FRISCO—The Secret History

Elaine Worth Pt. 1 - Star of the French Sex Farce "Easy For Zee Zee" at the Green Street Theater

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 16:00:00 -0700

North Beach, September 1928. There's a walk-up playhouse on Green Street with a stage the size of a dining table and fourteen actors crammed onto it. The show is a French farce called "Easy for Zee Zee." Opening week, it's bombing.

Beautiful Elaine Worth, a Russian emigre, replaces the leading lady in the role of Zee Zee. Elaine is the kind of dame who brings trouble with her the way some dames bring perfume.

Frisco can't get enough of her and leading man Robert Chapman. The show takes off and soon sets attendance records for Frisco.

November 24, 1928, half past midnight. Somebody puts six bullets into Jerry Ferri at his apartment on Lombard Street. The cops find letters addressed to Elaine on a dresser there. She had just moved out a week before the murder.

January 29, 1929, the cops bust the manager and the cast on an obscenity charge. The judge goes to see the show to see for himself. He dismisses the charges, but the story boosts ticket sales even more.

For nearly a year, "Zee Zee" is the hottest ticket in town.

In August 1929 the show's Robert Chapman goes out a sixth-floor window at a friend's place after a cast party. The Chronicle wants the show shut down, and the District Attorney is looking for a way to do it. Producer Sid Goldtree is sitting in Los Angeles and pulls the plug himself before they can.

The Coroner's Jury determines Chapman's death an accident, which makes no sense, but that is Frisco. He is the fourth bee buzzing around Elaine Worth's hive to turn up dead in a span of nine months.

Part One of the Elaine Worth story. Part Two, "Where There Is Honey, There Are Bees," picks up the bodies.

#SanFranciscoHistory #NorthBeach #TrueCrime #Prohibition #Frisco

Bones Remmer, Jack Ruby, and Frisco's La Cosa Nostra

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:00:00 -0700

Frisco in 1928 was a town with fog in its lungs and money in its pockets, and somebody had to decide who got to keep it. Frank Lanza, a quiet Sicilian who ran Fisherman's Wharf and sold grapes to half the bathtub wineries in America, sat back and watched the gunsmoke drift over Little Italy.
Handsome Jerry Ferri went down days before his wedding. The men who put him there went down after him, one after another, and a blonde stage star named Elaine Worth stood in the middle of it all with a lot of dead boyfriends and a story about how she never knew a thing.
Then the bridges opened, the cops lost their grip on the money machine, and the city was ready for a new boss. Elmer "Bones" Remmer walked in: a North Dakota farm boy who had played football with Jim Thorpe and had grown into three hundred pounds of trouble.
He ran the Cal-Neva up at Tahoe, owned the Menlo Club on Turk Street, ran Emeryville while the mayor drank all day at the Townhouse.
Dealing cards at Bones's tables in the thirties was a skinny kid from Chicago they called "Sparky." The Warren Commission would call him a clean-cut, honest kid. The world would know him as Jack Ruby. This is Part One of the Bones Remmer story, a tour of the Frisco underworld where everybody knows everybody and they all talk.
#TrueCrime #SanFrancisco #OrganizedCrime #JackRuby #BonesRemmer #FriscoSecretHistory

The Millionaire, the Madam, and the Marriage That Rocked Frisco

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:00:00 -0700

In October 1893, San Francisco society was rocked by the secret marriage of millionaire Charlie Fair and Maud Nelson, a well-known madam. The couple quietly crossed the bay to Oakland intending to elope without attracting attention. Instead, their wedding became front-page news.

Charlie was the son of Comstock silver millionaire and former U.S. Senator James G. Fair, while Maud had built a reputation and a business of her own in the city’s notorious late-nineteenth-century underworld.

The newspapers turned the marriage into a scandal, with increasingly outrageous stories about the couple. The San Francisco Examiner, in particular, crossed the line from sensational reporting into outright fabrication, even publishing a story that Charlie had been arrested for insanity.

Yet beneath the headlines was a much more complicated story. Maud appears to have become a stabilizing influence in Charlie’s life, eventually helping him reconcile with his family and take their place among San Francisco’s wealthy elite. Their remarkable story takes us from the city’s parlour houses and high-society mansions to European travel, the emerging world of automobiles, and a final chapter that would leave millions of dollars—and the question of what really happened—to be fought over in court for years.

Frisco Noir 4 with Rachel Walther: Killers, Cops & the Dark City: "The Lineup" and "The Sniper"

Wed, 02 Sep 2026 13:00:00 -0700

San Francisco has always looked good on film, but in The Sniper (1952) and The Lineup (1958), the city becomes something more than scenery. It becomes a character—a maze of steep streets, fog, waterfronts, alleys and lonely neighborhoods where killers can disappear and cops have to pound the pavement to find them. Rachel Walther, author of Born to Lose: The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon, joins me to talk about two very different pieces of Fifties' Frisco noir.

The Sniper ollows a troubled veteran who stalks women with an M1 carbine, while police struggle to understand what is driving him. Shot largely on location, the film offers an unusually intimate view of the city without ever actually naming San Francisco. Then comes The Lineup, where two very strange hitmen arrive in town to retrieve heroin hidden in the luggage of unsuspecting passengers. Eli Wallach, Robert Keith, steam rooms, Sutro's Baths, the Cliff House and a spectacular chase across the city all come together in one beautifully grimy piece of Frisco noir.

Along the way, Rachel and I talk about director Don Siegel, the Hollywood blacklist, the Film Noir Foundation, Eddie Muller, the lost San Francisco of free parking and empty streets—and the way these old crime pictures can sometimes feel like a decoder ring for the darker machinery of American life, and one San Francisco that exists now mostly on celluloid.

Find Rachel's website here.

#FriscoNoir #SanFranciscoHistory #FilmNoir #SanFrancisco #Podcast

Henry Miller, Big Sur, and the Examiner's War on Bohemia

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 10:00:00 -0700

Henry Miller came to Big Sur with no money and even less interest in behaving himself. He had already spent years writing books that were banned in America, smuggled into the country and sold under the table, and now he was living in the coastal hills with artists, poets, lovers, eccentrics and other people who had apparently misplaced their alarm clocks. The vast Pacific was there, the mountains were there, the fog came and went through the canyons, and for a while it was possible to imagine that a person might simply walk away from the machinery of modern life and disappear into the California landscape.

Naturally, the San Francisco Examiner could not let that happen. In 1947 the paper sent reporter Clint Mosher south with a mission: find the dirt on Miller and his bohemian companions. What followed was a four-day campaign portraying the Big Sur artists as a cult of anarchists, nihilists and general enemies of decent civilization. There was marijuana, surrealist poetry, barefoot girls, a dismembered mannequin, Central American jungle music and enough sinister laughter to frighten the average subscriber straight back into his chrome-and-bakelite toaster kitchen. Miller himself was less interested in the American Dream than in escaping it, and the Examiner seemed determined to make that escape look like the beginning of the end of Western Civilization.

