California Street

by Niven Busch

Anchylus Saye came to San Francisco in a hand-me-down suit, hungry for success. Ruthless and tempestuous in everything he did, Saxe found a bride, seized a newspaper, and used it to take wealth, power and position. His strong opinions came out daily in every edition; his house on California Street was a place of wonders, with a glass roof that glowed like ripe fruit, and an organ to pipe music into every room, and bright metal birds that sang at the touch of a gold button, all these things he had, but one thing eluded him. Saxe married a lady, but socially he never quite made it. He was too much like the ancestors whose existence San Francisco was trying to forget, the horny-handed, hard-drinking brutes who fleeced the Forty-niners of their savings, married the madams and founded the aristocracy which afterward forgot them. He came to San Francisco two generations too late, did Saxe. His daughters had the best education money could buy and everything that went with it, but Saxe remained as outspoken and tough as ever he was, breaking conventions right and left and shocking Society with all too obvious pleasure. His daughters were his pride and his treasure. The eldest became an international socialite, wildly beautiful and beautifully wild. Another married a distinguished newspaperman, a rival of Saxe's. Over the scarcely cold body of their mother, they both turned on their father to tear away his power. By his side, then, stood his third daughter-an illegitimate girl whose mother had been a streetwalker. Saxe fought his last battle against a powerful combination of enemies-the Eastern banks and newspapers, his per-sonal enemies in San Francisco-and two of his daughters. Niven Busch's lusty story of the Saxe family is a micro-sharp look at a newhorizon U. S. A. It could not have happened anywhere but in that wonderful, sophisticated city, sparkling' on its eleven hills.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

377 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Novelist, screenwriter and producer, Niven Busch, was, as David Shipman says, "associated with some interesting films at the time when movies were movies". Busch was born in Manhattan on April 26,1903, and died in San Francisco August 25, 1991. He was 88.

Busch's father was born into a New York banking family, was a stock broker at times yet was in the film business and ran a night club in Paris; his mother was British. Niven's childhood was spent in luxury in Oyster Bay, NY, and at a fashionable boarding school. He decided to become an author at the age of 14, when he again saw his name in print when his poem was published in his school magazine. Previously, at about age 9, St. Nicholas Magazine published a few of his little stores and poems in its section reserved for children's compositions. Before he left for Princeton in 1921 he had already sold verses and sketches to such well-known magazines as McClure's. He left Princeton before the end of his sophmore year when his father's firm went broke. He soon connected with his cousin, Briton Hadden who was editor of the new Time magazine. He worked at Time for a number of years, becoming an editor himself. He was also contributing stories and profiles to Harold Ross's budding The New Yorker. He owed much, he later confessed, to Ross's tuition. His first book, Twenty-one Americans, a collection of portraits of current famous Americans which had appeared in The New Yorker, was published in 1931.

In 1932, realizing he had gone as far as he was likely to go as a New York-based magazine writer and editor, Busch decided Hollywood was the place to be, and he had a connection through his father, who was at one time in the motion picture distribution business with Lewis Selznick. And through that connection, Niven met Lewis's son, David. It was David who brought Niven out to Hollywood.

David Selznick soon secured work for Busch at Warner Brothers, and Busch decamped to Los Angeles to write his first film, Howard Hawk's The Crowd Roars (1932).

By the early 1940s, Busch was chief story editor for independent producer Sam Goldwyn. During his stint with Goldwyn, Busch met and married contract actress Teresa Wright. For 21 years he was a screenwriter at such studios as Warner Brothers, 20th Century Fox, Goldwyn, Paramount and Universal, scripting movies which included The Big Shakedown (1934) staring Bette Davis, The Man With Two Faces (1934) staring Edward G. Robinson, and He Was Her Man (1934) staring James Cagney. He was nominated for an Academy Award for best original screenplay for In Old Chicago (1937), a film based on his story We the O'Learys, which climaxed with the Chicago fire of 1871 and one of the most expensive films made at the time. In 1940 he co-wrote The Westerner for director William Wyler and producer Sam Goldwyn. Soon thereafter he went to work as Goldwyn's story editor, recommending Pride of the Yankees (1942), in which Gary Cooper and Teresa Wright starred.

Another notable film of the period, for which Busch produced and wrote the original screenplay, was Pursued (1947) staring Robert Mitchum and Teresa Wright, one of the first psychological Westerns with “noir” overtones. Around the same time, Busch also adapted the noir thriller The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), for Metro- Goldwyn Mayer. The Furies (1950), from Busch's novel, attracted some scorn for its "Freudian excesses". However, says the London Times, "Busch was always shrewd and knew exactly what he was doing".

"I always wanted to write a novel. I started two or three, then dropped them when a film job came along. I finally figured out the problem: when I was writing a novel no one was paying." But he did find time in 1939; The Carrington Incident, published in 1941, was followed by the best-seller Duel in the Sun (1944), which was purchased by David Selznick and turned into the 1946 blockbuster of the same title. He now alternated between the writing of screenplays and novels, most of w

Reviews

[Pedgie]

When his wife dies, an old man, rich, mischievous, life-loving and arrogant, reflects on his rise to the top of a San Francisco newspaper. Along the way, a family secret and an angry and spiteful daughter threaten to unravel all he has worked so hard to mold. A great story richly told through a blending of past and present.
It's too bad this era of writers is relatively unknown to modern readers.

[Elizabeth Gibbs]

I really enjoyed this book! Such an odd book though. I'm not even sure what it was really about- you can't quite classify it as "adventure" or "drama". It was about a family- growing up, the people they were in the beginning and the people they were at the end of the story. I will probably read it again someday simply because it is still mysterious to me.

[Barbara]

I enjoyed this book. I read it because my brother recommended it highly. It is a quiet, slow read. Written in the late 1950s and set in San Francisco, it begins as one man's rags/riches story but becomes a study of his three daughters and the family dynamics. It reminded me in ways and was possibly an influence on Jeffrey Archer and Irving Shaw of the 1960s.

[Susan Molloy]

🖍️ I could not get immersed in this. Blah, blah, blah. 🗑 Other readers might find this story their cup of tea and right up their alley. It wasn’t for me, and I donated the book to my HOA library,

📕Published: 1959. In the public domain.
જ⁀ ⚪️ E-book version on Project Gutenberg .
༺༻🌹 ༺༻🌹 ༺༻🌹 ༺༻ 🌹 ༺༻🌹 ༺༻

[Susan]

I enjoyed the book. It was a story in San Francisco where I grew up. It was fun to "see" the local places and how the story played out in the etiquette of the times. It's an old book, found when cleaning up my Mom's home after she passed. I wonder what she thought of it.

[M.K. Hobson]

I started this, and was enjoying it, but just hit a rock wall. I may pick it up again, but I think it's Gore Vidal's "Lincoln" for me next.