Pearl

by Jeremy Banas

  Southerleigh/Pearl smokestack. Jeremy Banas.

  O’Brien was a genius marketer, having come up with one of the most successful advertising campaigns in the brewery’s history, probably rivaling those of Anheuser-Busch and Miller. These campaigns included the famed “Country of 1100 Springs,” a slogan that is still used today. In fact, this slogan inspired a billboard off Interstate 35 in Dallas that had a small waterfall with water running through it daily. He was the genius behind the famed Judge Roy Bean campaign, capitalizing on the Wild West judge’s love of XXX Pearl Beer, as Bean served only that beverage. O’Brien had a slew of other advertising promotions and giveaways that in some ways would rival that of any macrobrewer today.

  Perhaps one of the most successful campaigns was a local western swing band known as the Pearl Wranglers. O’Brien worked with Aubrey Kline, Pearl’s genius of public relations, and recruited Adolf Hoffner, a local musician, to head up this band. Hoffner’s South Texas band became Pearl’s official musicians, the Pearl Wranglers. They went on to sing for nearly fifty years, all in the name of XXX Pearl Beer. At the end of each show, the bandleader always mentioned for folks to order “A bottle of Pearl please.”

  Over the course of his time with the San Antonio Brewing Association, H.B. O’Brien would help to build a distribution network from thirty-five wholesalers to four hundred distributors throughout forty states.

  O’Brien’s sometimes partner, Kline, was considered just as much a rock star at the brewery. Kline was one of the best public relations people in the business, with numerous awards supporting his success at Pearl. His work at Pearl began in 1936, when Otto A. Koehler, not quite president of the brewery, walked into a local family restaurant known as Boehler’s that was not far from the brewery and met Kline. Boehler’s was also the first place in San Antonio that received XXX Pearl when Prohibition ended. Otto A. took a shine to Kline and asked him to come work at the brewery as its public relations director. Not having any experience in the industry, Kline studied everything he could about public relations at the San Antonio public library and set out to work. He stayed thirty-six years and got to know politicians, governors and more. So popular was his style that he became something of a public relations subject himself, even picking up the nickname Mr. Pearl. He always greeted others with “Bless your heart.”

  Pages 68–71: Country of 1100 Springs promo. Pearl LLC Archives.

  Kline was very involved in the San Antonio community and served in several organizations. He was a participant in leadership with the March of Dimes, Golden Gloves boxing tournaments, the San Antonio Press Club Museum, the Texas tourism development board and the San Antonio Livestock Show. For many years, he was a committee chairman at the stock show and with Pearl’s advertising dollars would buy young animals to give away at the auction, where the animals were donated to the Boys Club of San Antonio.

  After retiring in 1972, Kline and his brothers went back to their roots and renovated Boehler’s restaurant. They operated it for many years and changed the name to Boehler’s Garden, running it in an old building that looked almost like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. For many years after Boehler’s Garden closed down, it would become the famous Liberty Bar, a popular hangout for San Antonio residents.

  Miss Pearl 1974, posing at the Houston Stock Show. Pearl LLC Archives.

  In the spring of 1935, new large pasteurization machines were obtained, as were high-speed fillers, increasing bottling by 80 percent. The year 1935 also saw the return of the Texas Pride beer, which would be brewed until 1938. The spring of 1935 also saw a little bit of fun for employees. In March 1935, San Antonio Brewing Association formed the brewery athletic club, organizing baseball, basketball and bowling teams. The men’s baseball teams were known as the Prides, and the women’s basketball teams were known as Brewettes. The bowling and baseball teams would continue on into the 1970s.

  More changes and improvements were seen in the late 1930s and ’40s as well. In 1936, Texans drank more than 1 million bottles of XXX Pearl and Texas Pride every nine days. San Antonio Brewing Association also introduced the new brand Cerveza Tolteca, with advertising all in Spanish. In the spring of 1938, the San Antonio Brewing Association became the first brewery in the United States to be completely air conditioned, and by summer of that year, it would get a large commercial neon sign, an invention known as the Neo-Rite system, that had a motion effect to it. By 1939, it had erected a more modern fireproof garage measuring 130 feet wide by 236 feet long, complete with shops to service its fleet of vehicles. It built a two-story addition to the bottling plant measuring 6,200 feet, doubling its previous size.

