16: 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...
15: 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 —...
14: 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....
13: 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...
12: 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...
11: 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...
10: 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...
9: 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...
8: 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...