FRISCO—The Secret History
Join us on a cinematic journey through the last wild years when San Francisco was still wide-open. The cops ran the town in the Thirties and Bones Remmer ran the town in the Forties.
Battles raged between the factions of dark and light in the hidden realms of San Francisco’s power elite, behind the headlines, from the celestial dominions of Nob Hill eateries and private clubs down to the nether depths of the dive bars in the heart of the Tenderloin, up to the Barbary Coast and jazz joints of North Beach and over to the banks and brokerages in the Financial District …
FRISCO will bring alive that wild and bygone era of the Cool Grey City of Love that seduced the world.
Episodes
31 episodes
29—Belle Cora, Frisco's Notorious Gold Rush Madam Tries To Save Her Man
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 ...
28—A Playlist From Hal Smith To Accompany His Interview On Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band
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...
27—Lu Watters and his Yerba Buena Jazz Band Save Trad Jazz, An Interview With Hal Smith
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 ...
26: The Ding Dong Daddy of the D-Car Line!
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 hitc...
#25 Bones Remmer Bribe Attempt Refused!—Freddie Says No To Gambler's Cash
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 societ...
Bonus #5—Wren vs Patterson: Does The Word "Poontang" Belong In A Family Newspaper
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 Examin...
Dolly Fine Part 4: Dolly Comes In From The Cold & Waltzes Off Into The Night
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 ...
Frisco Noir with Rachel Walther #3; "Sudden Fear" (1952) & "House On Telegraph Hill" (1951)
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...
FRISCO TALES - APRIL 27, 1938 - A trailer
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 ...
Ep. 11, Part 3 - Dolly Fine: The Lady in Red Vanishes
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...
The Lady In Red Part Two: Collateral Damage
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 t...
Dolly Fine—The Lady In Red & Frisco's Empire of Vice
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 prof...
La Cosa Nostra Gang War 1928-32 Bonus Episode Trailer
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 pe...
Ep. 11—A Very Frisco Christmas Special
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 ecc...
Call It Frisco Part 3: Emperor Norton and Herb Caen Myths Debunked!
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 Ca...
Ep. 9 Bones Remmer Pt. 1—Tenderloin Gambling King, Jack Ruby, & A Short History of Frisco's La Cosa Nostra
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 ...
Ep. 8—Rachel Walther Discusses "The Lady from Shanghai" Orson Welles’ Fractured Dreamscape of San Francisco Noir
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...
Ep. 7—"WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex" (1944) Part Two
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, auth...
Ep. 7—The Examiner's 1944 Moral Crusade Against Barfly Women—"WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex" Part 1
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...
Ep. 6—Jimmie Tarantino Pt. 2: D.A. Thomas Lynch Spells Out Jimmie's Scams in Post-WWII Frisco
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 Fri...
Ep. 5—Jimmie Tarantino Part 1: When Frank Sinatra and Mickey Cohen Invested in His Hollywood Nite Life Magazine
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 Ea...
Bonus Ep. 5—Call It FRISCO Part Two—Sally Stanford Weighs In On The Eternal Conflict
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 ma...
Bonus Ep. 4—FRISCO NOIR With Rachel Walther—The Maltese Falcon No.1 (1931) & No.2 (1941) and Dark Passage (1947)
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 ...
Ep. 4—The Story of Johnny Ochsner, The Rich Kid Romeo, and the Lovesick Stowaways
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 purs...
Bonus Episode 3—When Sally Stanford Kicked Humphrey Bogart Out Of Her Flagship Pleasure Palace At 1144 Pine Street In 1941
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 imp...