But there was something wonderful underneath all the newspaper thunder. Miller believed the artist had a duty to go against the crowd, to choose the uncertain road, even poverty, rather than surrender the imagination to convention. Big Sur gave him a place to live that philosophy. The Examiner gave him a villain. And postwar America, busy building suburbs, appliances, conformity and a new industrial future, suddenly found itself staring at a bunch of strange people on a mountain who appeared to be having a pretty good time. This is the story of Henry Miller, Big Sur, and the newspaper crusade that tried to turn bohemia into a public menace.

The Water Queen: Dolly Adams and FrIsco’s Gilded Vice

Tue, 11 Aug 2026 12:00:00 -0700

Dolly Adams hit Frisco as a wild and precocious child, already carrying the kind of trouble that would follow a girl in the late 1800s. She became infamous as the Water Queen, and she could stay underwater long enough to make a North Beach crowd forget its manners. The bloods, the rich boys, from Nob Hill and Pacific Heights came looking for a little excitement and found Dolly instead. Money followed. Diamonds followed. Soon enough, she had plenty of both.

But Frisco always collects its debts. Dolly moved from the stage into the city’s demimonde and eventually established a bordello on Ellis Street. For a few wild years she made a fortune and sent money home to her family. Then the booze, laudanum, opium, and syphilis began taking their cut. Her beauty faded, her customers disappeared, and her name turned up in William Chambliss’s poisonous book about San Francisco society—a book full of scandal, grudges, and whispers about the respectable men who knew Dolly.

In 1887, Dolly went back to the Big Apple for five months and came back to Frisco looking like a wreck of the woman she had been. She still had diamonds and railroad bonds, but the good times were gone. She sailed for the Orient, learned in Hong Kong that her mother had died, and turned around for home. She never got there. Dolly Adams died aboard ship on the voyage back to San Francisco, twenty-six years old. They embalmed her body and brought her home with a little tin trunk containing diamonds, bonds, and the remnants of a life that had burned hot and fast. In a city built on gold, vice, and second chances, the Water Queen ran out of all three.

Nick DeJohn Part 3—The Trial That Fell Apart: The Strange End of the Nick DeJohn Murder Case

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 15:00:00 -0700

The jury's out, sequestered up at the Fairmont like kings in exile, and Frisco holds its breath after four weeks of front page testimony. Part Three opens with the strange coda nobody asked for — a state Attorney General's daughter kidnapped for an hour and a half, grilled about her father's trip to Chicago, then let go with a mobster's name dropped on the way out. The cops call it a prank. Nobody believes that, and nobody does anything about it either. Then Inspector Frank Ahern takes the stand and finally gives the State what it's been missing all trial: Leonard Calamia's own confession, a hand-drawn map of a barroom, and the names of every man who waited for Nick De John in that basement.

But this case doesn't want to be won clean. Alibis collapse on the stand — Catherine Calamia can't keep her dates straight, Sebastiano Nani can't explain a hotel register with his own signature on it, and a mysterious in-law who was supposedly dead three weeks before the murder somehow lets a witness into a basement anyway. The jury tours the murder scene, La Rocca offers the judge a drink. Thirty hours of deliberation takes the jury to seven-five for acquittal — with the jury still reading back transcripts when the District Attorney asks for the judge to dismiss both the jury and the case.

And that's it. No verdict, no reckoning — just three gangsters walking out the city jail smiling, two more still in the wind, and a District Attorney's decision nobody in the room, on either side, seems willing to explain. Nine dead men traced back to the Chicago Cheese Syndicate mob moving into town, and Frisco never gets its answer for a single one of them.

Some cases close. This one just swirled like mist out into the cool Frisco night and disappeared.

Nick De John, Part 2: She Heard Too Much — The Grand Jury, the Garrot, the Girl in the Bay Window, and a Barefoot Kidnapping in Golden Gate Park.

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 23:00:00 -0700

Fog rolls into the North Beach basements, and Nick DeJohn is still not talking — a garrot saw to that back in May of '47. Part Two picks up the case cold with Freddie Francisco’s break down of rumors in the Tenderloin whisper stream, jumps forward to a judge's chambers where DA Edmund "Pat" Brown torches his own trial rather than let a liar keep the stand, then rewinds to fill in the backstory.

A crab fisherman's wife walks into a police station with an extortion complaint and walks out having cracked a mob murder. Four men plotting in a back bedroom, not realizing the walls have ears — and one very unlucky woman caught listening.

The Grand Jury scene reads like paperback fiction nobody would believe: a widow turning hysterical on the stand, a son dropped at a movie house hours before his father’s killing, and Leonard Calamia — the friend who delivered Nick to the wolves. He runs, changes his name, even gets himself elected an election worker in Albuquerque, and still can't outrun a Christmas package. The trial turns into theater — memories evaporating on the stand, until a secret witness nobody knew existed turns up watching it all from a bay window above the murder scene.

And because this story never ends a chapter quietly: a California Attorney General’s daughter is kidnapped when three men jump into her car and make her drive barefoot through Golden Gate Park, grilling her about her father’s business in Chicago. When they let her go, finally, they drop one last name, a mobster on the lam. Part Three, next week.

Lithe Ah Toy With The Laughing Eyes

Tue, 23 Jun 2026 23:00:00 -0700

In this episode, I tell the story of Ah Toy, San Francisco's first Chinese prostitute and madam. She arrived in 1849 at the age of 20, just as Gold Rush fever was turning the tiny harbor settlement into the wildest and most chaotic city on earth. In no time at all, she became one of the most infamous women in town.
Ah Toy was many things: entrepreneur, madam, celebrity, courtroom ninja, a source of fascination for some and outrage for others. She made a fortune servicing Gold Rush miners, repeatedly stood up to the extortionists and self-appointed community leaders who thought the tall, thin young woman from Canton would be easy prey. She used the courts to defend herself when powerful men tried to dominate her. This worked until they rigged the game.
Through Ah Toy's adventures, we see a city exploding in opportunity, greed, vice, prejudice, and ambition. For those few brief years, she outsmarted her rivals gloriously, made a fortune, and never submitted to those who would attempt to extort her.

