Career
Banducci operated the hungry i nightclub in San Francisco"s North Beach neighborhood, where he launched the careers of Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Bill Cosby, Jonathan Winters, and Barbra Streisand, and featured Woody Allen and Dick Cavett before they were well-known, as well as countless folk singers. Banducci later also started the Clown Alley hamburger stand as well as Enrico"s Sidewalk Cafe on Broadway, a restaurant and jazz club that has since gone out of business. Banducci was born in 1922 in Bakersfield, California.
He came to San Francisco at age thirteen to study under the concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony.
He changed his first name to "Enrico" after Enrico Caruso. He began wearing a beret after a health inspector insisted he cover his hair while running a food operation, and continued the practice to hide his eventual baldness.
He bought the hungry i for $800 in borrowed money in 1948. Although he once calculated that he made over $10 million from his various projects, he spent it all on his lavish lifestyle.
He spent time in jail, and was involved in a number of brawls.
The hungry i went bankrupt at least once. In 1981, Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Irwin Corey, Jackie Vernon and a host of others gathered to film a tribute to Banducci that was nationally televised and called The hungry i Reunion. The film is intercut with reminiscences by Bill Cosby, Maya Angelou (who started at Banducci"s club performing Caribbean songs and patter while imitating a Caribbean accent) and Phyllis Diller.
Banducci died in his sleep in South San Francisco, California at the age of 85.
Banducci is portrayed by Jon Polito in the 2014 film Big Eyes directed by Tim Burton and starring Amy Adams, featuring Banducci in a fist-fighting scene, among other sequences.
