FRISCO—The Secret History

Knox Bronson
  • 5.0 (8)
  • TRUE CRIME

Join us on a cinematic journey through the last wild years when San Francisco was still wide-open. The cops ran the town in the Thirties and Bones Remmer ran the town in the Forties.Battles raged between the factions of dark and light in the hidden realms of San Francisco’s power elite, behind the headlines, from the celestial dominions of Nob Hill eateries and private clubs down to the nether depths of the dive bars in the heart of the Tenderloin, up to the Barbary Coast and jazz joints of North Beach and over to the banks and brokerages in the Financial District …FRISCO will bring alive that wild and bygone era of the Cool Grey City of Love that seduced the world.

  1. #25 Bones Remmer Bribe Attempt Refused!—Freddie Says No To Gambler's Cash

    3D AGO

    #25 Bones Remmer Bribe Attempt Refused!—Freddie Says No To Gambler's Cash

    In this episode, I talk about the time well-known grifter, Charles Auberguy, he of the Frisco netherworld and serial inheritance scams, contacted San Francisco Examiner columnist Freddie Francisco, ex-con and brilliant chronicler of high society foibles and underworld gossip, with a lucrative bribe offer, $500 a month, for laying off Chin Lim Mow, aka The Chinaman, gambling boss of San Mateo County. Freddie played along and invited Auberguy to come visit him at his luxury apartment atop Nob Hill, replete with butler, the following week. Immediately, Examiner Editor Bill Wren, Freddie, reporters Ernie Lenn and Ed Montgomery decided to capture the whole thing on tape, and laid out the plan. A few hours before the appointed time, they wired Freddie's plush digs for sound. Auberguy showed up right on time and tossed some carefully folded bills on the table. Freddie maneuvered him over to the stereo where the microphone was hidden and drilled him for details about the who what when and the how much he was going to make each month. We have a transciption of that conversation in the episode.. When Freddie spoke the agreed upon phrase, the two reporters, the sound man and the photographer, burst out of the back room, flash bulbs popping. Auberguy didn't protest. He smiled sheepishly, picked up his cash, and walked out into the night. There was a fair amount of fallout. A sledgehammer raid at The Chinaman's 101 Club south of the city. Police blockades at Bone's Club on Turk and Ed Sahati's joint at the Hotel Somerton on Geary. A lot of sound and fury, but nothing really changed in Frisco. That would take a few more years. Come to think of it, that might have been the first payoff Freddie Francisco ever turned down.

    38 min
  2. Bonus #5—Wren vs Patterson: Does The Word "Poontang" Belong In A Family Newspaper

    SEASON 1, EPISODE 23 TRAILER

    Bonus #5—Wren vs Patterson: Does The Word "Poontang" Belong In A Family Newspaper

    In this episode, I’m diving into one of my favorite San Francisco stories—the kind that lives right at the intersection of journalism, mischief, and outright audacity. It centers on two unforgettable characters from the San Francisco Examiner: the hard-driving, razor-sharp editor Bill Wren, and the wildly charismatic columnist Bob Patterson—better known to readers as Freddie Francisco. Bob was one of the most charming and fascinating men I’ve ever met. This was the clash of two monumental titans over the use of the word "poontang" in the newspaper. I walk you through Wren’s amazing rise, a tale of grit and termination—from a runaway kid riding the rails west to becoming one of the most feared and respected newsroom bosses in the country—and how he hired Patterson, a brilliant writer with a criminal past, a trickster at heart. Their relationship was equal parts respect and chaos, which made what happened almost inevitable. At the heart of the story is a ridiculous, very San Francisco kind of bet they made about whether the word “poontang”would ever appear in the paper again, after Bob used it in one of his columns.   What followed is pure Freddie Francisco: clever, subversive, and brazen.  It’s a small story on the surface, but it captures something bigger about Frisco, the era, and the kinds of characters who used to run the show. Who won the bet? You’ll have to listen to the episode!

