One photo. Two Old Town Auburn bar stories

Cue the tumbleweeds. When this week's Media Life "then" photo was shot around 1934, Old Town Auburn - like much of the world - was in the depths of the Great Depression and dealing as best it could with hard times. The "now" photo - if you can ignore the man walking on the sidewalk with a rarely seen gunnysack on a pole - shows the more prosperous Auburn of today. But there was a time when it wasn't so. And it's always good to remind ourselves that it could happen again. As it is in the "now" picture, the Union Saloon building is in the foreground of the 1930s photo. It's looking forlorn and empty, in need of a new splash of whitewash and perhaps some serious TLC from a new owner. The California Hotel sign shows another bar in business - with the names of its proprietors also prominently displayed. It's where the California Club is today. First, the Union Bar and a story of money talking and history walking - with a side order of Hollywood glitz. Story No. 1 The story goes back to December 1932 and a visit by a couple of Hollywood types to Auburn. According to newspaper accounts of the time, Mark Larkin - for many years the media spokesman for silent movie stars and power couple of the day Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks - was one of the visitors and they were on a hunt for Gold Rush-era artifacts for Doug's den. The 1920s version of an action movie hero was on a big-game hunt and Pickford had recruited Larkin to buy some choice collectibles as a surprise when he returned. As it turned out, the match was on rocky ground and the redecoration of the basement lair at the couple's Pickfair estate in Hollywood was a kind of last-gasp attempt by Pickford to rescue any remaining sparks of marital bliss. Bar Goes South The editor of the Placer Herald - you can see the Herald office just behind the old Fire Hall No. 2 - was happy enough to help and steered Larkin to the old Union Saloon and a very old, very beautiful mahogany bar with plate-glass accoutrements. In March of 1932, the widow of its longtime Union Bar building owner W.B. McGuire had died in Carson City, Nev. Larkin was able to make a deal on behalf of the "Mary Pickford Moving Picture Studio" to sell the old Union Saloon fixtures, including the mahogany front and back bar. McGuire had opened the Union Saloon 62 years earlier. The Union Saloon bar's departure to Pickfair was a great historical loss to Auburn and four years later, Pickford would add insult to injury. Joe Elder, Auburn's mayor in 1936, shared the story with the Auburn Women's Club at a meeting. He was listening to a radio broadcast featuring Pickford and was surprised when she offhandedly mentioned A-Town during an on-air tour of Pickfair. "She said she had picked it up in one of the ghost towns of Northern California," Elder said, adding that he objected to being the "mayor of a ghost town." Story No. 2 Turning our attention to the California Hotel sign, we see the names "G. Bianchini" and "Louis Wold." Depending on what side of the whisky bottle you were on during Prohibition Era days ending in 1933, Bianchini was either a local hero or the scourge of Auburn. The Bianchini ranch just outside of Auburn city limits on the way to Newcastle was a notorious roadhouse, where the bootleg booze flowed and Placer County Sheriff Elmer Gum would play a constant cat-and-mouse game to enforce prohibition laws. Bianchini also had - or said he had - a colorful military past. He'd reportedly piloted an Italian Air Force bomber in World War I as part of a squadron commanded by the Italian poet Gabriel d'Annunzio. Both Bianchini and Wold - a Norwegian-born carpenter - had been in court to face fines related to bootlegging. But by 1934, they were legit - as the sign out front of the California Hotel showed. What a difference a constitutional amendment makes. Media Life's Gus Thomson can be reached at gust@goldcountrymedia.com or 530-852-0232. Thomson is a state and national award-winning reporter who writes for the Auburn Journal.