00:00:01.340 - 00:00:50.460

Yeah, yeah. No. A Cron Channel four Special. Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Uh huh. Hard to believe it was 60 years ago. The Golden Gate Bridge was only a month old. And most of the San Francisco we know today wasn't even on the drawing boards yet.

00:00:50.940 - 00:01:13.050

Good evening. I'm Wendy Tokuda. Tonight we're going to tell you the story of a city where, even in the worst of times during the Depression, dreams could come true. Join us now, as we take you back to San Francisco in the 19 thirties, we remember them

00:01:13.060 - 00:02:00.490

as good times. Those of us who are around to remember the pleasures we enjoyed back then we found in the simple things in friendship and family. We were young men and innocent and filled with wonder at the sight of our own creations. How naive and starry

00:02:00.490 - 00:02:46.880

eyed we must have been in those days when splitting the atom was just one man's fantasy. We may do with our nickels and dimes. Better than that. We had the time of our lives. Ah, yes. Those were the days. San Francisco in the 19 thirties. Yeah,

00:02:47.860 - 00:03:13.380

it was an Indian summer day in San Francisco in the fall of 1929. Fair and mild I'm not a trace of fog by eight oclock. The Pacific Stock Exchange had already been opened for hours, and by then the panic was full blown. The exchange never closed

00:03:13.390 - 00:03:37.240

that black. Thursday, desperate brokers stayed all night slaves to the ticker tape. By the weekend, thousands of investors had lost their life savings. Some of the Bay Area's most respected institutions had taken a real beating. Fireman's Fund Emporium, Capwell Standard Oil of California. All down. In

00:03:37.240 - 00:03:56.800

the following months and years, scores of Bay Area businesses would fail. Middle class families who had prospered in the flapper years would find themselves lined up for surplus food and make work jobs. Neighborhoods were studded with soup kitchens and red lines. The most famous was run

00:03:56.800 - 00:04:16.810

by a society matron who identified herself only as the White Angel. Yeah, yeah, the more you had, the more you had to lose. Kids just out of college found themselves lined up for jobs behind experienced breadwinners, people who had lost what had taken them a lifetime

00:04:16.810 - 00:04:43.080

to accumulate. But strange as it may seem, most of the people who are around today to remember those Depression years. Remember making the best of bad times and in the process, having a very good time indeed. Mm hmm. Yeah. If you had a job, everything was

00:04:43.080 - 00:05:03.580

sweet. It was sweet to go out and was sweet to go to hotel and go dancing, even though. And it was only couple of dollars, you know, And everybody was interested in sort of an upbeat mood, sort of a happiness pervading the whole thing. Those were

00:05:03.580 - 00:05:22.150

the days when you could take a dip in flesh hacker pool, the world's largest for just a nickel. Unfortunately, only a few chili blocks from Ocean Beach, right? Or you could have your pick of hot, cold, fresh or saltwater at the world famous Sutro baths just

00:05:22.150 - 00:05:41.730

up the street from Playland at the beach. For a whole day's outing, you could go across the bay to the amusement park at Neptune's Beach in Alameda. But first you'd spend the better part of the day getting there on the ferry. You know, you can imagine

00:05:41.730 - 00:05:56.200

yourself, you know, going, uh, taking, taking a regular steamer, right? You know, in the New York, through the Panama Canal or something, you know you could picture yourself in some mystery drama or something, you know, standing out in the direction of the wind whipping against you.

00:05:56.210 - 00:06:12.540

You know, if you're if you're young enough, you had a good imagination in those days. The ferries were so popular that on weekends, the line of cars waiting to cross the bay would stretch clear across town to Van Ness Avenue. In those days, whether you went

00:06:12.550 - 00:06:35.370

by ferry or by cable car, getting there was half the fun. Mhm. I couldn't wait to get on the California street Dinky. They don't call him the Donkeys anymore, do they? Well, the cable cars were always the donkeys on account of the bell. Ding, ding, ding,

00:06:35.740 - 00:06:55.560

ding, ding, ding. And that was the dinky. Yeah, if a day in the sun was what you were after, you could take the trolley into the mission to watch the seals play ball at the old Recreation park. Even at the back of the bleachers, you could

00:06:55.570 - 00:07:08.850

catch yourself a foul ball, and it was a colorful ballpark because you were right on top of the field. You know, you weren't a mile away from the action. And when a when a when a ball player went to bat, You know, you could give them

