaggerate shivering to highlight the brisk, fall lakefront feel.
The movie closes with the new husband filming his wife as she walks away from the beach back toward the hotel, still clutching her handbags and tucking in her tight, dark curls under a box hat.
She turns back one last time, flashing a smile at the love of her life.
Foulston said her parents were first-generation Americans coming from an Italian family, who later went on to have three children of their own.
The couple met when her mother was a hat model ("As you might have guessed from seeing her in her fabulous chapeaux," Foulston said) who was working as a dancer on Broadway in the 1930s at the time she met her husband-to-be.
Other videos uploaded by Foulston show the couple's nuptials at Immaculate Conception Church in the Bronx neighborhood of New York City on Oct. 7, 1944, the same church where they first laid eyes on each other.
Terry Tedesco, known then as Theresa Pellino, wore a satin white dress that softly bore a shimmer of light as she sat in the back seat of a sleek black car on the way to meet her groom.
Later they're seen "enjoying life as newlyweds" while visiting family in New York state.
At the end of their honeymoon video, the daughter writes that the couple's love indeed lasted the test of time, saying they "lived happily ever after."
"Our parents were pretty wonderful," Foulston said.
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