In the 1940s nightclubs in Chinatown became very popular with the soldiers passing through town on their way to the Pacific. These ads are all from the Curran Theatre’s The Playgoer magazine that is from Montez Lawton’s scrapbook (click on her name in the labels to see more).
Chinatown, in San Francisco, California, is the oldest Chinatown in North America and the largest Chinese community outside Asia. Since its establishment in 1848,it has been highly important and influential in the history and culture of ethnic Chinese immigrants in North America. Chinatown is an enclave that continues to retain its own customs, languages, places of worship, social clubs, and identity. There are two hospitals, numerous parks and squares, a post office, and other infrastructure. Visitors can easily become immersed in a microcosmic Asian world, filled with herbal shops, temples, pagoda roofs and dragon parades. In addition to being a starting point and home for thousands of Chinese immigrants, it is also a major tourist attraction, drawing more visitors annually than the Golden Gate Bridge. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)
'the Chinese ‘Folies-Bergere’ of the Americas.' He boasted, 'Our entertainment costs more than $2,000 per week' and offered what had become a nearly standardized Chinese-American menu. Still, patrons could order 'other native dishes upon request.' (SOURCE: Flavor and Fortune)Obviously the problem is that the ad above says it was owned by D.W. Low. I'm throughly baffled, but I'll give you what I found.
here to see the cover of a menu for Shanghai Low,Click here to read about Ed Pond, owner of Dragon's Lair.
here to see a postcard of the interior of Club Shaghai,
here to see a postcard of Shanghai Low,
here to see a photo holder for Club Shanghai,
here to see a photo of D.W. Low, owner of Shanghai Low, in traditional Chinese clothing
here for another menu cover of Shanghai Low,
here to see a bit of the exterior of Shanghai Low on Grant Avenue,
and here to see a photo of the interior of Shanghai Low.
Club Shanghai opened around 1913 by D.W. Low. My father, Fong Wan, who had an interest in this nightclub, took sole ownership of it in 1946 until around 1956.Thank you Williard!
It was my father who brought Lana Wong from China to perform at his Club Oakland, formerly the New Shanghai Terrace Bowl in Oakland CA before her performing at the Club Shanghai. Barbara Yung, was the featured dancer after Ms. Wong left my father's employ.
Few fighters stepped into the ring more often than Maxie Rosenbloom, who fought 299 times in sixteen years. Raised on the Lower East Side of New York, Rosenbloom left school after third grade and later served time in reform school. Reportedly, actor George Raft spotted the young Rosenbloom in a street brawl and advised him to become a boxer.Rosenbloom had an unusual style. He was a weak puncher and often slapped at his opponents with an open hand—earning him the nickname "Slapsie"—but he was a consummate defensive fighter and did whatever was necessary to avoid getting hit. He won the vast majority of his fights, although he only recorded nineteen knockouts in his entire professional career. (SOURCE: Harry Greb)
In 1930, he won the New York light heavyweight title. In 1932, he won the Light Heavyweight Championship of the World. He held and defended the title until November 1934, when he lost it to Bob Olin.As a professional boxer, Rosenbloom relied on hitting and moving to score points. He was very difficult to hit cleanly with a power punch and his fights often went the full number of required rounds. In his boxing matches he suffered thousands of head punches, which eventually led to the deterioration of his motor functions. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)The story goes that the club was owned by mobster Mickey Cohen, but according to this December 1, 2011 article in the L. A. Times by Patrick Goldstein, that’s not the story.
According to most historical accounts, Maxie Rosenbloom, a former prizefighter, was simply the front man for Cohen, who actually owned the joint. In the film (The Gangster Squad), Cohen has a special table at the club, which has his bookmaking operations housed upstairs. But the nightclub's ownership history turns out to be more complicated than I realized.
After my story ran, I got an email from Marti Devore, setting me straight. Even though the club was originally in Cohen's hands, from 1947 through 1950 it was owned by Sy Devore and his older brother, Al. Marti, who is Al's daughter and Sy's niece, is the Devore family's unofficial historian, which, as it turns out, makes her something of an expert on Hollywood history too.Click here to see a photo of the outside of the Los Angeles club.
Her uncle Sy, who ran a men's store originally located on Vine near Sunset, was known for years as Hollywood's "tailor to the stars." Born in Brooklyn, Sy Devore was a natural-born hipster, operating a store in New York, at Broadway and 42nd Street, before he moved west.
Sy spent a lot of time in Harlem, running with the likes of Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald and the Dorsey brothers, who bought their threads at his store and were the ones who told him that he'd be a natural fit in Hollywood. So he moved west, doing custom tailoring and throwing parties. His regular showbiz customers included Frank Sinatra and most of the Rat Pack as well as Bob Hope and Nat King Cole. Being flush with cash, they made Sy a lot of money. Marti says that Jerry Lewis used to boast that after hitting the bigtime, he bought 100 suits from Sy in 1949 alone.
