Of All the Gin Joints

by Mark Bailey

  CAMPARI & VODKA

  1½ OZ. CAMPARI

  1½ OZ. VODKA

  SODA WATER

  ORANGE SLICE

  Pour Campari and vodka into an Old-Fashioned or a Collins glass filled with ice cubes. Fill remainder of glass with soda water. Stir gently. Garnish with orange slice.

  NEGRONI

  1 OZ. CAMPARI

  1 OZ. GIN OR VODKA

  1 OZ. SWEET VERMOUTH

  ORANGE TWIST

  Pour ingredients into an Old-Fashioned or a Collins glass filled with ice cubes. Stir gently. Garnish with orange twist.

  OLIVER REED

  1938–1999

  CHARACTER ACTOR

  “You meet a better class of person in pubs.”

  Oliver Reed was known for playing burly Luddites, onscreen and off. Reed’s first notable roles were in British horror movies produced by Hammer Films, including The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960) and The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), but his signature performance was as Bill Sikes in Oliver! (1968), directed by Carol Reed (his uncle). He frequently collaborated with Ken Russell; see roles in The Devils (1971), Tommy (1975), and his nude wrestling turn in Women in Love (1969). Beginning in the 1970s, Reed would star as Athos in three movies based on Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers novels and return to horror in 1979 with David Cronenberg’s The Brood. He was largely relegated to straight-to-video releases by the 1980s, with the notable exception of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Reed died at a bar in Malta while shooting Ridley Scott’s Gladiator (2000).

  OLIVER REED WAS WHAT you might call a “four-quadrant” drunk. Which is to say, whether you were male or female, under twenty-five or over, he would never fail to offend. A brawler, prankster, and unapologetic chauvinist (with a lifelong devotion to exposing his penis), Reed’s besotted lunacy put him in a league of his own. Not surprisingly, it also helped sabotage any chance he ever had (and he had numerous) of becoming a Hollywood star. Too drunk for Hollywood? As a matter of fact, yes.

  In the late 1960s, Reed was rumored to be the next James Bond, the replacement for Sean Connery. But for “unknown” reasons, the part went to George Lazenby, an Australian whom Reed shortly thereafter attacked in a restaurant—slapping the MI6 agent in the face, then wrestling him to the ground amidst several servings of custard. In the early 1970s, Steve McQueen came to London with an interest in casting Reed in a major Hollywood production. Out on the town, Reed got so bombed he threw up on McQueen, splattering the superstar’s jeans and shoes and forcing McQueen to spend the rest of the night reeking of puke. Once again, the role went to somebody else. In the mid-1970s, in yet another display of his capacity for poor decision making, Reed reportedly passed up the role of Quint in Spielberg’s Jaws. The part went to Robert Shaw instead, himself an impressive drinker, though somewhat less apocalyptic. It wasn’t until the late 1990s, cast as Proximo the slave trader in that massive tentpole Gladiator, that Reed would again find himself within striking distance of international recognition. Sadly, in the final act of self-sabotage, he died during filming on the island of Malta, this while arm wrestling Royal Navy sailors in a pub, smashed on rum and his much-beloved whiskey. He was only sixty-one.

  Still, as biographer Robert Sellers makes very clear, Reed’s was a career worth noting, both on the silver screen and on the bar stool—a life filled with drunken antics that ranged from the violent to the humorous to the surreal. Focusing first on the violence, there were the typical fisticuffs: punch-ups with local toughs and sober citizens, the constables often called in. Sometimes things got a little out of hand, as on the night a West End heckler broke a glass on Reed’s face that left him with thirty-six stitches and puckered scars for the next year. Naturally, there was the barroom arm wrestling, too, up until the day he died, as well as a game of head butting that was Reed’s own invention. Simple enough, opponents were to continue to butt heads until one of them either backed down or buckled. But the roughneck stuff aside, what seems most curious was Reed’s ever-increasing appetite for medieval weapons.