00:07:08.850 - 00:07:25.970

encouragement, cursing, spit at him or do anything they want. And they did. You know, they talked. And you bum, you know, you know, uh, let's see you get a hit. This, you know, And it was kind of personal. You're right on top of the field. That

00:07:25.980 - 00:07:43.330

personal feeling was something you'd find all over town back in the thirties, because San Francisco was the kind of small town city where everyone knew everyone at a time when big time pro ball was decades away. The big names in town belonged to high school football

00:07:43.330 - 00:08:05.210

heroes. Guys like Allen Beals, Al Santa Key, Eddie Forest and milk juice image. Uh, well, they called me snatch short. I was called Butch. Well, the newspapers used to call him the slashing slab. It was really It was his nickname in the newspaper possible. And I

00:08:05.210 - 00:08:22.250

was a sea pig. I don't know what Nichols. Dick Tracy came out with the heels Beals one time when that was stuck for a little while, but not long. It was for these guys high school ball players that the city's first big stadium was built. Keys

00:08:22.250 - 00:08:47.010

are stadium, and the fun didn't stop. At nightfall, just 20 cents bought you a ticket to the best movie theaters, which meant not only a double bill, but a newsreel, a cartoon and live music from the house orchestra. For another 75 cents, you could top off

00:08:47.010 - 00:09:12.230

the evening with a seven course Italian feast, North Beach. But if you were young and in love, there was only one spot to be on a Friday or a Saturday night at a place called the Rose Bowl. Every weekend, thousands descended on the tiny town of

00:09:12.230 - 00:09:40.240

Larkspur in Marin to dance under the stars at the Rose Bowl, an outdoor dance hall sponsored by the Larkspur Volunteer Fire Department. She whisper me through to me A C C's too high for me. Um, John and Evelyn Craig are still dancing together 50 years after

00:09:40.240 - 00:09:58.060

their first date at the Rose Bowl. The most impressive part of the evening for me was the waterfalls I used to play the storm. Well, actually, it wasn't a waterfall. It wasn't a fire fall. I heard something, but to me, if I remember correctly, it was

00:09:58.060 - 00:10:23.950

representing a thunderstorm with lightning and lights and whatnot. And they did play the storm after the storm. After the name of a song. At that time, they would play that. I love that Mhm. You were young. You can find amusement most anything if you can't mhm

00:10:24.440 - 00:11:07.670

spend a lot of money. Why you can find a way to spend a dime and still have a good time read yet. And I think that was a general thing with all the young people music. They made the best of what you had. Mm. Despite

00:11:07.670 - 00:11:25.960

its heavenly appearance, the San Francisco of the 19 thirties was anything but Angelique from our forefathers, the gold miners and the merchant marines of the Barbary Coast. We'd inherited some fine old traditions, among them a reputation for being a wide open town. These were prohibition years,

00:11:25.960 - 00:11:44.850

remember? But even that couldn't stem the flow of good cheer. Is everybody bootleg? Nobody would turn anybody in. Bootlegging was not a crime to the ordinary people. A probation agent come and they'd have to have a man stand guard over their car where they were raiding.

00:11:45.540 - 00:12:08.140

They come out, the car wouldn't run all the bike standard to go and break all the spark plugs would let the air out of Giant. Yeah, the city's high spirits made for some pretty tall tales and some great copy. Nobody knew that better than a Sacramento

00:12:08.140 - 00:12:31.130

born writer who came here in 1936 seeking his fortune amidst the city's folly. It was possible to stay up 24 hours a day, and I never go without a drink. There was a wide open town. The tenderloin was wide open. Anything you wanted was available, wet

00:12:31.130 - 00:12:47.150

or dry. Prohibition or not, the San Francisco of the 19 thirties was an all night town. Nightclubs like the Forbidden City and the Ball Tavern Head floor shows at four in the morning. Then there was the music box over on a Barrel Street, which is now

00:12:47.150 - 00:13:27.600

the great American Music Hall. And there disporting herself, the famous Sally Rand with her fans and her showgirls and after hours club upstairs called The Blue Room. Yeah. Mm, yeah. Uh huh. Mhm. Mhm. For better or for worse. Speakeasy. That night, clubs weren't

00:13:27.600 - 00:13:49.350

the only establishments where patrons made their vices public. Sally Stanford, a famous madam. She had a huge house on Russian Hill, and her girls are all very like socialized. They're like junior leaders. They were dusters and they were feather boas, and they were corsages and the

00:13:49.740 - 00:14:07.890

acted like ladies and was even on the gray Line tour. For a while, you could drop in if you were on the tour and meet Sally's Girls. All kinds of shady enterprises flourished in San Francisco in those days. Much of it, it was said, under the

00:14:07.900 - 00:14:28.400

paid protection of the city's boys in blue. Somehow, that didn't seem out of keeping with our unruly past. It was just business as usual. Pat Brown, who would later become the city's district attorney and eventually governor of California, has a unique perspective on the city's underbelly.

