When Hollywood rolled into Evansville, Indiana, in the summer of 1991, the town was proud. Columbia Pictures had chosen its historic Bosse Field as a stand-in for a 1940s ballpark in A League of Their Own, a baseball comedy directed by Penny Marshall and starring Tom Hanks, Geena Davis, Rosie O’Donnell, Lori Petty, Jon Lovitz, and one of the world’s biggest pop stars in a rare acting role.
For a small Midwestern city of about 120,000, it was no small achievement. Locals lined up to serve as extras, stars were spotted in barbecue joints and antique shops, and the town briefly became a hub of Hollywood glamour. Evansville had every reason to feel good about itself. Then came Madonna.
The interview that started a war
In November 1991, MTV’s Kurt Loder interviewed the pop star for TV Guide. Reflecting on her three months filming in Indiana, Madonna was blunt.
“For the past three months—it might as well have been three years—she was stranded in Evansville, Indiana, a place she will not be revisiting in this current lifetime,” Loder wrote.
“‘I may as well have been in Prague,’ she says, by way of summing up the town’s attraction.”
It was a curious choice of insult. Evansville residents were offended enough at being written off by the biggest pop star in the world. But Prague? The Czech capital, with its Gothic spires, cobblestoned Old Town, centuries of history, and a castle that still functions as a presidential office, was somehow the yardstick for cultural desolation.
At the time, Prague was only two years removed from the Velvet Revolution. Madonna, it seemed, was not envisioning the fairy-tale city of Franz Kafka, Charles IV, and Saint Wenceslas, but rather the drab Communist-era stereotype of a gray, crumbling Eastern Bloc capital. In 1991, to the world’s biggest pop star, Prague was still shorthand for the middle-of-nowhere, or in military parlance, BFE.
That Prague was well, akshually becoming quite the popular destination among American expats did little to soothe Evansville. Within weeks of the article, a local radio station organized a protest. Around 300 residents gathered in the parking lot of Roberts Stadium, arranging themselves into a giant human billboard spelling out Madonna’s name, crossed out with a red circle.
A helicopter flew overhead to capture the image, which quickly made its way into national media. Some locals even wore T-shirts emblazoned with the phrase “Serving time in Prague, Indiana.”
Compare us to *shock* Prague?! How dare you.
Manufactured outrage, Midwest pride
The protest likely had less to do with genuine civic outrage than with good publicity. Evansville residents knew a story when they saw one, and if Madonna was going to dismiss their town, they could at least fight back on Entertainment Tonight. Radio hosts retold the tale of the insult for weeks. Letters poured into the Courier & Press demanding contrition.
“As far as I’m concerned, Madonna is not welcome to return to Evansville for the premiere of this movie or for any other reason,” one letter to the editor declared. Some locals never forgave her.
O’Donnell joked on The Arsenio Hall Show that Madonna was planning to buy a house in Evansville. Madonna herself brushed off the controversy, quipping that the city’s social scene consisted of “only one drag bar.”
The city even staged a tongue-in-cheek charity event, the “Evansville-Prague Summer Olympics,” inviting Madonna and the Czech embassy to attend. President Václav Havel was politely unable to make it—he was, inconveniently, running for re-election at the time.
Prague’s reputation in the crossfire
From Prague’s perspective, the entire episode is a kind of historical oddity: a Midwestern American city rising up in outrage because it had been compared—unfavorably—to the Czech capital. Today, the notion feels absurd. Prague routinely tops lists of Europe’s most beautiful cities, drawing millions of tourists each year to its castle, astronomical clock, and beer halls. Evansville, by contrast, remains largely unknown outside Indiana.
But in 1991, Prague’s global image was still in flux. The Iron Curtain had only just fallen, and for some, the word “Prague” conjured images of gray apartment blocks and long queues for bread, not the architectural jewel box visible today. Madonna’s offhand remark was less an attack on Prague than an unthinking use of Cold War shorthand.
That subtlety was lost on Evansville, which briefly convinced itself that being compared to Prague was the ultimate insult.
More than three decades later, A League of Their Own is remembered as a classic sports film and Evansville still celebrates its role in the film, with Bosse Field a tourist attraction for fans of the movie. Madonna’s comments have largely faded into trivia, recalled most recently in an in-depth ESPN story.
For Prague, the whole affair is a footnote in an already colorful history: a moment when the city’s name was wielded as shorthand for dreariness, before it became a global tourist magnet. The irony, of course, is that today, Evansville would likely be flattered by the comparison.
Lead photo: Madonna in A League of Their Own / Evansville and Prague courtesy DepositPhotos (montage by Prague Reporter)
