December 9, 1997,  San Francisco Chronicle, Dean of Detectives Dies in S.F. - Harold Lipset transformed the world of private eyes, by Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer, 


File photo of famed SF private eye Hal Lipset. Chronicle photo by Steve Ringman

1997-12-09 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Harold K. "Hal" Lipset, the famed private eye who demolished the myth of the trench-coated, gat-wielding Humphrey Bogart character and turned the detective business into a respectable, lucrative and even intellectual profession, died yesterday at the age of 78.

Lipset suffered an aneurysm in the abdomen last week, according to his bookkeeper, Dorothy Jansizian, and was taken to Mount Zion Hospital in San Francisco, where he underwent an operation Friday. Although the operation was successful, Jansizian said, Lipset died yesterday of cardiac arrest.

In the span of his 50 years as a private investigator, Lipset tracked jewel thieves across Europe (he caught them), worked on a range of political cases (Angela Davis, Harry Bridges and People's Temple's Jim Jones were among his clients), served as chief investigator for the U.S. Senate's Watergate committee and pioneered the use of electronic surveillance -- his best-known bug was concealed in an olive in a very dry martini.

Lipset's style of investigating -- using his brains and his charm, rather than speaking out of the side of his mouth and parroting a tough-guy Dashiell Hammett hero -- spawned a whole new generation of now well-known San Francisco private eyes, all of whom once worked for him and learned their trade while operating out of his elegant 25-room house in Pacific Heights, headquarters of the Lipset Service.

"The most important thing about Hal is that he genuinely revolutionized the way in which investigators and lawyers worked together," said Josiah "Tink" Thompson, a former philosophy professor who worked for Lipset before striking out on his own. "The old way was the lawyers treated you as an errand boy -- 'Go see Mrs. Shultz and ask her these three questions and then tell me what she says.' That led to asking three questions and not the fourth. The fourth was the important one. That's what we learned at Hal's feet. That's the way you did things."

The way Lipset learned this trade was in the Army during World War II, when he served in the military police and won a Bronze Star in combat. After the war, he and his wife, Lynn, moved to San Francisco, and he thought about going to law school. But his wife became pregnant, he needed a job, and so he went to work as a federal investigator. In 1947, eager to stretch, he opened up his own office and never looked back.

By the 1950s, Lipset had become the premier man in his field, working closely with lawyers, particularly the legendary James Martin MacInnis, and carving out a permanent spot in Herb Caen's column. Lipset was perfect column fodder -- he was elegant, well-spoken and, most of all, he gained a reputation among the town's hottest lawyers of being able to get the job done, with flair and panache other private eyes could only envy.

Jack Palladino, a San Francisco private investigator who got into the business when he signed up with Lipset in 1972, said that by the time he got there, Lipset had become a legend in the Bay Area.

"One of the great stories about Hal," Palladino said, "was when he was working on a case for a plaintiff who had been damaged in a railroad accident. He couldn't come up with anything, and so one day he went out to the railroad cars and was going back and forth and was taking pictures and was running up and down, measuring things.

"The opposing side was so intimidated -- largely by his reputation -- they figured he's got to be coming up with something. They were so upset, they settled the case."

Palladino said Lipset was the pivotal point in his life -- he met his future wife, Sandra Sutherland, at Lipset's detective agency, and he made investigating his career because of the standards he said Lipset set for the business.

James Brosnahan, a well- known San Francisco attorney who frequently worked with Lipset, said: "Hal was the detective to contact on the most difficult cases. He had a huge reputation -- national, international -- and he worked for all the luminaries of the San Francisco trial bar. . .Marvin Lewis, MacInnis, George Davis."

Lipset was the founder of the World Association of Detectives and was the technical adviser on the Francis Ford Coppola movie about a surveillance expert, "The Conversation."

"He was a man of tremendous contradictions, a genuine original," said Patricia Holt, author of a biography of Lipset called "The Good Detective." "He was the kind of flamboyant character who lights up San Francisco life,"

Lipset is survived by two sons -- Louis Lipset of San Francisco and Lawrence Lipset of Mendocino County -- and one grandchild. Lipset's wife, Evelyn, died in 1964.

Services are pending.