00:14:28.720 - 00:14:48.160

His father ran an illegal gambling parlor, and his father in law was once a captain in the police department. Someone Uhh said to me one day, he said, the San Francisco Police Department is honey comb with graph, and the other lawyer that was standing right back

00:14:48.290 - 00:15:08.180

right next to me said, Let me tell you something. The San Francisco Police Department is honey combed with honesty, and I never forgot that even in the depths of the Depression, the city's nightlife prospered, attracting partygoers from all over the city was full of people from

00:15:08.190 - 00:15:24.280

Hollywood. Every weekend we came up on a train athlete called the Lark, and they come up on Friday night and I'd see them all over town. All these famous people would be out nightclubbing because L. A Los Angeles really had no nightclubs and very few restaurants.

00:15:24.290 - 00:15:46.510

So they all love San Francisco. Yeah, while most of the city love them in return, there were some places where even the brightest stars weren't entirely welcome. And one of those places was a ritual laden affair called Monday Lunch at the ST Francis. They found very

00:15:46.510 - 00:16:11.500

much on theatrical people. The major D there was not at all happy with them, And he would put I remember it was Rita Hayworth. I think that he would put near the kitchen someplace. Um, there was a real snob deal. Mm. Mhm. The regulars at the

00:16:11.500 - 00:16:31.160

Monday lunch were the daughters and sons of the city's founders. The newspaper Society columns took up pages and pages filled with their doings. Mm. Teas were popular. You always wrote who presided at the tea table. I mean, you never hear that nowadays, and there would be

00:16:31.160 - 00:16:50.140

Mrs So and so at the coffee urn and Mrs somebody else at the teapot. Look in any direction and you could see the efforts of the Golden Circle to turn our little pioneer town into a capital of culture. There was the opera house completed in the

00:16:50.140 - 00:17:09.530

worst years of the Depression. The major dailies, four of them stores filled with the latest fashions from abroad. And yet again and again, you saw the same names, too. Young Spreckels, Stanford Magnet Crocker. They were very insolent. As a matter of fact, when they'd give a

00:17:09.530 - 00:17:25.250

dinner party, you could practically make up the guest list if they say they were going to have 25 or 30 you would say on the so and SOS. And so and so I always wondered why they never got awfully sick of each other. While their husbands

00:17:25.250 - 00:17:47.360

made and lost fortunes, the society women competed fiercely on a battlefield of florists, caterers, butlers and maids, and no one could mount a campaign like the mistress of Phyllo Lee Gardens, Laura Lean Roth. Now she used to transport that whole, that whole estate into a fairyland.

00:17:47.360 - 00:18:05.140

I mean, she would bring up three shiploads. I'm talking about ocean liner loads of orchids and there'd be eight million orchids all over the place, and it was just unbelievable. They would plan a party and planned six months on it. And then each lady each grand,

00:18:05.140 - 00:18:19.460

um there in Burlingame society would have a party for their granddaughter of the daughter, and they would fall on consecutive nights during the winter season. And each lady wanted her party to be better than the others, you know, naturally. So it was a tremendous effort to

00:18:19.840 - 00:18:31.750

to keep that kind of enthusiasm up on our part. I mean, I just had a and I had to do better each successive night, you know, to get through the thing. And then I was flat out for two weeks. I couldn't move. I just lay in

00:18:31.750 - 00:19:11.060

bed all day. It was a group. I would say 5, 600 of them. What we used to say the best people and they were They were really nice. They were the best people, and they still are. As far as I'm concerned right

00:19:17.140 - 00:19:44.270

today, it may look like a tourist trap in the thirties, it was the city's life. Blood? Mm. Come on. The smells in this city were just unbelievable. In those Depression days and right up to the war, because the big soldiers and M, J B and Hills

