Welcome to the Frisco: The Secret History Podcast. I'm your host, Knox Bronson. I have a great episode for you today about the Green Street Theater, which we have focused on in the last couple of episodes. Although this time I'm just going to read Freddie Francisco's column from January 1st, 1947. That's almost two months shy of 80 years ago. I've done three episodes on Bob before, Bob Patterson, a.k.a. Freddie Francisco, and they're worth going back and listening to because he was quite a character. I talked about how I met him, and I'll just quickly mention that I met him in 1971 when I went to work for the San Francisco Examiner at the age of 20 as a copy boy. I ran into him on the elevator my first day. He claimed that he had arranged the job. He may or may not have... You never knew with Bob. He was an incredible, fascinating man, and he'd done time in Sing Sing, and he was a great writer, which was interesting. I mean, considering the fact that he was also a true criminal, and, uh, had been arrested many times and been in jail. A lot of times he'd worked all over the world, but go back and listen to those three episodes and we will do other episodes in the future about him. And, uh, And the last two episodes that I did were about the Green Street Theater and Elaine Worth. There is a story, another story coming related to the Green Street Theater, but I'm just going to read his last column and you can get a sense of how he did things. Like I say, he was equally at home on top of Nob Hill or the gambling joints down in the Tenderloin, or the sporting houses around San Francisco. He was quite a guy. Okay, so the January 1st, 1947, the headline read, "Freddie Francisco Observes: On Stage and Off, Green Street Theater Actors Made Headlines." San Francisco Examiner, January 1, 1947. The Green Street Theater is dark again. This somewhat dreary outpost of the dramatic arts, which has been entertaining waifs, strays, and transients with a rather sad production of "The Drunkard" in recent months, has again entered that dismal state of defunctitude. Let me just mention that the word "defunctitude" does not exist, but that's Bob, or Freddie, as the case may be. I love it. From which it emerges now and then again to glitter palely and briefly with someone's sure thing. Let me read that again. The theater has entered that dismal state of defunctitude from which it emerges now and then to glitter palely and briefly with someone's sure thing. The place has now come upon evil years, for though it was never running over with Barrymores and Chattertons or Bennetts, it once had a very much livelier era. But, and most San Franciscans were well aware of its presence, if only through the public prints. True, its publicity has more to do with the Detective Bureau and the morgue than discussions of the drama, but nevertheless, the Green Street Theater has had its moments. A whole generation of San Franciscans, now old enough to know better, will remember sneaking down there to see "The Peephole" and "White Cargo" and other plays too risque to be produced further downtown. Dorothy Friend, one half of Variety's San Francisco representation, reminds me that girls from Hamlin's and Burke's, her alma mater, didn't feel they had lived in her day until they had witnessed a performance of "Easy for Zee Zee" at the Green Street Theater. Probably one of the strongest reasons for attendance lay in the fact that one never knew if the play would end or not. Suddenly the place might be filled with censors and gendarmes, and then a little curtain speech from the manager, like the one that Sidney Goldtree made when the cops rang the curtain down on "Easy for Zee Zee": "We can't run a play without any lines. The only thing that the censors have left is permission for the box office girl to say hello to customers. Your money will be refunded at the door." As the years went by, a certain aura of rather dingy tragedy became associated with the place. There was certainly enough reason for this. Robert Chapman, leading man in "Easy for Zee Zee," was murdered one night after the show, thrown down the light well of his apartment building. Well, it was his friend's apartment building, but minor trifle. The play's leading woman, Elaine Worth, followed the path of love into the underworld circles and was photographed languishing over a morgue slab when her gangster lover, Gerry Ferri, was pumped full of Colt slugs. She couldn't live without poor Gerry, she said. Shortly afterward, another underworldling, Frank Grupico, made the city prison on a charge that promised to win him a trip over to Marin County. She couldn't live without poor Frankie, said Elaine. Perhaps the most tragic figure to be connected with the Green Street Theater was Edith Ransome. Edith was a woman of no little culture and family background. Reared in Baltimore, she flew the home coop as soon as she was able and tried for a stage career. She had moderate success on Broadway and finally wound up in Hollywood with a contract. While she was there, she was approached by the producers of "White Cargo" with the offer of the star role, Tondeleyo. She took the part and opened shortly thereafter at the Green Street Theater. Tondeleyo, in the play, was an amoral and completely vicious female, a beautiful animal. Edith, whose life up to then had been conventional and wholesome, suddenly began to be Tondeleyo on the street as well as on the stage. She became pathologically temperamental. She brought suits against her fellow actors for treating her roughly on the stage. She indulged in a series of fancy love affairs. Finally, after a fight with the manager, she left the company. For a while she worked as the press agent for a hotel, and later took a publicity job with the Matson Line. Suddenly she was in the news again with a suit against the Matson Line. She had been shanghaied aboard a boat bound for the Orient, she claimed. The suit was settled out of court. Then came the sordid years in the downward trail, unpaid hotel bills, trouble over bad checks, second and finally third-rate men. And then one day, at twenty-eight, the little star, who was absorbed by the part she had played, brought her life to an end in a shabby little hotel on a mean street. And so perhaps the atmosphere of sadness that hangs around the little theater on Green Street is created by the presence of ghosts like these, wraiths out of the checkered, turbulent, and sometime tragic past of the shabby little show house. The funny thing is, the Green Street Theater had smash hits like "Easy for Zee Zee." And despite all the turbulence and drama surrounding, and deaths, if you've listened to the past two episodes, and poor Edith Ransome. But that was Frisco. It was another time, another place. It's the place we are visiting.
