00:00:01.340 - 00:00:35.700

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chances are, we'll sit back, relax. We're going for a ride back to a time that wasn't too long ago. Get back to a place that in so many ways was very different than it is today. Back

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to San Francisco in the 19 fifties. Yeah, mhm dreaming. I'm always dreaming. We remember the 19 fifties like one big home movie. For many of us, the decade after World War Two was our childhood searching for everybody else. It just seemed like one. Searching the fifties

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were a lot of fun open. It was a time when America had just won the big war and we were ready for our prize, a bright and promising future. The Bay Area experienced a great migration, then to the new suburbs while the city went big league.

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Sure, there was war in Korea and the Russians and the bomb to worry about, but there was so much else dreaming. And increasingly, San Francisco was a big part of it. Dreaming company. Good evening. I'm having white. So San Francisco in the 19 fifties is really

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the story of our city growing up at a time when most of us were doing the very same thing, which is why this show may seem like one big home movie. But it should also explain how San Francisco grew from something of a Western outpost to

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a major American city. Right little. Now, yes, San Francisco in the fifties is brought to you by Chevron and high octane Chevron Supreme Unleaded, the high performance premium gasoline with tech relief. Chevron Supreme, Yes, and by Nissan, who invites you to see the complete line of

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Nissan cars and trucks at your nearest Nissan dealer, Nissan built for the most important race of hall, the human race and by Swanson frozen foods. When you're not home cooking, Swanson is you saw. Our story actually begins in 1945 V J Day, the end of four

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years of war and 10 years of depression. Before that, the biggest party this city has ever thrown mhm, mhm. But if we'd stopped long enough to look around that August afternoon, we might not have recognized our city. Hundreds of thousands of genes have fallen in love

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with San Francisco and the weight of the war in the Pacific, and they returned home. They returned to stay 1950 the city's population was the largest it's ever been nearly 800 people. For native San Franciscans, like newspaper columnist Herb Cain, the city would never be the

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same. City was much more crowded. And of course, there was this great influx of people who were strangers in a way have been admitted into our charmed circle. And we watched them warily, and they looked at us and wondered what to do to become real San

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Franciscans. Uh, there was the atmosphere was completely different than it had been. We had that sort of club like atmosphere. Yeah, yeah, the city's new atmosphere more resembled the stock exchange. This was the era of the man in the gray flannel suit when San Francisco, like

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the rest of the country, enjoyed what the war had left behind the most productive economy on Earth. Never before Life magazine declared so much for so few cars kitchen hardware, ready wear, so many new things to buy and everything with a fresh sense of fashion and

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style. And while these men met at the corner of commercial and Montgomery to do battle in the boardrooms, their wives were shopping at elegant Union Square more than almost any place else. In the 19 fifties, Union Square became the center of San Francisco's newfound wealth. Fashionable

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stores line the streets ready to turn the city's ladies into models of the new American style. Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood, Kim Novak. Those were all the new stars, and they were the trendsetters. Lee Bledsoe, Mr Lee to his Ladies Joe's Union Square for his

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salon. Gina Lollobrigida brought in the Italian cut, which just swept the United States. It was so popular, and everybody had the little curls here. Up to that time, women didn't really have a lot of clothes. They made their own clothes at home. World War two. Korean

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War was right behind it, so we didn't have the materials. It was a wonderful era. Was a good feeling era? So much for so few. And it wasn't only a Union Square. In the farmlands and fruit orchards south of town, the American dream was breaking new

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ground. Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky little boxes on the hillside little boxes all the same. By the time Malvina Reynolds wrote little boxes in 1961 her ballot of Daly City, the boom was over at their peak, developers like Soldier Eichler

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and Gillard turned out 20 new homes a day. For many, like Bunny and Ken Gillespie, the newest family outing was going to see The little box is being built and maybe, as they did in 1950 finding the right empty lot for a dream house. I remember

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it very clearly because it was the day which we found out was the incursion over the 38th parallel in Korea, and we had looked at these things before and seeing that the price at that time was 9 $250 for a two bedroom, one bath home. And

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this supposedly was the last street in broad, more to be developed that we discovered maybe 30 other people who bought the last house. It was part of the sales gimmick, but one of the things we liked, it was an aura of being sort of, you know,

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quasi rural. And we were in the country. There was nothing south of us that was inhabited farm out here. One of the big things that we would do on a Saturday or a Sunday was to come out and see the progress of the house that was

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being built and everybody was doing the same thing because you would meet your perspective. Neighbors. They're all exactly like their fellows have been in the works, and most of them had brand new babies. That ours was six months old when we moved in was not at

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all unusual. Everybody on the block had a six month old baby. We shared a lot of problems, a lot of how to. And that's something we all got along the concrete defenses, the grass. Everybody was talking about peat moss. We did a lot of at home,

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25 years old. My thing was, I made tuna and noodles and do I still do get things If I don't make as often anymore, we would have tuna noodles about three times a week because it was one of the few things I knew how to make.