  Pearl Pride baseball team, 1960s. Charlie Staats.

  Pearl waterfall billboard. Jeremy Banas.

  Pearl executives stand atop the Peal waterfall billboard. Pearl LLC Archives.

  Players on the Pearl Pride baseball team, 1930s. Charlie Staats.

  Other community involvement included a Miss Pearl Brewery contest that was held in 1941 and 1942. The year 1941 also saw Jinx Falkenberg working as an actress and model in the San Antonio Brewing Association’s 1941 advertising. The year 1942 saw advertising changing to the image of Georgia Carol Wynn.

  With World War II raging on, by April 1942 there was a metal shortage around the country. Otto A. Koehler, being the industrious man he was, invented a bottle cap salvaging machine that took used crowns and re-formed them to be used on new bottles, a practice that continued throughout the war. To this end, and to help with the war effort, the San Antonio Brewing Association donated its 200,000-pound ice machine that was installed in 1895 as scrap metal for the war effort.

  EMMA PASSES AND OTTO A. RETURNS THE OTTO NAME TO THE BREWERY

  In 1943, the venerable Emma Koehler passed away. A pillar of the community, the woman who had been here since the beginning, steering the ship through Prohibition and beyond, would be sorely missed. Almost immediately, the board of directors elected Otto Andrew Koehler as president of the San Antonio Brewing Association.

  Otto A. ushered in what many would later call the brewery’s golden age—Otto A. himself was often referred to as a beloved employer and close friend over the next twenty-six years while he was head of the San Antonio Brewing Association. More than anyone else, Otto A. seemed to embody the original Otto’s ability to relate to pretty much anyone.

  The young Otto A. was born to Karl Koehler and his wife, Lina Unverzacht, on July 24, 1893. The couple, along with Otto A. and their eldest son, Charles, was living in North Warren, Pennsylvania. Sometime before the turn of the twentieth century, Karl took his entire family back to Germany to visit extended family. It would not be as pleasant of a trip as planned, for Karl became sick and passed away in Germany. In about 1909, Otto Andrew was brought to San Antonio to stay with Otto Koehler and his wife, Emma. Although Otto A.’s brother, Charles, would later come to San Antonio as well, it was Otto A. who arrived first.

  Now that the Otto name had returned as president of the brewery, many saw a very bright future for the San Antonio–based brewery, although it was a slow and methodical growth that Otto A. presided over. This allowed much time to cultivate a variety of interests and eccentricities. Otto A. was well known for his love of fishing, the outdoors and big game hunting. Many of his prizes were prominently displayed in the Pearl’s Safari room at the brewery, as well as at a private club at the home he inherited from his uncle and Aunt Emma on West Ashby Place, aptly called the Zebra room. His many conquests filled the walls of both rooms and are still observed with fondness today.

  Otto A. was not content to merely run the brewery that had been a part of his family for so many years. He wanted to know all aspects of the business intimately, and to this end, he went so far as to attend brewing school in Chicago in about 1934 so that his technical skills would improve. He attended the Wahl-Henius Brewmaster School along with future Pearl brewmaster and friend Harry Haeglin, who would also be plant manager around the time of the 1953 expansion of the brewery.

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nbsp; Despite his well-known love of hunting and fishing, one little-known fact was his love of machines and inventing. During World War II and the well-documented shortage of metal, the ability to make crowns and bottle caps became increasingly difficult. Not one to let such a problem defeat him, Otto A. found a solution. As metal was certainly short in San Antonio, he devised a machine that would take old bottle caps and re-crimp them onto new bottles. The brewery instituted a policy with its distributors: if they did not return each case with all of the caps, the distributors would be shorted one case of beer on the next delivery. To ensure that this did not happen, the distributors passed this on to the restaurants and bars, advising them of the same. This worked wonders, as they were always out of crowns. For the workers at the Pearl, though, these crowns proved to be troublesome when they were reused. “Those crowns had two liners, aluminum foil and cork,” said Al Marmor, a superintendent of the bottle shop. “It was a mess, those crowns. The foil kept coming loose and clogging the re-crimping machine.”