Being so good at hanging out, it was inevitable that Sy would try his hand at running a nightclub. He knew Slapsy Maxie well—according to Marti, the ex-boxer turned bit actor showed up nearly every day at a barber shop that was located inside Sy's Vine Street store. So Sy and Al bought themselves a nightclub. (SOURCE: LA Times)
When Georgie was born, his mother missed work as janitor of the building, and the landlord evicted the entire family of 11, carrying Mrs. Price and Georgie into the street in her bed. A famous lady social worker saved them, letting the family return home.Click here to read more about Georgie Price.
Georgie started singing and dancing on the streets and subways of New York at a very early age, and in 1907, accompanied an older brother on his dry-cleaning delivery rounds. He sang for the wife of Gus Edwards, a Vaudeville entrepreneur, and was adopted by the Edwards, thereafter taking Edwards as a middle name. He and "Lila Lee" starred as "Little Georgie and Cuddles" in Gus Edwards song review, "School Days". Surrounded and adored by old-timers of Vaudeville, he mastered many arts, including tap dancing, soft shoe, gag-writing, double-talk, and especially imitation, at which he was regarded as one of the best, not only for his accents and voices, but also for his ability to imitate dancers, singers (including Enrico Caruso, who offered to adopt him), and entertainers of the past—as taught to him by those who remembered them best.
He fell on hard times during his adolescence, when though short, he could no longer play children. Bribing an elevator operator at the Shuberts' office building, he donned the operator's uniform, and imprisoned one (or more) of the Shuberts between floors, just long enough to audition. He became their "headliner", replacing Al Jolson, and later became the first non-classical singer to get a long-term recording contract with RCA Victor.
In the Thirties, he took the advice of his friend Bernard Baruch to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, beginning a second career, but continued on in show business, notably as president of The American Guild of Variety Artists, as a frequent emcee of charitable fund-raisers, as the host of "The Big Time", a CBS radio show in the early Fifties, and as a spokesman for Vaudeville and retired Vaudevilleans. (SOURCE: IMDb, Marshall Price)
Joe Finocchio opened his famed San Francisco nightspot after a customer, drinking in his father's speakeasy, performed an imitation of the legendary Sophie Tucker. This gave Joe the idea of a nightclub with men performing with all the glitter, sophistication and glamour of sophisticated women.
He opened a speakeasy in 1929 at 406 Stockton St, which he managed with his wife Marjorie. Initially the show was a female impersonator paired with a exotic dancer – hula or Chinese.
In 1933 with the repeal of Prohibition, it became legal, and Joe hired more dancers and expended the floor show. In 1936 the police raided the club and arrested five female impersonators, including Walter Hart and Carroll Davis, and the owners for employing entertainers on a percentage basis. Police Chief Quinn ‘declared war’ on female impersonators, and also revoked the permit of the 201 Club.
After the raid, Finocchio’s moved to a larger location at 506 Broadway, and hired more impersonators. Marjorie planned the entertainment on a grand scale. She booked the finest entertainers, supervised and planned elaborate productions. The club was allowed to exist because it became a tourist attraction, a symbol of the city’s sophistication. Joe had to promise the police that the entertainers would not mingle with the customers. Tourist magazines billed Finocchio’s as ‘America’s most unusual night club’. This was reinforced during the 1939 World’s Fair in San Francisco.
The club always included ethnic impersonators. Li-Kar did a Geisha dance; Billy Herrero recreated Hedy Lamarr in the film Algiers, 1938; in 1940 the club developed an Argentine feature; later Juan Jose did a flamenco dance; Reene de Carlo a hula dance; Bobby de Castro did a striptease in a gorilla costume (this was supposed to be Cuban).
There was little trouble at the club over the years, though military authorities declared Finocchio's "off limits" for selling liquor to WWII military personnel outside of authorized hours. That temporary sanction was lifted New Year's Eve 1943 after Joe Finocchio and other bar owners signed an agreement to limit liquor sales to military personnel to between 5 p.m and midnight. Beer could, however, be sold between 10 a.m. and midnight. The future Tony Midnight, who was working in munitions during the war, snuck into Finocchio’s using fake ID.
Joe Finocchio died in 1986, aged 88. Eve Finocchio, his widow, decided to close the club in late 1999 because of a major rent increase and dwindling attendance. The club closed November 27, 1999. Eve died 2007. (SOURCE, including club photo: Zagria)
Construction began on January 5, 1933. The project cost more than $35 million. The Golden Gate Bridge construction project was carried out by the McClintic-Marshall Construction Co., a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel Corporation founded by Howard H. McClintic and Charles D. Marshall, both of Lehigh University.