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I could make that in Spanish, right? And it was It was very warm. It was it was cozy because we felt interdependent. It really was a terrific time and then in 1952 or so, television came in and things did change. San Francisco, this is Admiral in

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New York. Just stand by. We'll be with you. In September of 1951 the television cable from New York to San Francisco was completed. Finally, the West Coast joined nationwide TV. And the two years that followed television ownership grew 44 ending up in 70% of all homes.

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Thanks a million. That year, Milton Burro was still King of Tuesday night. Shut up. Even though vaudeville shows were on their way out variety hours with a thing like Ed Sullivan, Arthur Godfrey and family comedies. Hey, you look pretty sharp this morning. Thanks, Pop. Yes, you

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certainly do. Yeah. Sharp is a meatball. Yeah. Nobody asked you. Ricky, now here with the true stories of our time, beamed directly into our living rooms with situations that mirrored our daily life and characters that did what we did. Like watch TV, television parties. What else

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would you want to watch? TV type of thing. And it was very, very exciting because it wasn't on all the time. Television parties were weird and wonderful. You didn't talk. You didn't move. If your youngster cried out, you would hold them on the lap hoped they

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would go to sleep. You were absolutely mesmerized by this fascinating medium. Big evening out, leaving your Children with no dinner. You think they'll go to the trouble of preparing a complete meal for themselves. They don't have to. Swanson has already done it. As much as anything.

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Television changed our lifestyles, but it also changed our lives. On the night of January 19th, 1953 nearly three quarters of our TVs were tuned to a special episode of I Love Lucy. The next day we all watched President Eisenhower's inauguration in two wildly different circumstances. Only

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hours apart, we have been united by the image on the tube. Oh, but the image could divide. Senator Joseph McCarthy's image would become one of the most familiar and disturbing of the decade. 1954. The spectacle of his investigation into the Communist Party was shown live every

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day. His was the face of a growing paranoia, and it gripped the nation. When we come back. A look at the Red Scare in San Francisco in the 19 fifties. Mhm mm. But far ranging cameras of Movietone News bring you the top stories of the year

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in the cavalcade of 1953. If you went to the movies in the 19 fifties, it was still a black and white world, even though we were seeing red all over. Newsreels have ran before. The feature showed us frightening images of the growing threat from communist Russia.

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Mhm. Mhm, yeah, And when the movie finally started, sometimes its message wasn't all that different. Mhm monster movies in the fifties mirrored our fears that the enemy was coming to destroy our monuments to change the American way of life. It was around this time that a

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young man named Bill Turner graduated from college and went looking for a job. He decided to join the FBI. I was in the FBI here in the San Francisco office in 1952 and 1953 and for most of that time I was assigned to the wiretaps and

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bugs that were installed. At that time, the FBI's targets included labor leaders, lawyers and suspected institutions from the California Labor School to the Yugoslavian consulate, and our wiretaps were fed into a converted basement south of market in San Francisco's produce district. There were so many least

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telephone lines going into the place that the San Francisco police thought it was a bookie joint and they were about to raid it until I could show my credentials. As you know, we got something going here. Yeah, Yeah, there was a moral dilemma, particularly in the

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area of the bugs that involved a trespass in order to install, in other words, of burglary. And, uh, we're talking about the McCarthy era, you know, at least in the minds of many Americans, Uh, anybody who would be a member of any socialist type of group

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was disloyal to the United States. It was the faulty syllogism. It was that kind of reasoning that sent Senator McCarthy on his hunt for Communists in the State Department. Were you a member of the Communist Party? While you're handling classified material for the government, I decline

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to answer the question for the reasons previously given. As he gained public support, other politicians jumped on the bandwagon and began to question loyalty. In every quarter at the University of California, a new loyalty oath was introduced. Employees had to swear they had never been a

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member of the Communist Party when many teachers refused to sign it divided the school. Tom Parkinson and Chuck Muscatine had just joined the university. Then. Well, I didn't sign because you have to remember in those days. Hitler was still very much in our minds in the

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early fifties and late forties, and Hitler's professors did not behave very well during the growth of Nazism. Many of us knew that, and many of us felt that it was part of our identity as professors, to tell it the way it is and not go along

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with this hysterical anti communism. Tom and Chuck were among the dozens of professors who left the university in protest. 32 others were actually fired for not signing. The professors may have been right, but that didn't make them popular. Public opinion did not come to their rescue.

