by kbronson | Dec 23, 2025 | Episodes
This special holiday episode of Frisco — The Secret History explores how Christmas was celebrated in San Francisco from the Gold Rush through the 1940s. The episode opens with a reflection on Emperor Norton, the city’s most beloved eccentric and an early, outspoken...
by kbronson | Dec 19, 2025 | Episodes
In this episode of The Secret History of Frisco, Knox Bronson returns—hopefully for the last time—to San Francisco’s most emotionally charged semantic battlefield: the word “Frisco.” Building on the earlier episodes Call It Frisco and Call It Frisco #2 — Sally...
by kbronson | Nov 13, 2025 | Episodes
In this episode, we step back into San Francisco at the end of the roaring twenties, when bootleggers, blackhanders, and quiet Mafia bosses carved out invisible empires in North Beach. It was a time when the city’s underworld tried to keep its violence out of sight —...
by kbronson | Nov 1, 2025 | Vintage Films
Steamboat Willie is one of the most significant and recognizable animated shorts in film history, best known for being the official debut of Mickey Mouse. Here are the key facts about this seminal film Landmark in Film History Debut of Mickey Mouse: It premiered on...
by kbronson | Oct 19, 2025 | Episodes
REFERENCES: NOIR CITY 41, in which the cover story, “Queen of the Cutters,” sees Mary Mallory discuss the career of editor Viola Lawrence, and the role that she played in shaping Orson Welles’ confounding masterpiece The Lady from Shanghai. The KL Studio Blu-ray...
