COWEN

Posted by Cathy Gowdy on Wednesday, October 05, 2011 at 06:09:50 :

Belvedere/Tiburon Ebb Tide
Jan. 1 – Jan. 8, 2002
Page 3

The man who brought Sally Stanford to Sausalito

Behind every great madame there is a good man. That was certainly true in the case of famous (and infamous) San Francisco madame and Sausalito businesswoman and politician Sally Stanford.

The man behind Sally was Marion Cowen who died Dec. 12 in San Francisco at age 102.

According to Marin resident Leon Galleto who knew both Cowen and Stanford well, it was Cowen who actually drove Stanford across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin in 1948. She ended up buying the Valhalla Restaurant and beginning the Marin portion of her legend.

Although Cowen was a lifelong San Francisco resident, his ties to Marin were strong. Not only was he a frequent and honored visitor at the Valhalla, but he was friends with many of Sausalito’s known residents.

In fact, he was honored at the Sausalito Arts Festival on his 100th birthday.

Sally Stanford came into Cowen’s life (or he into her’s) when Stanford bought the San Francisco mansion where he was living. For Stanford, it was a business investment and she took one look at the cultured Cowen and asked him to remain.

“He was a very refined, cultured gentleman and Sally wanted him to stay in the house and take care of things. At the time he didn’t know what she meant,” Galleto says.

“Sally knew her guests sometimes needed to [be] entertained by art, music and things other than the girls.”

Galleto tells the story of the police coming to the house one day and busting in only to find Cowen surrounded by beautiful women providing voice instruction. “I’m teaching them to sing,” Cowen told the officers, who quickly left.

Although Cowen knew many celebrities professionally through his varied careers, he also knew many socially through their visits to Stanford’s house.

“He often told me that, now that Sally and a lot of the others were dead, that he was going to write a sequel to “Lady of the House,” (Stanford’s life story) and tell a lot of details, but he never got it done,” Galleto relates.

While Cowen was tied closely to Stanford, he was a very gifted man in his own right. He acted, produced operas on the West Coast, wrote numerous plays and musicals and knew many of the famous entertainment legends of five decades.

Cowen and Galleto were different parts of Stanford’s life. Cowen knew and befriended her (and she him) at the height of her career as a San Francisco madame. Galleto came along later, serving as maitre d’ at the Valhalla and close friend of the owner.

Although he had known Cowen from his visits to the Valhalla, Galleto says, “I really got to know Marion after Sally’s funeral (in 1982),” Galleto recalls. “I went to his apartment in San Francisco and discovered an enormous amount of work. He was a writer, a playwright, a composer of music. He was special.”

When Stanford saw the first draft of her life’s story, “The Lady of the House,” which later became a movie, she was not at all pleased, and it was Cowen who helped draft a form she would accept, putting in some episodes of her life, but equally important, leaving out others.”

Among other things, he was also a survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. He was six or seven at the time, but according to Galleto he could vividly recall the disaster. “He could tell stories just like it was yesterday,” Galleto says.

Cowen was born in San Francisco in 1899 and grew up in Oakland.

His grandfather came west on the back of a mule by way of Panama. His father was a coffee importer.

He never married, but devoted his life to his art and his legions of friends – famous, infamous and just regular people.

“Everywhere he went he loved talking to people,” Galleto recalls. “He was a person that made you feel good just being around him.”

He was also a living local history book.

“He knew everything about the history of San Francisco and the area,” says Galleto.

With his passing the area loses a bit of that history and Marin loses a well beloved link to one of its most famous residents.