Hanging Up Their Hats: San Francisco's ‘Beach Blanket Babylon' Prepares to Say Goodbye

It was the 1970s, when San Francisco's street corners were dotted with busking musical performers — including Steve Silver and the small gaggle of friends who would ultimately form the first cast of Beach Blanket Babylon.

To hear Silver tell it, the show only moved indoors so that police would stop breaking it up. He struck a deal with the owner of North Beach watering hole Savoy Tivoli for what he assumed would be a brief brush with fame.

"Steve said, 'We'll put a little show on for six weeks. That's all it'll be,'" Jo Schuman Silver said, recalling her husband's account of the story. "That was 45 years ago."

Nearly half a century later — and two decades after the AIDS crisis claimed Steve Silver's life at age 51 — Beach Blanket Babylon is a San Francisco institution, and the world's longest-running musical revue, known for its outrageous hats and ever-changing topical gags.

The hats, Schuman Silver said, were born out of necessity: Savoy Tivoli's tiny stage didn't leave much room for scenery.

"It was very narrow and high," she said. "And because (Steve) could draw anything, he said the way that his characters are gonna be noticed is by going up. By hats."

It wasn't long before Beach Blanket Babylon signed a long-term booking at its current home, Club Fugazi, a venue that's become so iconic that the street outside was renamed in the show's honor. The theater's balconies are lined with gilded silhouettes of Silver's original character drawings — among them, an over-the-top King Louis XIV, a dancing French poodle, an adorably innocent Snow White and a decidedly sassy Glinda the Good Witch.

"This is the best job for an actor — and a mom too," said Renee Lubin, who plays Glinda along with about a dozen other characters. 

Lubin said the show has provided its performers with a rare opportunity to have full-time work in a production that runs indefinitely, year-round — eliminating the stress of pounding the pavement every few months looking for work. She seized that opportunity at a time when the line for auditions wrapped around the block — in a year she describes as "back in 19-wahoo!" — and has been with the show for 33 years.

"What's kept me here is the fact that the show remains fresh," Lubin said. "We make it new every time."

Schuman Silver takes pride in her contribution to the show's ever-changing script.

"Whatever is the news of the day, that's how the show goes," she said.

Over the years, characters have been added and removed, including two incarnations of Donald Trump — first as a reality TV star, and later in his current incarnation as president — and news headlines work their way into song lyrics with astonishing speed.

"We're able to get a news story in that night," Schuman Silver said. "That's how good our people are."

Those people include the heroes audience members don't see, building hats and wigs in a workshop directly below the small stage. 

"If Jo wants something in the show today … I will make up a wig for this evening, and that's a stretch wig," said Tim Santry, who's been the show's wigmaster for 14 years. "If it plays and they like it, the audience seems to care, then I'll take the time to make one of my larger wigs."

Santry's large wigs, many of them several feet tall, can be made from pieces of as many as 30 "normal" wigs, often with a rigid internal structure and a flexible "helmet" molded to an individual actor's head.

"You put on the costume, and you go: 'I can't do this. I can't sing in all this,'" said Curt Branom, who wears high heels and a 15-pound wig to play King Louis XIV.

Branom, like Lubin, said he's stayed with the show for decades because it never gets old. The constant introduction of new jokes and new characters keeps the performers energized, he said.

"We wait for the audience to tell us if the bit works. And that's the scariest part. Because we've all gone out there and died," he said. "We just look at each other, and we know we'll have another show."

But all too soon, that won't be the case anymore. On New Year's Eve 2019, the red velvet curtains at Club Fugazi will close on Beach Blanket Babylon's giant hats for the last time.

"Steve told me he didn't know it was gonna last this long," Schuman Silver said. "He left it to me, and he says, 'You're gonna know what to do with it. … You're gonna know how long it should last.'"

Schuman Silver said she began feeling it was time for the show to close about three years ago.

"I want the show to go out on top, and everything is changing, for the good and for the bad," she said. "If it didn't go out on top, I'd kill myself."

The performers admit they feel it too: a shift in local culture, and in the national headlines that make up the bread and butter of their jokes.

"San Francisco has changed," Branom said. "The political parties are not as fun as they used to be, because there's so much tug-of-war."

Still, for this small company of artists, saying goodbye won't be easy.

"We have dinner together almost before every show," Branom said. "We've watched our kids grow up. We've watched our kids go off to college. We have this bond — that's gonna be the hardest thing to leave, is my friends."

Tearfully, Schuman Silver said she'll miss the legacy and the family she helped her late husband build — but she knows San Francisco and its arts scene will continue to flourish after the performers hang up their giant hats for the last time.

"Nothing could get this town," she said. "It's San Francisco. It's gonna always be fabulous."