San Francisco Honors Tony Bennett, a New Yorker, for Losing His Heart Here

San Francisco city officials will unveil a statue on Friday, Aug. 19, for a lifelong New Yorker. And I can’t imagine any San Franciscans complaining about honoring this particular outsider. The eight foot bronze monument depicts Tony Bennett, the man who made “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” an international hit.

“The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gray
The glory that was Rome is of another day
I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan
I’m going home to my city by the Bay”

“He’s been our ambassador around the world,” says San Francisco’s chief of protocol, Charlotte Mailliard Shultz.

Shultz and I talked a few days ago in the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel high on Nob Hill, where Bennett first sang the song at the Venetian Room in 1961.

Shultz helped raise the private funds to build the statue, which she says was a breeze because of how “I Left My Heart…” made the city sound like so romantic.

“That song resonates with people and they want to come here,” Shultz said. “And people who are from here say that’s my town. That’s my city.”

Bennett recorded the song in early 1962, over the objections of CBS boss Mitch Miller, as the B side on a 45. “I Left My Heart…” reached #19 on the Billboard Hot 100, and became Bennett’s trademark.

“I had hits before that song, and certainly a lot of hits afterward,” he told reporter Bill Christine in a recent SF Weekly interview, “But I never had a hit like that one. That song gave me international recognition.”

San Franciscans George Cory and Douglass Cross wrote “I Left My Heart…” as an act of “pure nostalgia” in 1953, while failing to make it as songwriters in New York City. The song would be their only big hit, but what a hit it was: the Recording Industry Association of America ranked “I Left My Heart…” 23rd on its list of the most historically significant Songs of the 20th Century.

San Francisco has honored Bennett before. The song is one of San Francisco’s two official anthems, and Bennett was given the key to the city in 2012, on the recording’s 50th anniversary. But with Bennett turning 90 this month, Schultz says she felt some urgency to do more.

“Because I think SF’s have a love for him, and why wait till he’s gone.” So she picked up the phone and called a friend, sculptor Bruce Wolfe.

“I had a month to do the whole statue, you know.” Wolfe told me a few days as we talked in his Piedmont studio. “So I did it in wet clay, as he sat here.

“You see the armature over there,” Wolfe went on, “It’s rebar, and I had 1500 pounds of clay on that sucker by the time it was done. That’s a lot of clay.”

Wolfe has given Bennett a characteristic half smile, arms outstretched like he’s finishing a song.

“What I tried to get from him,” Wolfe said, “was a feeling of the graciousness… The love of singing… that look he has, when he comes and belts something out. Wow. He puts his heart into it.”

Bennett will appear, and maybe sing, at three events in his honor late this week: the unveiling of the bronze statue at noon in front of the Fairmont, at AT&T Park that night, and at a fundraiser Saturday for the benefit of emergency pediatric care at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.

Here are the deceptively simple lyrics to “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”:

“The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gray
The glory that was Rome is of another day
I’ve been terribly alone and forgotten in Manhattan
I’m going home to my city by the Bay

“I left my heart in San Francisco
High on a hill, it calls to me
To be where little cable cars climb halfway to the stars
The morning fog may chill the air, I don’t care

“My love waits there in San Francisco
Above the blue and windy sea
“When I come home to you, San Francisco
Your golden sun will shine for me.”