Tom Gaffey Archives - Petaluma Historian

Beau Bridges’ Search for His Petaluma Roots

Beau Bridges crossing Washington Street to the Phoenix Theater in his search for local family roots (photo Crissy Pascual, *Petlauma Argus-Courier*)

The actor Beau Bridges was in town last week ostensibly to shoot a movie—“A Christmas Mystery” with Petaluma filmmaker Ali Afshar— but while on location he found himself inexplicably drawn to local history, specifically that of his father, the legendary film and TV actor from Petaluma, Lloyd Bridges.

Accompanied by his wife Wendy and French bulldog Buster, Beau began his inquiry leafing through old yearbooks at Petaluma High School, from which his father graduated in 1930. They then set out to find the house his father grew up in, which they believed to be somewhere on the hillside behind the high school.

Driving along Hill Boulevard, Beau spotted an old schoolmate of mine, Harry Lewis, standing outside his house, and randomly pulled over to ask his help. Harry contacted me, and I agreed to do some quick research and meet with the Bridges the next day at Volpi’s Restaurant, where Harry tends bar on the weekends.

What unfolded in Volpi’s historic back barroom the next day was a Petaluma version of the popular TV show, “Finding Your Roots.” A curious and congenial raconteur, Beau made it clear he wasn’t looking for the dry facts of genealogy—a family member had already undertaken that task—he wanted to hear the stories.

Publicity photo of Lloyd Bridges starring in TV series Sea Hunt, 1958 (photo public domain)

That included stories about Volpi’s, which, during his father’s teen years in the 1920s, was an Italian grocery with a backroom speakeasy. He was also eager to hear about the Phoenix Theater across the street, where he understood his grandfather, Lloyd Vernet Bridges, Sr., had worked as a movie projectionist in the ’20s when it was the California Theater. His father used to watch screenings of the same film over and over when he was young to study acting techniques. ^[1]

Beau Bridges tossing a signed dollar bill to ceiling of Volpi’s Bar (photo John Sheehy)

Harry and I were more than happy to oblige his request. Growing up in Petaluma in the 1960s, we were both big fans of “Sea Hunt,” the adventure TV series Lloyd Bridges starred in, as well as his many films, including the classic western “High Noon” and the madcap comedy “Airplane.” After sharing local tales and initiating Beau in the Volpi’s tradition of signing a dollar bill and affixing it to the bar’s ceiling, we got down to discussing his family roots.

Lloyd Bridges, Jr.—“Bud” as he was known in Petaluma—moved to town when he was 10, along with his mother Hattie and older sister Belle. His parents had divorced a decade earlier, a year after Bud was born, with Hattie citing her husband’s relentless “amusement” with prize fights, baseball games and automobile rides, while Lloyd Bridges, Sr. complained of her monotony. ^[2]

Lloyd Sr. remained in San Francisco, where ran a hotel and boarding house, while Hattie moved with the children to San Rafael initially, and then to Petaluma in 1923, purchasing a home near the high school at 11 Spring Street, named for a natural spring on the site. ^[3]

11 Spring Street today (photo public domain)

Petaluma was in the midst of its heady reign as “The Egg Basket of the World.” Bud quickly distinguished himself as a gifted singer—performing at Sunday services in the Congregational Church at Fifth and B streets—and a talented performer in plays and musicals staged at the high school and at the California Theater. Local critics noted he had “a natural talent for the stage, a flair for comedy, and knack for serious acting as well.”^[4]

Eleanore Hawthorne, Lloyd Bridges, and Jewel Johnson in the 1929 school play, “Captain Applejack” (photo 1930 Enterprise Yearbook, Petaluma High School)

His best friend was Art Parent, who would later go on to serve as Petaluma’s mayor and owner of Parent Funeral Parlor. Art noted that Bud was always the star in their plays together, because unlike Art, he could improvise. One night while they were performing at the California Theater, Bud fell coming up the back stage steps and knocked himself out, leaving Art to recite his lines over and over until Bud finally came to. ^[5]

Art Parent and Lloyd Reynolds at Petaluma High, 1930 (photo 1930 Enterprise Yearbook, Petaluma High School)

“Oddly,” said Beau, “what my dad talked most about growing up in Petaluma was playing basketball.”

A fierce competitor, Bud lettered in four sports and served as captain of the basketball team. After finishing high school, he took a brief job at the local Bank of America, before enrolling in UCLA to pursue a political science degree. He spent much of his time however on the basketball court and the stage. ^[6]

Lloyd Bridges, center, captain of 1930 Petaluma High basketball team (photo 1930 Enterprise Yearbook, Petaluma High School)

While Bud was in high school, his mother got remarried to Clarence Breuillot, a state contractor. In the late 1930s, Breuillot was appointed foreman of the newly constructed San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, and the couple left Petaluma for Berkeley. ^[7]

After UCLA, Bud spent five years working in New York theater, before being signed as a stock actor with Columbia Pictures in 1941. The same year, he and his wife welcomed their first child, Lloyd Vernet Bridges III, whom they nicknamed “Beau” after a character in “Gone with the Wind.” Beau’s first visit to Petaluma came three years later, when his parents visited Art Parent. ^[8]

A dogged performer, Bud appeared in more than seven dozen films, most of them potboilers and B-movies, before finally getting his big breakthrough in a film called “Home of the Brave,” in 1949. That same year, his second son, Jeff Bridges, was born. He would go on to become an Academy Award-winning actor.

In 1951, a budding young Petaluma newspaper columnist named Bill Soberanes arranged to stage the West Coast premiere of Bud’s latest movie, “The Whistle Stop at Eaton Hills,” at Petaluma’s Mystic Theater (then called the State Theater).

Poster for the film “The Whistle at Eaton Falls,” which had its west coast premiere at the State Theater in Petaluma in 1951 (photo public domain)

Soberanes arranged for a police escort from the city limits to bring Bud into town and to the Hotel Petaluma, where a banquet with 75 of his old friends and former teachers from Petaluma High awaited him. Art Parent served as master of ceremonies, and the city’s mayor read a proclamation declaring it Lloyd Bridges Day. Bud was then publicly sworn in as a member of the National Good Egg Club, taking an oath to “give due respect to the egg.” ^[9]

“I feel like I’m in high school all over again,” beamed Bud. He then lauded his music teacher, Agnes Bravo, for helping him learn his first operetta. ^[10]

Screening party for “The Whistle at Eaton Falls.” premiere in 1951. From left, Bill Soberanes, Hattie Breauillot (Lloyd’s mother), Lloyd Bridges, and Petlauma Mayor Leland Myers (photo *Petaluma Argus-Courier*)

Art remained Bud’s Petaluma connection over the years, as did Soberanes, who later enlisted him in helping to promote the World Wristwrestling Championship Tournaments.^[11] When a TV show came to Petaluma in 1985 to film Bud’s early beginnings, Art filled in for Bud, who was on location as usual, taking the film crew on a tour to the Bridges home, the Phoenix Theater, and Fundas’ Candy Store beside the Mystic, where Bud and Art competed in high school for the attention of Dorothy Beidleman—a contest Art won, eventually convincing her to marrying him. ^[12]

After Harry and I concluded our roots presentation with Beau, we escorted him, Wendy and Buster across the street to meet Phoenix Theater manager Tom Gaffey, who started working at the theater when he, Harry and I were in high school together.

