Curran Theatre

The Curran has been putting on Broadway shows in San Francisco since 1922. The grand lobby and ornate theater are iconic — but a murder backstage in the 1930s left a permanent mark on the place.

At 7:30 p.m. on November 28, 1933--two days before Thanksgiving--a gaunt, hatless young man walked up to the Curran Theatre's ticket window while patrons filed in for the operetta Show Boat. Without saying a word, 25-year-old Eddie Anderson thrust a revolver through the box office grillwork and fired. Hewlett G. Tarr, the 25-year-old ticket seller behind the glass, cried out "My God! I've been shot!" He stumbled backward, fell down a small flight of steps, and collapsed. By the time anyone reached him, he was dead. Minutes later, his fiancee Dorothy Reade arrived for their dinner date and wept over his body. They had been engaged for five years. In just a few weeks, they were supposed to be married.

Anderson, a $14-a-week electrician, fled in a cab to the Koffee Kup restaurant on Geary and 18th Avenue, which he robbed of $60. He told police his crime spree was meant to impress a new girlfriend. "I couldn't do much on $14 a week," he said. "So I quit my job and started hoisting." The "girlfriend" denied any romance, saying they had known each other only three weeks. Anderson later robbed the Bank of America at Geary and Jones of $1,951 and wounded a policeman in a shootout before his capture. He insisted the gun discharged accidentally when it caught on the grillwork. The San Francisco Chronicle headline declared: "CURRAN KILLER MUST HANG!" A jury convicted him in just seven hours--the fastest verdict on record in San Francisco. Anderson was hanged at San Quentin on February 15, 1935.

The Curran Theatre itself had opened in February 1922, built at a cost of $800,000 by theater impresario Homer Curran in partnership with the Shubert Corporation. Architect Alfred Henry Jacobs designed the venue with elegant rose and tan interiors, crystal chandeliers built by Phoenix Day, and ceiling murals by Arthur Matthews. Homer Curran had abandoned his wealthy Missouri family's wheel manufacturing business to study music at Stanford. He served as owner until his death in 1952. The theater has hosted over 8,000 performances and stars including Ingrid Bergman, Katharine Hepburn, and Hugh Jackman.

Since Tarr's death, generations of patrons and staff have reported seeing him in the large mirror opposite the theater entrance. He appears as a handsome young man in 1930s clothes--"possibly dressed up for a wedding that will never happen," as one witness put it. Theater manager Tess Collins, with 20 years at the Curran, confirmed the sightings, and a psychic assessment of the venue identified "more than 300 ghostly playgoers" still in attendance. Staff say Tarr still "works" the theater--tipping his cap to passersby, roaming the halls to check on actors. Strange sounds echo through empty corridors. Footsteps where no one is walking.

A second ghost haunts the Curran: a little girl struck by a car across the street during the 1950s, documented on the TV series "America's Scariest Places." Little is known about her identity or why she stays in the theater.

The Curran considers Tarr a friendly guardian angel. According to theater lore, there is only one thing that riles him up: audience members who forget to turn off their cell phones during performances.