  The San Antonio Brewing Association also took a more direct approach in the war effort. During part of World War II, bottles of XXX Pearl Beer carried labels on the neck of each bottle recommending customers purchase war bonds—quite ingenious when you think about it. I’m sure supporting the troops was near and dear to Otto A.’s heart, but the benefit to the company was the goodwill and faith for Pearl drinkers, something that would carry on for years to come.

  The San Antonio Brewing Association got involved in the local community in other ways too. The brewery sponsored broadcasts for local radio station WOAI AM 1200, and on October 15, 1943, WOAI celebrated its 2,000th Pearl-sponsored broadcast. This was not the only radio station where the San Antonio Brewing Association sponsored programs, though, for in March 1950, the brewery sponsored a thirty-minute news program entitled Your Radio Newspaper on local station KTSA.

  CHANGE CONTINUES AT A RAPID PACE

  Changes became commonplace at the San Antonio Brewing Association over the next twenty years. In May 1948, it broke ground on an eight-story addition and purchased new brewery equipment, in addition to a new bottling unit, pasteurizer and washer. In April 1949, it added a filling machine. This expansion led to quite a growth by the end of 1948. For San Antonio’s largest brewery, there were 340 employees producing two thousand barrels per day, with trucks delivering them to thirsty Texas residents. A few years later, in 1951, the San Antonio Brewing Association introduced the Pearl pick-up pack, six twelve-ounce bottles of Pearl beer, hoping that this added convenience would boost sales.

  In 1949, Pearl entered the canned beer market, releasing its first beer in a can on September 29. One year later, in the fall of 1950, more improvements came to the buildings themselves. All the brewery buildings were freshly painted, taking twenty-five to thirty men using two thousand gallons of paint two and a half months to complete. This was a much-needed upkeep of the brewery and its grounds. The improvements would not end there; the old stables, long since out of use other than for storage, got an extreme makeover of their own.

  The Pearl Stables were renovated and updated to become the Pearl Corral Hospitality room, which contained the famous Safari room. Decorating the interior of the former stables was a mural painted by James Buchanan Wynn of Wimberley, Texas, standing 8 feet high and 280 feet long. It became the United States’ longest continuous mural depicting Texas ranch life—clearly falling right in line with Otto’s love of animals.

  It was likely this passion that saw the San Antonio Brewing Association purchase its first animal at the San Antonio Livestock exposition in February 1951. A grand champion steer known as “Shorty” was purchased for $21,000 from Andrew Tatsch. The San Antonio Brewing Association had never before bid on any prize animal. The record-breaking purchase price was as much a story as the animal’s subsequent donation after the livestock exposition so that the brewery could help with funds for a building program for local family charity Boysville, which still exists today on North 1604. The general director of Boysville, Armin F. Bahnsen, was shocked and overjoyed by the unexpected generosity and indicated the time that the prize steer might be sold again to raise funds.

  B.B. McGimsey, executive vice-president at the time, said the San Antonio Brewing Association’s purchase of the grand champion was to help the Livestock Exposition obtain a new record. In addition to that, he said the brewery had a large interest in helping with programs for boys throughout Texas who could raise better cattle for the following year’s stock show. McGimsey went on to say that Boysville was “a fine organization, backed by fine men, which is doing a great job in the education and non-denominational character training of orphan boys.”

  However, the biggest changes in the brewery’s history came in 1952 and 1953. Recognizing that many people around San Antonio and Texas often confused the name San Antonio Brewing Association with an organization that might be representing breweries around San Antonio, the board of directors elected to change the name of the brewery to that of its flagship XXX Pearl Beer, becoming the Pearl Brewing Company. The year 1952 also saw the very first issue of Pearl Parade, an employee magazine that came out between July and September of that year.