  * * *

  In the late 1960s, Reed was rumored to be the next James Bond, the replacement for Sean Connery. But for unknown reasons, the part went to George Lazenby, an Australian whom Reed shortly thereafter attacked in a pub—slapping the MI6 agent in the face, then wrestling him to the ground.

  * * *

  Even before he bought a fifty-two-bedroom country estate, Broome Hall, Reed had begun collecting broadswords, pikes, battle axes, and the like. Not a dangerous hobby in and of itself, but probably unwise for an angry young man so given over to drink. After enough booze, the monster inside would awaken. Like the time Reed lined up half a dozen drunken mates on his front lawn, armed them with antique weapons, and led an assault on the local police station. Or the night he forced a six-foot sword upon director (and enfant terrible) Ken Russell and insisted on dueling. Reed was not satisfied until Russell had cut open Reed’s shirt, causing blood to pour down his chest. It was a passion that carried over into his film work. Cast as Athos in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers, foregoing rehearsal, Reed would launch into sword fighting with such a frightening zeal that the terrified stunt team was reduced to drawing lots as to who would be matched up against him. There seemed to be no limit. While filming the Who’s Tommy (Reed in the role of Uncle Frank), the actor quite naturally found a kindred spirit in legendary drummer Keith Moon, the two of them becoming running mates until Moon’s untimely death a few year’s later. Along with the orgies (the term seems almost too quaint), the television sets thrown out of windows, and the hotel wallpaper attacked with forks, there would be the odd duel at Broome Hall, this with double-edged swords. Moon even upped the ante with a new game: Reed was to run around the fields outside his estate, while Moon tried to run him down with his car.

  It was dangerous, but comical, too, which more or less sums up Reed. Because along with the violence, there was humor—like passing out on the baggage carousel at Galway Airport or kidnapping famed producer David Puttnam. At a hotel in Madrid, Reed stole all the goldfish from the dining room pond and hid them in his bathtub. He replaced the school with fish-shaped carrots, then at breakfast made a singular display by diving into the water and eating what the other guests believed to be real fish. What can you say about a man like that?

  On a bender in Los Angeles, Reed had a pair of eagle’s claws tattooed on his penis. One can only imagine him waking up to find what he liked to call his “mighty mallet” swaddled in blood-soaked gauze. He went on to have an eagle’s head tattooed on his shoulder. This, according to Sellers, so that when anyone asked why, Reed could tell them, You should see where’s it’s perched.

  GUNK IS AN Oliver Reed original and a fitting accompaniment to his equally inventive head-butting game. Which is to say, both are easy to learn and cause a great deal of pain. To create Gunk, Reed would simply ask the bartender for an ice bucket and then ask him to pour every spirit behind the bar into it. Not unlike Ava Gardner’s Mommy’s Little Mixture, Gunk indicates a particular kind of wet-brained idiocy.

  And here lies the classic chicken and egg debate. Only a man who has smashed his head into a great many things could come up with such a concoction. Or perhaps, only after drinking such a concoction could you swing your head about with true abandon.

  THE VESPER MARTINI has little to do with Oliver Reed, and everything to do with James Bond. But then what if Reed had been Bond? It is hard to imagine. But some say that in 1969 he came quite close. He did after all best Bond (in the form of George Lazenby) that same year in a brawl in London. This all took place during the Sean Connery–Roger Moore transition. Foregoing Reed as Bond was a casting decision that the Guardian would describe as “one of the great missed opportunities of post-war British movie history.”

  As it stands, for most of James Bond’s cinematic life, over which a great number of cocktails have been downed, he has almost always ordered a dry vodka martini, shaken, not stirred. A couple of not so small quibbles, lik
e, why dry? The martini calls for vermouth and many feel strongly the wetter the better. And why shaken? It only dilutes it further. While we’re at it—why vodka?

