Venetian Room memories

Last night I made my Venetian Room stage debut.

My pal Marilyn Levinson, founder of Bay Area Cabaret, has been producing concerts in this venerable room at the Fairmont Hotel for many years and this season included “Venetian Evenings: A Musical Celebration of the Fairmont San Francisco’s Venetian Room.” When she learned that I had worked at the hotel while putting myself through college, she solicited my research assistance. The project went through many permutations, up until the last minute, until finally at five o’clock, the band stopped, and I took to the stage to introduce the show:

Hello, I’m Jim Van Buskirk and I worked at the Venetian Room back in the day. Well, not all the way back, and not here onstage.

In 1976, I was 24 and working in the Food & Beverage Control department, while putting myself through college. Each night I was assigned to a different station, but my favorite was the Venetian Room. I loved to watch the maître de escort San Francisco’s crème de la crème to their tables, the waiters scurry about serving drinks and dinner couples dance to the Ernie Heckscher orchestra. Once, a party arrived just before showtime to a totally sold out room. Money surreptitiously changed hands and suddenly a table was being lifted over the heads of the audience and plunked right in front of the stage. The party was seated and the show began.

Ernie Heckscher and his band played the room for 36 years. Herb Caen wrote: “He was our ‘society bandleader’, always hiring the best musicians and arrangers, always looking as dapper as Fred Astaire in white tie and tails, always keeping the beat lighthearted and danceable.”

From my workstation I was able to watch the shows. A mix of old and new, like the Supremes and Sammy Davis, Jr., and Broadway stars like Chita Rivera and Joel Grey. One memorable artist was Peggy Lee who performed in February 1976. Standing completely still in the center of the stage wearing a platinum wig and a white gown she looked like an iceberg. The smallest gesture punctuated her wry delivery.

I was particularly excited to see Ginger Rogers’ opening night in mid-March 1976. Never mind that she was now 65 – that seemed old then! — she was an icon. In the middle of one number, her eyelash fell off. Ever the trouper, she cracked a joke and continued her performance. Imagine my surprise the next night when she lost her eyelash at the same place in the show. Hmm…

There are many Venetian Room memories, you probably have some of your own…

Fortunately, even today, new memories are being made against the backdrop of this historic stage, where the nonprofit Bay Area Cabaret, now in the 14^th season of its residency, presents Tony and Grammy-winning Broadway and jazz artists, like Annaleigh Ashford, Leslie Odom, Jr., Judy Collins, John Pizzarelli, Christine Ebersole, and many others.

Tonight we take a step back, and pay musical tribute to the Venetian room starting in the year 1947, when Boston businessman Ben Swig bought the Fairmont hotel. Swig had the brilliant idea of turning this room into a dedicated world class supper club. He hired designer Dorothy Draper to transform the lobby and public rooms into a Venetian palazzo (thus the name) and had hand-painted murals of gondoliers placed on the wall panels (behind those scrims).

Now mind you: In those days, phones were where they should be — bolted to the wall!  People went out to have fun!  In one 2 week / 2 shows per night run, Ella Fitzgerald was reported to have brought in a combined audience of 7,000 people. They were treated to a supper with delicacies like boneless squab, turtle soup and sliced lobster in addition to a performance by the first lady of jazz, followed by dancing on the dance floor (which still exists beneath the pullout stage and center tables.)

On New Year’s Eve of 1989, the Venetian room went dark as a dedicated music venue, having presented many of the nation’s top artists. Tonight, led by three of the country’s finest vocalists, we’ll celebrate just a few of the Venetian Room regulars. I don’t know about you, but every time I set foot in this room, I feel a part of something larger than myself. “Hallowed ground” as this season’s opening night artist Joshua Henry put it. The Venetian room, though renovated a number of times, is one of those spots where the room itself has a presence that transcends the present.  

Now close your eyes… Oh, if only these walls could talk. But walls can’t talk… Or can they?

At that moment, from the doorway where I once watched the shows, Carol Buford entered the room singing Peggy Lee’s “Fever”. As she wended her way around the room invoking the iconic singer, my sense of déjà vu was well on its way. Throughout the evening she embodied Eydie Gormé, Edith Piaf, and many others. In addition, recent Grammy-winner Jamie Davis invoked other famous singers associated with the room including Mel Tormé, Louis Armstrong, and Nat King Cole while triple-Tony-winner LaChanze channeled Ella Fitzgerald, Tina Turner, and Lena Horne, among others. The evening ended on a high note: the trio singing the song most associated with the room: “I Left My Heart In San Francisco.”

After the concert many couples began dancing to the onstage band, as if in days of old. A delightfully memorable evening.

Coda:  Among the stories eventually left on the cutting room floor were two of my favorites:

The most famous song associated with this room has an interesting back story. In 1954, Douglass Cross and George Cory, songwriters and lovers, had moved from San Francisco to Brooklyn, where they wrote “When I Return to San Francisco,” which they later changed to “When I Come Home.” I’ve just learned that “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was shown to their friend Claramae Turner, who was beginning a long operatic career in both San Francisco and New York, and she frequently used it as an encore for her performances. When Tony Bennett’s musical director asked the songwriters for a song for an upcoming Venetian Room concert they suggested their famous ode to the “city by the bay” and he first sang in December 1961. Tony later said, “I was completely unknown in town. The room was packed. It was right about one-quarter through the show before I sang it. As soon as I finished, the place exploded.”  And the rest, as they say, is history. In 1969 the song was adopted by the City and County of San Francisco as “the official city ballad.”

The venue did have at least one detractor. “I’d never sing in the Venetian Room. The worst,” Frank Sinatra purportedly remarked to Herb Caen over a vodka martini in 1960. “Everything’s right field and left field, you sing to the door.”

It was fun to meet the personable performers in their street clothes at rehearsal and then see them transformed into their glamorous onstage personas. I took a photo of them in the spot where I used to stand watching the shows nearly 50 years ago.

After the performance, I fanboy gushed over LaChanze, whom I’d seen many times over the years in Once on this Island, Ragtime, Dessa Rose, If/Then, and other Broadway shows. When I sheepishly asked for a selfie, she expertly showed me how best to use my phone for this fabulous photo.

So everything has come full circle and I now have proof of my Venetian Room debut.