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.
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].
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nightspot [Stephen Duncan Riley, ‘The Rebel Cafe: America’s Nightclub Underground and the Public Sphere, 1934–1963’, (Unpublished PhD dissertation, 2014, University of Maryland)].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).
Endnote: the Purple Onion The hungry i, by most observers’ reckoning, was in the vanguard 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”
(Photo: rsl.ru)
(Image: Omaha World Herald, CooksInfo Food Encyclopedia)
Appian way, or if you prefer, the Appian Way, is a reminder of the more exalted social status that Burwood perhaps once commanded. In the midst of the “Strata-titleland” that is modern day Burwood is the Appian Way, you’ll find it perched between Burwood Road (South) and the seminal Liverpool Road. Appian Way is just a short, little street which charts a serpentine course, looping not far from its eastern end. Within this loop lies the street’s main interest…at least as far as this correspondent is concerned.
Hoskins, exhibiting a tendency which nowadays we might describe as that of a “control freak”, leased rather than sold the estate’s houses, which allowed the industrialist and developer to monopolise all aspects of the community (only one solitary house in the tree-lined street had been sold by the time of Hoskins’ death in 1926) [ibid.].
The houses
‘Erica’ – perhaps the Way’s standout house▲
▲ What tennis courts?
▲ Bush plants and agaves surround the ‘courts’
(Photo: 
⬆ Kirshner, King & Goffin
Greater Union (henceforth GUT) was involved in all forms of the movie business – production, distribution and exhibition. The Bondi Studios made a few silent films in the late 1920s, like The Adorable Outcast and most notably The Term of His Natural Life which cost £60,000 and bombed badly at the box office [‘Cinesound Productions’, Sydney Morning Herald, 06-Aug-1934 (Trove).
Stuart F Doyle, GUT managing director, appointed former film publicist Ken G Hall as general manager of the newly formed Cinesound Productions. Two more Cinesound studio locations were opened, one at nearby Rushcutters Bay and the other at St Kilda (in Melbourne). Over an eight-year period (1932-40), with Hall at the helm as producer-director, Cinesound produced 17 feature films (16 of which were directed by Hall). The first of the sequence, On Our Selection, revolved round the adventures of one of Australian cinema’s most popular characters, Dad Rudd and his family. The film, benefiting from a new sound-recording system invented in Tasmania, was a box office triumph for Cinesound, earning £46,000 in Australia and New Zealand by the end of 1933, providing a tremendous fillip for the fledgling studios [Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900-1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, (1998)].
Cinesound and Hall exploited On Our Selection’s popularity with a series of sequels, Grandad Rudd, Dad and Dave Come to Town and Dad Rudd, MP. Of these the ‘Dad and Dave’ entry especially proved a hit, matching the profitability of the original movie.
↗ Ken G Hall (centre) with American actress Helen Twelvetrees during filming of ‘Thoroughbred’ (photo: Mitchell Library)
⬆️ Australian cinema’s long tradition of Bushranger flicks beginning with the original 1906 feature film
With the outbreak of world war Cinesound called a halt on feature film production. During the war years the studios directed all energies into making newsreels, initially covering the war against Japan and beyond that on all aspects of Australiana.
Newsreel rivalry: Cinesound Vs Movietone: t
Newsreels in Australia prior to 1956 occupied a unique place in media and communications. Before the introduction of television, cinema-goers’ exposure to newsreels (part of the “warm-up” for the main feature) were the only images Australians saw of their land – the footage of elections, natural disasters and other such events [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.]. Thus, newsreels like the Cinesound Review, with its distinctive red kangaroo symbol, were an important source of news and current affairs, and were an integral part of the cinema program [‘Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreels’, (ASO) (Poppy De Souza), www.aso.gov.au]✙. According to Anthony Buckley, the newsreels reflected Ken G Hall’s “pride and spirited nationalism” [Buckley, A, ‘Obituary: Ken G. Hall’, The Independent (London), 17-Feb-1994].