00:19:44.270 - 00:19:59.990

Brothers, all the big coffee companies were doing their roasting right down there on the waterfront. And any small boy or girl would come to San Francisco. You smell this aroma of coffee, and it was a wonderful, exciting city. Come on. After school dances, we go to

00:19:59.990 - 00:20:14.140

the Embarcadero and get fresh fruit right off the boats. And they would We talked to the green grocers there and the fruit, grocers and all that, and they were spilling them all out. And they talked in different languages. And somewhere Oriental, somewhere Italian. What a city

00:20:14.140 - 00:20:30.690

to grow up in you go along the waterfront boat. You see the stirrings of these big, trans Pacific and intercoastal freighters there. And it came from all over the world from Oslo and from London and Calcutta and Hong Kong and Singapore. And this was it was

00:20:30.690 - 00:20:53.920

a city of dreams. No question about it. Yeah, 1933. Those dreams had turned into nightmares for the men who worked the waterfront. In 1919, The waterfront unions had been devastated by an unsuccessful strike, and by the end of World War One, they were virtually powerless. The

00:20:53.920 - 00:21:09.870

violence and politically charged 19 teens a decade of union activism across the country had become the complacent twenties, with jobs in abundance. It didn't seem to matter so much that the only way you could get a job on the San Francisco waterfront was to join the

00:21:09.870 - 00:21:28.660

company run association that called itself a union but did little to address workers' needs. All that would change in the thirties the names would be different. But all over the country, the story would be the same. As the depression deepened and the volume of cargo dwindled,

00:21:29.000 - 00:21:47.310

more and more unemployed laborers showed up at the docks looking for work. With so many men competing for so few jobs, corruption spread like wildfire semen. Bill Bailey remembers the indignity of it all, now the shipping crimps job. He was employed by the ship owner, and

00:21:47.310 - 00:21:59.120

the ship owner told him. They said, We don't want no union men on the shift. We don't want anybody to talk politics, you know. You know nobody who's going to cause us any trouble. And your job is to see that my ships are supplied with such

00:21:59.120 - 00:22:12.010

men. In other words, robots are idiots, that type of. So the shipping crimp had a little something going on the side. He figured well, long as he was Lord and master of putting men on the ship, he could make them bow a little bit. I remember

00:22:12.010 - 00:22:24.960

one of these characters telling me when I said, Hey, how about a job, fella? He said, Look, Bailey, I never see you in my restaurant eating you, don't you? Don't sleep with my boarding house. I never see in my store when it comes to buying clothes.

00:22:25.440 - 00:22:42.690

No, I don't even see you chasing around with any of my horse. Now you want me to give you a job over all these other guys? Okay. Okay. Well, I mean, that's how degrading things were. 1933. Roosevelt's National Recovery Act guaranteed workers the right to form

00:22:42.690 - 00:23:03.020

their own unions, regardless of opposition from employers. A San Francisco chapter of the International Longshoremen's Association was hastily assembled and Practically overnight, the fledgling union found itself in a deadlock with the shipping companies, no matter what we suggested. No, no, no. There's no all the time.

00:23:03.020 - 00:23:31.400

Well, we finally realized that there was only one thing left to do, and that is to call a strike. Uh, yeah. Ah, small. At first, the strike gradually gained momentum as more and more longshoremen joined the union and took their places in the picket lines. Then,

00:23:31.730 - 00:24:18.020

two months into the strike, after the shipping companies attempted to open the port with scab labor, the violence began. Oh, yeah, I'm going now. Uh huh. All told, two were killed. More than 100 injured. Several of the victims were innocent bystanders. It was to be

00:24:18.020 - 00:24:47.100

a major turning point for the strikers. Mhm. Yeah. It showed the employers that the people of San Francisco not just along shore and not just a union people either. But the average person in sandwich was fed up with the cold blooded murder of innocent people. Uh

00:24:47.100 - 00:25:07.890

huh. In the days following that bloody Thursday, one voice was heard above all the rest. It belonged to a young Australian seaman named Harry Bridges. Softly persuasive, he seemed an unlikely candidate for the role of a labour strongman. I don't think he had two pairs to

00:25:07.890 - 00:25:22.540

shoot. He wore the same pair of pants for once, you know, slept on the floor half of the time. That wasn't the labor leaders that's supposed to ended up in the Mark Hopkins Hotel or five or six suits of clothes and all that type of stuff.

