Photo: The Chronicle 1983

Some San Francisco stories seem too strange to be true.

The Chronicle’s front page from Nov. 24, 1983, covers a topless bar worker’s death atop a trick piano made famous by renowned stripper Carol Doda.

“The assistant manager of The Condor nightclub was crushed to death early yesterday when an elevator piano accidentally rose to the ceiling while he was entangled atop it with a young woman,” the story read.

“James (Jimmy the Beard) Ferrozzo, 40, a longtime employee of the North Beach topless club, was caught between the spangled piano and the ceiling while he was lying partially on top of his 23-year-old girlfriend, Theresa Hill, police said.”

Doda, of course, was a beloved San Franciscan “who helped take stripping out of the shadowy margins of American society and gained worldwide fame as a topless dancer in the 1960s and ’70s,” her Chronicle obituary from 2015 read.

She worked for decades at the Condor in North Beach, and the descending piano was one of the signatures — just one, mind you — of her burlesque act.

When Doda was long gone from the club one night, tragedy struck.

“The accident on the piano ... happened between 4 and 6 a.m. yesterday,” the story by The Chronicle’s Stephen Magagnini read. “Angel Vicente, the club’s janitor, found the couple pinned between the piano and the ceiling 15 feet off the ground at 7:30 a.m., police said.”

R.I.P.: Jimmy the Beard.

R.I.P.: Ms. Doda.

Top O’ the Top of the News: “One of the last of a divine breed, a San Francisco hatter, tells what makes him mad. Page 47.” The answer: groan-inducing plays on words.

See more front pages: Go to SFChronicle.com/covers to search a database of hundreds of Chronicle Covers articles that showcase the newspaper’s history.

Chronicle Covers highlights one classic Chronicle newspaper page from our archive every day for 366 days. Library director Bill Van Niekerken and producers Kimberly Chua, Michelle Devera and Jillian Sullivan contributed to the project. Tim O’Rourke is the executive producer and editor of SFChronicle.com. Email: torourke@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TimothyORourke