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You have to remember that at that time you had a vast number of young people who had been through the war returned, who were busy setting up their houses in the suburbs, buying their station wagons, getting their Children to school and back. And if you went

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to them and said you had a problem and what it was, Sam, nothing compared to the problem of meeting the payments in that station line across the bay at San Francisco's waterfront. Fear of the Red Menace was also behind the most famous criminal trial of the

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time, the United States versus Harry Bridges. He was charged with being a Communist, 1934. The Australian born Bridges had emerged from the bloody San Francisco dock strike as the leader of the longshoremen. Then, as president of their union, he became an articulate voice for organized labor

00:15:13.170 - 00:15:32.320

on the West Coast. He was both a hero among the working men and a target of the maritime establishment. Three times in the forties, Bridges was accused of and acquitted of being a Communist. Yeah. Then, at the turn of the decade, the government mounted another case,

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this time claiming Bridges had lied at earlier hearings on the war, for the longshoremen were crying Frame up that it was a government sponsored attack on their union. San Francisco liberals called it an outrage. He was the victim of the only bill of attainder ever passed

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by the United States Congress that is to pick a particular man out and ordered his deportation because of his political activities. Attorney Vincent Hallinan defended Bridges Allen and had become something of a legend himself in a few celebrated trials. But he knew he'd face more than

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a jury in the Bridges case. Bridge has warned me that his lawyers and the other case at all been sentenced to jail in New York, which they had been, and that I might have the same thing and that he wanted to warn me that he wasn't

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going to misrepresent the possible penalties. Bridges was an international figure, and this was now the height, McCarthyism And here Bridges is right at the peak of it, and then the judge, the federal judge, as most of the federal judges are, was just part of the prosecution

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did everything he could to bring about a conviction. Judge George Harris, a man known to be tough on communism, heard the case. He and Helen locked horns immediately, and just as Bridges had worn, Salomon was sentenced to jail for contempt of court before he'd even finished

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his opening remarks. That is the whole thing with McCarthyism, bridges trial, putting me in prison. If they could do this to bridges, and to me, who had the powers of resistance. What chances? It's a poor little streetcar conductor. Uh, if they can throw howling into jail

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for six months, they can throw me in. For six years, Helen Anne's jail term was postponed. The trial went on. 11 witnesses testified against Bridges. Most of them were ex communists. A few had once testified on his behalf. They were all professionals. At taking the stand,

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they painted a portrait of Harry Bridges as a Communist that the jury believed. And on April 5th, 1955 months after the trial began, the Labour hero who united San Francisco's waterfront was convicted of being a communist and his lawyer was headed to jail for contempt of

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court. They did everything they could to convict poor bridges and succeeded. And then the judges, I say before the case is over. Since 3 to 6 months in prison in the federal penitentiary, weather Bridges was framed became a moot point when, three years later, his conviction

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was overturned on a technicality. It was about that time that the 32 professors had been dismissed at cow were reinstated, also on a legal technicality. Within a year, Senator McCarthy would take on the U s Army and in doing so, anger the president, discredit himself and

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resign. I'm sure that by the time Dwight Eisenhower waltz through the Republican convention at San Francisco's Cow Palace in 1956 fear of communism at home had receded. But our fear of the Soviet Union was riding high. America was deep in the arms race and no longer

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the only one with the bomb. When we come back, we'll take a look at how we lived under the threat of nuclear war in San Francisco in the 19 fifties. Yeah, right about there, Mom. I want her in my big one. Mhm. We've heard the news.

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In late 49 the Russians had the atomic bomb. Incredibly, just four years after the war to end all wars, the world was back on uncertain terms, and by the early fifties we were busy building and testing newer, bigger bombs. Doom Town USA is being sacrificed for

00:19:46.680 - 00:20:06.780

science in the two story house on Main and Elm Street's Damanik and family waits 3500 ft from atomic destruction. 50 cars are on the streets of the Ghost Hamlet in Nevada at marching to within two miles of the blast center. 1500 GS take cover in slit

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trenches closer to an atomic explosion than any human since Nagasaki. Yeah, that the Bay Area would play a major role in the new arms race was inevitable. Lawrence Radiation Lab at Cal It helped build the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, and in 1952 Ernest Lawrence

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with another pioneering scientist, Edward Teller, convinced the Defense Department that it should convert an old air station at Livermore into a second atomic weapons lab. Okay, operating in secret, The Livermore Labs first project, code named Ruth, barely damaged the shot tower at the Nevada test site.