Strauss remained head of the project, overseeing day-to-day construction and making some groundbreaking contributions. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati, he placed a brick from his alma mater's demolished McMicken Hall in the south anchorage before the concrete was poured. He innovated the use of movable safety netting beneath the construction site, which saved the lives of many otherwise-unprotected steelworkers. Of eleven men killed from falls during construction, ten were killed (when the bridge was near completion) when the net failed under the stress of a scaffold that had fallen. Nineteen others who were saved by the net over the course of construction became proud members of the (informal) Half Way to Hell Club.
The project was finished by April 1937, $1.3 million under budget.
With the death of Jack Balestreri in April 2012, all workers involved in the original construction are now deceased. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)
In 1936, Silvio Zorzi opened the happening Italian restaurant Vanessi's on Broadway. Counter-side seating around the open kitchen was one of Vanessi's trademarks, as were specialty dishes such as the Chicken Cacciatore and Spaghetti Cabonara. Though Vanessi's was a major hotspot on Broadway for years, in the 1980s new owners moved the restaurant to California Street in Nob Hill. Sadly, slow business in that location led to the restaurant’s abrupt closure in 1997. (SOURCE: San Francisco Restaurants.com)
Wherever he spoke, whenever he was quoted, his theme was about segregation, discrimination, the theme of being put in the position of second-class citizen. After all, here is a man who was twice named All-American in football. An all-around athlete and student at Rutgers University. Then a degree from Columbia Law School. Then famed as actor and singer. He could play the leading role in Othello—and yet he still was a man even up until the 1950s who couldn't go into a restaurant or into the same hotel with other members of the same company.This became a public issue in 1940. After a concert, he and a group went to Vanessi's, one of the better restaurants in North Beach, in the Italian area of San Francisco. It was a mix of several whites and Negroes including John Pittman, a black newspaperman. I knew Pittman at Berkeley, at the university. He had very light skin and was allowed to walk right into Vanessi's and then the man at the door—the head waiter—said, "That guy in back of you can't come in." He pointed up to Robeson who was probably three heads taller. The group walked out and sued Vanessi's. It became a front-page scandal. Consider the public recognition of Robeson on the one hand, and the insulting behavior on the other hand—all becauseof his color! The group sued Vanessi's but nothing came of it. I've been listening to Robeson's speeches in the last few recordings I'd made where he'd spoken. More and more he emphasized a link among people whom the white race considers inferior or second-class or third world. A common bond shared by people who have been put upon by their society or other societies. People of different color or religion. Third-world people. Shearer: Did he actually use the term "third world"? (SOURCE: calisphere)
"Excuse me cabbie, take me to the Empire.""Sure thing bud."
"Hey cabbie, take me to that church/hotel."
Religion: San Francisco Skyscraper-ChurchMonday, Mar. 17, 1930When city land becomes too expensive to build churches upon, a solution is to combine churches and skyscrapers. The Chicago Temple (First Methodist Episcopal Church plus offices, stores) and Manhattan's Broadway Temple (Methodist Episcopal Church plus apartment houses, hotel, stores) are examples. San Franciscans now have a brand new 30-story pyramidal skyscraper-church-hotel to admire —the William Taylor Hotel and Temple Methodist Episcopal Church, on the busy corner of McAllister and Leavenworth Streets.A greystone tower with a suggestion of Gothic ornament, it is named for Forty-Niner William ("California") Taylor who chose the longest way to the gold fields— around the Horn. In 1849 that route was safely traversed by 108 vessels. Most of the passengers sought gold. Few of them became either rich or famous, many returned East. William Taylor took a cargo of cut timber with him to build a church. An overpowering man with a stentorian voice, he wore a big, warm beard instead of a shirt. He had been Methodist Bishop of Africa. When he arrived in San Francisco he put his Bible on an overturned whiskey barrel in the middle of Portsmouth Square, bellowed and sang until the saloons emptied to hear him. For diversion he swam regularly across San Francisco Bay, a procedure still regarded as something of an athletic feat. He founded the College of the Pacific (Methodist Episcopal college in Stockton, enrollment about 970), wrote more than 20 books, thundered his old-time religion at Gold Coast sots and socialites.The building which bears his name cost $2,800,000, contains 500 guest rooms and 32 tower apartments, a famed French chef, a glossy array of electric stoves, refrigerators, semi-modernistic furniture. It is floodlighted at night, has a tapestried lobby. Its seven elevators can reach the roof in 30 seconds.The church proper, in the Gothic style, will seat 1,500, with a chapel seating 125 more. Two assembly halls may be combined to hold an audience of 1,100 for athletics or theatricals. Four Methodist churches combined to form the new congregation. The pastor is Dr. Walter John Sherman, who devoted ten years to the scheme. Laymen prominently involved: Fred D. Parr, president of Parr Terminal Co.; John H. McCallum, lumberman, president of the San Francisco Y.M.C.A. (SOURCE: TIME)