  But then Bond is a creature of habit. After all, habit has kept him alive for a very long time. Pierce Brosnan, for one, looked like he actually enjoyed a martini and Roger Moore before him. Sean Connery seemed, well, more of a scotch man. But the truth of it is, while the Vesper martini was not introduced to movie audiences until the 2006 film adaptation of Casino Royale, that novel was Ian Fleming’s first Bond book (1954) and the Vesper was actually the very first cocktail the character Bond ever ordered. It is about the Vesper that he first says “Shake it very well until it’s ice cold.”

  On screen, Daniel Craig as Bond (the most Reed-like Bond yet) creates the drink and names it after his one true love, Vesper Lynd. It is her and perhaps sunset, the violet hour (not as much the evening prayers), that the name connotes. Worth mentioning is that in that same film Bond also finds himself tied to a chair naked and hit in the testicles with a heavy knotted rope. This seems very much a scene that Reed would have relished—and maybe even attempted in one configuration or another with Keith Moon. Likely, after drinking a bucket of Gunk (see above).

  The cocktail, as written by Fleming: “Three measures of Gordon’s, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it’s ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel. Got it?” And here is the translation:

  VESPER MARTINI

  3 OZ. GIN (PREFERABLY TANQUERAY OR BROKER’S SINCE GORDON’S HAS BEEN REFORMULATED).

  1 OZ. VODKA

  ½ OZ. LILLET BLANC OR COCCHI AMERICANO (KINA LILLET IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE)

  LEMON PEEL

  Pour ingredients into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake well, and then strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.

  FRANK SINATRA

  1915–1998

  SINGER AND ACTOR

  “I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they are going to feel all day.”

  Frank Sinatra began as a singer, dubbed “the Voice” for his smooth inflections and distinctive phrasing. After fronting bands for Tommy Dorsey and Harry James, he embarked on a solo career in the early 1940s, quickly acquiring the sort of rabid teenage fan base that later coalesced around Elvis Presley and the Beatles. By the end of the decade, Sinatra had released a wildly successful solo record, The Voice of Frank Sinatra (1946), launched a weekly radio show, and teamed with Gene Kelly for three musicals: Anchors Aweigh (1945), Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), and On the Town (also 1949). Two years later, he struggled with hemorrhaging vocal chords and mentions in House Un-American Activities hearings. While attempting a singing comeback in Vegas, he accepted a paltry (by his standards) $8,000 fee to play Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953), a part he desperately wanted. Eternity proved to be a major turning point, earning him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and laying the groundwork for such starring roles as The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). Despite inspired collaborations with Count Basie and Antonio Carlos Jobim, his record sales flattened as rock ‘n’ roll became the dominant sound of the sixties. Still, Sinatra would spend the rest of his life as an American icon. Becoming part owner of the Sands hotel and casino in Las Vegas, he earned $100,000 each week he performed. Sinatra announced his retirement in 1971 but continued to make sporadic appearances all the way up to his eightieth birthday, when he performed for the last time at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles.

  HOW DID SINATRA KNOW where to find her? No one bothered to ask. They were at the Villa Capri: Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio, Robert Mitchum, Lee Marvin, screenwriter Eddie Anhalt. Everyone but DiMaggio was out for yet another night of revelry during the production of the film Not as a Stranger. DiMaggio just had the misfortune of crossing their path—and he hadn’t been feeling that well to begin with.

  DiMaggio’s marriage to Marilyn Monroe was basically over, everyone knew that. All he wanted to do was talk to her, he said. He’d spent days tracking her down, to no avail. It was tearing him apart. So Sinatra, DiMaggio’s loyal friend, suggested that he and the rest of the guys help him find her. In fact, Sinatra happened to know where Monroe was right at that moment.

  But first let’s step back and acknowledge how astonishing it was that Stanley Kramer, director and producer of Not as a Stranger, had found it advisable to assemble this cast in the first place. In addition to Sinatra, Mitchum, and Marvin, he’d also hired character actors Broderick Crawford and Lon Chaney, Jr. It was the U.S. Olympic Dream Team of boozing—and much like their future basketball counterparts, they were unstoppable. The set was a free-for-all. Which is to say that a scheme like the one they were now hatching—the “Wrong Door Raid,” the press would later call it—was definitely in their wheelhouse.