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But successful tests, followed by 1956 9 out of 10 American nuclear bombs were designed here. The Livermore lab added to the strategic importance of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the new arms race meant that we'd have to leave the rest of our lives under the

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awesome threat of nuclear war. Peterson, civil defense director warns us to prepare for one day. This could be your house and your window. Yeah, yeah, as a new mother and every other new mother, we got involved with P. T. A and one of the things that

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we did in 1958 was to plan an evacuation of the local schools in broad market. We have been told to civil defense and and the people who knew such things that, uh, treasure Island might be a target, and they might drop a bomb there. And there

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would be a certain amount of time if that happened, that we might be able to save the Children. And he took them all the way down to Woodside. Like some herald of doom early in the fifties, monthly air raid drills were a grim reminder of the

00:22:04.820 - 00:22:25.700

nuclear threat. If the bomb came, evacuation was the plan. The new highways with the means? San Francisco's Civil Defense Code called for leaders to direct the operation from a basement at the Yonville Veterans Home. Bill Ward was regional manager for civil defense. These lights represent the

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various warning conditions. For instance, the yellow alert, uh, went under that condition. It meant that something was going on in terms of, uh, of some kind of enemy action. Uh, that would be the sign for civil defense. People report in here and get ready to go

00:22:42.480 - 00:23:04.940

into action, then the blue condition was to that. Something was definitely going on. Some overt act had been had been detected. This would be the condition under which we would begin to evacuate cities and move people people out, uh then under the red. This meant that

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the attack was actually in progress, and that was for to take cover. Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program to bring you important news. Of course, there's always a suspicion in the back of your mind. Uh, just how effective could you be? But, uh, there was

00:23:21.500 - 00:23:36.030

no other alternative. We had to give it our best shot and hope that what we were doing would save lives. According to the plan, during an evacuation, all roads were to lead one way out of town, and six million people were to find food and shelter

00:23:36.040 - 00:23:58.510

in the farm towns north of Sacramento or south of San Jose. We didn't during the fifties conducted some practice evacuations. And in Solano County, under a program called Operation Chico, we moved nearly 1000 people from Fairfield to the city of Chico in an exercise based on

00:23:58.510 - 00:24:15.940

this type of planning, and it went quite well. In fact, Operation Chico was a grand success. Organized, civil, almost fun. Fairfield families spent the night with Chico families and everyone went home in the morning having made new friends. Obviously, it was missing a very important element.

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And that was that People knew that they weren't under enemy attack at the time. You know, thank God we never had to really, really find out if the plan would work under an actual enemy attacks situation. But it was the best that could be done under

00:24:30.600 - 00:24:52.280

the circumstances. But large scale evacuation plans would soon be shelved thanks to new, bigger rockets that could airmail a bomb from so far away. We'd never see it coming. It wouldn't be seven or eight hours of warning anymore. We'd be lucky to get 20 minutes now.

00:24:52.280 - 00:25:09.650

We were told to look for cover wherever we could. We must be ready every day, all the time to do the right thing. If the atomic bomb explodes, duck and cover, that's the first thing to do. Duck and cover was the most famous civil defence film

00:25:09.650 - 00:25:26.790

at the time. Looking at it now seems to acknowledge the futility of planning for the bomb under the table. It's a bomb cover cover. And so by the middle of the decade, the nuclear bomb had clearly changed the way we looked at our lives. But at

00:25:26.790 - 00:26:00.970

the same time, another bit of technology was drastically changing the way we lived our lives. It was the automobile. When we come back, we'll take a look at our love affair with the car in San Francisco in the 19 fifties. Mm hmm. War. How

00:26:00.970 - 00:26:22.220

does it feel to loan on it? So it's like falling in love to get that going down the road. I believe you're well, Come on. Mhm. Of course, the automobile had been around since before the twenties. Oakland, with the General Motors plant, proudly called itself the

00:26:22.230 - 00:26:37.460

Detroit of the West. But cars were always a hard sell here compared to the rest of the country. After all, only ferries cross the bay until the bridges were built. That was during the Depression. World War Two followed then Korea. It wasn't until the early fifties

00:26:37.460 - 00:27:00.790

that the Bay Area bought into America's fascination with the automobile. Well, mhm, yeah, mhm. The funny thing about the cars is at that time they were so important. We named our cars that was greeny greeny. And then we had Blue Boy and then we automatic transmission.