A Frisco Murder On a Foggy Spring Night, the Nick DeJohn Killing of 1947, Part 1

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 15:00:00 -0700

Nick DeJohn never knew when he had enough.
He’d slipped out of Chicago in the nick of time, so to speak, with a stolen $250K skim in his pocket and a lot of enemies at his back. Safe in Santa Rosa, California, with his wife and children, he could have stayed quiet and counted his money.
But guys like Nick need the action.
He decided he could muscle into the gambling action in Frisco. Old underworld connections were drifting west based on rumors that Northern California was opening up, and not just in Frisco. Nick figured he could make a move. Maybe get into the dope trade as well. He had plenty of friends.
On May 7, 1947, Nick pointed his big maroon Buick south and drove into San Francisco for the day. He looked at a house he planned to buy, met up with his old Cheese Syndicate partner and good friend Leonard Calamia. They had known each other for years. Their families were close. Nick trusted him. What Nick didn’t know was that Leonard had been sent west by Chicago boss James Franzone to take care of the "DeJohn" problem.
By nightfall they were in North Beach, at La Rocca’s Corner, where a handful of familiar faces waited beneath the glow of neon signs and the haze of cigarette smoke. Nick thought he was spending the evening with old friends at La Rocca's Corner in North Beach. Even top Frisco boss Tony Lima was there that night.
This is Part One of the story of Nick DeJohn and his untimely but unsurprising end, about ambition and betrayal, and the way old debts never disappear.
Nick DeJohn spent the last few hours of his life in a North Beach mafia hangout, surrounded by men he had known for years, smoking, drinking, maybe playing cards.
Nick had no friends in the bar.
Two days later, police found him in the trunk of his Buick out in the Marina District, while the men who put him there were busy planning their next moves.

Belle Cora, Frisco's Notorious Gold Rush Madam Tries To Save Her Man

Sun, 10 May 2026 14:00:00 -0700

The city was young then, all bad whiskey, muddy boots, and men chasing gold like it was salvation itself. Meet Belle Cora, the most notorious madam west of the Mississippi. She came in hard from New Orleans with gambler Charles Cora and enough nerve to tame a town that didn’t scare easy. A sorry of crooked gamblers, desperate miners, abandoned ships rotting in Yerba Buena Cove, and a city where vice wasn’t hidden in alleyways: it sat right at the head of the table wearing silk gloves and diamonds.

Belle and Charles were the kind of lovers that only exist in old crime sheets and whispered stories after midnight. He was a hot-headed riverboat gambler with a pistol close at hand; she was sharp enough to build an empire in a town overrun by lonely men and easy money. Together they clawed their way from mining camps to the top of Frisco’s underworld, throwing lavish parties while judges, politicians, and merchants slipped through the front door after dark. Belle crossed paths with society queen Lavinia Richardson, and Charles tangled with U.S. Marshal William Richardson — a collision that would end with gunfire in a dark alley and a murder trial soaked in bribery and scandal.

Then came the reckoning. Newspaper wars, political grudges, vigilante justice — the whole rotten carnival rolled downhill fast. The feud surrounding Belle and Charles ignited one of the most infamous Vigilance Committee hangings in Frisco history, ending beneath the shadow of the gallows while church bells rang through the fog. It’s a story packed with doomed romance, corruption, revenge, and the kind of hard luck that built this town one coffin at a time. This is a bonus episode of Frisco: The Secret History. You can hear part of it free, but for the whole dark ride, head over to Patreon and subscribe.

A Playlist From Hal Smith To Accompany His Interview On Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band

Sat, 02 May 2026 15:00:00 -0700

Yesterday, I published wherein I interviewed drummer and jazz historian Hal Smith. We discussed the music scene in San Francisco in the 30s and 40s and how one man, Lu Watters and his band The Yerba Buena Jazz Band, saved traditional jazz after the emergence of swing music.

I asked him for a playlist our listeners. He provided this list of songs and youtube links with extensive commentary. Thank you, Hal!

Enjoy!

Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band Save Trad Jazz, An Interview With Hal Smith

Fri, 01 May 2026 12:00:00 -0700

In this episode, I interview drummer and jazz historian Hal Smith. We discuss the music scene in San Francisco in the 30s and 40s and how one man, Lu Watters and his band The Yerba Buena Jazz Band, saved traditional jazz after the emergence of swing music. The musicians, the clubs, and how an girlfriend's irate father with a pistol put Lu and his band on the front page, launching their career.

All in all, fascinating story!

Links:

Hal's website: http://halsmithjazz.com.

Books:

Clancy Hayes, The Swinging Minstrel.

Dustbowl To Disney—The Lost Memoir of Danny Alguire.

The Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line!

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 19:00:00 -0700

We are going to look at the life and times of little Francis Van Wie, the Diminutive Dutchman known also as the Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line, the Car Barn Casanova, and the Trolley Toreador, and other nicknames. Francis managed to get hitched eighteen times over the course of his eighty-eight years. He rarely, if ever, bothered to get divorced. He did a stint in San Quentin for bigamy.

He started making nationwide news in 1915 at the age of twenty-seven and would continue to do so until he passed on from this mortal coil.

Francis covered so much territory over the course of his life, had so many jobs, told so many stories, and married so many women, as many as twelve concurrently at one point, it’s been a bit of a challenge to map his odyssey.

I believe I have gotten it right.

Bones Remmer Bribe Attempt Refused!—Freddie Says No To Gambler's Cash

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 18:00:00 -0700

In this episode, I talk about the time well-known grifter, Charles Auberguy, he of the Frisco netherworld and serial inheritance scams, contacted San Francisco Examiner columnist Freddie Francisco, ex-con and brilliant chronicler of high society foibles and underworld gossip, with a lucrative bribe offer, $500 a month, for laying off Chin Lim Mow, aka The Chinaman, gambling boss of San Mateo County.

Freddie played along and invited Auberguy to come visit him at his luxury apartment atop Nob Hill, replete with butler, the following week.

Immediately, Examiner Editor Bill Wren, Freddie, reporters Ernie Lenn and Ed Montgomery decided to capture the whole thing on tape, and laid out the plan. A few hours before the appointed time, they wired Freddie's plush digs for sound.

Auberguy showed up right on time and tossed some carefully folded bills on the table. Freddie maneuvered him over to the stereo where the microphone was hidden and drilled him for details about the who what when and the how much he was going to make each month. We have a transciption of that conversation in the episode..

When Freddie spoke the agreed upon phrase, the two reporters, the sound man and the photographer, burst out of the back room, flash bulbs popping.

Auberguy didn't protest. He smiled sheepishly, picked up his cash, and walked out into the night.

There was a fair amount of fallout. A sledgehammer raid at The Chinaman's 101 Club south of the city. Police blockades at Bone's Club on Turk and Ed Sahati's joint at the Hotel Somerton on Geary.

A lot of sound and fury, but nothing really changed in Frisco. That would take a few more years.

Come to think of it, that might have been the first payoff Freddie Francisco ever turned down.