00:25:22.550 - 00:25:44.640

He didn't have nothing. On July 12th, 1934 the mighty Teamsters walked out in support of the striking longshoremen. Other local unions followed closely on their heels. The city was shutting down. The general strike had begun. On the the third day of the general strike, I was

00:25:44.650 - 00:26:02.020

walking down from 28th Street in church all the way to the waterfront. The Pier 37 not a street guy, was running. Not a taxi cab was available. Everything was quiet, and I felt like I was walking on air because everything was closed down. When the strikers

00:26:02.020 - 00:26:15.770

went back to work a week later, all but one of the long Sherman's demands had been met. It was one of the biggest victories in labor history, but it came at a high price. The closure of the port during the strike would end up costing the

00:26:15.770 - 00:26:33.060

shipping companies more than $500 million. It would take years and many more strikes to close the gap for others on the waterfront and on a personal level, Harry Bridges and others among the Labour leadership would be haunted two decades later by their own words and actions

00:26:33.070 - 00:26:48.790

in that strike during the Communist witch hunts of the 19 fifties, somebody has to make a sacrifice somewhere along the line that we can advance these things now. If we didn't take a chance to go out on the picket line and getting a head bashing, are

00:26:48.790 - 00:27:02.610

getting worked over by goons or vigilantes or whatever, I mean, we'd just be all chattel slaves or something. We might as well go with a hat in the hand. It would be still doing it. It's a shame that we can't live in an ideal world, but

00:27:02.610 - 00:27:35.010

that's the way it is. And somebody has to take a beating to try to advance our cause. Mhm, Yeah, it was the first national addiction. To some, it was a technological wonder, to others, an insidious force. But For most of us, it was

00:27:35.020 - 00:27:59.640

just plain wonderful. All right. Still where? Away. Oh, Mr McCarthy. Gangbusters. By the mid 19 thirties, practically every Bay Area home had a radio in the depths of the Depression. You could turn your dial and bring anyone from Fibber McGee on up to the president, right

00:27:59.640 - 00:28:24.650

into your living room, What you're doing and hello, Damos. Just checking my bank account. Six million eight million. One program. Amos and Andy was so popular that movie theaters piped it into their lobbies so that ticket fires wouldn't have to stay home to listen. Many of

00:28:24.650 - 00:28:47.030

radios Earliest hits originated here at 1 11 Sutter at the West Coast headquarters of NBC. Hundreds of musicians and actors and actresses gave live performances here in the days before tape recordings they'd have to repeat. Their performance is three times once For each time zone. Writers

00:28:47.030 - 00:29:12.670

and producers were constantly searching for new ideas, new concepts, pioneers in a brave new medium. Edna Fisher, a pianist on one of the most popular local programs, the Blue Monday Jamboree, remembers the scramble to fill the air time. I yes and I did. I could go

00:29:12.680 - 00:29:26.290

right down there, Go on the air with it. You know, we never had rehearsals. They'd say to me five minutes before we went on, What are you gonna play tonight? And I'd say, Well, I don't know. I've had a lot of requests to do what I

00:29:26.290 - 00:29:52.560

did last Monday night. I think I'll do the 12th Street rag again. Mhm, 1930 Writer Carlton Morris came up with an idea for a show about a family, just a typical San Francisco family. Just one man's family. Well, it was so different than anything they'd ever

00:29:52.560 - 00:30:17.480

had. It was on a lower level. It was not Bang, bang, bang. It was Mama talking to the Children or father and they said, Boy, you're written out. You better quit ahead. We'll call you if we need anything like this. When the show went on that

00:30:17.490 - 00:30:44.180

April and never went off the air again for 27 years, mhm one man's family is dedicated to the mothers and fathers of the younger generation and to their bewildering offspring. Today we present Chapter seven books 69 entitled Triplets and Redheads. Mhm. One man's family was the

00:30:44.180 - 00:31:03.240

first soap opera, and it quickly became one of radio's biggest success stories. Night after night, week after week, listeners got to know Mother and Father Barber and their offspring. It was hard to believe the family really didn't exist except in Carlton Horses. Imagination. The studio even

00:31:03.240 - 00:31:27.060

released a family album and a book of mother barbers, favorite recipes and a diary. Yeah, mhm. For almost three decades, Bernice Berwyn played the role of Hazel, the barber's eldest daughter. Carton Up followed us quite a good deal. For instance, Betty, who had so many Children?