00:27:00.800 - 00:27:14.230

Well, we had one, and we called it the powder puff. That was a little bit later, and it was a nice It was a mercury, and it was a little hard to cream. We don't name our cars anymore. So things have changed. With families move into

00:27:14.230 - 00:27:33.480

the suburbs. The car founded steadiest customers, but with teenagers, it found its most devoted fans. This is jumping George, reminding you you're listening to pay essay in San Francisco, mhm McDonald Avenue in Richmond East 14th in San Leandro, Monterey Road in San Jose. These roads were

00:27:33.480 - 00:27:55.100

long. Gas was cheap. Cruising became part of the courting dance. We cruised Friday night and Saturday night, maybe 5200 cars following each other back and forth, back and forth. That was it. Job. Alan cruised in a 41 Chevy. Back then, there's always girls to day. I

00:27:55.100 - 00:28:10.200

was with this guy and I was in this guy's car. He also happened to own a shop in Hayward that was something of a shrine for cruisers. Ballons, custom auto, but they transform Detroit's best into works of art. Joe Balin became known across the nation is

00:28:10.210 - 00:28:29.760

King of the Custom Cars. My main one and my whole life was candy apple red paint. I invented it. I tried to create a paint that was like the curve of daylight. Now it's all over the world. They've painted everything and by mistake. I didn't patent

00:28:29.760 - 00:28:51.890

the color, and that makes me still working. Building custom cars. Mhm but more than a Cadillac culture and drive through dreams. The most profound effect of the automobile was on our landscape. 1952. The Bayshore Freeway opened the following year. Plans were unveiled for an integrated system

00:28:51.890 - 00:29:09.140

that would rim the bay every month. Seems to bring another ribbon cutting with another parade of cars, and every month another rail line closed. Another ferry went to dry dock. Yeah, the car had proven to be the final link in a great chain of progress that

00:29:09.140 - 00:29:27.870

led to life in the suburbs right out of the pages of Sunset Magazine. Yeah, opportunity moved to the suburbs as well. Cheap land that attracted developers attracted industry. Ford moved to Milpitas. GM left Oakland for the then farmlands of Fremont, Lockheed and Westinghouse broke ground near

00:29:27.870 - 00:29:48.060

Stanford for their new homes. With all this movement upward and outward, someone was bound to get left behind in the city's. Predictably, it would be minorities, especially blacks. I have to say that in this area, the fact that we were all Caucasian, it didn't bother us.

00:29:48.070 - 00:30:05.530

It didn't really. It didn't occur to us. In fact, there was a racial covenant for this area, and you could not rent, lease or house anyone who frankly didn't look like us. But we didn't even know. But I think that probably in those days we probably

00:30:05.530 - 00:30:20.090

would have signed it anyway if we had known because we wanted to get a house. 1952 A San Francisco dentist named Dan Collins decided that the suburbs of Mill Valley would be the ideal place to raise his family. He knew that no blacks lived there yet,

00:30:20.110 - 00:30:38.960

and that restrictive covenants were still on most of the homes. Indeed, on this house, indeed, that was signed. When we bought the house, it had restricted covenant, no pigs or goats of farm animals or Orientals, all blacks, except for House servants could live on this profit.

00:30:39.340 - 00:30:56.530

But there was no legal reason why we couldn't, and it was a matter of muscling up the courage and doing it for Dr Collins of suburban Home was at least a financial possibility. After all, he was a professional, one of only three black professionals in San

00:30:56.530 - 00:31:14.770

Francisco at the time. Most blacks had migrated here during the war to man shipyards and factories. When wartime industries vanished, so did their jobs. And the government guarantees of equal opportunity opportunities in the 19 fifties were very slim because this is the most unionized town in

00:31:14.770 - 00:31:34.260

the country. And except for the Iow, there was really no inroads for blacks into labor union. There was not a black bellhop or a black boots black or your black taxi driver or your black waiting. There were no jobs in this town for blacks. Most blacks

00:31:34.260 - 00:31:49.990

ended up in temporary war housing or in San Francisco's Western edition, which had been a Japanese neighborhood until wartime internment the Collins has moved to Mill Valley was unprecedented. Before we moved in, I got a call from a man named Jean Heidi, who at that time

00:31:49.990 - 00:32:06.180

was a real estate dealer here in San in Mill Valley. He was supposed to be the liberal real estate dealer, and for that reason he had been assigned the the job of the task about his fellow relatives to offer to sell, to buy the house from

