sisterhood – ANARCHY IN HIGH HEELS

STORIES LEFT OUT

June 7, 2022Denise Larson2 Comments

The Gold Pinto

In 1978 I was producing and performing in Les Nickelettes’ play Curtains! My 15 year-old Nissan Datsun reliably got me around town to meetings, rehearsals, and performances. It was a boxy little compact, beige, with a clutch transmission, but it served its purpose. An added plus was that it was paid for, and the auto insurance was cheap.

One evening, as I was driving along San Francisco’s Hwy 101’s aptly named “hospital curve”, a California Highway Patrol car suddenly veered across three lanes to check out an apparent escapee from nearby General Hospital. Seen faintly from the soft shoulder of the road was a frail figure climbing the hill still in a hospital gown. The car in front of me slammed on the brakes to avoid hitting the CHP cruiser, I simultaneously slammed on my breaks stopping just in time, but the truck coming around the curve behind me plowed into my tiny Datsun. Thankfully, my only physical injury was a whiplash, but the Datsun was totaled.

Sorting out the insurance, and making a claim against the state’s CHP department would take months and months, so I was back to good old, unreliable public transit. This put a crimp in my responsibilities as a theater producer. I lamented to Vince, my staunchest supporter, and live-in partner at the time, “If I have to rent a car to haul props, sets, and costumes across town in-between runs of Curtains! and then back again into storage, it will cost a fortune.”

Three days later, coming to my rescue, Vince tossed me a set of keys. “A new set of wheels? I asked in surprise.

“Go take a look,” he beamed. I skipped outside, excited to jump into my new ride, but stopped mid-skip and stared at a metallic gold 1972 Ford Pinto hatchback station wagon. “Seriously?” I said, “I’m going to look like a suburban housewife.”

“It has low mileage and only one previous owner,” Vince pointed out. “The back seat folds down so you can load your theater stuff.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “but can’t I have a roomy car that also makes me look like a hip artist?” He shrugged, I sighed. Hopping in behind the wheel, I turned on the ignition. At least it had an automatic shift.

Eventually I grew to love my signature gold Pinto and it proved to be a tireless workhorse, transporting performers and materials for years to come.

Many of my favorite memories in the iconic Pinto were the late-night drives home after rehearsals. Les Nickelettes managed to finagle free rehearsal space in some out-of-the-way destinations. I couldn’t in good conscience let members wait at lonely, desolate bus stops, followed by blocks-long walks to their apartment buildings. So, I offered everyone in need a ride home. Same for performances at far-flung areas like Fort Mason, situated on a wharf overlooking the San Francisco Bay. Members would jump into the front seat, back seat, and cram into the back storage area. And I, as the driver of the trusty gold Pinto, would drop each and every one of them off at their front doorstep. The trips around the city were often sidesplitting fun with the group telling jokes, singing songs, or just letting off steam after a rehearsal or performance. One time, we were laughing so hard I had to pull over next to a park so a couple of the ladies could pee. There was also validation of women protecting other women.

Many years later, when I was eight-and-a-half months pregnant with my daughter, my husband Vinny (not to be confused with the aforementioned Vince), and I, bought a brand-new trustworthy family Dodge mini-van. The dealership offered us a $100 trade-in for the gold Pinto. As the salesperson drove it away down a ramp – to some mysterious subterranean cellar for discarded cars – I felt a pang of sorrow. Having intense feelings for an inanimate object felt strange, but then I realized it wasn’t the object that I had feelings for: it was the flood of fond memories attached to that metallic gold 1972 Ford Pinto hatchback station wagon, and for all the Nickelettes who had come along for the ride.

White Blackbird: a rare and improbable creature.

February 13, 2019June 3, 2021Denise LarsonLeave a comment

Before Les Nickelettes were launched at the People’s Nickelodeon 1972 I was doing experimental plays with college friends. We had recently graduated from the theater department at San Francisco State University, and were itching to create new forms of drama. Every time we crafted an original play, we changed the name of the group, as though each new venture demanded a new label. So, we were the Mandala Theatre Company, then the Blue Lantern Theater, then the Fantasy Theater. Being in our early twenties, the point was to indulge in a purely artistic lifestyle. Money and fame were not the goal. Our playwriting process explored rituals, myths, archetypes, dreams, and devised characters that bubbled up from the depths of our own unconsciousness. We read voraciously about alternative theater, and stayed up late into the night drinking wine, smoking pot, and discussing Jungian theory.