Ken G Hall in his autobiography contended that Cinesound Productions never lost money on any feature films. Some did very well – crime drama The Silence of Dean Maitland, for instance, for an outlay of £10,000 returned takings of more than £70,000 in Australia and the UK [Graham Shirley & Brian Adams, Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, (1989)]. One Cinesound movie however, strictly-speaking, probably did lose money…Roy Rene’s single venture into celluloid, Strike Me Lucky, in which ‘Mo’s’ humour, robbed of it’s spontaneity in live performance didn’t translate well to the big screen and was reflected in negative critical reviews and at the box office [Film Review: ‘Strike Me Lucky’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19-Nov-1934 (Trove)]. Despite Hall’s faith in the studios’ films, from 1937 there was a decline in box office returns (prompting GUT head Doyle to resign). Another (external) factor affecting Cinesound profitability occurred in 1938 with the passing of the Cinematograph Films Act in the UK…under this legislation Australian films no longer counted as local, their removal from the British quota meant a loss of market for Cinesound and other Australian movie producers [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].
⬆️ ‘Smithy’ star Ron Randell later pursued a career in Hollywood
We booked into Rydges Hotel in Queenstown✲, New Zealand’s capital of adventure tourism. Whitewater rafting, bungy jumping and Jet Shotovers beckoned, but as our hotel was handily situated in proximity to the wharf on picture perfect Lake Wakatipu, something more sedate – a leisurely boat trip across its glistening waters – was what took our immediate fancy.
From the Queenstown wharf we caught the vintage twin screw steamboat TSS Earnslaw❁…the journey was a complete step back in time…a slow and leisurely ride across Lake Wakatipu with the boat chugging along at a 1924 pace. No one on board much minded the pedestrian progress we were making. The only downside to the trip was trying to avoid inhaling the vessel’s toxic nasties, trying to survive the vile fumes of black smoke emitted from the steamer’s coal-fired boilers pervading the air inside the Earnslaw.
My highest highlight of the tour however was the demonstration of rounding up and penning a drove of sheep. This was made memorable by the antics of the leathery-faced old shepherd guy and his “Abbott and animal Costello” routine with the farm’s working border collie. The old farmer was a real joker, entertaining us with his dry commentary which bore more than a touch of the John Clarke quippery – and the same flat deadpan delivery. To start the show, he barked out instructions to the collie to tear madly all over the top paddock fetching the grazing sheep. After terrorising and cajoling the sheep into one cowering bunch, the dog efficiently corralled them into the enclosure at the south end. Then, with mission accomplished, the farmer, with comic timing and mock annoyance, remarked of the still heavily panting dog, “I don’t know why he’s so tired! I’m the one who does all the work”!
The one-liners didn’t stop when the farmer donned his “shearing kit”, the blue and red overalls of his defleecing trade, to do some serious bladework. With a couple of hand-picked Romneys, he demonstrated (with accompanying audio) how to give a sheep the “Full Monty” crew cut! I’m not sure if the sizeable cohort of Japanese tourists on hand were sufficiently au fait with ‘Kiwised’ English to get the gist of the demonstrator’s jokey spiel and all the nuances of his wry humorous asides, but they generally seemed to sense the comic implications of the situation and enthusiastically laughed accordingly.
The other stand-out feature of the visit, the afternoon tea, was held in the Colonel’s Homestead, an elegant turreted terracotta red and white building set against the impressive backdrop of the towering Walter Peak. The high tea worked a treat with very generous servings of scones and pikelets and the obligatory jam and cream, all washed down with a nice cuppa. Afterwards, a leisurely lakeside stroll through the homestead’s très picturesque English-style gardens set the seal on a great day’s outing.
Time passed at the right pace on the return journey in the Earnslaw to Rydges – the tour operator organised a traditional sing-a-long to the accompaniment of the boat’s period-piece piano. We were given a complimentary “NZ Song Book” and encouraged to join in. The songs were every bit as vintage as the 1912 vessel and only a bit cringeworthy, but hey it was all part of setting an authentic mood for a momentary step back into yesteryear.