00:32:06.180 - 00:32:21.700

us at a profit. And I said to him, Great, if you pay me twice what I paid for the house, no bargaining, I'd be happy to sell it to you. But they didn't take that big. They didn't call back and consequently, we bought the house and

00:32:21.700 - 00:32:35.220

we've had a couple of months later on the other side. There were many people in Mill Valley who were not distressed by removing here. My sons don't know of any, you know. They were accepted and lived in Mill Valley without any fear of being, you know,

00:32:35.230 - 00:32:57.200

rejected. You had a bunch of people over here in Mill Valley who were much more democratic than lot of people thought, um, there were, yeah, integration. Desegregation in neighborhoods in schools in the workplace would capture the nation's attention by the end of the decade 1955 at

00:32:57.210 - 00:33:10.390

the University of San Francisco. It will be a couple of young black basketball players who would take the city where it had never been before to a national championship. Two players from that team would go on to be among the greatest to ever play the game.

00:33:10.660 - 00:33:26.410

Bill Russell and K C. Jones Jones remembers taking the Florida start the 1955 season against Powerhouse U C L A. You sell it with a thin the country as far as ranking goals, and we were like 500. We're not even thought of and we had no

00:33:26.410 - 00:33:39.850

shoes. We just had a bunch of ragged looking guys. Now you talked about being cocky, arrogant and the whole bit, and we and we had him 22 3, I guess in the 1st 10 minutes, and then we just roll from there and just rolled over everybody,

00:33:40.060 - 00:33:58.470

and I'll watch galloping Bill Russell a classic dribbling job, going to a pair of points for the Don. USF coach Phil Walpert had a Cinderella team led by Jones and his roommate, Bill Russell. The Dawn's went undefeated that year on their way to the national championship

00:33:58.480 - 00:34:14.180

tournament in Oklahoma City, most of black players and in Oklahoma City uh, while we were practicing, a lot of Spectators come in and watch us. They throw pennies on the throw, dimes at us and little bit Globetrotters, Globetrotters. What Russell was doing during the course of

00:34:14.180 - 00:34:29.910

practices, going around, picking it all up, the holders for me, coach. And, uh, we just rolled through the tournament. In fact, the Dons rolled right through the next season. Two. They didn't lose another game until after Casey and Russell had graduated, the city of San Francisco

00:34:29.920 - 00:34:46.210

opened up its hearts to be all conquering Dawn's following their return home with their second straight national championship. We've done something that no other team an epidemic at that time. Just get fantastic things for San Francisco. Just put it on the map, brought it together. There

00:34:46.210 - 00:35:03.770

was sort of like a oneness, something to hang our heads on, something to be proud of, and the city was proud of its team, but not everybody turned out for the games. By the middle of the decade. There was too much else going on when we

00:35:03.770 - 00:35:34.150

come back. A trip to the city's hottest spot, North Beach San Francisco, in the 19 fifties continues mhm when the clock strikes. Trouble will cool off and start right there around the clock. Look around 1955 the year rock and roll burst onto the charts, the year

00:35:34.150 - 00:35:51.970

America owned half the world's cars and three quarters of the kitchen appliances, something was happening in San Francisco's North Beach. In the dark, smoky bars and coffee houses, a cultural revolution was brewing. It had a great ambience, had a great feeling that it was. It was

00:35:52.540 - 00:36:07.990

like it was a creation or something was being born. Cemento Renaissance We all call it. The Renaissance was happening. Enrico Banducci was one of the first sense, the changing times. He opened his club, the Hungry I to a new breed of comics like Mort Saul and

00:36:07.990 - 00:36:23.130

later, Lenny Bruce, whose sharp wit cut into American values and politics as never before. It was a combination of many things. One. You had four universities around two. You had a man like Mort Saul, who started the whole thing with hungry I, speaking about the universities

00:36:23.130 - 00:36:34.250

and about about the president and about McCarthy. He was the first one to speak against McCarthy. Politically, he had a little joke, which it was uh, you said you have you seen the Eisenhower jacket? He says it's multi zippered, zippered. Here. You zipper here and you

00:36:34.250 - 00:36:45.910

pull out the map. Your zipper here, you got cigarettes and use it for over here and you got you got pencils and everything else, he says. But, uh, they have a new jacket called the McCarthy jacket. It zips up the side over your mouth. Well, half

00:36:45.920 - 00:37:13.550

the audience laughed in those days, the other have, says Khamis Boo Khamis Khamis Middle East. Mm. On the streets, Italian Opera recalled the neighborhoods roots, but suddenly it was blending with the rhythms of jazz. Dick Party made the trip from the old nightclubs in the Western

