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 novelist, Gertrude Atherton, a San Francisco native, to mount an investigation into the phenomenon of unaccompanied women drinking in saloons and nightclubs.

We trace the history of William Randolph Hearst’s and Joseph Pulitzer’s battle for domination in New York City at the end of the nineteenth century and the sensational, fact-free style style of reportage that gave rise to the term “yellow journalism,” and created the outrage that led to the Spanish-American War in 1898, the one where Hearst famously said, “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war!”

Finally, we circle back to to 1944 and Gertrude Atherton’s first installment of “Women In Saloons, The Shame of My Sex.” The city bursting with wartime workers. Women daring to have a drink in public. Atherton’s piece is a classic piece of moralizing, painting these women as mothers neglecting their kids and succumbing to “riotous indecencies.” She herself was born to great wealth and privilege and it shows.

In her first installment, she hilariously brings along an escort to down her drinks while she performs her first-hand research, since she is a teetotaler. This installment ends as she and her escort make it to the legendary Top o’ the Mark Restaurant and Bar atop Nob Hill.