Of All the Gin Joints
Page 1
ALSO WRITTEN BY MARK BAILEY
AND ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD HEMINGWAY
Hemingway & Bailey’s Bartending Guide to Great American Writers
Books for Children:
Tiny Pie
Of All the Gin Joints
Stumbling through Hollywood History
WRITTEN BY MARK BAILEY
ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD HEMINGWAY
Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill 2014
For Ed Bailey, who liked a good laugh and a good drink, too.
—M.B.
For Sophie, Sergio, Brian, and Johnny—bonne santé!
—E.H.
“We are sitting at the crossroads between Art and Nature, trying to figure out where Delirium Tremens leave off and Hollywood begins.”
—W. C. FIELDS
CONTENTS
People
Places
Films
Recipes
PART ONE
THE SILENT ERA,
1895–1929
PART TWO
THE STUDIO ERA,
1930–1945
PART THREE
POSTWAR ERA,
1946–1959
PART FOUR
1960S & NEW HOLLYWOOD,
1960–1979
Acknowledgments
Sources
Index
List of People
PART ONE
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle
John Barrymore
Clara Bow
Louise Brooks
Marion Davies
W. C. Fields
John Gilbert
D. W. Griffith
Buster Keaton
Fritz Lang
Stan Laurel
Tom Mix
Mabel Normand
Ramon Novarro
Mary Pickford
PART TWO
Tallulah Bankhead
Robert Benchley
Charles Butterworth
John Carradine
Raymond Chandler
Joan Crawford
Bing Crosby
Frances Farmer
William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Errol Flynn
Clark Gable
Jean Harlow
Rita Hayworth
Veronica Lake
Carole Lombard
Herman J. Mankiewicz
Louella Parsons
Preston Sturges
Spencer Tracy
Lana Turner
Orson Welles
Anna May Wong
PART THREE
Humphrey Bogart
Lon Chaney, Jr.
Montgomery Clift
John Ford
Ava Gardner
Judy Garland
Jackie Gleason
Cary Grant
Sterling Hayden
William Holden
John Huston
Robert Mitchum
David Niven
Jack Palance
Anthony Quinn
Nicholas Ray
Lawrence Tierney
John Wayne
PART FOUR
Richard Burton
John Cassavetes
Sammy Davis, Jr.
Richard Harris
Dennis Hopper
Rock Hudson
Dean Martin
Lee Marvin
Steve McQueen
Sam Peckinpah
Oliver Reed
Frank Sinatra
Elizabeth Taylor
Natalie Wood
List of Places
PART ONE
The Hollywood Hotel
The Ambassador Hotel
Monmartre Café
San Simeon
Garden of Allah Hotel
Alexandria Hotel
The Brown Derby
Stanley Rose Bookshop
The Hollywood Athletic Club
Musso & Frank Grill
PART TWO
Polo Lounge
Perino’s
Romanoff’s
Don the Beachcomber
Café Trocadero
The Cock ’N Bull
Chateau Marmont
The Embassy Club
The Clover Club
The Players Club
Chasen’s
Dragon’s Den
PART THREE
Formosa Café
Mocambo
Ciro’s
Hotel Bel-Air
Villa Capri
Boardner’s
PART FOUR
The Magic Castle
The Troubadour
Dan Tana’s
Whisky a Go Go
Rainbow Bar & Grill
Trader Vic’s
List of Films
PART ONE
Prix de Beauté (1930)
The Gold Rush (1925)
Trader Horn (1931)
The Wedding March (1928)
The Deadly Glass of Beer (1916)
PART TWO
The Lost Weekend (1945)
Rasputin and the Empress (1932)
The Big Trail (1930)
My Little Chickadee (1940)
Girl Crazy (1943)
PART THREE
From Here to Eternity (1953)
The Sun Also Rises (1957)
Beat the Devil (1953)
Not as a Stranger (1955)
PART FOUR
Night of the Iguana (1964)
Apocalypse Now (1979)
The Getaway (1972)
The Misfits (1961)
List of Recipes
Simple Syrup
PART ONE
Pimm’s Cup
Cocoanut Grove Cocktail
Mimosa
Half and Half
Orange Blossom
Brown Derby Cocktail
Blue Martini
Orange Wine
Martini
PART TWO
Prairie Oyster
Tom Collins
Raymond Chandler’s Gimlet
Seven & Seven
Zombie
Missionary’s Downfall
Mint Julep
Bloody Mary
Vendome Special Sling
Moscow Mule
Tea & Applejack
Bourbon Old-Fashioned
Shirley Temple
PART THREE
Bourbon Milk Punch
Torpedo Juice
Mommy’s Little Mixture
Greyhound
Shandy Gaff
Black Velvet
Mitchum’s Eye-Opener
Margarita
PART FOUR
Richard Burton’s Boilermaker
Coach Buttermaker’s Boilermaker
Port and Brandy
Chocolate Martini
Alaskan Polar Bear Heater
Old Milwaukee
Campari & Vodka
Negroni
Vesper Martini
Mai Tai
Scorpion Bowl
Crane’s Scorpion Bowl
FOR THE COCKTAILS that call for simple syrup, please refer to this recipe.