00:37:13.550 - 00:37:25.010

edition to North Beach. There really was a lot going on, and I lived on Grand and I had a friend of mine. When I wasn't playing, he and I would go out and close the bars, and we find a party to go to it. At one

00:37:25.010 - 00:37:40.170

point, all the bars along this street, the little Italian bar over at six in the morning. So we close the bars, we find a party to go to, and then until six o'clock And then we started at six o'clock in the morning. Yes, it was like

00:37:40.170 - 00:38:03.850

somebody to every night. Clubs sprang up overnight. The hungry I the I standing for intellectual was where the big names played to break in. You've had to go down the block to the purple Onion. That's what one housewife mother of five from Alameda did in 1955.

00:38:03.860 - 00:38:14.900

Her name was Phyllis Diller. I was 37 years old and believe me, I was a housewife. I was the woman next door, and that's exactly what I looked like. The woman next door. Nobody wants to pay money to see the woman next door. You go next

00:38:14.900 - 00:38:31.030

door and look at that dumb broad opening night Boy was innocent. You see, I have this black glove that I put on and my I had a man helping me with material, and he suggested cutting one finger out of the black glove and every time I

00:38:31.030 - 00:38:44.250

put the glove on, I gotta laugh. And time and time again, I asked. I said, Why do they laugh at that? Of course it just happened to be the finger which I knew nothing about. I I knew nothing about that. Phyllis was a hit. What was

00:38:44.250 - 00:39:02.220

supposed to be a 10 day run lasted 89 weeks. You see, it was the underbelly of the arts that was coming to life in North Beach. It was before the topless thing invented by Rudi Gernreich in San Francisco. Little Shop right there. I will never forget

00:39:02.220 - 00:39:20.910

when he introduced that, and that sort of ruined that sort of wonderful highbrow thing because then they went with Carol Doda and the big Resumes and the whole different thing. But topless North Beach was still a few years away. October 7th, 1955 while Phyllis was at

00:39:20.910 - 00:39:40.440

the Purple Onion, another historic debut took place in a converted garage called the Sixth Gallery, a poetry reading. I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. Starving, hysterical. The poem was called Howell by a Berkeley graduate student named Allen Ginsberg. That night, a

00:39:40.440 - 00:39:57.860

cross section of San Francisco's artistic community was on hand, from wealthy art patrons to young poets and writers like Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure and Gary Snyder, angel headed hipsters burning for the ancient. The events seemed to bring together a movement with poetry it's voice. From that

00:39:57.870 - 00:40:16.840

day forward, North Beach would be the heart of the beat generation. It has a double meaning. One is beat in the sense of beatific or blessed, blessed, and the other is beat in the sense of out of society and also in the sense of being voluntarily

00:40:16.840 - 00:40:34.180

poor. There was beat poetry. There was beat art beat, film, beat dance, even beat dress and a beat lifestyle and centered around bars and cafes like the Coexistence Bagel Shop, the Place, the seller, the Savio's and the Original Coffee Gallery run by Leo Rigler, A friend

00:40:34.180 - 00:40:48.820

of mine and I. We opened this bottle is misty room, and there was a big empty room next to it, which was a bakery at one time, and we put it in wine licensing there. And pretty soon people started coming in, and then the whole thing,

00:40:48.820 - 00:41:09.210

the whole bit generation started it, and we put in with jazz and art exhibits and poetry readings, et cetera. Well, going to North Beach in those days was quite an adventure. We read about Ferlinghetti and Kerouac, and we read it. You might read the poem, but

00:41:09.210 - 00:41:27.300

we didn't really get involved with them. We didn't have to remember being moved. We never I never sat in a coffee house. I don't know if you did, but I don't like that coffin. I would call them rebels rather than revolutionaries. And just some extent they

00:41:27.300 - 00:41:48.040

were putting people on to give you a silly example. Michael McClure once wrote a poem that had only one word in it, which was repeated for 10 minutes, and the word was light, and it really, almost permanently put the audience to sleep. After Mike was through,

00:41:48.040 - 00:42:03.150

he asked one of his friends, and his friend liked it. Their friend thought for a while, and he said parts of it. I had questions about whether it was a beat poet or not, but my friends were all beat poets, so I probably was a beat

00:42:03.160 - 00:42:17.890

poet. Probably they were all thinking the same thing. Michael McClure came to San Francisco in 1954. He left his home in Kansas to right in the city famous for Mark Twain, Bret Hart and Jack London. I came here for the romance. Do you have the two