    20 min
  3. Dolly Fine Part 4: Dolly Comes In From The Cold & Waltzes Off Into The Night

    MAR 26

    Dolly Fine Part 4: Dolly Comes In From The Cold & Waltzes Off Into The Night

    In Part Four of the Dolly Fine story, I bring the Dolly Fine story to a close.  Where we last left off, Dolly had been arrested and charged on eight felony counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The DA had her dead to rights and such was the political climate of the moment, he was going to make hay by pressing her to the full extent of the law.  Instead of arriving for her arraignment, she took flight and forfeited her $1000 bail. Every sighting of her, from San Diego to Paris, made headlines around the country. Dolly sold papers. On the eighty-ninth day of her exile, she got word to her attorney, Jake "The Master" Ehrlich, to arrange for her to turn herself in. Jake met Dolly in Oakland, covered her face with a large scarf and sunglasses and they took the ferry back to Oakland. On the morning of her trial, Jake pulled one of his most Ehrlichian moves and brought Frisco's elites face to face with their own hypocricy. Did Dolly walk? Of course she did, but at what cost?  Because Jake had demanded quite an unforeseen fee for his services.

    42 min
  4. Frisco Noir with Rachel Walther #3; "Sudden Fear" (1952) & "House On Telegraph Hill" (1951)

    MAR 8

    Frisco Noir with Rachel Walther #3; "Sudden Fear" (1952) & "House On Telegraph Hill" (1951)

    In this episode of Frisco: The Secret History, Knox Bronson welcomes back film writer Rachel Walther to explore two classic film noir movies set in San Francisco: Sudden Fear (1952) starring Joan Crawford and Jack Palance, and House on Telegraph Hill (1951) starring Valentina Cortese and Richard Basehart. Rachel dives into the production history, fascinating behind-the-scenes drama, and the real San Francisco locations that shaped these atmospheric thrillers. From Joan Crawford’s tense love triangle with co-stars to wartime backstories and dramatic Telegraph Hill chases, the conversation reveals how the city itself became a character in post-war noir filmmaking. They also explore why San Francisco’s dramatic hills, foggy streets, and working-class past made it such a natural setting for crime dramas in the 1940s and 50s—and how these films captured a version of the city that has largely disappeared. If you love classic cinema, film noir, or San Francisco history, this episode uncovers the strange and shadowy stories behind two remarkable movies.

    44 min
  5. FRISCO TALES - APRIL 27, 1938 - A trailer

    MAR 5

    FRISCO TALES - APRIL 27, 1938 - A trailer

    On April 27, 1938, San Francisco woke up to a banner headline: “Jury Indicts Dolly Fine as Boys Tell of Vice Den.” In this bonus episode of Frisco: The Secret History Podcast, I zoom out from Dolly Fine’s indictment to take you inside one extraordinary spring day in the city. I explore the political optics behind Dolly’s charges, the lingering fallout from the Atherton corruption investigation, and the broader culture of tolerated vice that defined Frisco in the 1930s. From a shocking “white slavery” trial to a police sergeant’s scandalous midnight “auto ride” with an arrested streetwalker, the day’s stories reveal a city caught between reform and routine corruption—while the rest of the world edged closer to war. This is a Patreon-only bonus episode available to members at the $5 tier and above.

    9 min
  6. Ep. 11, Part 3 - Dolly Fine: The Lady in Red Vanishes

    FEB 11

    Ep. 11, Part 3 - Dolly Fine: The Lady in Red Vanishes

    In this episode, I let Jake Ehrlich do a lot of the talking, because frankly, no one skewered San Francisco’s hypocrisy quite like he did. Dolly wasn’t just fighting a criminal charge—she was being fed to the wolves in a city that had tolerated, taxed, and quietly protected vice for decades. Suddenly, after one raid involving a handful of well-connected teenage boys, everyone found religion. What fascinates me most here is Dolly’s code. She could have blown the lid off police graft. She could have named names. Instead, she chose silence—and then she chose to disappear. Whether you see that as loyalty, pride, or strategy, it says everything about how the underworld operated. And in the middle of it all? A mother terrified that her child might see her face in the papers.