Gaffey told us Soberanes was the source of the story that Beau’s grandfather had been the projectionist at the California Theater when Bud was growing up. To Beau’s disappointment, I had to dispel that lore.

Lloyd Sr. had owned a movie theater in San Leandro, where Bud was born in 1913. [13] But the next year he returned to the family hotel business in San Francisco. Shortly after Bud graduated high school, Lloyd Sr. took over the legendary Vance Hotel in Eureka, and lived out his days as a local hotelier and real estate mogul. ^[14]

As a consolation, Gaffey informed Beau—a three-time Emmy, two-time Golden Globe, and one-time Grammy Award winner—that as a legacy performer at the theater, he was entitled to make free use of the Phoenix for theatrical or musical productions. Beau appeared to give the offer serious consideration, expressing his love of serendipitous opportunities.

Beau Bridges inside the Phoenix Theater (photo Crissy Pascual, *Petlauma Argus-Courier*)

Before Beau and Wendy left to view the Bridges family home, Beau shared how he and his father bonded over playing tennis and one-on-one basketball together. In his father’s footsteps, Beau attended UCLA, where he joined the basketball team coached by the legendary John Wooden.

“My dad was always extremely competitive. But as he grew close to my age now—I’m 80—I realized I could handily beat him anytime I wanted. So to make it even, I started tanking balls into the net, but carefully, so he wouldn’t know what I was doing. One day, after three sets of tennis on a hot summer day, I looked at him sitting tired and slumped over on the bench, and I was overcome with a wave of melancholy.

Beau Bridges and Lloyd Bridges at the 44th Emmy Awards, August 1982 (photo credit Alan Light, public domain)

“Dad,” I said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do without you.”

There was a long pause. “What makes you think I’m going to go first?” he said. There was a little piece of a smile on his face, but he was dead serious.

Petaluman Lloyd Bridges died in 1998 at the age of 85, after starring in dozens of TV series and more than 150 feature films. ^[15]

******

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, June 24, 2022.

RESPONSES FROM LOCALS

Menu at the Little Hill Banquet on Main Street following State Theater premiere of The Whistle at Eaton Falls” (courtesy of Melissa Musso James)

Beau Bridges’s search the local roots of his father, the actor Lloyd Bridges, prompted an outpouring of reminiscences from locals. Many people with family members who went to school with Lloyd dug out the old yearbooks they still keep from that era.

A number of people shared that their mother, grandmother, or aunt laid claim to being Lloyd’s date at the 1930 Petaluma High senior prom. Yvonne (Armour) Cornilson, who appeared in school musicals with Lloyd, appears to be the most likely candidate.

Tammie Tower-Snider said her grandmother told stories about riding to school on the handlebars of Lloyd’s bike when they were young. As the school was only a half a block away from his house on Spring Street, it must have been a short ride.

Marion Johnson said her mother recounted how Lloyd carried her books home from school for her. Lauri Carlson’s grandmother taught at Petaluma High in the 1920s, and had Lloyd for study hall.

Linda Parker shared that A Tale of Two Cities was required reading when Lloyd was in high school. You had to write your name on a list pasted in the back. When she was a student 30 years later, they were still using the same old copies. She got the one with Lloyd’s signature in it, and never gave it back.

Betty Prior remembered Lloyd’s return to Petaluma in 1951 for the West Coast premiere of a movie he was starring in, and visiting her and other students at Petaluma High.

Melissa Musso James shared the menu from her parents’ Little Hill restaurant on Main Street, where Lloyd Bridges was feted following the West Coast premiere of his 1951 film The Whistle at Eaton Fall at the State Theater.

Joe, the chef at the Little Hill restaurant ,and Lloyd Bridges, 1951 (photo courtesy of Melissa Musso James)

Some people shared that their fathers and uncles telling stories about attending school with Lloyd. Melinda Webb Zerrenner said her father, longtime Petaluma judge Rollie Webb, was a schoolmate of Lloyd’s, and took the family to see him whenever they visited Los Angeles.

Gig Schuster Jones said her grandfather Cap Schuster was Lloyd’s high school physical education teacher. When the family sat around watching Lloyd in his hit TV series Sea Hunt, her grandfather often boasted that he was the one who taught Lloyd to snorkel.

FOOTNOTES:

“TV and Film Actor Lloyd Bridges Dies,” Washington Post, March 11, 1998.
“Prize Fight Cause of Rout of Cupid,” Oakland Tribune, September 13, 1914.
“Will Move Here from San Rafael,” Petaluma Argus, January 18, 1923; “Sold 7th Street Property,” Petaluma Courier, September 18, 1926; Katie Watts, “Names of Streets and Places,” Petaluma Argus Courier, March 26, 2008.
“Lloyd Bridges Stars in High School Play,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, October 5, 1929.
Bill Soberanes, “Art Parent: A Petaluma Legend,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 20, 1991.
“Lloyd Bridges in Film at ‘Cal’,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 20, 1936; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Bridges
“Local Couple Are Wedded,” Petaluma Courier, July 26, 1927; “Daughter Arrives for Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Stout,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, May 16, 1933; “Fire Damages 11 Spring Street,” Santa Rosa Press Democrat, December 2, 1938 “Real Estate Deals Closed,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, April 21, 1941; “Clarence Breuillot Obituary,” Los Gatos Times, October 23, 1970.
“Recent Guests at Arthur Parent Home,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, July 25, 1944.
“Wonderful to be Back,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1951.
“Wonderful to be Back,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1951.
Bill Soberanes column, Petaluma Argus-Courier, November 2, 1981; “Petaluma Memories of the Late Lloyd Bridges,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 24, 1998.
Bill Soberanes column, “Lloyd Bridges TV Special,” Petaluma Argus-Courier, March 26, 1985.
“Motion Picture News: Best Theater, San Leandro,” Oakland Tribune, November 22, 1913.
“Lloyd Bridges Sr. Dies,” Humboldt Standard, May 1, 1962.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Bridges