  Otto A. and the board of directors were just getting started with improvements and changes. Expansion at the brewery and equipment upgrades were in order so that it could stay competitive, increase production and put out the same quality product for which it was known.

  By 1953, much of the expansion had been completed, and a special issue of the San Antonio Express declared Pearl the largest brewery in the Southwest. This expansion, one of the crowning jewels of Otto A.’s reign with the brewery, gave it a more than 50 percent increased capacity, raising its annual production to almost 1,225,000 barrels. The new buildings also created room for new and desperately needed equipment. This included a very large beer storage area, adding fifty-seven glass tanks, each holding 880 gallons, on just the first three floors. On the fourth and fifth floors, increased space for fermentation was now available. The brewery also added a canning shop that could package six-packs or cases of XXX Pearl Beer at a rapid pace of eighteen thousand cans per hour, with room left over for expansion down the road. Add to all of this a payroll that by the end of 1953 had hit the $2,200,000 mark, Pearl Brewing had begun to be the force in the San Antonio community it had always hoped to be.

  Pearl canning employee, 1970s. Pearl LLC Archives.

  Although this expansion was one of Otto A.’s triumphs, he was actually not present for the kickoff. No, our dear Otto A. was in Africa as often as he could to hunt anything he could find. In fact, he had just recently killed the largest elephant that Kenya had seen in the past fifteen years before that point. His African safaris would become the stuff of legend even at that time. A film exists even today of several of his African safari adventures, as well as a book called Ku-Winda, a kind of how-to book for conducting a safari.

  Certificate of Pearl common stock. Jeremy Banas.

  In 1954, Pearl Brewing sold 117,696 shares of common stock to the public for about eighteen dollars each, but only to Texas residents. This brought an influx of cash that would allow the brewery to continue to grow and also give San Antonio and Texas residents a piece of their own brewery.

  PEARL BREWING COMPANY DOMINATES THE COMPETITION

  By 1955, Texas Pride would see its third return, as well as the introduction of XXX Pearl Beer in quart bottles. Alas, though, Texas Pride would last only until around 1956. The remainder of 1955 saw quite a lot of promotion and experiments for the brewery. Pearl Brewing sponsored bullfights, a show on KCOR TV channel 41 and a sponsorship of the television show Passport to Danger, as well as a championship bowling tournament, both on WOAI TV channel 4. Before 1955 was over, though, Pearl would try an experiment that would not end in success: the introduction of twelve-packs of its bottles, although it merely amounted to two six-pack containers put together in a hand carrier. Perhaps consumers weren’t ready to purchase that much at once or they di
d not much care for the carriers falling apart if they became damp.

  A .45 recording of “That Pearl Thing” by Jesse Lopez, a song about Pearl beer that aired on a Dallas radio station, December 10, 1968. Jeremy Banas.

  Continuing to try and diversify, Pearl brought back Pearl Bock, which had been sporadically available in the ’30s and ’40s; it made its full return in 1958. In January 1959, Pearl laid claim to the first oversize billboard in San Antonio to flash the time and temperature. The billboard was a popular feature at the intersection. More promotions would be seen later in 1959 with two inventions from a Pearl employee that carried the Pearl logo: the “Pearl-O-Lure,” a three-pronged lure using leftover tin from the brewery, and the “Hook Jacket,” a protector for hooks on the lure. Other promotions included small packs of hand lotion, insect repellant and a snake bite treatment kit and were quite the gimmicks for local residents, who proudly carried these around.

  Clearly Pearl was not resting on its laurels. The ’60s came in big for the brewing company. The James Street entrance to the brewery was renamed Pearl Parkway, likely to fall in line with the brewery’s recent name change a decade earlier, and included a new sign on Broadway Street. A version of the sign can be seen today in the exact same location. Pearl Brewing also introduced glass cans, a non-returnable stubby beer bottle and a zip-open pack carton, hoping to give consumers another option to carry their beer home. In 1960, Pearl also became the first brewery in Texas to sell 1 million barrels of beer that year.