    33 min
  7. The Lady In Red Part Two: Collateral Damage

    FEB 3

    The Lady In Red Part Two: Collateral Damage

    In this episode, I continue the story of Dolly Fine as San Francisco’s long-standing system of tolerated vice begins to unravel in the wake of the Atherton Report of 1937. Police shakeups, grand jury investigations, and rising public pressure tightened the noose the long-tolerated and city-wide machinery of grart, even as those very same players who profited for decades scrambled to protect themselves.  When a police raid on Dolly's house triggered  by a high-society matron's call to the Chief of Police, caught her son and his friends in her parlor, the response was swift and ferocious: felony indictments, screaming headlines, and officials suddenly eager to prove they could clean house. The men walked free, the broader system went largely untouched, and Dolly—branded the “Lady in Red”—was singled out as the fall guy. Faced with the choice of prison, suicide, or breaking her lifelong code of the underworld and becoming a snitch, she vanished, setting off a nationwide manhunt, or madam-hunt. Her tell-all interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, published after she had absconded, did not help her case, nor Attorney, Jake "The Master" Ehrlichs' future defense of her crimes.

    35 min
  8. Dolly Fine—The Lady In Red & Frisco's Empire of Vice

    JAN 16

    Dolly Fine—The Lady In Red & Frisco's Empire of Vice

    Dolly Fine was one of San Francisco’s last great madams and a defining figure of the city’s wide-open 1930s nightlife. Tall, blonde, impeccably dressed, and deeply embedded in the city’s underworld, Dolly ran one of the most profitable and professionally managed houses in town—right as Frisco’s long tradition of tolerated vice was beginning to crack under public scrutiny. Before diving into Dolly’s reign, Knox takes us on a whirlwind tour of the city’s legendary madams, from Gold Rush pioneers like Irene McCready and Ah Toy to fan favorites Tessie Wall and Jessie Hayman. These women helped define San Francisco’s peculiar relationship with sex, money, and moral flexibility—a relationship that lasted for decades, until reformers, headlines, and political embarrassment forced the city to look too closely at its own reflection. Dolly Fine’s story sits squarely at that breaking point. With ties to Prohibition-era smuggling, early gangster life, and a past that police later dredged up with relish, Dolly faced the full force of the Atherton investigation and a changing civic mood. Though she survived the Grand Jury and continued operating, the ground was shifting beneath her feet. Part One sets the stage for her dramatic fall—her arrest, flight, and nationwide manhunt—stories that will unfold in Part Two. Key Topics Covered San Francisco’s long tradition of tolerated viceLegendary Frisco madams from the Gold Rush onwardDolly Fine’s rise in the 1930s underworldProhibition smuggling and early gangster connectionsThe Atherton Report and systemic police graftThe McDonough Brothers and institutional corruptionPublic revulsion at graft versus tolerance of viceJake Ehrlich’s defense of Dolly FineThe cultural turning point that ended old Frisco

    35 min
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Trailer

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
8 Ratings

About

Join us on a cinematic journey through the last wild years when San Francisco was still wide-open. The cops ran the town in the Thirties and Bones Remmer ran the town in the Forties.Battles raged between the factions of dark and light in the hidden realms of San Francisco’s power elite, behind the headlines, from the celestial dominions of Nob Hill eateries and private clubs down to the nether depths of the dive bars in the heart of the Tenderloin, up to the Barbary Coast and jazz joints of North Beach and over to the banks and brokerages in the Financial District …FRISCO will bring alive that wild and bygone era of the Cool Grey City of Love that seduced the world.

Information

  • Creator
    Knox Bronson
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 FRISCO—The Secret History
  • Show Website
    FRISCO—The Secret History

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