Maya Angelou and the Purple Onion

Another pioneer offbeat, avant-garde, and/or existential cellar, with a more or less continuous show featuring folk singers, monologists, and comics of the cerebral variety.

That was the legendary Herb Caen's appraisal of the Purple Onion. An off-shoot of of Enrico Banducci's legendary hungry i, the Purple Onion opened in early 1953.

Weep not for the hungry fellows who run the "hungry i" tavern on Columbus avenue. They'll do their own weeping in a branch they're opening across the street to be called "The Purple Onion"... (San Francisco Chronicle December 18, 1952)

According to Phyllis Diller, Keith Rockwell, a co-owner of the hungry i, left his partnership with Banducci to open the Purple Onion as a vehicle for the "chanteuse" Jorie Remes. Diller wrote that Rockwell, who "absolutely adored her," was also a musician who played string bass.

Jorie Remes (Marjorie Remes who was later was known as Jorie Remus) was a native of New York City. She perfected her craft in the early 1950s at La Boite de Sardines [Sardine Tin] along the Paris Champs Elysees. "Jorie Remus was too hip for the room before being too hip for the room was a thing, and almost even before there was a room worth being to hip in." That is the appraisal of Shawn Levey in his book In on The Joke: The Original Queens of Stand-Up Comedy.

source: San Francisco Chronicle May 9, 1953

She was a singer and monologist who sang and wrote her own material that she called "20th Century Laments." Historian and former Chronicle theater critic Gerald Nachman designated her as one of the "foremothers" of stand-up comedy. Phyllis Diller described her as "a willowy, sexy, French chanteuse-type with a husky voice, a droll sense of humor, and haughty, heaving affected manner." By November 1953, a Chronicle columnist remarked that crowds lined up outside the Purple Onion's door to watch her performance. When Variety magazine reviewed her act they noted that she projected "warm cynicism" and that she "has a knowledge of humor in its less blatant forms."

At the same time that Remes was putting the Purple Onion on the map as a destination for the night hawks of San Francisco, Maya Angelou, then going by Marguerite Angelos, was in the process of divorcing her husband. Her savings were dwindling so she went looking for work in San Francisco's International Settlement. This was the entertainment district that supplanted the former Barbary Coast occupying Pacific Avenue between Montgomery and Kearney Streets.

In her memoir, Singin' And Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas, Angelou remembered how the block had four strip joints. She found work as a showgirl at one of them -- the Garden of Allah. (Angelou may have changed the name of this establishment -- it is not listed in the city directories or phonebooks of that time). Once the management discovered her expressive skill as a dance, they had her perform her artistic routines fully clothed and she started bringing in a different clientele. The audience transitioned from lonely old men to "laughing open faced couples" who came to see her.

One night she noticed a party of four - three men and a woman. Angelou described the latter, Jorie Remes, as a "young Marlene Dietrich-looking woman" with a shock of "sunlight-yellow hair." They were all from the Purple Onion, just a few blocks away. Word had spread about this expressive dancer. Angelou wrote:

These beautiful people and their friends began dropping in each evening and I awaited their arrival. I danced indifferently until I caught a glimpse of their party near the back of the room, then I offered them the best steps I had and as soon as the dance was finished I hurried over.

Jorie Remes (from the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Remes had accepted a gig at a New York nightclub for the new year and the club was looking for a new headliner to replace her. They learned that Angelou was being let go by her club and wondered whether she could sing as well as dance. She volunteered that she could and hey found her a vocal coach and helped her work up a repertoire of songs. She and the rest of them even brainstormed her new stage name. Maya (a truncation of Marguerite) was a nickname her brother familiarly called her and Angelou was adapted from her married surname - Angelos.

With Jorie Remes on her way to New York City, the Purple Onion debuted the name and persona Maya Angelou ("The New Singing Sensation") in their advertisement in the Chronicle of January 2, 1954. The Chronicle's nightlife correspondent, who went by "The Owl," excitedly announced on January 9, 1954 that:

The Purple Onion now has a bigger and better show with that young romantic baritone Patrick McVey and that new sensational find Maya Angelou. The Owl predicted she would make you forget Jorie Remes.

He later noted audiences frequently requested her rendition of the Louis Jordan song "Push ka pee she pie." He continued to gush:

The exotic Maya Angelou, now appearing at the Purple Onion, has more expression in her hands than most singers have in their faces. You really have to see Maya's graceful gestures to appreciate her.

Maya Angelou is the spellbinder at the Purple Onion. One moment the passion flower sings quietly and demurely and suddenly, she erupts in strictly spontaneous combustion. An artist with both delicacy and fire, Miss Angelou is certainly the most expressive singer in these parts.

After this auspicious start, her show business career took off. She continued her run at the Purple Onion through the end of August 1954. She then joined a European tour of Porgy and Bess as a dancer. While in Paris she headlined at a nightclub.

Mars-Club presents Maya Angelou (source: New York Herald Tribune October 2, 1954)

She returned to San Francisco in September 1955 where she headlined at a new nightclub called the Hollow Egg. We haven't found any photographs of Maya Angelou performing in San Francisco. Fortunately, the 1957 feature film, Calypso Heat Wave documented her act.

Maya Angelou, still shot from Calypso Heat Wave (1957)

Maya Angelou's show business career continued for several more years. She appeared in clubs in Los Angeles and New York. She also recorded a calypso album for Liberty Records in 1957. But her name and her fame started with the Purple Onion on Columbus Avenue.

The Purple Onion in 1964 (source: San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection)

Bibliography

"Americans Make Good as Paris Nitery Ops," The Billboard February 3, 1951.

Angelou, Maya, The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou (Modern Library, 2004).

"The Bachelor," San Francisco Chronicle November 23, 1953.

Caen, Herb, Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco (Doubleday, 1957).

De Beix, Maxime, "Paris," Variety October 25, 1950

Diller, Phyllis, Like A Lampshade in A Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy (J.P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005).

Jennings, Dean, "It's News to Me," San Francisco Chronicle December 18, 1952.

Levy, Shawn, In on The Joke: The Original Queens of Stand-up Comedy (Doubleday, 2022).

"Maya Angelou in Calypso Heat Wave (1957)," Youtube.

Nachman, Gerald, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s (Pantheon Books, 2003).

The Owl, "After Night Falls," San Francisco Chronicle January 9, 1954

The Owl, "After Night Falls," San Francisco Chronicle February 27, 1954.

The Owl, "After Night Falls," San Francisco Chronicle April 10, 1954.

"Purple Onion, S.F.," Variety August 12, 1953

Steif, Bill, "San Francisco," Variety July 6, 1955

Databases used:

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive

Gallica
San Francisco Chronicle Historical