The Search for Petaluma’s Real Founder

Solving a History Mystery

Petaluma History Podcast , *Onstage with Jim & Tom*, Phoenix Theater, September 30, 2014., r-to-l: John Sheehy, Katie Watts, Skip Sommer, Chuck Lucas, Tom Gaffey, and Jim Agius with back to camera (photo courtesy of The Phoenix Theater)

A number of years ago, I participated in a podcast interview about early Petaluma history for Onstage with Jim and Tom, hosted by Jim Agius and Tom Gaffey at the Phoenix Theater. Joining me were local historians Katie Watts, Skip Sommer, and Chuck Lucas. In the interview, we discussed at length Garrett W. Keller, who developed the town of Petaluma in 1852, before mysteriously disappearing.

After the podcast was broadcast, a woman claiming to be a descendent of Keller sent us an email informing us that we had it all wrong—her ancestor was not the man we made him out to be, a scam artist who illegally claimed land he didn’t own, divided it up into lots that he then sold to unsuspecting new settlers, and then vanished with the proceeds without a trace. He was actually an honest, well-respected fellow who went on to do good in the world, and who founded a town in Kansas after leaving Petaluma. I made another online search of Garrett W. Keller, but, as usual, finding nothing on the man, filed the woman’s email away

Years later, after accidentally stumbling upon it, I decided to contact the woman. She responded, and after some back and forth and digging around in ancestry records, we determined that she wasn’t in fact a descendant of Garrett W. Keller, but rather a descendant of another Keller who had resided sometime later in Petaluma.

But the point she made about Keller establishing another town in Kansas was a new lead in an otherwise cold case. As anyone who has engaged in researching family genealogy knows, such leads often go nowhere, but sometime they are the thread to a major discovery. Such a breakthrough is fraught with suspense, as it can lead to information that have been deleted, omitted, or else revised in family lore.

Communities are no different. Garrett W. Keller had been a vital part of Petaluma’s creation myth for 170 years. That he himself was something of a blank slate made it easier to fit him into the colorful myth of the wild west scam artist.

1855 map of Petaluma (courtesy of the Sonoma County Library)

Such lore and mythology are important in passing down a sense of shared heritage and social identity, whether in families or cultural groups, apocryphal or not. History through is something different.

As any aspiring family genealogist discovers, it is first and foremost about inquiry, and the willingness to go where the inquiry takes you. Historian Jill Lepore calls it “the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence.” It’s an art that when done well gives us a richer and perhaps more inclusive humanistic view of our past in order get our bearings in moving forward. It’s always one that’s open to revision as new evidence comes to light.

In the case of Garrett W. Keller, my new evidence initially led me nowhere. In frustration, I turned to the historical sources that identified him as Petaluma’s founder. The first mention of him is in Robert Allan Thompson’s Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California, published in 1877. Thompson refers to him merely as “Keller,” with no first name nor middle initial.

Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, by Robert A. Thompson, 1877

It’s in J.P. Munro-Fraser’s History of Sonoma County, published in 1880, that he appears as “Garrett W. Keller.” In a footnote on page 260, Munro-Fraser points out that a “Garrett W. Keller” was appointed Petaluma’s first postmaster on February 9, 1852, which leads him apparently to conclude that he was the Keller who originally laid out of the town.

History of Sonoma County, by J.P. Munro-Fraser, 1880

The next county history, 1889’s Pen Pictures From the Garden of the World, An Illustrated History of Sonoma County, written by longtime Petaluma Argus editor Samuel Cassiday, makes no mention of a Keller at all, although Cassiday first arrived in Petaluma in 1854, only two years after Keller had left.

Tom Gregory’s History of Sonoma County, published in 1911, basically picks up Munro-Fraser’s identification of Garrett W. Keller. The two historians appear to serve as the source of Ed Mannion’s legendary history column “Rear View Mirror,” which ran the Petaluma Argus-Courier in the early 1960s, and served in part as the basis of Adair Heig’s History of Petaluma: A California River Town, published in 1982, with Mannion as an advisor.

For help finding the primary source of Munro-Fraser’s discovery of Keller as Petaluma’s first postmaster, I turned for help to Katherine J. Rinehart, the former manager of the Sonoma County History & Genealogy Library. She provided me with the copy of an official handwritten record of Sonoma County’s first postmasters in the 1850s. This was apparently the same document Munro-Fraser discovered in his identification of Garrett W. Keller.

Garret V. Keller, Post Master Appointment, National Archives

The first thing I noticed is that Munro-Fraser has incorrectly transcribed Keller’s name. In the handwritten record his first name is spelled “Garret,” with one “t”, and his middle initial is clearly not a W, but instead either a U or a V.

That question led me to a document I found in an online government depository entitled A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United State that had been typeset and printed in 1853 by the U.S. Department of State. In it, a “Garret V. Keller” is listed as the first postmaster of Petaluma, appointed February 9, 1852, and replaced in December, 1852. In a search of Newspapers.com, I also found a listing of California postmasters published in the November 15, 1852, edition of the Sacramento Daily Union newspaper, that confirmed “Garret V. Keller” to be the postmaster of Petaluma.

*A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United States, 1853*, United States, Department of State

With the new name spelling and my earlier clue about Kansas, I began searching Findagrave.com for anyone with that name who had been buried in Kansas in the late 19^th century. The site led me to a Garret V. Keller who died in 1901 in a small rural Kansas town of outside of the city of Leavenworth. There was no description of his life, but there was a link to the gravesite of his father, George Horine Keller, which did include a memorial drawn from a Kansas history book.

Reading down the text I suddenly hit paydirt:

“In Platte County, Missouri, [George Horine Keller] engaged in farming and manufacturing till the year 1850, but catching the gold fever, he sold out, equipped a large train with merchandise and went to California during the spring of that year. Settling down in the Sonoma valley, he founded the town of Petaluma, now a prosperous city of some 10,000 people. He returned in 1852 to Weston [Missouri].”

I quickly discovered in Google books a copy of the source cited in the memorial—Transactions of the Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908, edited by George W. Martin. The book featured a short biography of George Horine Keller, noting that after founding Petaluma, he went on to help establish the town of Leavenworth, Kansas.

