Grab Bag #027

In the 1936 movie San Francisco, Clark Gable’s Paradise Club is supposed to be in the Barbary Coast, the party zone between downtown and Telegraph Hill in today’s Jackson Square. But rather than a grimy basement bar on Pacific Avenue, Blackie Norton’s place looks fairly lush, spacious, and theatrical. Thanks, Hollywood set designers.

In size, prominence, and notoriety, the fictional Paradise perhaps better resembled a real pre-1906-earthquake den of iniquity which stood boldly on the city’s main thoroughfare at 771 Market Street between 3rd and 4th Streets: the Cremorne Gardens, later renamed the Midway Plaisance.

Every day, thousands of respectable San Franciscans wrinkled their noses passing this venue of vice while hundreds of others walked in for a drink and some entertainment. It operated less than a football field away from the Call, Examiner, and Chronicle newspapers and each took turns fulminating about the stain it made on the city’s reputation. Here’s the Call in 1892:

“Jack Hallinan’s Cremorne at 771 Market street is the worst of the dives because it flaunts its iniquity in your very face and stretches out its sin-slimy arms to the gilded youth. You need not look down to see it when passing, nor search to find it out. Its hideous features, veiled only with the robes of sensuality, meet you boldly in the street, and at night a blare of trumpets rings out upon the air from the balcony above to tell you that the painted, gaudy-dressed, short-skirted harpies and their male accomplices have assembled in the upper halls to filch your pockets and steal away your self respect.”

Along with the sin-slimy arms, you also got Chinese dancing girls, boxing and wrestling matches, vaudeville, and musical acts. While it’s unlikely the Cremorne/Midway ever hosted someone with Jeanette MacDonald’s vocal chops, the immortal song and dance man Bert Williams is rumored to have done a gig there. 

If Netflix is looking for a historical murder-of-the-week detective show, this is the place: