The hungry i – a Fifties and Sixties SF Institution for Folk Musicians and Ground Breaking New Comedians

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Leisure activities, Music history, Performing arts, Popular Culture, Society & Culture

The “hungry i?” Sounds like a trendy, up-market boîte on Eat Street, but it is—or rather was—a live music and stand-up comedy venue located in the “hip” North Beach neighbourhood of San Francisco. Its original owner, self-styled beatnik Eric “Big Daddy” Nord, sold it to beret-sporting impresario Enrico Banducci in 1951. Under Banducci’s direction the SF joint set about making a cutting edge name for itself. For much of the next two decades the hungry i nightclub became the spot where many of the big acts in American entertainment got their start and others honed their performing skills to perfection❶.

Enrico Banducci rocking a cardy!

Bob Patterson, Examiner columnist (writing as Freddy Francisco) on the hungry i circa 1950s: ❝a basement Disneyland, peopled by beatniks, left-over bohemians, on the nod junkies, and other waifs and strays from reality.❞

Hothouse of new comedy: The roll call of names associated with “the eye” (as it was affectionately known), especially of American comedy, is mightily impressive…it was the launchpad for many famous performers including Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, Tom Lehrer and Jonathan Winters. Other iconic comics to perform there at the formative stage of their careers include Woody Allen, Phyllis Diller, Richard Pryor, Dick Gregory, Godfrey Cambridge, Bill Cosby, the Smothers Brothers, (Mike) Nichols and (Elaine) May and Joan Rivers❷. The soon-to-be comedy stand-up legends performed against a red brick wall that later became the standard stage backdrop of comedy clubs across America [‘1960s Folk Music at the hungry i and SF Folk Music Club’, Claire Huang, FoundSF, (2019), www.foundsf.org].

The hungry i at the height of its popularity (source: Barbra Archives)

Banducci embraced the Fifties non-conformism of the emerging “rebel cafe” culture taking root simultaneously in North Beach and in Greenwich Village, NYC. He welcomed musicians, comedians, writers and painters—“bohemians of every stripe, from North Beach bohos to Berkeley brainiacs”—to the nightspot [Stephen Duncan Riley, ‘The Rebel Cafe: America’s Nightclub Underground and the Public Sphere, 1934–1963’, (Unpublished PhD dissertation, 2014, University of Maryland)]. Uncommonly for a nightclub owner Banducci really looked after his charges, unlike many of his contemporaries who were content to sit back and count the night’s takings – Enrico always ensured that the club’s artists performed in a safe and quiet environment…patron chatter during performances was verboten and (remarkably) drinks were not served while the acts were on [‘The hungry i (1963)’, Barbra Archives, www.barbra-archives.info; ‘The ‘I’ That Stormed Through North Beach, Circa 1950’, Art Peterson, hoodline, 06-Jun-2016, www.hoodline.com].

A way-station for aspiring folk and pop artists: The hungry i provided a similar massive leg-up for music performers still in the basement of their careers. The nightspot provided the springboard for some, propelling them on the path to pop and folk music immortality, or at least to national/international recognition. The Kingston Trio, Barbra Streisand (her first gig headlining), Peter, Paul and Mary et al, all cut their teeth at the famous San Fran venue in their early days. The Kingston Trio recorded its first live album at the club (“…from the “Hungry i” (1958)). Glen Yarbrough and the Limeliters were a regular act, John Phillips (of the Mamas and Papas fame) fronted the eye’s house band (The Journeymen) in the early Sixties. By the early 1960s the hungry i had hit its heyday…in 1967 it moved to Ghirardelli Square (San Francisco’s Marina district), by this time it was mainly being used as a rock music venue❸. By 1970, Banducci deep in debt and with a flawed business model was forced to close down his cherished nightclub.

Enrico’s echo of hungry i: Banducci switched his attention to “Enrico’s”, a restaurant-café at 504 Broadway (SF) he had started in 1959. Enrico’s spot played cool jazz and drew in a mixed crowd and was for a time the place in SF to be seen, everyone from celebrities like FF Coppola, Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant to complete nonentities…Banducci’s lack of business acumen again ultimately proved its downfall with Enrico’s folding in 1988. The name “hungry i” lived on somewhat ignominiously in the form of a strip club at 546 Broadway (today operating as a Karaoke bar).

hungry i in its later incarnation
Enrico’s: Banducci’s Broadway café/jazz club (photo: William Martin/Facebook)

Endnote: the Purple Onion The hungry i, by most observers’ reckoning, was the apex of live venues presenting the new wave of stand-up comics in the 50s and 60s, but it existed very much in a shared universe. The very same up-and-coming but still unknown talents featuring at the eye also plied their trade at other SF venues, most prominently at the hungry i’s local rival the Purple Onion, a small basement club on Columbus Ave with a similar storied history [‘North Beach History: Careers Sprouted For Almost 6 Decades At The Purple Onion’, Art Peterson, hoodline, 20-Jun-2016, www.hoodline.com].

