Caliph of Baghdad

"If you want to be taken for a San Franciscan," advises a new San Francisco guidebook, "dress conservatively, cling to the outside of cable cars, and make bad jokes about Los Angeles." Though Guidebook Author Herb Caen does not mention it, another sure sign of the Compleat San Franciscan is his addiction to the San Francisco Examiner's Columnist Herb Caen.

Newsman Caen (rhymes with rain) is probably the most loyally read local columnist in the U.S., and his formula--like San Francisco--is unique. "My job," says he, "is to make the legends come true.' While 15 other local columnists in the city's four dailies have come and gone in the past two decades, Caen's lighthearted legend-doctoring has filled six newspaper columns a week since 1938, earned him the sobriquet "Mr. San Francisco." and poured over into five profitable books about the city he calls Baghdad-by-the-Bay. The latest, Herb Caen's Guide to San Francisco, had sold 20,240 copies by last week, and is one of the few local guidebooks in publishing history to have made the national bestseller list.

Topic A. Caen's Baghdad is essentially a mutual admiration society whose members never tire of hearing San Francisco's praises sung. "You go ten days without writing a column about how great the city is," says Caen, "and you start getting letters saying 'you don't love us any more.' " His most popular columns in the Examiner (circ. 246,186) are the periodic panegyrics he calls "fog creeping through the bridge" pieces; in them he ranges rhapsodically from the hills (he claims there are 30) to the weather (which he says beats sex as the city's "Topic A"). He even manages to extol such dubious assets as the city's sky-high alcoholism rate and the fleas, which, according to Caen, "bite only tourists and newcomers" because the natives are "so full of garlic." At times, Garlic Lover Caen sounds as if he had distilled his high-calorie prose from the Reader's Digest's Picturesque Speech Department. Sample: "The sidewalk flower stands exuding such clouds of heavy perfume that their owners should be arrested for fragrancy."

"Babble-by-the-Bay." What saves his column from being a paean in the neck is Caen's fresh, irreverent eye and his breezy, gag-filled style. Unlike most gossip columnists, Herb Caen seldom rumples through dirty linen or tries to scoop the city desk, but concentrates instead on the San Franciscana he calls "sightems" or "babble-by-the-bay." Sample Caenanities: "Sign on a Volkswagen: Help Stamp Out Cads"; classified ad for a new home: "All-electric family kitchen, including natural-birth cabinets"; one matron to another matron: "No, she's not keeping the car any more. Just the chauffeur."

The courtiers who stroll through Caliph Caen's Baghdad are the gay, sophisticated souls he thinks all San Franciscans should be--even when they're not. Since San Francisco boasts few genuine celebrities and fewer pressagents, Caen has made his own cast of characters familiar to every San Franciscan, e.g., an aging newsboy who is President Chester Alan Arthur's grandson;* Sir Robert Hadow, the ne plus U British consul; socialites named Icky Outhwaite, "Poom" de Ralguine (whom Caen calls the "handkisser extraordinaire"). Caen credits his characters with so many Caencocted witticisms that they often wind up believing they are, in fact, rapier-sharp raconteurs.

Turning San Franciscans' infatuation with their rip-roaring past to good advantage, Caen on newsless days bats out a wistful, whimsical column called "That Was San Francisco." One recent T.W.S.F. item recalled that Anita Howard Vanderbilt once arrived at Izzy Gomez' famed Bohemian bar wearing a bracelet containing a topaz the size of a pigeon's egg. "Lady," said a barfly on the next stool, "shouldn't you have that thing lanced?"

Words with Caviar. Sad-eyed, curly-haired Herbert Eugene Caen, 41, was born in Sacramento, went to work on the hometown Union as a sportswriter after getting out of high school. At 20, he was hired as a columnist by San Francisco Chronicle Editor Paul Smith (TIME, Dec. 24). After World War II (he wound up an Army captain), Caen returned to his Chronicle column despite tempting offers from the opposition Examiner. "I hope I'm never so poor that I have to work for Hearst," he once said. In 1950, nonetheless, Caen was lured over to Hearst's Examiner at nearly twice his Chronicle salary (1957 income: more than $40,000). Said he: "Now I'm eating my words--with caviar."

Divorced by his first wife (who threatened to name San Francisco as corespondent), Herb Caen in 1952 married a handsome blonde ex-model named Sally Gilbert, whose brighter sayings are dutifully reported in the column. With her daughter by a previous marriage, the Caens live in an eight-room Russian Hill apartment. No cable-car clinger, Caen drives a grey-and black Cadillac convertible on his rounds of nightclubs and restaurants, where, over Dubonnets-on-the-rocks, he gathers much of his material. An avid reader (favorite novelist: Evelyn Waugh), Caen in his off hours also plays tennis, and, like all good San Franciscans, rambles with his family through Golden Gate Park.

Some of Caen's best items come from an army of volunteer tipsters, who range from the Mission Street down-and-outers Caen calls "Skid Rowgues" to the high-and-flighty set he calls the "Nobhillbillies." Despite the fervent pleas of his longtime legman, Jerry Bundsen, 42, Caen refuses to write even one day ahead, pounds out his column in 90 minutes at his air-conditioned office each morning. Though the file box he calls the "item-smasher" is usually filled with rough notes for the column each day, Caen is haunted by the fear that he will run dry, or that San Franciscans will someday tire of hearing about San Francisco. Herb Caen has often been touted as Hearst HQ's choice to succeed aging Gossipist Walter Winchell, if and when W.W. ever retires. But even if Caen could spread his broad interests beyond San Francisco and nationalize his parochial, easygoing style, it is unlikely that he would ever willingly abdicate his caliphdom.

*And recently won $2,000 on TV's $64,000 Challenge for answering questions on Shakespeare.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.