Elaine Worth Pt. 1 – Star of the French Sex Farce “Easy For Zee Zee” at the Green Street Theater

by kbronson | Sep 29, 2026 | Episodes

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

The Secret History of Frisco

Elmer “Bones” Remmer

After running the Cal-Neva Lodge in the 30s, Bones came to San Francisco and took his mantle as the Bay Area’s the king of vice.

Jimmie Tarantino

Editor of the Hollywood Nite Life scandal sheet, extortionist, blackmailer, Jimmie was the prince of smears and innuendo.

Bill Wren

Managing Editor of the SF Examiner, Bill Wren ran the city, played the horses, and didn’t like to pay up when he lost a bet.

Bob Patterson

As Freddie Francisco, Bob was the biggest gossip columnist of all, also a convicted embezzler and thief. A great writer, too.

Shell Cooper

Bones Remmer’s lieutenant. Cooper and Varni’s bar was a feeder saloon to nearby brothels and filled with b-girls.

Sally Stanford

Sally ran the city’s high-end brothels, catering to the city’s power elite. She eventually became the mayor of Sausalito.

Frank Sinatra

Frank was an early investor in Hollywood Life magazine. After Jimmie shook him down for $8K, Jimmie had to leave LA.

Mickey Cohen

Mickey Cohen was Hollywood’s flamboyant gangster, the southern California equivalent to Bones Remmer

Thomas Lynch

San Francisco’s District Attorney. An ally of Bill Wren, he went after the purveyors sin in the city’s Tenderloin district.

Herb Caen

Gossip columnist at the SF Chronicle and creator of the modern myth of San Francisco, cool grey city of love.

Louella Parsons

Syndicated Queen of Gossip and screenwriter for William Randolph Hearst’s newspaper and radio empire.

Estes Kefhauver

The Senator’s committee revealde the extent and scope of organized crime’s influence over the United States.

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“Will Freddie Francisco, former inmate of Sing Sing, be permitted to sit arrogantly upon a throne of pen and ink and splash spiked words that cause tears and unhappiness to S.F. business men and their families?

“Freddie Francisco, alias Bob Patterson, once posed as a member of royalty. He assumed the title of a Count, under the name of Maximilian B.H.M. Carlton as the son of Marquis of Gahnst and a subaltern in the Black Watch regiment, and as such was arrested in Tucson, Arizona and on Jan. 27, 1928, was arrested for grand larceny by the Chicago Police. (Can you picture columnist Francisco as a count?)”—Jimmie Tarantino, Hollywood Life Magazine.

“It doesn’t take much to produce a good merchant of cash-and-carry love: just courage, an infinite capacity for perpetual suspicion, stamina on a 24-hour basis, the deathless conviction that the customer is always wrong, a fair knowledge of first aid, do-it-yourself gynecology, judo, and a tremendous sense of humor. Aside from these basic talents, a good madam must possess an understanding of female psychology (in the broadest sense), a knowledge of quick therapies for restoring drunks to a state of locomotion (out the door), and a grasp of techniques for the eradication of pimps. With these qualities, and a few others, you may develop into a self-respecting madam. —Madam Sally Stanford (allegedly ghost-written by Freddie Francisco himself)