With that information, I also discovered online two other historical sources that provided more details on George Horine Keller’s life: William G. Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas, published in 1883, and The History of Leavenworth County, Kansas, written by Jesse A. Hall and Leroy T. Hand, published in 1921.

From a search of old newspaper clippings at Newspapers.com, I discovered that George Keller and his wife Nancy had one daughter and five sons. On the wagon train that took him to California in 1850, Keller had taken along with him with his oldest son, Garret Valentine Keller (named for his two Dutch grandfathers), as well as his new son-in-law Andrew Thomas Kyle, both of whom were 19 years old.

After being disappointed in the gold fields, the Keller party headed to Sonoma County, where, after Keller made his land claim and laid out the new town of Petaluma, his son Garret, then 21 years old, was appointed town’s first postmaster.

The one mention of George Keller I found in old Petaluma newspapers was in an article published in the Petaluma Weekly Argus in 1876 about a group of men who, while preparing Main Street Plaza (today’s Penry Park) for America’s centennial celebration, unearthed a coffin. From John E. Lockwood, who established Petaluma’s first trading post in 1850, reporters learned that it was the burial site of the first white man to die in the village in the fall of 1851. He and some other men dug the grave, and George Keller gave the service.

While sources indicate that George Keller and his son-in-law Andrew Kyle left Petaluma to return to Missouri in the fall of 1852, Garret Keller stayed behind in California for the next seven years, although it’s unknown exactly where. Postal records indicate he had vacated his position as Petaluma’s postmaster by December, 1852.

Garret V. Keller in later life (photo courtesy of Alex Finlayson)

A brief biography of Garret Keller in Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas notes that in 1854 he married a woman in California named Jane E. Hoagland, who was a native of Fort Leavenworth in Kansas Territory. They moved to Kansas in 1859, where Garret purchased a farm in Springdale outside of Leavenworth. He apparently lived an otherwise quiet life.

As for George H. Keller, after returning in 1852 to Weston, Missouri, he became a prominent figure along with his son-in-law Kyle in establishing Leavenworth, the first town in the new Kansas Territory, under another illegal land scheme.

Fifth Street in Leavenworth by Alexander Gardner, 1867 (photo courtesy of Legends of America)

But there was another side to Keller, one in which he distinguished himself at the risk of his own life as an abolitionist leader who was elected to the first Kansas Territorial Legislature during the violent conflicts over establishing Kansas as a slave state or free state. Upon the outbreak of the Civil War, he enlisted in the Kansas Frontier Guard at the age of 60, and was immediately dispatched to Washington, D.C., to guard President Lincoln at the White House. After the war was appointed the first warden of the Kansas State Penitentiary by the state’s governor.

When he died in 1876, after retiring to a farm near the farm of his son Garret, Keller was highly lauded in newspapers throughout the state of Kansas.

George H. Keller gravesite, Leavenworth County, Kansas

Which leaves us with a much more complicated picture than we had for the previous 170 years with the blank slate known as “Garrett W. Keller.” The story of Petaluma’s true founder acknowledges what history does best, which the sociologist W.E.B DuBois noted was expose “the hideous mistakes, the frightful wrongs, and the great and beautiful things that people do.”

*****

A version of this story appeared in the Petaluma Argus-Courier, February 11, 2021.

SOURCES:

Newspapers

Lawrence Tribune: “Settler’s Defense,” July 1, 1868.

Leavenworth Times: “Kyle’s Reminiscence of Early Border Life,” January 11, 1902.

Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Ed Mannion’s Rear View Mirror,” April 2, 1960.

Petaluma Courier: “Death of Major Singley,” March 2, 1898.

Petaluma Weekly Argus: “Centennial Resurrection,” March 31, 1876.

Sacramento Daily Union: “Post Offices in California,” November 15, 1852.

Books, Magazines, Journals

Samuel Cassiday, Pen Pictures From the Garden of the World, An Illustrated History of Sonoma County (The Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago, 1889), pp. 109-114.

William Connelley, editor, A Standard History of Kansas and Kansans, Volume 14 (Chicago: Lewis, 1918), pp. 1209-1210; Frank M. Gable, “The Kansas Penitentiary,” p. 379.

Thomas Jefferson Gregory, History of Sonoma County, California, With Biographical Sketches of Leading Men and Women (Historical Record Company, Los Angeles, 1911), p. 177.

Adair Heig, History of Petaluma: A California River Town (Petaluma, CA: Scottwall Associates, 1982), p. 29.

Jesse A. Hall and Leroy T. Hand, History of Leavenworth County, Kansas (Topeka, Kansas: Historical Publishing Company,1921), pp. 116-123.

LeBaron, Blackman, Mitchell, Hansen, Santa Rosa: A Nineteenth Century Town (Historia, Ltd., 1985), pgs. 16, 26-27.

George W. Martin, editor, Transactions of the Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908 (Kansas Historical Society).

Henry Miles Moore, “Sketches of the Early Settlement of the City and County of Leavenworth,” Western Life (Leavenworth, KS), August 3, 1900.

Henry Miles Moore, Early History of Leavenworth, City and County (Samuel Dodsworth Book Co., Leavenworth, KS, 1906), pgs. 21, 24, 56, 86, 103, 123-127, 147, 161, 171.

J.P. Munro-Fraser, History of Sonoma County (San Francisco: Alley, Bowen & Co., 1880), p. 131, pp. 259-262.

Robert Allan Thompson, Historical and Descriptive Sketch of Sonoma County, California (Philadelphia: L.H. Everts & Co., 1877), pp. 53-54.

“Territorial Legislature of 1857-58: George Horine Keller,” Kansas Historical Society Collection, Vol. 10, 1907-1908, edited by George W. Martin, p. 211.

Websites

“Guarding the White House,” The White House Historical Association, whitehousehistory.org
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/press-room/press-timelines/guarding-the-white-house

“1851, March 3 – 09 Stat. 631, Act to Settle Private Land Claims in California,” US Government Legislation and Statutes.
https://digitalcommons.csumb.edu/hornbeck_usa_2_d/7

A Register of Officers and Agents, Civil, Military, and Naval in the Service of the United States, 1853, United States, Department of State. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_Register_of_Officers_and_Agents_Civil/C5EDAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Petaluma’s Days as a Porn Capital

The jury in *Petaluma’s* Deep Throat obscenity trial, entering the State Theater to view the film, September 17, 1973 (photo courtesy of the *Petaluma Argus-Courier*)

Filmmakers often use the flashback to render a coming-of-age story, dipping into the whirlpool of memories that mark any rite of passage. For those who grew up with drive-in movies—first as pajama-clad kids plied with snacks and soda pop in the family station wagon, and then as adolescents making out in the back seat—the re-emergence of outdoor theaters during the current pandemic stirs up its own flashback whirlpools of childhood innocence and teenage initiation. If you came of age in Petaluma during the 1970s and early 1980s, those flashbacks inevitably include the X-rated movies displayed on the big screens at either end of town.