Bonus #5—Wren vs Patterson: Does The Word "Poontang" Belong In A Family Newspaper

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 14:00:00 -0700

In this episode, I’m diving into one of my favorite San Francisco stories—the kind that lives right at the intersection of journalism, mischief, and outright audacity. It centers on two unforgettable characters from the San Francisco Examiner: the hard-driving, razor-sharp editor Bill Wren, and the wildly charismatic columnist Bob Patterson—better known to readers as Freddie Francisco. Bob was one of the most charming and fascinating men I’ve ever met.

This was the clash of two monumental titans over the use of the word "poontang" in the newspaper.

I walk you through Wren’s amazing rise, a tale of grit and termination—from a runaway kid riding the rails west to becoming one of the most feared and respected newsroom bosses in the country—and how he hired Patterson, a brilliant writer with a criminal past, a trickster at heart. Their relationship was equal parts respect and chaos, which made what happened almost inevitable.

At the heart of the story is a ridiculous, very San Francisco kind of bet they made about whether the word “poontang”would ever appear in the paper again, after Bob used it in one of his columns.

What followed is pure Freddie Francisco: clever, subversive, and brazen.

It’s a small story on the surface, but it captures something bigger about Frisco, the era, and the kinds of characters who used to run the show.

Who won the bet?

You’ll have to listen to the episode!

Dolly Fine Part 4: Dolly Comes In From The Cold & Waltzes Off Into The Night

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:00:00 -0700

In Part Four of the Dolly Fine story, I bring the Dolly Fine story to a close.

Where we last left off, Dolly had been arrested and charged on eight felony counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The DA had her dead to rights and such was the political climate of the moment, he was going to make hay by pressing her to the full extent of the law.

Instead of arriving for her arraignment, she took flight and forfeited her $1000 bail. Every sighting of her, from San Diego to Paris, made headlines around the country. Dolly sold papers.

On the eighty-ninth day of her exile, she got word to her attorney, Jake "The Master" Ehrlich, to arrange for her to turn herself in. Jake met Dolly in Oakland, covered her face with a large scarf and sunglasses and they took the ferry back to Oakland.

On the morning of her trial, Jake pulled one of his most Ehrlichian moves and brought Frisco's elites face to face with their own hypocricy.

Did Dolly walk? Of course she did, but at what cost?

Because Jake had demanded quite an unforeseen fee for his services.

Frisco Noir with Rachel Walther #3; "Sudden Fear" (1952) & "House On Telegraph Hill" (1951)

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:00:00 -0800

In this episode of Frisco: The Secret History, Knox Bronson welcomes back film writer Rachel Walther to explore two classic film noir movies set in San Francisco: Sudden Fear (1952) starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, and House on Telegraph Hill (1951) starring Valentina Cortese and Richard Basehart.

Rachel dives into the production history, fascinating behind-the-scenes drama, and the real San Francisco locations that shaped these atmospheric thrillers. From Joan Crawford’s tense love triangle with co-stars to wartime backstories and dramatic Telegraph Hill chases, the conversation reveals how the city itself became a character in post-war noir filmmaking.

They also explore why San Francisco’s dramatic hills, foggy streets, and working-class past made it such a natural setting for crime dramas in the 1940s and 50s—and how these films captured a version of the city that has largely disappeared.

If you love classic cinema, film noir, or San Francisco history, this episode uncovers the strange and shadowy stories behind two remarkable movies.

FRISCO TALES - APRIL 27, 1938 - A trailer

Wed, 04 Mar 2026 17:00:00 -0800

On April 27, 1938, San Francisco woke up to a banner headline: “Jury Indicts Dolly Fine as Boys Tell of Vice Den.” In this bonus episode of Frisco: The Secret History Podcast, I zoom out from Dolly Fine’s indictment to take you inside one extraordinary spring day in the city.

I explore the political optics behind Dolly’s charges, the lingering fallout from the Atherton corruption investigation, and the broader culture of tolerated vice that defined Frisco in the 1930s. From a shocking “white slavery” trial to a police sergeant’s scandalous midnight “auto ride” with an arrested streetwalker, the day’s stories reveal a city caught between reform and routine corruption—while the rest of the world edged closer to war.

This is a Patreon-only bonus episode available to members at the $5 tier and above.

The Lady in Red Vanishes; Dolly Fine Part 3

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 12:00:00 -0800

In this episode, I let Jake Ehrlich do a lot of the talking, because frankly, no one skewered San Francisco’s hypocrisy quite like he did. Dolly wasn’t just fighting a criminal charge—she was being fed to the wolves in a city that had tolerated, taxed, and quietly protected vice for decades. Suddenly, after one raid involving a handful of well-connected teenage boys, everyone found religion.

What fascinates me most here is Dolly’s code. She could have blown the lid off police graft. She could have named names. Instead, she chose silence—and then she chose to disappear. Whether you see that as loyalty, pride, or strategy, it says everything about how the underworld operated. And in the middle of it all? A mother terrified that her child might see her face in the papers.

The Lady In Red Part Two: Collateral Damage

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 15:00:00 -0800

In this episode, I continue the story of Dolly Fine as San Francisco’s long-standing system of tolerated vice begins to unravel in the wake of the Atherton Report of 1937. Police shakeups, grand jury investigations, and rising public pressure tightened the noose the long-tolerated and city-wide machinery of grart, even as those very same players who profited for decades scrambled to protect themselves.

When a police raid on Dolly's house triggered by a high-society matron's call to the Chief of Police, caught her son and his friends in her parlor, the response was swift and ferocious: felony indictments, screaming headlines, and officials suddenly eager to prove they could clean house. The men walked free, the broader system went largely untouched, and Dolly—branded the “Lady in Red”—was singled out as the fall guy. Faced with the choice of prison, suicide, or breaking her lifelong code of the underworld and becoming a snitch, she vanished, setting off a nationwide manhunt, or madam-hunt. Her tell-all interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, published after she had absconded, did not help her case, nor Attorney, Jake "The Master" Ehrlichs' future defense of her crimes.

Dolly Fine—The Lady In Red & Frisco's Empire of Vice

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 22:00:00 -0800

Dolly Fine was one of San Francisco’s last great madams and a defining figure of the city’s wide-open 1930s nightlife. Tall, blonde, impeccably dressed, and deeply embedded in the city’s underworld, Dolly ran one of the most profitable and professionally managed houses in town—right as Frisco’s long tradition of tolerated vice was beginning to crack under public scrutiny.

Before diving into Dolly’s reign, Knox takes us on a whirlwind tour of the city’s legendary madams, from Gold Rush pioneers like Irene McCready and Ah Toy to fan favorites Tessie Wall and Jessie Hayman. These women helped define San Francisco’s peculiar relationship with sex, money, and moral flexibility—a relationship that lasted for decades, until reformers, headlines, and political embarrassment forced the city to look too closely at its own reflection.