00:31:27.240 - 00:31:41.650

Well, Jean Reverol was forever having a child. And that's how Betty and Jack had so many Children. I'd rather be the very me kissed of housewives with a man to hold me in his arms in the dark hours of the night than be the smartest, most

00:31:41.660 - 00:31:57.510

glamorous, most independent female in the world. Maybe you're the wifely type. All women are the wifely tight. That's the one thing I keep praying for with our six daughters. Happy marriage for each. I'm doing my dog. Gandhi's, to mold them into girls will be lovable and

00:31:57.520 - 00:32:18.010

desirable. You really believe in marriage, don't you? You bet I do. It's just cheap smart talk to say anything else. The hungriest years of the Depression, the barber family chronicles gave fans what they craved most. A taste of the good life. San Francisco tour guides proudly

00:32:18.010 - 00:32:39.620

pointed out one of the grander homes in the city's affluent Seacliff district, identifying it as the home of America's favorite family. The barber home really only existed in the dreams of Carlton Morris and of his listeners. Families throughout the United States identified with us, and they

00:32:39.620 - 00:33:10.610

wished that they had a family like that. Mhm, yeah! As the years passed, times seemed only to get worse and worse. Drought had turned much of the Midwest into a dust bowl, and many of the desperate loaded up their belongings and moved west to what they

00:33:10.610 - 00:33:30.960

hoped would be the golden land of opportunity. Instead, they found the resentment and prejudice that would be the subject of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Five years after the stock market crash, almost a quarter of the Bay Area's workforce was still out on the streets.

00:33:36.440 - 00:33:54.860

Many of the unemployed went to work for the alphabet soup of federal works projects. The work was everything from clerical to custodial to just plain hard labor workers came from every conceivable walk of life. They had only one thing in common. There was no other way

00:33:54.870 - 00:34:17.310

to survive as a teenager. Job, Right was one of thousands of young Californians who joined the Civilian Conservation Corps. His starting pay was $30 a month. $25 of that was automatically sent to his family in San Francisco. My mother and father used that money to pay

00:34:17.310 - 00:34:40.410

the rent of the house where we had we were living in. And, uh, it was like money falling from heaven. Young men like Joe Bright would help plant more than two billion trees. They would build San Francisco's Aquatic Park and Berkeley's Rose Garden. Federal funds would

00:34:40.410 - 00:35:04.020

also help build the Bay Bridge, the Caldecott Tunnel and dams and roads by the score. But the federal projects didn't always inspire gratitude or public acceptance. One of the smallest programs, employing only 26 people, ate up more column inches than all the rest combined. The project

00:35:04.020 - 00:35:37.970

was painting murals in the recently completed monument to Fire Man Adolf COIT. It was a lifesaver for many local artists. Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah mhm mm, yeah, mhm, mhm. But according to the popular press, the murals were more than pretty paintings. They were communist propaganda.

00:35:38.540 - 00:35:57.120

Critics cited the depiction of leftist reading materials in several scenes as proof of their allegations, and the official opening of the tower was delayed for months as the squabbling went on and on. At the same time, another project was gearing up that would change the face

00:35:57.130 - 00:36:27.570

of the entire Bay Area, lacking federal funding and public support. It was a project some said was impossible, but Chicago engineer Joseph Strauss wanted to build a bridge to top all others. MM, mhm, Yeah, yeah, It took more than a decade of public debate and bond

00:36:27.570 - 00:36:46.950

issues and court hearings and committee meetings, but Strauss finally got his big chance. Ironically, after years of arguing and pleading, it was the depression that finally made the building of the bridge possible, in fact, made it a public duty because it provided jobs. Joseph Strauss quickly

00:36:46.950 - 00:37:17.250

became one of the Bay Area's biggest employers. Mhm, Yeah, jobs on the bridge paid as much as $11 an hour, and at that price, men were lined up daily, ready and willing to risk their lives altogether. 11 men would lose their lives working on the bridge,

00:37:17.730 - 00:37:44.230

and many more would come mighty close. The survivors called themselves the halfway to Hell club. Of course, the Golden Gate Bridge wasn't the only game in town. At the same time, Strauss was making his dream a reality. The other bridge was also under construction. Mm. Started