I was nine years old when Petaluma’s first drive-in, the Parkway Auto Movies, opened in the summer of 1964. My mother made up a bed in the back of our Ford station wagon, knowing that not long after the cartoon shorts played, my sister and I would be off to dreamland, leaving her and my father to watch the main feature in peace.

That summer was the last for the family station wagon. In a fit of midlife crisis, my father traded it in for a sporty, two-door Pontiac LeMans coupe. Once I was old enough to get my driver’s license, I drove the LeMans to the Parkway on dates. Couples wooing in the “passion pit” rarely saw more than the first 20 minutes of any movie, which at the Parkway was just as well. Built in the lowlands of Denman Flats north of town, the drive-in was plagued in summer with creeping ground fog and flooded in winter during heavy rainstorms.

Night time photo of the Parkway Auto Movies, Denman Flats , 1980 (photo courtesy of *Petaluma Argus-Courier*)

I started high school in the fall of 1970. My next-door neighbor Kenny, who was a few years older, got a job changing the marquee at the Parkway, and hired me to help. We also changed the marquee at the State Theater downtown (today’s Mystic Theater). Both theaters were owned by Alan Finlay, a small, friendly man, who also owned a theater in Boyes Hot Springs.

Finlay purchased them in 1967 from Dan Tocchini, Jr., a second-generation, small town theater mogul. The next year, Tocchini bought the only other theater in town, the California, changing its name to the Showcase (today’s Phoenix Theater). Over the next two decades, Toccini and Finlay swapped theaters back and forth, dominating the movie business in town.

California Theater (today’s Phoenix) before its conversion to the Showcase in 1968, 201 Washington Street, late 1950s (Sonoma County Library)

A second drive-in, the Midway, also opened alongside the freeway south of town in 1967, offering wired speakers that sat on the car roof instead of hooking onto the driver’s window. That not only saved speakers from being ripped off their poles by customers absent-mindedly driving away, it also provided stereo sound.

Such technological innovations were important, as moviegoers were declining in the ’60s due to the rising popularity of television. Hollywood studios, which had dominated moviemaking for decades, were being replaced by business conglomerates who shifted to financing and distributing independently produced pictures. That opened the door to the “Hollywood Renaissance” of the late 60s and early 70s, allowing young filmmakers to appeal to younger countercultural audiences with movies like Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, and Easy Rider.

Lost in the transition to New Hollywood was the predictability theater owners had come to depend upon from the studios. In their heyday, movie factories pumped out enough new releases to supply a schedule of double features that changed three times a week at theaters. Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday usually screened musicals; Wednesday and Thursday, B-movies (low budget films); and Friday and Saturday, westerns.

But while in 1950, 12.3 per cent of American’s recreational budget was spent on movie tickets, by 1965, it was 3.3. per cent. As audiences diminished, theaters cut back, rotating movies only once a week, usually pairing a new release with a B-movie or a second-run hit from prior years. Even then, many big budget films were flopping at the box office.

There was, however, a glimmer of hope on the horizon. The sexual liberation of the swinging ’60s brought an end to the “Hays Code,” a set of strict moral guidelines imposed upon filmmakers. The code was originally adopted during the Depression after studios, struggling with dwindling audiences during cash-strapped times, resorted to making films touching on sex, violence, and other less-than-wholesome topics. Dropping the code in 1968, the movie industry shifted to alerting audiences about film content, adopting the film-ratings system we know today.

The new ratings proved a boon for movie theaters, providing them with a exclusive niche of R- and X-rated films that network television couldn’t broadcast. It took only a year for an X-rated movie—Midnight Cowboy, the story of a friendship between a male prostitute and an ailing con man—to win an Oscar for Best Picture. Two years later, Midnight Cowboy was re-rated from X to R, without a single frame being altered. The change was due in large part to the Swedish film I Am Curious (Yellow).

Movie poster for I Am Curious Yellow, 1969 (in public domain)

Initially banned in the United States for its explicit nudity and sex, the film depicted a 20-year old female college student experimenting with relationships, political activism, and meditation. After U.S. courts ruled it not obscene in 1969, the film became the highest grossing foreign film of all time, helping to usher in the “Golden Age of Porn.”

I Am Curious (Yellow) came to the State Theater in January, 1970, where it ran for an unprecedented six weeks. Prior to its arrival, blue movies, or stag films, were largely restricted to old, whirling, reel-to-reel projectors set up in the back room of the Moose Lodge or the Elks Club on select evenings. Cheaply produced in grainy black-and-white, the films accorded with the public yet strangely private nature of fraternal orders, a characteristic they shared with drive-ins theaters.

By the time Kenny and I began changing marquees in the fall of 1970, Finlay was screening a double or triple bill of X-rated films one week out of every month at both the Parkway and the State. Our first X-rated marquee was Russ Meyers’ crossover hit, Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, at the Parkway. Like most of Finlay’s X-rated films at the time, it was soft porn, meaning that the focus of the films were more on the erotic setup, with only simulated sex.

Parkway Theater Ad (Petlauma Argus Courier, September 25, 1970)

After finishing the marquees every Tuesday night, Kenny and I stopped in the Parkway’s projection booth to get paid. Finlay, who maintained a small living room there, was usually watching television with his mother between changing reels.

The Midway drive-in south of town also added adult films to its rotation at that time. While the drive-ins were popular with customers seeking anonymity, they also drew public attention. The Midway’s screen faced the freeway, which meant drivers got a full view of the movies as they passed by. The Parkway’s screen had its back to the freeway, but looked out upon Stony Point Road, a rural lane that was often lined with parked cars during X-rated showings.

Outraged parents and religious leaders appealed to city hall to shut down adult films at the drive-ins on the grounds that they were creating safety hazards for distracted drivers. They also complained that underaged teenagers were not being carded for X-rated films, or else were sneaking in, hidden in car trunks. In response, police increased their patrols of the drive-ins during the showing of adult films.

The Showcase remained the only theater in town showing family fare. That was important to me, as the theater served as a clubhouse for my clique of high school friends. One of our classmates, Tom Gaffey, was assistant manager, and since the Showcase’s manager was off most evenings playing cards, Tom was in charge, allowing us the run of the place.