❶ Banducci liked to describe the hungry i as a theatre rather than a nightclub

❷ a less stellar comedy name frequenting the stage at the hungry i was “Professor” Irwin Corey whose unscripted, abstruse improvisational monologues earned him a dedicated cult following

❸ in 1967 you could catch the early Ike and Tina Turner Experience at the eye

“P” Words from Left Field II: Redux. A Supplement to the Logolept’s Diet

Posted on by demonymonic
Ancient history, Creative Writing, Leisure activities, Literary & Linguistics, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Regional History

<word meaning & root formation>

Pachycephalic: thick-sculled; stupid [from Gk. pakhús (“thick”) + –cephalic (“head”)]

Pachycephalic

Paleomnesia: good memory for events of the far past [Gk. paleo (“old”; “ancient”) + –mnesia (“memory”)]

Palimony: the division of financial assets and real property on the termination of a personal live-in relationship wherein the parties are not legally married (ie, de facto) [formed from “pal” + “alimony” (coined by celebrity lawyer Marvin Mitchelson)]

Palinoia: the compulsive repetition of an act over and over until perfection is achieved [? + Gk. –noia (“mind”)]

Palladian: pertaining to learning and wisdom [from Gk. Pallás an epithet of Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom) + -ian]

Palladian: Pallas Athena

Palpebrate: having eyelids; to wink. [L. palpebra, eyelid]

Paltripolitan: an insular city dweller [blending of “paltry” + -“metropolitan”]

Pancratic: (Hist.) an athletic contest called the pankration; athletic; pertaining to or having ability in all matters [Gk. pankratḗs, [“all-powerful”)]

Pancratic Credit: Midjourney for the Greek Reporter

Pandaculation: involuntary stretching and yawning [L. pandiculatus, from pandiculari (“to stretch oneself”)] 🥱

Pangrammatist: a person who composes verses or sentences using all letters of the alphabet [Gk. pan (“all”) + -grammar + -ist]

Pantophagy: a diet that consists of a large variety of foods; ideally, of all possible foods [from Gk. pant (“all”) + –phagein (“to eat”)]

Paracme: (Medic.) a point beyond the greatest or highest (eg, of a fever); the stage after one’s peak [from Gk. para, (“beyond”) + -akmē, (“highest point”; “prime”)]

Paradiastole: (Rhetoric) a form of euphemism in which a positive synonym is substituted for a negative word; to reframe a vice as a virtue [para + -diastolḗ, (“separation”; “distinction”)]

Paronomasia: word-play of the punning kind; playing upon words which sound alike for comic or clever effect [from  para + –onomasía, (“naming”)]

Parorexia: a craving or appetite for unusual foods [from Gk. para + -orexia (“desire”;  “appetite”)]

Parorexia (photo: taste.com.au)

Passepartout: a master key; a safe conduct or passport (from Fr. lit. (“passes everywhere”)] 🔑

Passepartout (fictional character)

Peculate: to pilfer or embezzle (money, esp public funds) [L. from peculatus]

Pilgarlic: a pitiful bald-headed man [from “pilled”/“peeled” + “-garlic”]

Pleionosis: the exaggeration of one’s own importance [? + Gk. –osis (“disease”; “process”); “condition”)]

Preterist: (Theo.) a Christian eschatological view or belief that interprets prophecies of the Bible as events which have already been fulfilled in history; a person interested in the past [ from L. praeteritus, (“gone by”) + -ist]

Prevenient: anticipating; preceding in time or order; having foresight; preventing [from L. praeveniens (“precedes”)]

Procerity: tallness; height [from L. pro–  (“forward”) + –cerus, from –crescere (“to grow”) + –itas (“-ity”)]

Proctalgia: a severe, episodic pain in the region of the rectum and anus; pain in the arse [Gk.  prōktos (“anus”) + –algos (“pain”)] (cf. Rectalgia)

Procumbent: lying or kneeling with face down; prostrate [L. pro + -cumbere (“to lie down”)]

Protogenal: pertaining to primitive creatures [NewLat. protogenes, from L. prot (“first”) + –gen (“birth”)]

Psephologist: someone who studies elections and voting patterns [Gk. psēphos, (“pebble”)]

Psephologist (credit: the Irish News)

Psychagogic: attractive; persuasive; interesting [from Gk. psychagōgia (“persuasion”; “winning of souls”) + -ikos -ic]

Pyknic: relating to a stocky physique; rounded body and head, thickset trunk and tendency towards fat [from Gk. pyknos (“dense”; “stocky”)]

A Logolept’s Diet of Obscure, Obsolete, Curious and Downright Odd “Z” Words

Posted on by sabinebuena
Leisure activities, Literary & Linguistics, Local history, Media & Communications, Regional History

Meet the “Z” family of words…Zeta, Zelda, Zara, Zack, Zee and Zed

Z is the twenty-sixth and not-so-lucky last letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet and other western European languages. It is most commonly pronounced zed, as used in international English. But in the US, and sometimes in Canadian and Caribbean English, the preference is for zee. A third, archaic variant pronounces the letter “Z” as izzard, whose usage today is confined to Hong Kong English and Cantonese. “Z” derives from the Greek letter zeta, reaching English via the customary pathway of Latin. The ancient Greek “Z” was a close copy of the Phoenician Zayin (I) (meaning “weapon” or “sword”). Around 300 BC, Roman censor Appius Claudius Caecus relegated the letter Z to the ancient history archives, striking it from the alphabet allegedly due to his distaste for the letter, owing to it “looking like the tongue of a corpse”🅐.

Zabernism: misuse or abuse of military authority; bullying [From the German name for Saverne, a town in Alsace involving a 1913 incident of an overzealous soldier who wounded a cobbler for laughing at him, ultimately triggering an intervention from the army who took over the power from local authorities]

Zaftig: having a full, rounded figure; pleasingly plump (esp of a woman) [Yiddish. zaftik, (“juicy” or “succulent”) from zaft, (“juice” or “sap”)]

🅐 a more likely explanation is that the “z” sound had disappeared from Latin at that time making the letter useless for spelling Latin words…a few centuries later it made a comeback to the A(to Z) team resuming its place as № 26

An al fresco Bush Picture Theatre Once Nestled Quietly among the Orchards and Produce Gardens of North Ryde

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Leisure activities, Local history, Regional History

꧁꧂🍊🍋🎭📽️🍿꧁꧂

THE street names around Macquarie University in the northwest of Sydney have an unambiguously militaristic ring to them. Many, many bear the names of historical battles, wars and military campaigns. In particular the battles of two 19th century wars, the Crimean War and the Napoleonic Wars, figure heavily in the street configurations – there’s Balaclava Road, Waterloo Road, Talavera Road, Vimiera Road, Taranto Road, Busaco Road (actually misspelt as the correct spelling of the Peninsula War battle is “Bussaco”), Trafalgar Place, Nile Close and Crimea Road itself. Then there’s Culloden Road, Abuklea Road, Libya Place and Agincourt Road on the Marsfield side, and Khartoum Road, all from various other wars involving the British and English imperialists. Khartoum also lent its name to a very atypical cinema that existed in the North Ryde area long before the university, tech industry or shopping centre came along. The part of North Ryde, which is now called Macquarie Park, was largely green-belt bushland before the 1960s, punctuated by pockets of agriculture, Italian market gardens, citrus orchards and farms, plus an incongruously-placed greyhound racing track on the site of the future university campus. At the time the area which backs onto the Lane Cove National Park had not been developed commercially and its attractive natural surrounds drew the Northwood Group of artists to it who painted the orchards, market gardens, farms and waterways.

Nestled in among all of these market gardens and bushland was the Khartoum Open-Air Theatre, North Ryde’s first licensed cinema. Located on the corner of Khartoum and Waterloo Roads and carved out of a former orchard, it looked like the type of run-down picture house you’d encounter in a country town rather than in Sydney suburbia. The less than majestic Khartoum, held its first public screenings in early 1938. Debut feature for the theatre on opening night was Cecil B DeMille’s The Plainsman.

≜ ‘The Plainsman’ (1936)

The picture theatre’s knock-up construction from timber and corrugated iron earned it an affectionate (and not inaccurate) nickname from locals, “The Shack”. Roselands “Theatre Beautiful” it was not! The entrance section and projection booth were made of timber. “Open-air” really meant open-air with an obvious lack of shelter. The structure had a partial roof but most of the seating was exposed to the elements – the covered (padded) seats cost the princely sum of 1/6d while the uncovered (and less comfortable wooden) seats went for 1/-.

≜ Khartoum Theatre, an undisguisedly rudimentary open-air cinema absolutely devoid of any “bells and whistles” 

The theatre’s owner was one Mr N Johnstone and was later partnered by Jack Peckman who doubled as projectionist. The Khartoum functioned as a two-man operation. At intermission or between double features the theatre would regularly provide an unorthodox form of entertainment for the patrons, wood chopping contests (in keeping with the bush ambience?). On wintry nights, if heating was needed, fires were started in 44-gallon drums (wonder if anyone alerted the local fire brigade?) (‘Khartoum Theatre’, www.cinematreasures.org)

Despite its primitive and seemingly incommodious facilities the Khartoum maintained a steady patronage from locals even after the North Ryde Skyline Drive-In, just one block away, opened in 1956. The greater threat however, not only to the Khartoum but to cinemas everywhere, was the arrival of television. (‘Cinemas of the 20s and 30s’, City of Ryde, www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/).

North Ryde Drive-In (photo: David Kilderry/ Drive-Ins Downunder)

“The Shack” managed to keep going at North Ryde—longer than many of the other, conventional cinemas, in the Ryde district—until 1966 when it closed down, bringing an end to 28 years of big screen entertainment in the former orchard. The Wild One with Marlon Brando was the feature chosen for the final screening on closing night in 1966 (‘Sydney’s lost cinemas: Ten of the best which enchanted audience before biting the dust’, Brian Kelly, The Daily Telegraph, 07-Sep-2016, www.dailytelegraph.com.au).

Khartoum Theatre, North Ryde, 1938-1966, one screen, 480 seats