Grab Bag #011

My father grew up in straitened circumstances: abusive father who died when he was 12, public housing, juvenile trouble with the law. He lived alone at a YMCA when he got out of high school, sold shoes, worked as a hospital orderly, and flirted with entering a number of religious seminaries.

Stephen Francis LaBounty only found himself when he found martial arts. Beginning with a judo class he attended on a whim in the early 1960s, my dad went on to win trophies in international karate tournaments. He was heavyweight karate champion of California in 1972 and 1973.

For the rest of his life, “Sigung” LaBounty was an well known and respected teacher of Ed Parker’s system of Chinese Kenpo Karate.

While my father was rarely ahead of the curve on societal trends, he had tons of experience under his karate belt when Bruce Lee’s early 1970s emergence sparked an explosion of popular interest in kung fu, karate, tae kwon do, judo, ninjas, and any Asian-flavored chopping/kicking action.

My father taught David Crosby from Crosby, Stills, and Nash. His teacher, Ed Parker, gave Elvis lessons. Dudes like Chuck Norris, who my dad knew from the tournament circuit, became movie and TV stars, and suddenly my father had an agent.

There are terrible movies in the world in which Stephen F. LaBounty plays a denim-vested bully or a rip-off of the Oddjob chauffeur from Goldfinger, but his most minor appearance was the one that allowed me some bragging rights on the playground. In the pilot for The Streets of San Francisco my father took a dive impressing Karl Malden.

For the kids: The Streets of San Francisco was a television series which ran on ABC from 1972 to 1977, back when we had three big networks and a couple of channels on the UHF band if we wiggled the TV rabbit ears just right. The show’s big star was Academy Award-winner Karl Malden and its little star was Michael Douglas, then known only as the son of movie legend Kirk Douglas.

It was a basic crime show, a Quinn Martin production, as the opening credits reminded us each week. The old cop—working off instincts and experience and saying things like “we got him, buddy boy”—shared his wisdom with the hip young cerebral cop, who had shoulder-length hair and wore high-heeled suede mini-boots. The extensive on-location shots made San Francisco the 3rd costar.

Not that solving crimes in San Francisco was an original idea in the early 1970s: McMillan and Wife and Ironside were already working that angle on the airwaves.

Like those shows, The Streets of San Francisco pilot mined the city's stereotypes. There are hippies, cults, malformed takes in Eastern spirituality, and young women who pay the ultimate price for breaking norms. You also get Tom Bosley, Robert Wagner, and lots of sideburns. You can watch it for free at the Internet Archive.

While Streets usually wallowed in San Francisco-flavored sensationalism, it also resorted to hackneyed cop-show plots. In the second episode, for instance, a police officer is killed. You will be shocked to learn he was just about to retire…

But for me, and my fellow 7-year-olds, the show was a hit. We were oblivious to stereotypes, slights, or geographically impossible chase sequences. We felt nothing but pride that the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower, and shady parking lots under the Embarcadero freeway were shown on network television. Each week, it was thrilling to see Michael Douglas catch the bad guy by tackling him into a pile of cardboard boxes in a wharf warehouse.

Back to the pilot… As I said, the martial arts were hot. (Kung Fu, starring David Carradine, was debuting in the same ABC fall season.) So, The Streets of San Francisco opened with some gratuitous karate mixed into the mystery. This is where my father flips in.

Robert Wagner is under investigation for a murder. His status as a star karate student able to break boards, which my father compliantly holds for him, makes him even more suspicious.

The interior studio shots were filmed at Mr. Bowen’s San Francisco School of Karate at 1916 Polk Street, where my father was the head instructor. Mr. Bowen was paid for use of the downstairs, but as the show pretended it was a dojo in a Chinatown alley, and not Polk Street, the school received no business-boosting publicity. Dad got some promotional photos and Robert Wagner’s autograph to give to my mom and that was it.

My father’s time as an “actor” was short, just a blip compared to his half-century of instruction and influence in Chinese Kenpo Karate. But strangely, his flip and mug for the camera will likely survive long after all who remember Sigung LaBounty have left this world. The pilot episode of The Streets of San Francisco is part of The Paley Center for Media collection, archived and conserved for long-term preservation.

Cheshire’s Long Hypnotic Sleep

Glamorous as it may seem, it’s a lot of work being an actor, even an extra like my dad getting tossed over someone’s shoulder. Why wear yourself out to be in show biz when you can just copy George Cheshire’s gig?

Placed in a “hypnotic trance” at the Bush Street Theater in 1896, Cheshire drew crowds for sleeping all week. Professor T. A. Kennedy, the hypnotist-magician who put him in his trance, predicted the subject would lose 10-15 pounds over that time. There were no mentions of bathroom breaks.

The Bush Street Theater was the city’s main venue for magicians, minstrel shows, animal acts, and the carnivalesque. Over a week, for free, the public could check in on Cheshire slumbering away day or night. Strung up inside a glass casket, he was basically a snoring advertisement for the ticketed magic show each evening.

When Cheshire was revived after seven days in front of a big audience, the Examiner reported that he declared “in hard times like the present it pays to be dead to the world,” and that he was willing to take another week's unconsciousness.

I think in recent years a lot of us would be onboard with Cheshire's sentiments.

Where to Eat Tonight (if it’s 1953)

Where to eat when visiting San Francisco...

I don’t actually know the date of this tourist brochure, but I am skeptical that the opinion of “gas station operators” is where to start for dining recommendations:

Thanks to Catherine Bauman for the scan. I'll share more from her great collection of San Francisco menus and postcards in the future.

Woody Beer and Coffee Fund