In September, 1971, Finlay began screening the country’s first hardcore hit movie, Mona. Unlike the soft porn he had been running, the sex in Mona was not simulated. The film ran at the State for five continuous weeks, packing in audiences. By the fall of 1972, the State, Parkway, and Midway theaters were running adult films almost exclusively, both hard and soft porn, drawing customers from hours away by car, and earning Petaluma a reputation as the Hardcore Capital of the North Bay.

That Christmas, Finlay upped the ante, screening the film Deep Throat at the State. Classified as hardcore due to its graphic enactments of oral, vaginal and anal sex, group sex, and masturbation in a dozen and a half sex scenes, it was among the first pornographic films to feature relatively high production values with both plot and character development. Drawing half of its audience from middle class married couples and single couples on dates, Deep Throat ushered in a new acceptability for X-rated films that The New York Times dubbed “porno chic.”

Poster for Deep Throat at State Theater, December, 1972 (photo in public domain)

In the early spring of 1973, Tocchini leased the Showcase to Finlay, providing him with a monopoly on Petaluma’s three theaters. Finlay brought in his own staff at the theater, putting an end to our teen clubhouse. With the State and Parkway showing adult films, he maintained the Showcase as the only venue in town for family fare. Meanwhile, Deep Throat became the most popular movie ever to play in Petaluma, running 28 consecutive weeks until Petaluma’s city council decided in late May to shut it down.

At the time, the film faced obscenity charges in at least a dozen American cities. However, as Sonoma County’s district attorney warned the city council, getting a conviction would prove difficult, as there was no common legal definition of pornography to cite.

State Theater showing Behind the Green Door in 1973, next door to Christian bookstore (Sonoma County Library)

Kenny was working as a projectionist at the State when the Petaluma police showed up to confiscate Deep Throat. Finlay immediately substituted it with another hardcore hit film, Behind the Green Door. A few days later, the police came back with a warrant for that film. Finlay replaced it with another copy he was running simultaneously at his theater in Boyes Hot Springs. Having just turned 18, I was hired to shuttle the film reels between the two theaters each evening in my father’s LeMans, until police also confiscated that copy of the film.

At his arraignment before Petaluma judge Alexander McMahon, Finlay was charged with exhibiting obscene matter and “assisting persons (actors) to expose themselves.” In the district attorney’s filing of the charges, he cited a related case in New York where a judge had denounced Deep Throat as “a nadir of decadence and a Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire.”

The second copy of Behind the Green Door was returned to Finlay at the arraignment, as the original warrant only specified one copy. He immediately began re-screening it at the State until he was able to replaced it a few weeks later with another copy of Deep Throat.

On June 4, 1973, a few days before my high school graduation, the city council, passed an ordinance prohibiting films with “explicit sexual materials” from being shown at drive-in theaters. At the recommendation of legal counsel, they avoided use of the word pornography. That put an end to X-rated films at the Parkway, but not the Midway, which was outside city limits. County supervisors later passed a similar ordinance a few months later, targeted specifically at the Midway.

In late June of 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling defining obscenity as based in part on community standards. Intended to give local communities more agency in applying their own moral standards, the ruling actually served to undermine Petaluma’s case. Judge McMahon dismissed the charges against Finlay on the grounds that the prosecution failed to present evidence of a community standard of obscenity.

Elevated to a symbol of free speech and free sex thanks to the trial’s publicity, Deep Throat continued to draw audiences to the State, where it ran continuously until June 1974, and then episodically until the summer of 1976, almost four years after its Petaluma premiere. Finlay also acquired the Midway during that time and, in defiance of the county ordinance, began screening adult-only films there again.

As cable television and video rentals further eroded theater attendance, theater operators shifted to multiplexes, placing many screens under one roof to provide customers with more simultaneous viewing options. Petaluma’s first multi-plex theater, Washington Square Cinemas, opened at the shopping mall of the same name in 1976.

State Theater, mid-1970s (photo source unknown)

In the late 1970s, as home video began to cut into pornography ticket sales, Finlay exited the theater business in Petaluma. The new owners of the State transformed it into a repertory theater they called the Plaza, featuring art-house and foreign films. The Showcase was purchased by a group that renovated it into a performing arts center renamed the Phoenix.

Tocchini took back the Parkway, continuing to screen largely second-run family features. He also purchased the Midway, renaming it the Sonomarin Drive-in and maintaining its roster of hardcore adult films, which by that time movie producers were rating on their own as “XX” or“XXX” to distinguish them from soft porn (the X-rating itself was changed in 1990 to NC-17).

The Sonomarin Drive-in (formerly the Midway) along Highway 101, south of town, early 1980s (photo in the public domain)

“We like the X-rated movies,” Toccini said at the time, “because it eliminates competition for commercial films in our immediate area.”

Rising land prices and the continued transition to home video brought an end to the Parkway in 1986, taking with it what had once been a way of life for families and teenagers in Petaluma. The site was eventually converted into a golf driving range. The Sonomarin (Midway) followed in 1988, the property later purchased by the state of California for use as a flood control reservoir.

Closure of the Parkway Auto Movies, 1986 (Photo Sonoma County Library)

For those like Kenny and me, who came of age during the Golden Age of Porn, Petaluma’s reign as the Hard Core Capital of the North Bay left an indelible mark. As our former boss Finlay proudly noted, “Deep Throat put this city on the map.”

SOURCES:

Newspapers

Los Angeles Times: David J. Fox, “X Film Rating Dropped and Replaced by NC-17,” September 27, 1990.

The New York Times Magazine: Ralph Blumenthal, “Porno chic; ‘Hard-core’ grows fashionable—and very profitable,” January 21, 1973.

