By Larry Clinton, Sausalito Historical Society
PHOTO FROM SFLUXE.COM
Sally and Bob in happier times
The other day I wandered into Karl the Store at 1201 Bridgeway, a treasure trove of Sausalito memorabilia, among other nostalgic booty. Proprietor Dennis Green showed me a May 1951 copy of Life Magazine with a story entitled “Miss Stanford weds Mr. Gump: Sudden ceremony in Reno unites two well-known San Franciscans.” Here’s the scoop:
Two of the most noted names in northern California were joined together in matrimony last week. In a surprise ceremony at Reno, Nev. Robert Livingston Gump, millionaire dealer in Oriental objects d’art, married Sally Stanford, who has a police record as the keeper of a San Francisco disorderly house. In fact she admits having run the most exclusive establishment of its kind in the U.S.
Each is 47 and has been married twice before. Mr. Gump explained that he and his late father both had known Miss Stanford for some 20 years, but that it was only within the last three years or so, a time corresponding to Miss Stanford’s retirement from the management side of her business (the only side she ever was in), that he had actively sought her hand.
She has recently engaged in a completely virtuous bar-and-restaurant business in Sausalito, across the bay from San Francisco, and it was to this that the couple returned for their bridal breakfast after a brief ceremony.
Meanwhile the Gump firm published an announcement reminding that Mr. Robert Gump was no longer connected with the store. He has recently been employed as a radio news commentator and successfully predicted the outbreak of the Korean war the day before it began (although unfortunately his tape-recorded prediction was never broadcast.)
Mrs. Gump is best known as the former operator of 1144 Pine Street, a handsome establishment furnished with many rare antiques including a Roman bath 9 feet in diameter. The ill-famed house on Pine Street, which had been designed by Stanford White to imitate a Pompeian court, had few windows.
Here over the years “Miss Stanford” (real name — Mabel Busby) and her specially selected young hostesses entertained princes and shahs, movie stars, state and national dignitaries; some of her customers even brought their wives. Perhaps her widest fame came when she played hostess to men of many lands attending the San Francisco U.N. Charter conference in 1945.
Although Mrs. Gump, who retired from her career with a reported million-dollar fortune, has a very comfortable home at present, both she and her husband, yearning for the old house on Pine Street, plan to move back soon.
I’ve read a lot about Sally but didn’t remember this historic union of icons from either side of the Bay — perhaps because it was sadly short-lived. An obituary of Sally, on the website thetigerisdead.com, states that after eloping to Reno, the lovebirds divorced nine months later.
Sausalitans knew Sally by the name Marcia Owens, but evidently that was one of many pseudonyms for Mabel Busby. According to her autobiography Lady of the House, she saw a newspaper headline about Stanford University winning a football game and adopted Stanford as her surname.