Full of zeal and optimism, in San Francisco ten years ago Methodists of four of the city's biggest churches—Central, California Street, Wesley, Howard Street—sold their properties, pooled $800,000 to form a superchurch which they called Temple Methodist. Their optimism the Methodists expressed by building a 27-story hotel, highest on the Pacific Coast, at Leavenworth & McAllister streets in downtown San Francisco. The William Taylor Hotel, with a cathedral-like, 1,300-seat church concealed in its second, third and fourth floors, would support Temple Church, everyone felt, retire its $1,550,000 in first mortgage bonds at maturity. But more funds were needed and before the hotel was completed in 1930 the Methodists floated a $150,000 second mortgage issue, borrowed $100,000 privately, obtained $534,000 more through mortgages sold to the Methodist home missions board.Installed in its fine quarters. Temple Church prospered spiritually, but William Taylor Hotel moved into the red, remained there. For a time the Methodists paid interest charges totaling, $135.000 from their own pockets, then let a $500,000 debt accumulate. A bondholders' protective committee foreclosed, bought in the property last November for $750,000. The Methodists, their investment lost for good, were invited to move out of the hotel, their quarters to be used for more lucrative operations, including a garage. Temple Church was as homeless and penniless as any evicted tenement family, but it had kind neighbors. Temple Emanu-El, San Francisco's largest synagog, offered the use of its building on Sundays. A small Methodist church offered the Templers a place to worship in between regular services. And San Francisco's most vigorous Congregational church made what Temple's pastor called an offer of "marriage." Temple accepted. Last Sunday for the first time Methodists mingled with Congregationalists in First Church (2,500 seats), downtown near the swank St. Francis Hotel. (SOURCE: TIME)
In a 1937 auction, new owners acquired the William Taylor for $750,000, changed its name to the Empire and promoted its penthouse as the Empire Sky Room.Eventually, the Empire also failed. By 1942, it was sold to the federal government and became an office of the Internal Revenue Service.Since 1978, the once prestigious William Taylor Hotel has been a dormitory for Hastings College of the Law students. (SOURCE: SF Gate)
William Taylor (1821-1902) was an American Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, elected in 1884. Taylor University, a Christian college in Indiana, carries his name.Taylor was born 2 May 1821 in Rockbridge County—home to Sam Houston (b.1796), Robert E. Lee (b.1807), and Stonewall Jackson (b.1824)—in the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was the oldest of eleven children born to Stuart Taylor and Martha Hickman. In his autobiography, Story of My Life (1896), Taylor describes his grandfather, James, as one of five brothers who were “Scotch-Irish of the Old Covenantor type…who emigrated from County Armagh, Ireland, to the colony of Virginia, about one hundred and thirty years ago” (i.e. 1766). The Hickman family was of English ancestry and settled in Delaware in the late 1750s. Both families “fought for American freedom in the Revolution of 1776” and afterward emancipated their slaves. Taylor’s father, Stuart, was a “tanner and currier—a mechanical genius of his times”; his mother was “mistress of the manufacture of all kinds of cloth.” Both parents, he says, were of “powerful constitution of body and mind…their English school education quite equal to the average of their day.”Conversion to ChristBefore William was ten years old, his grandmother had taught him the Lord's Prayer and explained that he could become a son of God. He longed for this relationship, but was unsure how to obtain it. Overhearing the story of a poor Black man who had received salvation, he wondered why he could not, also. He recounts in his autobiography,"soon after, as I sat one night by the kitchen fire, the Spirit of the Lord came on me and I found myself suddenly weeping aloud and confessing my sins to God in detail, as I could recall them, and begged Him for Jesus' sake to forgive them, with all I could not remember; and I found myself trusting in Jesus that it would all be so, and in a few minutes my heart was filled with peace and love, not the shadow of a doubt remaining."He entered the Baltimore Annual Conference in 1843. Bishop Taylor traveled to San Francisco, California in 1849, and organized the first Methodist church in San Francisco. Between 1856 and 1883 he traveled in many parts of the world as an evangelist. He was elected Missionary Bishop of Africa in 1884, and retired in 1896.Books he wrote include:Seven Years' Street Preaching in San Francisco (1857)Christian Adventures in South Africa (1867)Four Years' Campaign in India (1875)Our South American Cousins (1878)Self-Supporting Missions in India (1882)The Story of My Life (1895)Flaming Torch in Darkest Africa (1898)
Here is a breakfast menu from Hotel Stewart that is part of a menu collection recently donated to Johnson & Wales University Library, Providence, RI. Based on the scope of the collection, I would guess this is probably from the 1940s.Menu link for Johnson & Wales University Library
New book available on Amazon.
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