Dolly Fine’s story sits squarely at that breaking point. With ties to Prohibition-era smuggling, early gangster life, and a past that police later dredged up with relish, Dolly faced the full force of the Atherton investigation and a changing civic mood. Though she survived the Grand Jury and continued operating, the ground was shifting beneath her feet. Part One sets the stage for her dramatic fall—her arrest, flight, and nationwide manhunt—stories that will unfold in Part Two.

Key Topics Covered

San Francisco’s long tradition of tolerated vice
Legendary Frisco madams from the Gold Rush onward
Dolly Fine’s rise in the 1930s underworld
Prohibition smuggling and early gangster connections
The Atherton Report and systemic police graft
The McDonough Brothers and institutional corruption
Public revulsion at graft versus tolerance of vice
Jake Ehrlich’s defense of Dolly Fine
The cultural turning point that ended old Frisco

La Cosa Nostra Gang War 1928-32 Bonus Episode Trailer

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 16:00:00 -0800

We pick up alongside Episode Nine on Bones Remmer, zooming out to look at what was happening in San Francisco in 1928 as the La Cosa Nostra gang war intensified in North Beach. Along the way, we pause on the culture of the moment: the movies people packed theaters to see, the arrival of Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie, and the everyday stories that shared front-page space with organized crime.

A Very Frisco Christmas Special

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 01:00:00 -0800

This special holiday episode of Frisco — The Secret History explores how Christmas was celebrated in San Francisco from the Gold Rush through the 1940s. The episode opens with a reflection on Emperor Norton, the city’s most beloved eccentric and an early, outspoken champion of civil rights, whose proclamations stood in stark contrast to the exclusionary realities of his era.

From there, the story traces the evolution of Christmas in San Francisco: from the rough-and-tumble mining camps of the foothills, where celebrations could stretch on for days, to the rise of elaborate urban traditions centered around downtown department stores. Listeners are taken inside the origins of iconic holiday spectacles at City of Paris, the transformation of Union Square into a month-long winter festival, and the Emporium’s famously extravagant rooftop attractions.

Blending archival newspaper accounts, civic history, and wry observations, the episode captures a distinctly San Francisco version of Christmas—equal parts spectacle, improvisation, excess, and absurdity—set against moments of hardship, war, and rapid change. The result is a vivid portrait of how the city celebrated the holidays while remaining unmistakably, and sometimes unruly, itself.

Call It Frisco Part 3: Emperor Norton and Herb Caen Myths Debunked!

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 13:00:00 -0800

In this episode of The Secret History of Frisco, Knox Bronson returns—hopefully for the last time—to San Francisco’s most emotionally charged semantic battlefield: the word “Frisco.”

Building on the earlier episodes Call It Frisco and Call It Frisco #2 — Sally Stanford Weighs In On The Eternal Conflict, Knox dismantles two of the most commonly cited weapons in the anti-Frisco arsenal: Emperor Norton’s supposed 1872 proclamation banning the word, and Herb Caen’s famously stern admonition, Don’t Call It Frisco.

New historical research from the Emperor Norton Trust reveals that Norton’s decree almost certainly never existed at all—an invention of a 1939 biography that somehow hardened into accepted truth. Meanwhile, Herb Caen himself ultimately reversed course, publicly inviting the city to reclaim “Frisco” as the sailors’, adventurers’, and Gold Rush city it once was.

Along the way, we explore sailor slang, Gold Rush linguistics, cultural snobbery, postwar migration, and the shifting moral geography of San Francisco itself. The episode closes by giving the final word to legendary madam and restaurateur Sally Stanford, who reminds us that the city’s original characters never called it anything but Frisco.

This is less a debate than a historical reckoning—and perhaps a small act of linguistic liberation.

Shownotes courtesy of ChatGPT. I find perverse enjoyment these weird summations.

Bones Remmer Pt. 1—Tenderloin Gambling King, Jack Ruby, & A Short History of Frisco's La Cosa Nostra

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 22:00:00 -0800

In this episode, we step back into San Francisco at the end of the roaring twenties, when bootleggers, blackhanders, and quiet Mafia bosses carved out invisible empires in North Beach. It was a time when the city’s underworld tried to keep its violence out of sight — but the headlines told another story.

It’s also the backdrop for the rise of Elmer “Bones” Remmer, the city’s gambling king who would come to rule its after-hours joints, brothels, and backroom poker games from the Tenderloin to Lake Tahoe. His story intertwines with that of Jack Ruby, who once dealt cards for him, and the quiet influence of the Lanza family, who kept the Mafia’s presence subdued but steady. The bridges were about to open, the old order was crumbling.

Rachel Walther Discusses "The Lady from Shanghai" Orson Welles’ Fractured Dreamscape of San Francisco Noir

Sat, 18 Oct 2025 17:00:00 -0700

This installment is all about the wild 1947 film noir The Lady From Shanghai, and guest Rachel Walther, a film historian with a book coming out soon called Born To Lose, The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon, breaks down the chaotic story behind it.

The Lady From Shanghai film was a last-ditch effort by Orson Welles to get back in Hollywood’s good graces after his studio battles over The Magnificent Ambersons. He literally phoned up Columbia head Harry Cohn and pitched a thriller based on a random book title he saw, just to get the cash for a play he was staging. The drama ratcheted up when Cohn insisted Welles cast his then-estranged wife, superstar Rita Hayworth, which Hayworth was actually into! She saw it as a chance to ditch her "sex goddess" image, even cutting and dyeing her famous red hair platinum blonde as a big middle finger to Cohn. However, Welles—being Welles—turned a simple plot into a "noir dreamscape fantasia" with a confusing story, kicking off the shoot with a crazy production on Errol Flynn’s yacht in Mexico where a cameraman tragically dropped dead on the first day. Errol's suggestion to simply put the corpse in a duffel bag and throw it overboard was ignored.

Rachel explains that while the plot is "nuts" and full of holes, the film's stunning visuals, especially once the action moves to San Francisco, are what make it a classic. Welles shot in distinct city spots like Chinatown, the Steinhardt Aquarium, and the iconic Hall of Mirrors at Playland at the Beach, which was a huge, custom-built set back in L.A. This visual feast, full of off-kilter energy, is why the film sits so high in the pantheon of SF noir. Interestingly, the film was a flop at the time because audiences and critics just weren’t ready for how strange and abstract it was. The discussion wraps up by exploring the tragic arc of Welles' career after Citizen Kane, where his inability to compromise and his obsessive creative nature led him to be constantly shut out of his own projects, proving that the film's theme of duplicity was really Welles’ commentary on his hostile relationship with Hollywood, not just his messy divorce from Hayworth.

"WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex" (1944) Part Two

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 16:00:00 -0700

Welcome back, Frisco fans! You're tuning into Part Two and the conclusion of our deep dive into the San Francisco Examiner's 1944 sensation: "WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex," by the legendary, if controversial, author Gertrude Atherton. If you missed the start, you definitely want to go back and listen to Part One! This episode picks up where we left off, following Atherton's increasingly frantic, first-hand reports as she descends from the glittering "Top of the Mark"—where she finds "all...attending strictly to business" in the gloom—down to the "second rate" clubs. She’s on a mission to document the moral "menacing breakdown of Feminine Morals in Our Brawling Barrooms." Things get louder, darker, and in her estimation, much uglier, with reports of "lewd" remarks and women "leaning heavily on the men" in crowded, raucous nightclubs.

Atherton, an 86-year-old self-proclaimed lifelong teetotaler, continues her survey of San Francisco's wartime nightlife, moving from the crowded dance halls to the more respectable cocktail bars frequented by women after a hard day's work. She actually offers a rare moment of nuance, distinguishing between the girls who are "out for the best that life has to offer" and the "frustrateds on the loose," seeking only an expensive fling. However, her true disdain is reserved for the affluent, blowsy women drinking from 11 AM to midnight in Marina bars, whose children wander in begging for dinner. This segment culminates in Atherton’s final, scathing assessment where she concludes that the majority of these "degraded women are fools—possibly morons" who lack the mental discipline to handle their newfound wartime "freedom" and turn into "human tanks."

The conclusion of Atherton's crusade isn't about mere disapproval—it's about a proposed societal cure. After rejecting prohibition as a remedy, she argues that these "fools are superfluous" and suggests they should be allowed to "drink themselves to death and the sooner the better," or else be "shut them up in institutions." Yikes. She then pivots to what she sees as the real problem: the children. Atherton makes a final, passionate appeal for saving this "new generation" by establishing large, comfortable country colonies with schools, proper care, and "personal affection" from "intelligent, motherly women." It’s a wild, shocking ride from a woman whose history includes links to eugenicist ideas and a clear sense of white supremacy. Join us for this final, unsettling look at a major San Francisco media event of 1944.

The Examiner's 1944 Moral Crusade Against Barfly Women—"WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex" Part 1

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 17:00:00 -0700

In this episode of The Secret History of Frisco, we're diving into the San Francisco Examiner's sensational 1944 moral crusade against Barfly Women and the threat they posed to the social fabric of San Francisco. The paper hired the renowned 86-year-old author and novelist, Gertrude Atherton, a San Francisco native, to mount an investigation into the phenomenon of unaccompanied women drinking in saloons and nightclubs.

We trace the history of William Randolph Hearst's and Joseph Pulitzer's battle for domination in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century and the sensational, fact-free style style of reportage that gave rise to the term "yellow journalism," and created the outrage that led to the Spanish-American War in 1898, the one where Hearst famously said, "You furnish the pictures, and I'll furnish the war!"

Finally, we circle back to to 1944 and Gertrude Atherton's first installment of "Women In Saloons, The Shame of My Sex." The city bursting with wartime workers. Women daring to have a drink in public. Atherton's piece is a classic piece of moralizing, painting these women as mothers neglecting their kids and succumbing to "riotous indecencies." She herself was born to great wealth and privilege and it shows.

In her first installment, she hilariously brings along an escort to down her drinks while she performs her first-hand research, since she is a teetotaler. This installment ends as she and her escort make it to the legendary Top o' the Mark Restaurant and Bar atop Nob Hill.

To be continued.

Jimmie Tarantino Pt. 2: D.A. Thomas Lynch Spells Out Jimmie's Scams in Post-WWII Frisco

Fri, 22 Aug 2025 12:00:00 -0700

California State Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch was the Assistant D.A. in San Francisco in the late 1940s, the years Jimmie Tarantino, blackmailer and extortionist magazine publisher, was plying his trade in San Francisco at the behest of Frisco gambling czar Bones Remmer.

This episode comes from the Oral History Department of the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, an interview conducted with Lynch in 1978. It's a fascinating overview of the era and the behind-the-scenes battles I inadvertently stumbled up so many years ago that led to the creation of "The Secret History of Frisco" podcast.

Frank Sinatra is in there, once again, as is Barney Ross, the drug-addicted war hero and prize-fighter. Lynch mentions many prominent San Franciscans of the era, those he suspected of being blackmailed by Tarantino: Joe Vanessi, Melvin Belli, S.F. Judge Michelson, Lawrence Welk, and others. Lynch tells the story of Sally Stanford standing up to Tarantino.

He also mentions that they had Tarantino's office and phone bugged for years.

Jimmie Tarantino Part 1: When Frank Sinatra and Mickey Cohen Invested in His Hollywood Nite Life Magazine

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 14:00:00 -0700

This episode of "The Secret History of Frisco" podcast introduces listeners to Jimmie Tarantino, a man described as a "louse, a blowhard, a barely literate, anti-Communist shake-down artist." The episode delves into Tarantino's early life in East Orange, New Jersey, and his eventual move to Hollywood where he became a peripheral member of Frank Sinatra's inner circle, "The Varsity."

I discuss Sinatra's deep and complicated ties to organized crime and he used those connections to get out of his contract with bandleader Tommy Dorsey. It involved a pistol jammed in Dorsey's mouth.

The podcast then details how Tarantino, with financial backing from Sinatra and mobster Mickey Cohen, started a tabloid called Hollywood Nite Life to extort celebrities. This venture eventually led to Tarantino double-crossing Sinatra, fleeing to San Francisco, and joining forces with crime boss Bones Remmer. The podcast also shares a moving story about Sinatra's courage as a champion of civil rights and the remarkable life of boxing champion and war hero Barney Ross, who was also involved with Tarantino's magazine.

Call It FRISCO Part Two—Sally Stanford Weighs In On The Eternal Conflict

Tue, 29 Jul 2025 21:00:00 -0700

In "Call It FRISCO, Part 2," host Knox Bronson defends his podcast's name, "The Secret History of Frisco," against objections from hither and thither, including the Reddit San Francisco group. Historical figures like Emperor Norton and madam Sally Stanford each make an appearance, showcasing their differing views on the term "Frisco." "Colorful characters like Foghorn Murphy and Charles Cora, embraced the name, contrasting them with later transplants who, according to Stanford's autobiography, brought "provincial" sensibilities and disapproved of the city's previously open and permissive culture. The Secret History of Frisco is a deliberate nod to this older, more authentic San Francisco spirit, despite suprisingly vehement opposition.

