Tuesday,
October 23
Obit: Enrico Banducci, 85; Owned Famous "hungry i"
Nightclub
The
ANNOTICO Report
Harry
Banducci was born on Feb. 17, 1922, in
Several Jews
claim Enrico Banducci, as
Jewish, Not Italian.Of course he could be both, and
an Italian Jew. The Second article from the West Coast News has his grandfather
talking to him in Italian, but revealing
two very indifferent parents, with his mother especially cruel.
Banducci bought the 83-seat
club "hungry i" that evolved from a
bohemian hangout to a showcase for folk singers, such as Stan Wilson.
That changed when Banducci hired Sahl,
his first comedian, in late 1953, and gave Sahl
time to develop his new brand of political satire and encouraged him to speak
his mind onstage.
"We were set free by Enrico," Sahl said "He's fearless,He was his own man. I stress that because he's the
last one I met.". He gave people artistic
freedom, allowed them to express themselves as they
wished, without any interference from him or anybody else,
This
led to a stream of new-wave comedians performing at the hungry i, including Phyllis Diller, Dick
Gregory, Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby. One memorable
1963 double bill featured Woody Allen and a young singer named Barbra
Streisand.
In the process, the barrel-chested, mustachioed and beret-wearing Banducci became known in the press as "The Billy Rose
of
"He had an extraordinary eye for talent, and he set the standard in
nightclub entertainment for 20 years,"
Banducci "started three major revolutions in
nightclub entertainment," (1) a new style for the nightclub where
bohemia met elegance, (2)
"he started satirical political comedy, (3) he started the revolution
in folk music, which went around the country and around the world." .
Enrico Banducci,
85; Owned Famous "Hungry i" Nightclub
By
Dennis McLellan
Staff Writer
October 16, 2007
Enrico Banducci, the
flamboyant San Francisco nightclub impresario whose hungry i
launched political satirist Mort Sahl and played a
major role in the careers of Shelley Berman, Woody Allen, Jonathan Winters and
other comedians in the 1950s and '60s, has died. He was 85.
Banducci, who was hospitalized for kidney and heart
problems last month, died Oct. 9 at home in South San Francisco, said his
niece, Chi Chi Banducci.
A onetime concert violinist, Banducci bought the
hungry i -- short for the hungry id -- in 1951 from
Eric Nord, who had started and named the tiny North Beach club two years
earlier.
Under Banducci, the 83-seat club in the basement of
the
But that changed when Banducci hired Sahl, his first comedian, in l ate 1953.
Banducci reportedly gave Sahl
time to develop his new brand of political satire and encouraged him to speak
his mind onstage.
"We were set free by Enrico," Sahl said last spring during the launch of "Enrico Banducci's hungry i:
"He's fearless," Sahl said. "He was
his own man. I stress that because he's the last one I met."
Sahl was soon drawing lines of customers around the
block at the hungry i, which moved to its much larger
and more famous basement location on nearby Jackson Street in the spring of
1954.
"The hungry i had become by the mid-1950s the
Comedy Central of its day, the main staging area of the revolutionary
movement" in stand-up comedy, wrote Gerald Nachman
in his 2003 book "Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and
1960s."
A stream of new-wave comedians performed at the hungry i,
includi ng Phyllis Diller, Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce and Bill Cosby. One
memorable 1963 double bill featured Woody Allen and a young singer named Barbra
Streisand.
In the process, the barrel-chested, mustachioed and beret-wearing Banducci became known in the press as "The Billy Rose
of
"I gave people artistic freedom, allowed them to express themselves as they wished, without any interference from me
or anybody else," Banducci recalled during the
exhibition's opening.
"He had an extraordinary eye for talent, and he set the standard in
nightclub entertainment for 20 years," Brad Rosenstein, curator of
exhibitions and programs at the San Francisco Performing Arts Library &
Museum, said Monday.
Banducci "started three major revolutions in
nightclub entertainment," Rosenstein said.
"He crafted a new style for the nightclub where bohemia met
elegance," s aid Rosenstein, noting that Banducci
"was the first to have that brick wall behind the stage, which every club
now has."