  It took place the evening of November 5, 1954. Two years later it was aired out in court. DiMaggio never testified. Sinatra—who some believe perjured himself on the stand—insisted he stayed in his car, and that DiMaggio and two private investigators were the only ones directly involved. He didn’t mention anyone else by name. Only Eddie Anhalt would speak publically about the incident, decades later, when all the other participants were dead. Anhalt said it went down like this:

  After a few rounds at the Villa Capri, everyone present agreed to take DiMaggio to the apartment building where Sinatra said Monroe was hiding out. Apartment 3A. Sinatra said that’s where they’d find her. What if she refused to answer the door, DiMaggio asked? Then they’d knock it down, Marvin replied. The only question now, Whom could they get to knock it down?

  Sinatra, for one, was not a big man, at least in the conventional sense. When his one-time wife Ava Gardner was asked why she was with a one-hundred-nineteen-pound weakling, she remarked that “nineteen pounds is cock.” However impressive that might be, it wasn’t going to knock down a door. Soon all eyes turned to Mitchum. Not a small man, Mitch. But Mitch suggested Broderick Crawford—that Old Brod was big enough to do it.

  By now the gang was drunk enough that the plan seemed foolproof. So they got in their cars, picked up Crawford at the Formosa (his regular hangout), and drove off to find Monroe.

  Everyone staggered out of the car and up to the door of Apartment 3A. Wham, wham—Crawford kicked the door down just as he’d been asked to. And everyone piled in. Only Monroe wasn’t there. In her place, they found a terrified fifty-year-old woman by the name of Florence Kotz—the apartment’s actual tenant. Something along the lines of “oh shit” was collectively uttered, as Kotz grabbed her phone and called the police. By the time the law arrived, everyone was long gone.

  * * *

  Sinatra said that’s where they’d find [Marilyn]. What if she refused to answer the door, DiMaggio asked? Then they’d knock it down, Marvin replied. The only question now, whom could they get to knock it down?

  * * *

  Monroe, it turned out, was staying at the apartment house just next door.

  “It was funny how Sinatra knew all this,” Anhalt said. “Later I found out he was balling Marilyn himself, but we didn’t think of that at the time.”

  THE MISFITS (1961)

  In 1956, while living on a ranch outside Reno, Nevada (he was there establishing residency requirements to obtain a divorce), Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Arthur Miller made the acquaintance of some old cowboys so desperate for money that they’d been reduced to capturing wild mustangs to sell to dog-food companies. A year later, divorced and in the full bloom of his relationship with Marilyn Monroe, Miller wrote about the cowboys for a short story eventually published in Esquire. And so began one of the most infamous productions in the history of American cinema—a film followed by the death of the two Hollywood icons who starred in it.

  The principal cast was small but sensational: Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Eli Wallach, and Thelma Ritter. The peerless John Huston would direct. Shooting on location in the Nevada desert was originally slated for
March 3, 1960 (before the intense summer heat kicked in), but delays and prior commitments by Gable and Monroe pushed the start date to mid-July. By then, the desert was unbearable. Daytime temperatures could reach as high as 120° F. Dust was inescapable, requiring constant cleaning of camera lenses and generally making everyone uncomfortable. But that was nothing compared to the lack of comfort Monroe was creating.

  Miller had written the script largely as a gift to Monroe, but by the time filming finally began, their marriage was in shambles. Monroe showed up having just completed Let’s Make Love, during which she’d done just that with her costar, Yves Montand, and was now demanding that Montand be given a part in The Misfits. (She was eventually convinced that, yes, the request was outrageous.) For his part, Miller would meet Austrian photographer Inge Morath on the set and begin a relationship that would last the next forty years. Added to this, the problems between Monroe and Miller were not so subtly working themselves into the story, which Miller was rewriting on the fly, incorporating their private conversations as dialogue, almost taunting his wife.