FRISCO NOIR With Rachel Walther—The Maltese Falcon No.1 (1931) & No.2 (1941) and Dark Passage (1947)

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 15:00:00 -0700

In this episode, the first of a series, Knox Bronson, host of "The Secret History of Frisco" podcast, welcomes Rachel Walther, a film noir expert and author, to discuss the genre's connection to San Francisco. Walther, who writes for the Film Noir Foundation's "Noir City" magazine and has a forthcoming book on "Dog Day Afternoon," highlights San Francisco's significant role in film, particularly after World War II, due to its cinematic landscape and the rise of on-location shooting. The conversation then delves into two adaptations of "The Maltese Falcon," the 1931 and 1941 versions. While the 1941 film, directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, is widely considered a foundational noir, the 1931 version, starring Ricardo Cortez, is noted for its different interpretation of Sam Spade and its more studio-bound production.

The discussion also explores the historical context of San Francisco in the 1930s and 40s, touching upon the city's organized crime elements and how those were rarely directly depicted in films of the era. Walther explains that '30s films set in San Francisco often harked back to the Barbary Coast lore rather than contemporary issues. She attributes the surge of on-location shooting in San Francisco in the post-war period to lighter camera equipment and filmmakers' desire to move beyond studio sets, inspired by Italian neorealism. The interview concludes with a focus on the Film Noir Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to film restoration, highlighting their magazine and restored films like "Woman on the Run" and "The Man Who Cheated Himself," both shot extensively in San Francisco in the late 1940s and early 1950s—considered the golden era of noir in the city.

The Story of Johnny Ochsner, The Rich Kid Romeo, and the Lovesick Stowaways

Mon, 21 Jul 2025 15:00:00 -0700

The episode chronicles the romantic life of Johnny Ochsner, a young Oakland oil heir whose escapades in the 1940s became international news.

Marguerite Faye Human and Teresa Briston, separately stowawayed across the Pacific in pursuit of Johnny, driven by dreams of marriage.

The story involves underage sex, a high-seas burglary, and the intervention of the FBI, naval officers, juvenile court, as well as Johnny's wealthy mother, who actively interfered to protect her son from what she perceived as "gold-diggers."

Johnny's romantic life continued to be tumultuous, marked by a number marriages, divorces and annulments, throughout his life.

Wealth, privilege, and very likely alcohol all play a part in these chapters from the life of the rich kid Romeo from Oakland.

Bonus Episode 3—When Sally Stanford Kicked Humphrey Bogart Out Of Her Flagship Pleasure Palace At 1144 Pine Street In 1941

Fri, 04 Jul 2025 17:00:00 -0700

This bonus episode of "The Secret History of Frisco" podcast delves into the scandalous lives intertwined with San Francisco's notorious madam, Sally Stanford. Born Mabel Busby in 1903, Stanford's early life of poverty and a wrongful imprisonment for cashing stolen checks fueled her determination to achieve financial independence. By 21, she opened her first brothel in San Francisco's Tenderloin, adopting the name Sally Stanford and quickly expanding her empire to multiple locations across the city. Her autobiography, "The Lady of the House," paints a vivid picture of a "live-and-let-live" San Francisco, where her establishments thrived.

The podcast highlights her flagship brothel at 1144 Pine Street, a "fortress" she acquired in 1941, designed by Stanford White. This lavish establishment, frequented by the city's elite and wartime contractors, became a hub of clandestine activity, with rumors suggesting even the early details of the United Nations were hammered out in her living room.

The episode then introduces two legendary Hollywood figures and their connections to Stanford. Humphrey Bogart, despite his public image as a "tough and rugged good guy," is revealed by Stanford as a "foul-mouthed, pugnacious drunk" who was eventually "eighty-sixed" from her establishment due to his boorish behavior towards her girls. This account significantly diminishes his heroic luster in the host's eyes.

In contrast, Errol Flynn—a "swashbuckling scalawag"—was a beloved figure at Sally's. After decking a Marine at Finnochio's, a famous North Beach nightclub known for its female impersonators, Flynn sought refuge at Stanford's Pine Street house for two weeks in late 1945. Stanford recounts his charm and the fact that he "tested all of the talent, including both shifts, twice," going through the place "like a dose of salts." Despite his personal struggles and "screwy beliefs," Flynn's uninhibited nature and courage captivated Stanford and her girls.

The episode concludes by bidding adieu to Bogart and Flynn, promising more tales of the formidable Sally Stanford in future installments of "The Secret History of Frisco."

The Secret Life of Bob Patterson, The Charming Ex-Con Who Terrrorized High Society With His Column, "Freddie Francisco Observes" In The 1940s

Mon, 23 Jun 2025 16:00:00 -0700

The Secret Life of Freddie Francisco: A Rogue's Rise and Fall

This episode of "The Secret History of Frisco" delves into the captivating, often scandalous, life of Bob Patterson, a writer of prodigious talent and even more prodigious roguishness. Under the pen name Freddie Francisco, Patterson became Northern California's most powerful newspaper columnist in the 1940s for the San Francisco Examiner. His dazzling prose and irreverent insights into San Francisco's elite captivated readers, but his career came crashing down in 1949 when Hollywood Life exposed his hidden past: a convicted criminal who had served four prison stints.

Born Robert Lawson Preston in 1907, Patterson was a man of many aliases and even more arrests—over 40 in his lifetime. At just 18, he was arrested for passing bad checks as "Maximillian Carlton." A year later, he was reporting for the San Francisco Chronicle before moving to New York City to continue his journalistic career. As the host aptly puts it, "criming came as naturally to Bob as breathing: it was simply in his DNA, as was writing." He became a "rococo stylist" who ghost-wrote memoirs for infamous figures like lawyer Jake Ehrlich and San Francisco madam Sally Stanford.

Patterson ran the gamut from confidence games and larceny in Chicago to grand larceny, robbery, and assault in New York, leading to stints in Elmira Reformatory and Sing Sing Prison. He even impersonated a prominent San Francisco socialite, Niles Larsen, to pass bad checks—a clear indication of his "Trickster's natural disdain for the upper crust."

Out of prison, near the end of WWII, Patterson wrote a letter to the San Francisco Examiner on Time Magazine stationery, got hired and moved to San Francisco.

The episode concludes with a reading from Freddie Francisco's September 26, 1946 column, "'Bad' Women, but They Make Good Company," which subtly challenges societal notions of respectability and reputation. Patterson, ever the astute observer, critiques the hypocrisy of the upper crust, highlighting that "bad" women often possess more warmth and humanity than their "reputable" counterparts. The host muses on Patterson's enduring appeal, wondering if such a "rascal" could thrive in today's journalistic landscape.