00:37:44.230 - 00:38:07.110

in 1934 completed two years later. The Bay Bridge was actually three times as long as the golden Gate and twice as expensive. Mm. The Bay Bridge was something at which to wonder. All right, there's no denying that. But there was just something special about the Golden

00:38:07.110 - 00:38:47.630

Gate that captured all our hearts. It was more than a way to get somewhere. It was a testament to the courage and the sheer audacity of the men who dreamt up and built the world's most beautiful bridge. Yeah,

00:38:49.520 - 00:39:25.350

Mhm. Mhm, right? The year was 1939 it seemed the worst was behind us. Mhm. Mm. Everywhere. People were going back to work, the bridges were over, and commuters were pouring into the city from newfound suburbs all over the bay. Uh huh. To celebrate the return of

00:39:25.360 - 00:39:48.650

good times. We threw the event of the decade with the bridge is built and the future looking bright. It was time for the city that knew how to strut its stuff. Mhm. Its official name was the Golden Gate International Exposition. But to us it was simply

00:39:49.120 - 00:40:34.660

Treasure Island back. Everyone had a day at the fair, from twins to ski jumpers. Two foreigners of all lands. Oh, and who could forget these lovelies? Yeah. Mhm. Mhm. Well, the favorite thing there was, uh, those those fat movement writing those boroughs that one woman come

00:40:34.660 - 00:40:58.960

in there and looked like the borough had saddlebags her rear end, sit on both sides of the thing, You know, she tried him and she, you know, she was nude and flop. I thought that was the best thing in the whole show. Oh, but the grandest

00:40:58.960 - 00:41:21.970

exhibit of all wasn't even officially part of the fair. It took place only once a day and only the extremely lucky or wealthy got a chance to take a ride on the newly inaugurated China Clipper. Honest to goodness, as far as I was concerned, it was

00:41:21.980 - 00:41:43.960

like the space shuttles now. It was just so far out. It was exciting, but it was adventuresome. Mhm. The China Clipper cut the trip to the Orient, down from 21 days on a ship to 60 hours of flying time. As adventures go, the China Clipper was

00:41:43.970 - 00:42:16.540

on the formal side. You could, while away those hours aloft, quite comfortably, playing cards, eating freshly prepared meals or sleeping in your own personal and private sleeping compartment. Uh huh, Yeah, The fair was such a success that had opened for a second season in 1940. But

00:42:16.540 - 00:42:36.650

for many of us, the new decade opened with uncertainty about the future. Hitler's troops were rolling into Poland and the Japanese had invaded the Chinese mainland. I hope the United States will keep out of this war. Mhm. I believe that it will as long as it

00:42:36.660 - 00:42:57.510

remains within my power to prevent. Yet the question on all our minds was, how long would it be before we were at war, too? At the same time, unknown to most of us, a decade of hard work was finally paying off for the scientists in this

00:42:57.510 - 00:43:21.370

rickety wooden building on the Berkeley campus. The men here had Jerry rigged their way into a brand new science. The science of splitting atoms scarcely six inches across this tiny device, the very first atom smasher ushered in the nuclear age. This tiny device and its inventor,

00:43:21.390 - 00:43:43.510

Ernest O. Lawrence, would change the course of history. 1939. Lawrence was just another hometown egghead who happened to have won the Nobel Prize. It would be six years before most of us would understand the real impact of his invention with the bombing of Hiroshima. Yeah. Mhm,

00:43:45.760 - 00:44:19.420

actually. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Uh huh. Mhm. Too many of us. The thirties were untroubled times when the streets were safe and our consciences were clear when we were free to enjoy the simpler pleasures that were abundant in our city by the bay.

00:44:23.190 - 00:44:44.270

Uh huh. Mm. It was a time when many of us shared an almost childlike innocence. Innocence was the keynote in the city. We were all naive. We were all wide eyed. We're all crazy about San Francisco. We were madly in love. It was like being in

00:44:44.270 - 00:45:04.140

love with the person. The It was the city of sort of a feminine persona about him. When I was growing up. I did not know. Then at nine years old, what sex feelings were. So I felt passionately in love with San Francisco thinking that that I

00:45:04.140 - 00:45:44.300

mean, it was a thing to fall in love with Or are you? I forget to do the little forget ordinary thing that everyone to do We loved loved the town. I wouldn't think of going anywhere else. Mm mm. It's just the thought of you. The very

00:45:44.300 - 00:46:35.420

thought of you Mhm given to give it all. I don't know nothing. Mhm.