SIMPLE SYRUP
1 CUP GRANULATED SUGAR
1 CUP WATER
ONE-TO-ONE RATIO, AS MUCH AS DESIRED FOR USE OR STORAGE
Stir sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a light boil and then let simmer until sugar is completely dissolved. Remove pan from heat and let cool.
If storing, pour cooled syrup into a glass bottle or jar, cap tightly, and refrigerate. Should keep for up to a week.
Part One
THE SILENT ERA
1895–1929
“To place in the limelight a great number of people who o
rdinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs, give them unlimited power and instant wealth, is bound to produce a lively and diverting result.”
–ANITA LOOS, screenwriter
ROSCOE “FATTY” ARBUCKLE
1887–1933
ACTOR AND COMEDIAN
“The only place in America to get a drink is the police station.”
At five foot ten and 275 pounds, Fatty Arbuckle earned his nickname. Of his over 150 films, the best known are The Rounders (with Charlie Chaplin, 1914) and the unconventional Western The Round-Up (character name: Slim Hoover, 1920). Arbuckle also wrote and directed most of his own films. In 1918 he became the first $1-million-per-year movie actor. In 1921 he was implicated in the sexual assault and accidental death of actress Virginia Rappe. Arbuckle was acquitted after three trials, but he did not receive a film contract for the next eleven years. With no means of employment, in 1928 he opened the popular, though short-lived, nightclub Plantation Café, in Culver City. His acting comeback finally began in 1932. A year later, the night before he was to sign his first talkie, Arbuckle had a party to celebrate. He left early, went straight to bed, and died in his sleep from a heart attack.
EARLY ONE MORNING IN 1920, housekeepers at the Sunset Boulevard mansion of actress Pauline Frederick heard a commotion outside. They emerged to discover a car blithely parked in the middle of the front lawn and three utility workers digging toward a leaky gas pipe. The housekeepers screamed for the workers to stop; Frederick had just paid an enormous sum to have the 150-foot lawn perfectly manicured, and now her flawless grass was being destroyed. The workers were unmoved. There could be an explosion, for God’s sake. Finally, Frederick herself dashed out of the house in a bathrobe, shouting and weeping. But as she neared the truck, her screams abated and something entirely unexpected occurred: Frederick broke into laughter.
Two of the “gasmen,” it turned out, were none other than superstar Fatty Arbuckle and his newest partner in crime, Buster Keaton—both well in their cups.
Arbuckle’s unquenchable thirst for good scotch was already legendary inside Hollywood. He threw lavish parties on any occasion, however slight. One such party was for the wedding of two dogs. The basement of his Tudor mansion on West Adams was stacked floor to ceiling with expensive wine and scotch. He owned a custom $25,000 Pierce-Arrow phaeton car with a bar and toilet inside. Perhaps that is worth repeating: He had a toilet inside his car.
* * *
Arbuckle’s unquenchable thirst for good scotch was already legend inside Hollywood. He threw lavish parties on any occasion, however slight. One party was for the wedding of two dogs.
* * *
A typical Arbuckle night involved lobster, scotch, a party (his or someone else’s), and the occasional orgy. It was thus that he ended up on Polly Frederick’s front lawn. The idea for the prank had been born several weeks earlier, when Arbuckle drove past Frederick’s home and deemed the front lawn insultingly well kept. Resolved to do something about it, he hatched the gasman plan, enlisting best friend, Keaton.
For her part, Frederick was gracious about the entire affair. After explaining to her housekeepers what was happening, she scolded the pranksters with a smile and invited them inside for breakfast.
the HOLLYWOOD HOTEL
NORTHWEST CORNER OF
HOLLYWOOD AND HIGHLAND
BUILT ON A THREE-ACRE strawberry patch fronting the dusty, unpaved road that would become Hollywood Boulevard, the Hollywood Hotel was the town’s first proper nightspot. Stucco, Moorish style, it was a mecca for arriving talent, as well as the early giants of the industry: actors, directors, producers.
Originally named the Hotel of Hollywood, but always called the Hollywood Hotel, the establishment had two watershed moments within its first decade. The first came in 1906, when sixty-three-year-old heiress Almira Hershey (of the chocolate dynasty) rode up from her Bunker Hill mansion to eat lunch at the hotel and ended up buying the place. Apparently things like this actually did happen, once upon a time.
The second was in 1910, when New York’s Biograph Studios sent director D. W. Griffith to shoot three films in Los Angeles, and he discovered the charms of its suburb (Hollywood) — and its freedom from the expensive patent licenses required to film in New York. Within five years, most of the film industry had relocated to Hollywood, and virtually everyone’s first home was the Hollywood Hotel. Its registry is now in the Smithsonian.
During those early years, it was the only acceptable hotel in Hollywood in which to reside, with a Thursday night dance that became quite the scene—the city’s very first “place to be seen.” Hershey didn’t allow drinking or cohabitation, but she was the only person who enforced those rules—and she was in her seventies and nearly blind. The result, to read contemporary accounts, was some combination of a frat house and an insane asylum, with ill-behaved actors drinking openly in the very dining room she policed. A besotted Fatty Arbuckle was known to use his napkin to catapult butter packets onto the ceiling, which then melted and dropped down at the next seating.