Interview with Paul Drexler, Author of "Notorious San Francisco: True Tales of Crime, Passion, and Murder"

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 21:00:00 -0700

In this episode, I talk to author and historian Paul Drexler about the crime and vice rooted in the very birth of San Francisco and their evolution and influence in the city for the next hundred years.

People and groups discussed in the episode include the Sydney Ducks, the Hounds, the San Francisco Police Department, Donna Fine, Sally Stanford, Bones Remmer and his mafia connections, including one-time employee Jack Ruby, California Governor and Attorney General Edmund G. Brown, and various other criminals and their Frisco escapades.

Paul's Book, Notorious San Francisco: True Tales of Crime, Passion, and Murder, can be found here on Amazon.

His website for his San Francisco Crime Walking Tours can be found here.

The Hawaiian Princess Who Wanted To Sing

Thu, 29 May 2025 18:00:00 -0700

I have a wonderful episode for you today, the story of the Hawaiian princess who came to San Francisco to open a nightclub where she could sing. We will again encounter lawyer Jake Ehrlich, of course. The McDonough Brothers, who controlled all the vice in the city, Chief of Police William Quinn and his corrupt Captain Fred Lemon at Central Station, also make appearances.

The Princess came to California in 1930. In 1933, she opened the Club Kilokawa on Bush St., full of pictures of Diamondhead and Waikiki Beach, palm fronds, coconuts, and prostitutes in grass skirts. It was very popular place.

However, the Princess refused to make the payments to the McDonough Brothers' graft machine and drama ensued. Ultimately, the Princess made some remarks to the press after a Grand Jury appearance. Her short speech led to the creation of Atherton Report of 1937, which shook Frisco to her core almost as badly as the great quake of 1906.

Bonus Episode No. 1—Call It Frisco!

Sat, 10 May 2025 17:00:00 -0700

This episode explores the long and often contentious history of the nickname "Frisco" for San Francisco. Despite the strong disapproval of many, including Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, the term has deep roots stretching back to the Gold Rush era.

We delve into the earliest documented uses of "Frisco" in the mid-19th century, finding it in letters from 1849 and newspapers like the Placer Times in 1850, suggesting it was once a common and respectable abbreviation, even appearing in genteel literature by 1868. The episode also touches on the theory of a Middle English origin for "Frisco" as a port term. We examine the contrasting perspective, highlighting how figures like Emperor Norton, the judiciary, and Herb Caen later campaigned against the nickname, viewing it as vulgar and disrespectful, particularly associating it with outsiders and the city's more unruly past.

The discussion then shifts to the more nuanced and contemporary understanding of "Frisco." We explore how, despite the traditional disdain, the term has persisted and even been reclaimed by certain communities, notably within Black San Francisco culture, as a sign of solidarity and identity. Even Herb Caen eventually softened his stance, acknowledging it as a "salty nickname." Ultimately, the episode concludes by inviting listeners to reconsider their own use of "Frisco" as a way to connect with the city's rich and complex history, particularly the "wide-open" era that this podcast aims to resurrect.

Links:

The Secret History of Frisco website: www.thehistoryoffrisco.com
Patreon page: www.Patreon.com/Frisco
"San Francisco Sea Chanties of the Gold Rush Era" by Dick Holdstock & Co. (Available as a download or as a CD)

A call to Action:

Share your stories and knowledge of San Francisco in the 1930s and 1940s! If you have expertise or anecdotes to share, please reach out. Tell your friends who love San Francisco history about the podcast, and have a little fun... call it Frisco!

Episode 1: Vice Defined San Francisco's DNA At Its Inception

Sat, 03 May 2025 17:00:00 -0700

Welcome to The Secret History of Frisco, a podcast peeling back the layers of San Francisco's vibrant and often illicit past during its last wide-open era, 1934 to 1953. Join host Knox Bronson as we journey through the city's smoky backrooms, bustling waterfronts, and glittering nightlife, where fortunes were made and lost, and a unique live-and-let-live ethos reigned supreme, naturally contingent on the right palms being greased. From the early days of Gold Rush outlaws like The Hounds and the Sydney Ducks, who set the stage for a city steeped in vice, to the looming figures of Mafia boss Frank Lanza and the corrupting influence of the McDonough brothers, we'll explore the intricate dance between crime, politics, and the burgeoning cultural landscape that captured the world's imagination, as immortalized in Tony Bennett's iconic ode to the "cool grey city of love."

In this inaugural episode, we set the stage for our exploration of Frisco, a term embraced for its outlaw swagger and the swirling mix of cultures, dreams, and darkness that defined San Francisco. We'll encounter the legendary defense attorney Jake Ehrlich, a true embodiment of the city's spirit, and glimpse the powerful forces that shaped its underworld, including the entrenched Mafia and the deeply compromised San Francisco Police Department, whose lucrative take from vice painted a picture of a city operating by its own set of rules. From the Barbary Coast's den of iniquity to the nascent jazz clubs and the shadow of the impending crackdown, prepare to delve into the secret history of a Frisco on the cusp of transformation, a city as seductive and dangerous as the fog that rolls through the Golden Gate.

When Gamblers and Newspapermen Ruled The Cool Grey City of Love

Wed, 19 Mar 2025 21:00:00 -0700

Ever wondered who really pulled the strings in San Francisco during its post-war golden age? It wasn't the mayor or the board of supervisors.

When the war ended in 1946, San Francisco experienced an unprecedented boom. Servicemen who'd fallen in love with the city returned to stay, nightlife flourished, and business thrived in what appeared to be a model American city. But beneath this picturesque facade, two men – neither elected nor appointed – controlled nearly everything.

On one side was Bill Wren, a powerful newspaperman working for William Randolph Hearst's Examiner, who effectively ran both the city and the state Democratic Party through his influence and connections. His rival, Bones Remmer, was a professional gambler who had previously managed the Cal-Neva Lodge before establishing himself in San Francisco, where he systematically took over various aspects of city business. Their intense rivalry and behind-the-scenes power struggle shaped the city in ways that have remained largely hidden from historical accounts.

My fascination with this era began unexpectedly while working as a copy boy at the Examiner in the 1970s. A chance conversation with an elderly bartender led me to discover phone tap transcripts from 1950 revealing conversations between these power brokers. Most surprisingly, I learned my own grandfather had been "a player" in this shadowy world – creating a personal connection that fueled decades of research into San Francisco's secret history.

Join me as we explore the fascinating web of influence, corruption, and colorful characters that defined San Francisco from 1946-1953. From legendary establishments with their famous Pisco Punch to Hollywood connections and Bay Area criminal enterprises, we'll uncover the stories that shaped the city we know today. Have family stories from this era or research leads? I'd love to hear from you as we resurrect this crucial chapter in San Francisco's past.