By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
PHOTO FROM JAN WAHL
Jan with a fraction of her fabulous hat collection.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Jan Wahl, Sausalito’s favorite film reviewer and historian, for a Historical Society oral history. Our meeting gave me the chance to turn the tables on Jan, who has conducted many oral histories for the Society, including two that can be heard on the SHS website: https://www.sausalitohistoricalsociety.com.
Jan began by telling how a show biz maven from West L.A. found her way to Sausalito. The following has been edited for brevity and continuity:
“I met a man on a plane and fell in love with him, but he only wanted to live in the Bay Area. And we’re still in love 42 years later, so something worked. We had this long-distance relationship when I was working in L.A. and New York, but one day I was visiting him in San Francisco when we came to Sausalito on a date. Coming down Alexander, Sausalito looked like Portofino, and we said, ‘This is the place.’
Jan and her husband Russ met Herb Madden and bought a 41-foot Hatteras power cruiser which they lived on for seven years in the Sausalito Yacht Harbor. “Then,” she says, “we found a place in the hills, and we’ve lived there ever since.”
When they first moved here Jan opened a shop on Bridgeway called Bridgeway to Hollywood. “A lot of people remember it,” she notes. “I had it for two years and it was a big hit. That led to radio and television. When you hit you hit, so I took advantage of that and closed the shop.”
Jan has a never-ending fascination with Sausalito’s history. “This is not normal,” she maintains. “It’s famous people, it’s eccentric people, it’s water and land, it’s economics, it’s politics, it’s Jack London, just everything. I dearly love that the sea people are still here.”
However, she misses the town’s bygone eccentrics. “We had Alan Watts, one of the great thinkers of our time; I studied Alan Watts in college. And we had Sterling Hayden here, one of the great personalities of Hollywood, ever. And we had Sally Stanford; I kiss the ground she walks on. She was a real original character, and when I first moved to Sausalito I made a point to go in there, and there she was, and she was so nice to me. She said, ‘You’re going to do fine here,’ and was very encouraging to me.”
Jan has retained some of that old time eccentricity with her mad hatter fetish. She explained how she got started wearing her iconic, ornate headgear: “I’m nuts for musicals, and there’s this number in the show Gypsy called ‘You Gotta Have a Gimmick’ and these strippers are showing Gypsy how to strip. And I thought, you know, hats are a good gimmick. I had always loved hats; when I was a little girl, I thought Hedda Hopper was cool with the hat thing, even though I hated her right-wing politics. I love hats on women because it shows they have courage. It takes guts to wear a hat, it really does. People look at you like you’re crazy, and the crazier the better as far as I’m concerned. When I got on television many years ago, that was my gimmick. The news director at the time said, ‘You’ll be taken off the air, no one will take you seriously.’ I said I wanted to try it so I did, and it was a big hit.”
We agreed that her gimmick, instead of taking things off, was to put something on. That, and her disarming frankness: “I think all that matters is that I plant my feet and tell my truth. That’s what makes me different as a critic.”
Although she fears the Internet keeps people from experiencing life these days, Jan still finds Sausalito enchanting. “Somehow, she sighs, “we’ve kept this town magic. We love it here and we’ll still be loving it in our 90s – or 100s, hopefully.”
As our interview drew to a close, I told Jan I look forward to celebrating our 100th birthdays here in Sausalito together.
PHOTO FROM JAN WAHL