The most famous room, 264, was the honeymoon suite out of which Jean Acker locked Rudolph Valentino on their wedding night, afraid to tell him she was a lesbian. Legend has it that Miss Hershey paid a visit to one bed-hopping actress every night to assure that no untoward activity was taking place. The actress always timed her trysts accordingly, until one night Hershey caught her. She was evicted at dawn. Two hours later, the actress returned with a new hairstyle, fake accent, and a pseudonym. Miss Hershey checked her right in.
Inevitably, stars bought mansions, and new hotels and nightclubs emerged; by the time Hershey died in 1930, at age eighty-seven, the Hollywood Hotel had become a quaint relic. It was torn down in 1956, and today the location houses an abominable megamall, the only graceful note of which is the Dolby Theatre, which hosts the Academy Awards on the same plot of land that sprouted the film industry a century before.
JOHN BARRYMORE
1882–1942
STAGE AND SCREEN ACTOR
“You can’t drown yourself in drink. I’ve tried; you float.”
John Barrymore was universally considered by peers and critics to be greatest actor of the early twentieth century. A theater legend, his 1922 turn as Hamlet (on Broadway and in London) is still considered the definitive performance of the role. Barrymore was perhaps the most prominent member of the multigenerational Drew-Barrymore acting dynasty. His father Maurice, grandmother Louisa Lane Drew, and uncles John Drew, Jr., and Sidney Drew were all thespians. His brother Lionel, sister Ethel, daughter Diana, and granddaughter Drew were all film actors. Working exclusively on the screen after 1925, Barrymore hated film but loved the money. Of his fifty-seven movies, he is best known for his leads in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920), Don Juan (1926; the first film to use sync sound), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), and a comic turn in Grand Hotel (1932). From 1933 through to his death in 1942, Barrymore’s acting ability and looks crumbled due to excessive drinking; his final roles were painful self-parodies. But even his worst work would not tarnish Barrymore’s eulogy: greatest actor of his time.
THE NURSE COULD NOT BE TAMED. Three months prior to his death, the great John Barrymore was bedridden in his Tower Road home, and his few remaining friends wanted desperately to see him. But Barrymore’s nurse, an unyielding and apparently quite large woman, simply would not allow it. Painter John Decker tried a ladder; she pushed it over. Actor Errol Flynn tried to wrestle her and lost. The nurse had been sternly advised that any friendly visit would involve the smuggling of alcohol, and that, she couldn’t have. Alcohol, after all, was the very thing that had brought him to death’s door.
Now we all know that each Hollywood generation has its most handsome leading man, its most admired acting talent, and its most raucous party animal. John Barrymore had the distinction of holding all three titles at once—for twenty years. His striking good looks earned him the nickname “The Great Profile,” and his Broadway version of Hamlet alone would have assured his
place in the acting pantheon: Freud had recently published his theory of Hamlet’s Oedipal desire, and Barrymore embraced the idea, giving the doomed prince an unusual touch of sex appeal.
Barrymore’s success with the gambit was no accident: As a teenager, he had lost his virginity to his own stepmother, Mamie Floyd, a tryst that saddled Barrymore with a mistrust of women and a guilt that accelerated his growing fondness for booze. Both the mistrust and the fondness would last the rest of his life.
Although Barrymore would arguably never fully translate his stage magic to the silver screen, Warner Brothers and their $76,250 per picture kept him in Tinseltown. And once he got over the feeling of slumming it, he was just simply bored. “On a movie lot,” Barrymore once said, “you’re nothing but a bloody stooge, a victim of some inept director who doesn’t know his ass from a Klieg.” By the time sound arrived, he was known as much for his off-screen antics as for his acting. His nicknames reflected the shift; The Great Profile had become, among his acquaintances, “The Monster.”
Barrymore ran with a group of fellow revelers and derelicts—W. C. Fields, Errol Flynn, John Decker, John Carradine, and screenwriter Gene Fowler—christened the Bundy Drive Boys. According to Fowler, they showed up at the draft office in 1941 sloshed and anxious to serve; the registrar looked them over and asked, “Who sent you? The Enemy?”
The other Bundy Drive Boys worshipped Barrymore, whose most affectionate nickname for someone was “shithead.” They all drank like devils, but even Fields was no match for him. The volume of fluid he could consume was untouchable, as was, accordingly, his need to relieve it. The Great Profile was famously indiscriminate in his choice of urinals. First it was sinks. Then it was windows. Soon it became anywhere—elevators, cars, the sandbox at the Ambassador Hotel (which banned him), nightclub draperies. (Decades later, Robert Mitchum would demonstrate a similar proclivity.)
One story goes that, while out on a binge, Barrymore accidentally walked into a women’s restroom. Finding no urinal, he proceeded to relieve his bladder in a potted plant. A woman standing nearby reminded him that the room was “for ladies exclusively.” Turning around, his penis still exposed, Barrymore responded, “So, Madam, is this. But every now and again, I’m compelled to run a little water through it.” Roughly fifty years later, the incident made its way, verbatim, into the film My Favorite Year.