Another San Francisco landmark is about to pack it in -- wigs, falsies and all.

Finocchio's, the world-famous Broadway nightclub where female impersonators have strutted their campy stuff since 1936, is folding November 27.

Faced with a big rent increase and a dwindling audience for old- style cross-dressing entertainment, the club's owner, Eve Finocchio, is calling it quits. Wherever he is, the late, legendary drag star Charles Pierce, the king of queenly impersonators, must be weeping.

"I don't want to do it, but we have no choice," said Finocchio, whose husband, Joe, created the club at 506 Broadway in North Beach. That's where countless locals and tourists first saw men in spangled dresses and heels, singing, dancing and cracking lusty jokes.

"My landlord upped the rent from $4,000 to $6,000," Finocchio said, "and we have to take care of the plumbing, too. You have to collect an awful lot of money to meet the rent and pay your bills, and we can't do it. I don't feel good about it."

The club's landlord, Peter Mar, said: "She's been at $4,000 a month for 15 years. That's 8,000 square feet. You tell me where on Broadway you can find (space) for about 75 cents a foot. I think it's a more than reasonable increase."


Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the famed North Beach poet and bookseller, summed up his feelings in three words: "What a drag."

That reaction was shared by Enrico Banducci, the legendary impresario who for many years owned the Broadway cafe that bears his name downstairs from Finocchio's.

"I'm sorry to see it go," he said. "When you say Finocchio's, people think San Francisco."

Added Mark McLeod, co-owner of the current version of Enrico's: "It's the loss of a venue with a wonderful tradition and sense of quality, in contrast to a lot of the sleazy stuff on the street."


Men in drag are commonplace in San Francisco these days. But they still had the power to shock and delight when Joe Finocchio began putting them in the spotlight 63 years ago.

An Italian immigrant who worked in his father's San Francisco speakeasy during Prohibition, Finocchio was inspired to focus on female impersonation while running his own Stockton Street speakeasy in the late '20s. A well-oiled customer got up and sang in a dazzling style that sounded exactly like Sophie Tucker. The crowd ate it up, and Finocchio saw his future.


Despite San Francisco's tradition of bawdy entertainment, Finocchio ran into resistance from the police when he opened his Broadway club. The joint was raided, and he was arrested in July 1936 for "keeping a disorderly house and selling liquor after 2 a.m.," according to The Chronicle, whose reporter noted that the bust occurred at 1:45 a.m.

"The cops, they objected," Finocchio recalled in a 1970s interview. "I had to fight a little bit of trouble, but then they told me if you run the place straight everything would be fine. They don't want the entertainers to mingle around with the customers. I promised to run it like a regular theater."

Over the years, a wide range of female impersonators -- some noteworthy, others just another guy in a dress -- paraded across Finocchio's stage.


They include such headliners as Lucien Phelps, the Sophie Tucker expert who starred for 27 years. He was one of many Finocchio performers who was straight, a married man with children. Another popular act was Don McLean, otherwise known as Lori Shannon, the 6- foot-5 comic who became nationally known after playing Archie Bunker's drag queen friend on "All in the Family."

Appearing in a wig, heavy mascara and a tight dress, McLean would tickle the tourists with such one-liners as, "Welcome to Boy's Town -- I'm Father Flanagan."


The club was a gold mine for years, with celebrities such as Bob Hope and Tallulah Bankhead making the scene, and Gray Line tour buses pulling up out front and disgorging tourists night after night.

But tour buses no longer stop there on a regular basis, and five years ago Eve Finocchio, who took over the business when her husband died in 1986, cut down to three nights a week: Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

"Business was good," she said, "but then one thing or another started coming up, and people just weren't interested in going out to see a show. I don't know whether it was our kind of show or what, but they're content to rent a movie and stay home."


Finocchio has no special plans for closing night, except to present the current crop of performers, among them a Madonna impersonator, a guy who does Whitney Houston and a chap named Alejandro Cruz, who does a Barbie doll bit.

"They feel terrible (the club is closing) because this is an institution," Finocchio said. "Joe felt he was giving the customer something different. It was all clean entertainment, nothing to be ashamed of. People weren't sure what they were going to get when they came in, but they went out laughing."

Like others in town, she feels bad. "I can't imagine Finocchio's not being in San Francisco, but honey, that's the way it goes."