Petaluma Argus-Courier: “Sale is Finalized,” June 8, 1967; “Mad Hatters at Spa,” Bill Soberanes column, November 24, 1967; “New Drive-in to Open Here Friday,” December 14, 1967; “California Theater Sold,” September 25, 1968; “Filmmakers Becoming New Breed,” December 27, 1969; Midway film ad for X-rated Paranoia, November 21, 1969; “In Defense of New Rating System,” December 6, 1969; film ads for the State and Parkway theaters, January, 1969 – March 15, 1970; film ads for the State Theaters, September 1-October 6, 1970; “Group Campaigns for Family Movies,” February 3, 1972; ad for State Theater featuring Deep Throat, December 13, 1972; “Showcase Movie Theater Leased,” February 8, 1973; “Sex Movie Measure O.K.’d,” May 22, 1973; “City Asks Help on X-Rated Movies,” May 19, 1973; “City Police Seize Sex Film,” May 24, 1973; “Second Sex Film Seized at Movie Theater Here,” June 5, 1973; “Duplicated Sex Film Seized by Police,” June 6. 1973; “X-Rated Movies Charges Filed,” June 11, 1973; “Plea Scheduled on Sex Movies Charges,” June 12, 1973; “Should Tackle Real Problems,” September 5, 1973; “Civil Offense for Drive-in X-Rated Films,” September 25, 1973; “Controversial Film Ends Long Run Here,” June 6, 1974; ad for Deep Throat at Midway, September 29, 1976; Final ad for Deep Throat, May 20, 1976 (The record for a continuous run of Deep Throat was ten years at the Pussycat Theater in Hollywood, “Hologram USA Hollywood Theater,” http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2364); “Opening Set for New Firms,” July 15, 1976; “X-rated Movies Leave the Downtown,” February 1, 1977; “New Owners to Reopen Theater,” May 25, 1977; “Rejuvenated Theater to Return as Performing Arts Center,” May 23, 1979; “Drive-in Theaters A Dying Breed,” January 25, 1980; “Adult Films Are Not Appreciated,” April 14, 1983; “Parkway Closure Ends An Era,” January 24, 1986; “Drive-in a ‘Headache,’” December 17, 1986; “Washington Square Mixes Movies, Videos,” June 12, 1987; “X-rated Drive-in to be Sold,” August 13, 1988; Harlan Osborne, “Tocchini Family Builds Legacy with Sonoma County Theaters,” December 8, 2016.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat: “Showcase Theater Leased,” February 7, 1973; “Hard Core Capital of North Bay,” May 25, 1973; Porno Trial Begins,” September 12, 1973.

Books and Websites

Film History of the 1970s, filmsite.org.

Alison M. Parker, “Mothering the Movies,” Movies Censorship and American Culture, Francis G. Couvares, ed. (University of Massachusetts Press, 2006).

Susanna Paasonen and Laura Saarenmaa, “The Golden Age of Porn: Nostalgia and History in Cinema,” Pornification (Oxford: Berg Publishing), pp. 23-32.

Scott Tobias, “Midnight Cowboy at 50: Why the X-rated Best Picture Winner Endures,” The Guardian, May 24, 2019.

Interview with Aaron Sizemore, who worked as a projectionist at the Sonomarin and the Parkway: “The Sonomarin from 1983 until its closure in 1989 was operated by the late Allan ‘Duck Dumont’ Shustak, who also operated a couple of hardtop porn houses in the Bay Area. The screen came down in 1989 and the building was demolished in 1991. The property was sold to the state for use as a flood control lake (it was cheaper than elevating the freeway at that spot.”

Petaluma Historytelling 1920-1970: with Katie Watts & John Sheehy

Onstage with Jim & Tom

Jim Agius and Tom Gaffey welcome historians Katie Watts and John Sheehy for a deep dive into Petaluma’s history from the the 1920s to the 1970s. We explore how Petaluma became known as the world’s egg basket, Prohibition, speakeasies, massive bootlegging rings, famous people-meeter and Petaluma booster Bill Soberanes, the post-war boom, Gilardi’s, Mayor Helen Putnam, the near decimation of Petaluma’s downtown, how the east side developed and much more.

Writer, historian, Petaluma Good Egg Katie Watts

Katie Watts is a writer, editor, and Petaluma historian, who as features editor for the Petaluma Argus-Courier, for years edited the popular “Yesteryears” column highlighting local history.

Writer, historian, Petaluma Good Egg John Sheehy (photo Anthony Tusler)

Tom Gaffey is the general manager and Jim Agius the talent buyer of the Phoenix Theater, where Onstage with Jim & Tom is produced.

Petaluma’s Peter Sellers: Frederick Geers (1955-2020)

“To dance beneath the diamond sky, with one hand waving free.” —Bob Dylan

Right-to-left, Frederick Geers, Jon Rankin, Tom Gaffey (seated) and John Sheehy, in a still shot for a student film set at Donahue’s Landing, 1972 (photo by Brigham Denison)

Friendships forged while growing up usually change as time passes, but memories made together in youth often create bonds for life. Frederick Gardiner Geers, who recently passed away, was such a friend. Although we grew up in Petaluma in the 1960s, we didn’t become friends until high school in the early 1970s, when I joined two of the cliques where Fred played a central role, journalism and theater.

Creative and whip-smart, he was wired with an intense energy softened by a satiric wit. Behind his coke-bottle glasses and tight-lip smile—used to hide his bad teeth until he had them all replaced in high school—Fred was our enigmatic Peter Sellers, a private person who presented himself in a series of different guises, sometimes playing Inspector Clouseau; at other times, Dr. Strangelove. During the rare instances he dropped his thespian guard, he revealed a poet’s sensitivity to the world around him.

From time to time, Fred’s natural intensity got the better of him, and he would erupt in head jerking, eye blinking, and uncontrollable cussing. When Fred fell under one of his spells—an event that often occurred while we were riding aimlessly around in someone’s car—it was like being caged with a seething bobcat. “Time to let Fred out,” became our a customary fire drill. In retrospect, it’s possible that he may have been touched in adolescence by Tourette Syndrome.

Frederick Geers, Petaluma, 1978 (photo John Sheehy)

Like many in our high school gang, Fred was something of an “at-risk kid.” We all had troubles at home that we tacitly acknowledged but never discussed, in something of an unspoken bond. In Fred’s case, life centered around his mother Jean, as his father was not in the picture.

Jean Gardiner was the daughter of the president of Heald’s Business College in Fresno, who was also a fig farmer. In 1937, at the age of twenty-eight, she moved to Hawaii to work for the Army Corp of Engineers as a civilian medical secretary. On the morning of December 7, 1941, she was driving to work at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base when a Japanese plane dropped a bomb onto the road in front of her. She survived the blast, but experience stayed with her for life, fueling a lifelong animosity toward the Japanese.

Jean remained in Hawaii until after the war, giving birth to a daughter with her first husband, an army major. After their divorce, she returned to California, where in 1950 she married John Geers, an Army private, and took a job working at Hamilton Air Force Base. Their son Frederick was born in Fresno in 1955, when Jean was forty-six, after which she and her husband purchased a small ranchette in Cotati, and Jean acquired a horse named Thunder.

