{wild bubble} Report From The No Kings March In Bezerkeley
{frisco} Rachel Walther Discusses “The Lady from Shanghai” Orson Welles’ Fractured Dreamscape of San Francisco Noir (1947)
This installment is all about the wild 1947 film noir The Lady From Shanghai, and guest Rachel Walther, a film historian with a book coming out soon called Born To Lose, The Misfits Who Made Dog Day Afternoon, breaks down the chaotic story behind it.
The Lady From Shanghai film was a last-ditch effort by Orson Welles to get back in Hollywood’s good graces after his studio battles over The Magnificent Ambersons. He literally phoned up Columbia head Harry Cohn and pitched a thriller based on a random book title he saw, just to get the cash for a play he was staging. The drama ratcheted up when Cohn insisted Welles cast his then-estranged wife, superstar Rita Hayworth, which Hayworth was actually into! She saw it as a chance to ditch her “sex goddess” image, even cutting and dyeing her famous red hair platinum blonde as a big middle finger to Cohn. However, Welles—being Welles—turned a simple plot into a “noir dreamscape fantasia” with a confusing story, kicking off the shoot with a crazy production on Errol Flynn’s yacht in Mexico where a cameraman tragically dropped dead on the first day.
Rachel explains that while the plot is “nuts” and full of holes, the film’s stunning visuals, especially once the action moves to San Francisco, are what make it a classic. Welles shot in distinct city spots like Chinatown, the Steinhardt Aquarium, and the iconic Hall of Mirrors at Playland at the Beach, which was a huge, custom-built set back in L.A. This visual feast, full of off-kilter energy, is why the film sits so high in the pantheon of SF noir. Interestingly, the film was a flop at the time because audiences and critics just weren’t ready for how strange and abstract it was. The discussion wraps up by exploring the tragic arc of Welles’ career after Citizen Kane, where his inability to compromise and his obsessive creative nature led him to be constantly shut out of his own projects, proving that the film’s theme of duplicity was really Welles’ commentary on his hostile relationship with Hollywood, not just his messy divorce from Hayworth.
My Sign For No Kings Day
{frisco} WOMEN IN SALOONS—The Shame of My Sex Part Two
Welcome back, Frisco fans! 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 definitely want to go back and listen to Part One! This episode picks up where we left off, following Atherton’s increasingly frantic, first-hand reports as she descends from the glittering “Top of the Mark”—where she finds “all…attending strictly to business” in the gloom—down to the “second rate” clubs. She’s on a mission to document the moral “menacing breakdown of Feminine Morals in Our Brawling Barrooms.” Things get louder, darker, and in her estimation, much uglier, with reports of “lewd” remarks and women “leaning heavily on the men” in crowded, raucous nightclubs.
Atherton, an 86-year-old self-proclaimed lifelong teetotaler, continues her survey of San Francisco’s wartime nightlife, moving from the crowded dance halls to the more respectable cocktail bars frequented by women after a hard day’s work. She actually offers a rare moment of nuance, distinguishing between the girls who are “out for the best that life has to offer” and the “frustrateds on the loose,” seeking only an expensive fling. However, her true disdain is reserved for the affluent, blowsy women drinking from 11 AM to midnight in Marina bars, whose children wander in begging for dinner. This segment culminates in Atherton’s final, scathing assessment where she concludes that the majority of these “degraded women are fools—possibly morons” who lack the mental discipline to handle their newfound wartime “freedom” and turn into “human tanks.”
The conclusion of Atherton’s crusade isn’t about mere disapproval—it’s about a proposed societal cure. After rejecting prohibition as a remedy, she argues that these “fools are superfluous” and suggests they should be allowed to “drink themselves to death and the sooner the better,” or else be “shut them up in institutions.” Yikes. She then pivots to what she sees as the real problem: the children. Atherton makes a final, passionate appeal for saving this “new generation” by establishing large, comfortable country colonies with schools, proper care, and “personal affection” from “intelligent, motherly women.” It’s a wild, shocking ride from a woman whose history includes links to eugenicist ideas and a clear sense of white supremacy. Join us for this final, unsettling look at a major San Francisco media event of 1944.
FOR A COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT AND REFERENCES, GO TO FRISCO—THE SECRET HISTORY
{frisco} Ep. 7—The Examiner’s 1944 Moral Crusade Against Barfly Women: Women In Saloons—The Shame of My Sex PT. 1
One Man’s Opinion Of Moonlight
Pop Down The Years
