Product Review

When it opened in 1953, Bennett Cerf called Barnaby Conrad’s saloon “the most attractive room in America.” San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen pronounced it “swank,” and wrote that because of it North Beach’s Broadway, “that garlicky old boulevard of longhaired men and shorthaired women will never be the same.”

In “Name Dropping,” renowned raconteur and “New York Times” best-selling author Barnaby Conrad tells the story of his San Francisco nightclub, the beloved El Matador, named and decorated in honor of his international bestseller Matador.

For ten years, El Matador glittered with stars like Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Duke Wellington, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Lenny Bruce, Lucille Ball, Art Tatum, Eva Gabor, George Shearing, Bing Crosby, William f. Buckley Jr., Alex Haley, Robert Mitchum, Andre Previn, John Steinbeck, and Jack Kerouac.

This was where entertainers came to be entertained, leaving their priceless doodles and boozily enigmatic epigrams in the guest book—and a captivating trail of exploits and gossip all noted and recalled in this book.

Charming, personable, and witty, the author is both celebrity and fan as he shares vivid, hilarious, and surprising anecdotes, delightfully dropping famous names all the while. Conrad remembers everything, from Sinatra’s plan to star in a movie version of the author’s bullfighting story “Matador” (in order to lure Ava Gardner out of the arms of the real-life matador she’d left him for) to Truman Capote making friends with Conrad’s bulldog.

Grab a stool, pull up to the piano bar, lean in close and prepare to be transported to the Golden Gate city’s golden age.

“Gossipy memoirs on celebrities abound, but Conrad's book is cut above the rest.”
—William Gargan, Library Journal