The Geers divorced in 1958, when Fred was three. Jean took Thunder and her two children back to Hawaii for a couple of years, then returned with them to Petaluma. She rented a farmhouse west of town where they could board Thunder, and took a job as a medical transcriber at Letterman Hospital in the Presidio. Fred attended rural Wilson School were he became a devoted Cub Scout.

I first became aware of Fred during a Washington’s Birthday Cherry Pie Eating Contest in junior high, in which he placed a close second. By that time, Thunder was gone, Jean’s daughter was married, and Fred and his mother were living in an old Victorian on Petaluma Boulevard, a block away from Walnut Park. At the beginning of his sophomore year, Fred moved to Hawaii to try living with his father, who managed a hotel in Hilo. He returned after a semester, scarred by the physically bullying he received from the local Hawaiian kids who tormented him for being a mainlander.

At Petaluma High, Fred and I both worked on the school’s newspaper, the Trojan, where a fellow member of our gang, Tom Gaffey, was the top editor. Tom and Fred helped form an Explorer journalism troop in the Boy Scouts led by Ralph Thompson, managing editor of the Petaluma Argus-Courier. Soon after I joined the troop, we launched a newspaper, The Bugle, for the Boy Scouts of the Sonoma-Mendocino Area Council, with Fred serving as editor.

Fred and I also collaborated on an underground newspaper in high school, inspired in part by “gonzo journalist” Hunter S. Thompson, which, much to our delight, became a source of controversy for the school administration.

Along with journalism, Fred engaged himself in theater, where his shape-changing theatrics translated well to the stage. He appeared in almost all of our school productions, most notably in the musical Carnival as B.F. Schlegel, the larger-than-life ringmaster who creates a sense of family for a group of quirky performers working his rinky-dink carnival.

Melinda Orchard as Rosalie and Frederick Geers as B.F. Schlegel in the musical Carnival, 1973

While the drama club on campus was populated with colorful personalities, few matched Fred for true eccentricity. At cast parties he distinguished himself on the dance floor, often dancing solo to his own ecstatic rhythms for hours on end. His own taste in music tended toward progressive rock, especially the band Yes, who provided the soundtrack to his teenage years.

After graduating with honors from Petaluma High in 1973, Fred enrolled at San Francisco State. In the years that followed, he remained in the Bay Area, working as a freelance writer and a chef, and for a brief time, running the historic Lorenzo Theater in San Leandro as a repertory venue, featuring both films and live performances. During opening night’s musical concert, Fred took a lit cigarette away from a defiant customer, who responded by stabbing him with a knife, setting off a melee that the police had to break up.

In the early 1980s, Fred worked as a chef at the first farm-to-table gourmet restaurant on the Healdsburg Plaza, just as the town was beginning to draw wine tourists to the area. Over the next decade it wasn’t unusual to find him cooking at some tony restaurant in San Francisco, whirling around the kitchen with his sous chefs like a dancing dervish ringmaster.

Although Fred never married, he had a number of long-term relationships, including with actress Diane Varsi, who was nominated while still a teenager for her role in the film Peyton Place.

Fred left the culinary business in the mid-1990s to become a technical writer at a software company. After the company merged with the open source software developer Red Hat, Fred was suddenly worth millions, at least in stock options. His paper fortune evaporated in the dot com bust of the early 2000s, after which he returned to cooking and freelance writing. During the 2010s, he served as the longtime chef at Ireland’s 32, San Francisco’s legendary Irish pub on Geary Street.

One of the last times I saw Fred was at an open house celebration for Tiburon attorney Jon Rankin, a charter member of our high school gang. Fred and his female partner at the time arrived by Uber, dressed in long, black overcoats as characters from the film the Matrix. True to his Peter Sellers nature, Fred never broke character the entire evening.

At the time of his death, Fred was employed at Episcopal Community Services in San Francisco, running a kitchen for feeding the homeless and the needy. After his 65^th birthday on March 18^th, he was sent home to the Inner Richmond apartment where he lived alone, to self-quarantine during to the Covid-19 pandemic. He died two weeks later of a heart attack while asleep in bed. In a final gesture so characteristic of Fred, he exited the stage on April Fool’s Day.

Petaluma Historytelling Series: featuring John Sheehy

Onstage with Jim & Tom

Jim and Tom welcome local historian John Sheehy for a dive deep into Petaluma history, including the Coast Miwok, the machiavellian General Vallejo, the 1830’s smallpox epidemic, Petaluma’s Chinese-American and African-American communities in the 19th century, stock breeder William Bihler, Tom’s favorite explosions, Petaluma’s railroad battle in Santa Rosa, Tom’s favorite murder, the booms of busts of Petaluma, Deep Throat at the Mystic Theater, and much, much more.

John Sheehy is the author of On a River Winding Home: Stories and Visions of the Petaluma River Watershed, which features intimate historical stories of the Petaluma River Watershed paired with the stunning photography of Scott Hess. Tom Gaffey is the general manager and Jim Agius the talent buyer of the Phoenix Theater, where Onstage with Jim & Tom is produced.

Petaluma History Session I: with Harlan Osborne, Katie Watts, John Sheehy

Onstage with Jim & Tom

Left to right: Jim Agius, Harlan Osborne, Katie Watts, John Sheehy, Tom Gaffey (back to camera)

Onstage with Jim and Tom welcomes Petaluma historians Harlan Osborne of the Argus Courier, Katie Watts of the Press Democrat, and author John Sheehy to explore and discuss Petaluma history.

This 70-minute conversation explores many moments and characters in the town’s history, including: when Petaluma tried to secede (twice), the town squatter Garrett Keller, the near civil war battle with Santa Rosa, “Mr. Petaluma” Bill Soberanes, the origins of the title “egg capital of the world” (even if it wasn’t true), Doc Naify of the California Theater, Petaluma’s response to prohibition, the Jewish chicken farmer community, and much more.

Classic Petaluma locations & characters referenced: The Spa, Gilardi’s Corner, Marios & Johns, Agius Grocery, Fannie Brown’s brothel, A & B Market, Fairwest Grocery, Volpi’s, Twin Oaks, Elks Lodge, Petaluma Hotel, Caulfield’s Meats, Andresen’s, The Hideaway, Mattei Brothers, The State (The Mystic) and the California/Showcase Theater (The Phoenix), the roost dances at Kenilworth, radio stations KAFP (“Krowing Always For Petaluma”) and KTOB, Mario Figone, Baccala’s Market, The Cordas, The Dolcinis, Judge Rollie Webb, Clem McCorkell, “Stan the Man” Greenhagen, Tom Caulfield, Lamar Lauritzen, and Bert Kerrigan.