Dolly Fine Pt. 3: 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, taxed, and quietly...
Ep. 11, Pt. 2: The Lady In Red—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 tightened the noose the...
Ep. 11—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 professionally managed...
A Frisco Mafia Deep Dive 1928-1932
This is a trailer for my first official Patreon bonus episode. To hear future bonus episodes, please join FRISCO: The Secret History at Patreon. TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to the Frisco the. Secret History Podcast. I’m your host, Knox Bronson. This is a bonus episode for...
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 eccentric and an early, outspoken...
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 Call It Frisco and Call It Frisco #2 — Sally...
Ep. 9 Bones Remmer, The Tenderloin’s 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 violence out of sight —...
Rachel Walther Discusses Orson Welles’ “The Lady From Shanghai” (1947)
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....
Ep. 8—Women In Saloons: The Shame Of My Sex Part 2
Welcome back! 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, author Gertrude Atherton. If you missed the start, you...
Ep. 7—The examiner’s 1944 moral crusade against barfly women: Women in saloons—the shame of my sex PT. 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-year-old author and...
Jimmie Tarantino Pt. 2: D.A. Thomas Lynch Spells Out Jimmie’s Scams in Post-WWII Frisco
TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to the Secret History of Frisco Podcast. I’m your host, Knox Bronson. I have a fun episode today, a bit of a departure in that it’s a verbatim reading of a portion of an oral history, the interviewing of former California Attorney...
Episode 5: introducing jimmie tarantino part 1—when frank sinatra and mickey cohen invested in 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 East Orange, New...
Bonus ep. 5 Call It Frisco Part 2—sally stanford weighs in on the eternal conflict
TRANSCRIPT: Welcome to the Secret History of Frisco Podcast. I’m your host, Knox Bronson. We are going to revisit the question of “FRISCO” today. Some people are quite passionate about it. This is the “Call It FRISCO, Part 2” Episode. Ever since I got sober many years...
Bonus ep. 4—FRISCO NOIR With Rachel Walther—The Maltese Falcon No.1 (1931) & No.2 (1941) and Dark Passage (1947)
TRANSCRIPT Knox(train chugging) (bell ringing) (horn blowing) Frisco: The Secret History, a podcast. (instrumental music) Hi, this is Knox Bronson at The Secret History of Frisco podcast, and we have a really great, uh, episode for you today. We're talking to Rachel...
Ep. 4—The Story of Johnny Ochsner, The Rich Kid Romeo, and the Lovesick Stowaways
TRANSCRIPT Hi, this is Knox Bronson at the Secret History of Frisco podcast. We have a rather remarkable episode today. It is the story of an Oakland man, two women who followed him across the Pacific as stowaways, one from San Francisco to Hawaii, one from Hawaii...
Bonus Ep. 3—when Sally Stanford Kicked Humphrey Bogart Out of Her Flagship Pleasure Palace at 1144 PINE in 1941
TRANSCRIPT Hi, this is Knox Bronson at The Secret History of Frisco podcast. This bonus episode is about legends: specifically the infamous San Francisco madam Sally Stanford, movie star Humphrey Bogart, and how she barred him from her infamous bordello, and...
The Secret Life of Bob Patterson, The Charming Ex-Con Who Terrorized High Society With His Column, “Freddie Francisco Observes” In The 1940s
TRANSCRIPT: Hi, this is Knox Bronson at The Secret History of Frisco podcast. I have a great episode for you today featuring one of the most wickedly intelligent and delightfully roguish writers ever to grace the pages of a San Francisco Newspaper: Bob Patterson. Bob...
Bonus episode No. 2—Interview with paul drexler, author of “notorious san francisco—True tales of crime, passion, and murder”
Bonus ep. No. 1—Call It Frisco
This episode explores the long and often contentious history of the nickname “Frisco” for San Francisco. Despite the strong disapproval of many, including Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, the term has deep roots stretching back to the Gold Rush era. We delve into the...
The Hawaiian Princess Who Wanted To Sing
TRANSCRIPT Welcome to the Secret History of Frisco Podcast. I’m your host, Knox Bronson. We have a wonderful episode for you today, the story of the Hawaiian princess who came to San Francisco in 1933 to open a nightclub where she could sing. We will again encounter...