00:42:17.890 - 00:42:33.180

factors? The closeness to the Orient? The sights, smells, tastes touches of Chinatown and of the Orient, right and literally at the edge of North Beach. And you had a proximity to nature. Here you could get in an old car where the doors didn't work, right, because

00:42:33.180 - 00:42:50.880

nobody's car doors ever shut right in those days, and the tires were bald. But you could drive to the top of Mount Tama piles and you can see the Pacific Ocean and you could think other thoughts. Mhm frequently. Those other thoughts were not what the rest

00:42:50.880 - 00:43:11.360

of America was thinking. The beat lifestyle was so different it got the attention of those who weren't including the police. 1957 Howl that Ginsberg poem that started it all was printed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti City Lights bookstore. But on the way back from the press is a

00:43:11.360 - 00:43:31.830

shipment was seized by U. S customs officials, who declared the poem obscene. Later, police arrested Ferlinghetti and his partner for selling copies. The Spirit of Howl trial lasted the summer and ended in a landmark decision, finding that the controversial poem indeed had redeeming social value. The

00:43:31.830 - 00:43:48.960

trial added to the North Beach mystique, as did Jack Kerouac's classic saga of American youth on the road, much of which was written here. Unfortunately, publicity was not necessarily what the beats were. After 1958 I realized I couldn't stay in North Beach anymore. It was filled

00:43:48.960 - 00:44:04.310

with tourists coming to look at people like us. We become an industry, and I literally had to leave. Tourists came in to look at the beatniks. The beatniks came in to look at the tourist was like Saturday night every night of the week. One time was

00:44:04.310 - 00:44:21.390

really funny. Scene speed. Nixon Wait Downtown made headlines. Everything that went down to Union Square with the bongo drums. Not sure the lobby after Saint Francis Hotel. You know, I was freaked. Everybody out. That event, dubbed the Squares Ville Tour, was really the last gasp for

00:44:21.390 - 00:44:47.300

San Francisco's beat scene in North Beach is the gray line. Bus tours moved in. The literary figures moved out. Many of the coffee house is closed, and although clubs remained on Broadway, they'd soon go topless and force virtually everything else off the Marquis. Mhm, mhm, mhm.

00:44:57.390 - 00:45:13.110

It was quite a coup in 1958 the Major league Baseball team, and that our San Francisco giants came from New York. Well, that only added to what most of us saw as the latest status symbol for the city. It was major that the town went crazy.

00:45:13.890 - 00:45:30.880

That's all anybody talked about. And the cursed Seal Stadium was an especially attractive place to watch baseball because it was small, comfortable, well built and very close to the action. For two years, I think we all found a way to get out to the game somehow

00:45:30.880 - 00:45:51.260

or other almost every day. And we loved Willie Mays and adored Orlando Cepeda. And these were our heroes. Opening day, our boys soundly trounced the new Los Angeles Dodgers eight to nothing, and the rivalry was underway. The Giants won 83 games that year. They also won

00:45:51.260 - 00:46:11.510

our hearts. Maybe that's because the team arrived when so many other things we've taken for granted were disappearing as the 19 fifties near their end, America's economy slumped for the first time since the Depression. What's worse, the Russians beat us into space and further confounded us

00:46:11.510 - 00:46:29.070

when they're evil. Leader Nikita Khrushchev and a visit to San Francisco at least gave the impression of not being very evil at all. Meanwhile, in the South, clashes over civil rights grew steadily worse and raised more and more questions about our democracy. Everywhere, it seemed the

00:46:29.080 - 00:46:50.270

world was becoming more complicated. For San Francisco, the changing times came home. When the House on American Activities Committee scheduled hearings at City Hall, they were greeted by protesters young, educated students willing to take a stand, willing to go to jail. This was a different generation

00:46:50.270 - 00:47:11.900

than the one who settled down here 10 years before, and the event was a signpost of what was to come in the next decade. Uh, but what endures is our image of San Francisco. In the 19 fifties, the war in the forties had opened up our

00:47:11.900 - 00:47:35.100

city. The targets of the sixties would rock its very foundation. Maybe that explains the growing nostalgia for the 19 fifties, the decade when San Francisco, like so many of us, started to grow up. We hope you've enjoyed our look back at San Francisco in the 19

00:47:35.110 - 00:47:54.220

fifties and that you'll join us when Bobby Menace takes us back to San Francisco in the 19 sixties. I'm Evan White Mm mhm. Mhm. Mm San Francisco in the fifties was brought to you by Swanson Frozen foods. When you're not home cooking, Swanson is, and by

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