The three women in group, Janet, Karin and I, bonded over the diaries of Anais Nin, and developed a play called White Blackbird. We condensed the themes of the Nin diaries into the embodiment of the three characters we played: June Miller (wife of Henry Miller), Antonin Artaud, and Anais herself. Presenting our work onstage, we promoted it with this description: “White Blackbird is lyrical, using a mixture of dance and drama to present a poetic unfolding metaphor of a physical and spiritual act of giving birth.” Heavy-duty deep stuff. And we took our artistic creation very seriously.

In the middle of this undertaking, Les Nickelettes were born. An accidental birth. Suddenly, a different zeitgeist was unleashed from our unconscious – a wild, crazy, bawdy, sometimes barely coherent women’s lib spirit, that erased all polite societal norms. “What fun,” exclaimed other women watching from the audience, and immediately asked to jump on board for the ride. And, before we knew it, a group of women – buoyed by each other’s support – said and did things onstage they never imagined. A uniquely female form of fun and laughter escaped from Pandora’s Box and no one could shove it back in again.

Below is a publicity photo for White Blackbird with me, Karin, and Janet channeling our experimental, but tame, lyrical spirits.

Contrast that to these photos of the three of us shortly afterwards letting our Nickelette spirit out of the bottle.

Girls having fun. Note: One of the girls in the background, Debbie, is channeling her inner dog spirit wearing a frilly formal. Read more in Anarchy in High Heels.

What do you want for a nickel?

November 20, 2018June 23, 2021Denise LarsonLeave a comment

Recently, there was news that the Mitchell Brothers O’Farrell Theater was up for sale. Memories of this being the unlikely birthplace of my feminist theater group Les Nickelettes surfaced. You may ask: feminism in a porno palace, really? Hey, this was San Francisco in 1972. A hip underground counterculture was thumbing its nose at past hang-ups, and at the same time saying, “anything goes.”

O'Farrell sign 1972 — A less garish facade of The O’Farrell Theatre in 1972

The O’Farrell Theater gained notoriety for opening the first hardcore porno film venue in the country, but Les Nickelettes didn’t emerge from that Mitchell Brothers’ enterprise. Instead, a different, after-hours counterculture event launched the group . In 1972 I was 24, and to pay the rent, I took a day job as a cashier at The O’Farrell Theater. One of the projectionists, Vince Stanich, came up with the idea for The People’s Nickelodeon. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, at midnight, after the moneymaking endless porno loops had ended, the theater was thrown open to the stoned “freaks.” Everything cost a nickel: the popcorn, the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and admission to see a forties newsreel, a Betty Boop cartoon, and a kitschy classic movie. Reefer Madness was shown at The People’s Nickelodeon before it became a cult classic.

As the popularity of this after-hours event grew, me and my theater friends became the Nickelette cheerleaders for The People’s Nickelodeon. Give us an “N” – give us an “I” – give us a “C” . . . But the hodge-podge troupe quickly evolved into something more meaningful. Maybe it was the times. Maybe it was the underlying second-wave feminist movement, but we came together in a sisterhood of unique and bawdy female satire that surprised us all. The creation of the group may have been accidental but the collective unconscious synergy of this eclectic group of women came together in the right place at the right time, and it took on a life of its own.

The Nickelettes in 1972 in the lobby of The O’Farrell Theatre with the night manager and the famous “moose head.”

To give credit where credit is due, Vince Stanich came up with the idea of Nickelette cheerleaders for The People’s Nickelodeon. He proposed the idea as he and I hung out smoking weed in his “Clubhouse,” an O’Farrell Theater backroom behind the projection booth – his 12-hour shift work station. It was a heady time. After midnight on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, in a reimagined porno theater, a creative genie was let out of the bottle. There would be no going back, no desire to. It was the beginning of my thrilling thirteen-year adventure in Les Nickelettes. I had the time of my life.