"He also started satirical political comedy, which was virtually unknown
before Mort Sahl. And, finally, he started the
revolution in folk music, which went around the country and around the
world."
The Limeliters folk group launched its career at the
hungry i, which also featured the Kingston Trio;
Peter, Paul and Mary; and other groups.
"He was really the first to spot many of these people -- comedians, folk
singers, variety acts -- and give them a chance," Rosenstein said.
"Other clubs looked at who he booked and often followed his lead."
Banducci told Nachman in a
1999 interview, "I wanted to have a club that was fair to the artist --
like a theater -- to develop and nurture talent."
For Banducci, that meant not putting up with that
bane of stand-up comics: hecklers.
In Nachman's book, comedian Professor Irwin Corey
recalled Banducci once reacting to audience members
who interrupted his act by yelling: "Stop the show. You noisy bunch of
mothers! Give 'em back their money. Have respect for
the acts or don't come back here."
Nothing stopped Banducci from demanding respect for
his performers. As Nachman noted, he even once
"threw out an entire audience -- a Gray Line bus tour of foreigners."
He was born Harry Banducci on Feb. 17, 1922, in
At 17, he was getting ready for a violin recital when he decided that Harry was
an unsuitable first name for a musician. Enrico Banducci "looked more important, more Italian, yes,
less
In 1958, he opened Enrico's Coffee House on Broadway
a few blocks from the hungry i. It was later renamed Enrico's Sidewalk Cafe, and he sold it in 1988.
At one point, Rosenstein said, Banducci had "a
mini empire in
But, Rosenstein said, Banducci was the first to say
that he was not a great businessman, and even at the height of the hungry i's popularity, "there were always financial
problems."
The hungry i, which moved from
Banducci, who was married five times, is survived by
his daughter, Allegra; and his son, Gregory. A
memorial will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. Oct. 28 at Enrico's,
504 Broadway,
dennis.mclellan@latimes.com
"CONTIAMO LA MONETA"
The West Coast News
"CONTIAMO
LA MONETA"
(Let's count the money), said Enrico Banducci's grandfather to him one day in
His grandfather had
been keeping Enrico's money for him in his safe so
that his parents did not take it. Enrico had earned
the money playing the violin two or three times a week since he was six years
old. His father, who took no interest in his musical abilities, made him
practice in the garage.
Part of the reason he
was going to
"I was not an
unruly kid," says Enrico. "My mother did
not like me from the day I was born." In fact, she had tried to abort him.
Enrico says that one day he was sitting
under the umbrella tree where he could not be seen and was listening to his
mother talking with his aunts on the back porch. The topic was abortion.
"Oh, yes,"
said his mother. "I tried to have an abortion but I couldn't."
"Who were you
trying to abort?" asked one of the aunts.
"Harry," said Enrico's mother."
Enrico was born Harry Banducci,
not Enrico Banducci. "Enrico" came latter when he
got involved in the night club business.
She told the aunts she
took "Philippine black pills," drank castor oil, and was jumping down
off the bed to get rid of him.
When he heard this, Enrico said he started to cry.
His father was a
bootlegger who had a mistress and paid almost no attention to his mother. Both
father and mother were frustrated, angry people who took it out on their three
boys.
One day his mother hit
him over the head with a pan, knocking him unconscious for twenty minutes. This
occurred, he says, because he accidentally dropped a laced doily on the floor.
A neighbor who witnessed this particular incident wanted to call the police but
Enrico talked the neighbor out of it, saying that it
would only make things worse.
Now if the above
sounds bad, picture this: One day his mother was beating him outside when the
Greek vegetable man came by and witnessed it. He was so upset by what he saw
that he told his mother that he would not sell her vegetables anymore. What was
Harry's crime that day? On the way home from school he had loaned his coat to a
black friend who was cold and he had arrived home coatless.
This was all back in
When Enrico and his grandfather counted the money, it turned out
he had 10,800 dollars.
In a scene at the
dinner table his father angrily opposed the move when it was announced, but by
the age 13 Enrico was now a big kid—"I
had a mustache already and I looked about 18 or 19"—and he simply told his
father that he was going. He had in fact already purchased his train ticket.
Once in
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