Eric "Big Daddy" Nord and Julie Meredith at the Gas House in Venice Beach, California, 1959, from Los Angeles Times photographic library. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy UCLA Library, University of California.
Eric "Big Daddy" Nord (1919-1989) was am American poet, nightclub owner, and actor.
Life[]
Nord was born Harry Helmuth Pastor in Krefeld, Germany to Dorothea, an American, and Carl Theodore Pastor, a German. As a child, he often accompanied his father on business trips to the United States. His parents divorced in 1920.
When he was 15, he left Germany in 1938. He studied acting in Los Angeles and took the stage name of Eric Nord.
In 1942 or 1943, shortly after his arrival in San Francisco, he met and married Mary Hollister with whom he had 3 or 4 children, including Carl Paul Pastor. However, Mary left him within a few years.
In 1950, Nord rented a basement in North Beach where he and a growing number of young people, aspiring beats, hung out. He called the place the "hungry i" nightclub. (Legend has it that the club was to be called the "hungry intellectual", but Nord ran out of paint).[1] Later that year, Enrico Banducci took over the club and moved it to Jackson Street, where it became the cradle of stand-up comedy.
In the early 1950s, Nord sometimes worked at the Co-Existence Bagel Shop (the self-described "Gateway to Beatnik Land"), a popular hangout in North Beach. (in Bagel Shop Jazz, the poet Bob Kaufman called its patrons "...shadow people...mulberry-eyed girls in black stockings, smelling vaguely of mint jelly…turtle neck angel guys..."). Corpulent, standing 6 feet 7 inches tall, Nord was the face of the Beat generation to San Francisco and Los Angeles newspaper readers in the late 1950s.
In June 1958, on orders from San Francisco mayor George Christopher to crack down on drug use and delinquency in North Beach, San Francisco police raided Nord's Party Pad club and arrested him for operating a public dance without a license.
Later that summer, on August 8, in an article titled "Schoolgirl Lost in Beatnik Land", San Francisco Chronicle readers learned that 2 high school girls in Eric "Big Daddy" Nord's production of Archy and mehitabel had disappeared after the previous night's performance. Chronicle readers learned how Nord and another man had taken the girls on a car trip. Nord, driving his Oldsmobile at the end of a beat procession, saying his interest in the girls was only fatherly, turned himself in at the Hall of Justice. His much-publicized trial ended in December, when he was fined $300 and given 3 years' probation. Said the presiding judge, "You and your friends in Beatnikland emphasize your unusual ways to give an impression that you have talent, ability and stature, when actually a person looking into you finds no talent at all." Later, the same judge overturned his own verdict.
After his 1958 trial, Nord declared bankruptcy; moved to Venice, Los Angeles, in Southern California;, and, putting his entrepreneurial ability to good use, started The Gas House, a café that soon became popular with Los Angeles beatniks and poets, who read their work alongside Nord. The Gas House was used as the setting for a cult horror film called The Hypnotic Eye (1960) that featured Nord as a bongo-playing beatnik. The role helped to launch Nord's brief film career.
In the mid-1960s, Nord returned to Northern California, where, in Scotts Valley, he converted a barn into a psychedelic night club that catered to hippies and was the scene of some of Ken Kesey's happenings.
In the early 1970s, he operated a "cultural center" in San Francisco's Haight Ashbury neighborhood.
He moved to Los Gatos in 1975 and remained there until his death in 1989.
Recognition[]
Newspaper columnist Herb Caen called Nord the "king of the Beat Generation."
In 1972 Nord appeared as the character 'God' in a San Francisco underground photo-comic titled 'SuperJesus' now rated an underground comix classic.
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- Eric Love Big Daddy Nord: As he sees it (edited by Fred Nelson; compiled by Gloria Harmon). Los Gatos, CA: Free Press, 1968.[2]
Audio / video[]
Film[]
- The Flower Thief (1959)
- The Hypnotic Eye (1960)
- Once Upon a Knight (1961)
- Hungry Eye (1971)
- Steel Arena (1973)
See also[]
References[]
Notes[]
- ↑ Bill Morgan, hunry i, The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A literary tour, City Lights Books, 2003, ,36. Google Books, Web, Dec. 28, 2014.
- ↑ Search results = au:Eric Nord, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 28, 2014.
External links[]
- About
- Eric Nord, 69, Is Dead; Owner of the Hungry I, New York Times obituary
- Eric Nord at the Internet Movie Database
- Beatnik!, a Beat Scene Magazine article that includes descriptions of Nord's run-ins with the law in 1958
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