Duncan Hines
Page 2
Mital Gaynor, Allan Mactier, presenting Duncan Hines with a Duncan Hines cake, Blackstone Hotel, Omaha, Nebraska, March 10, 1954.
Duncan Hines at home in the kitchen in Bowling Green, Kentucky, 1950s.
Duncan Hines, Clara Hines and Nelle Palmer, just before they sailed for Europe, on the deck of the S. S. Liberte. New York, April 8, 1954. Left to right: Roy Park, Nelle Palmer (in hat), Mrs. Roy (Dottie) Park, Clara Hines, Dr. Arthur Hunt, Duncan Hines, Adelaide Park (the Park’s daughter).
Clara and Duncan Hines in Hines’s new office, Ithaca, New York, June 28, 1954.
INTRODUCTION
Mention the name “Duncan Hines” to Americans under fifty-five today and the image their minds will undoubtedly conjure is a cake mix package. No one can blame them if they fail to recognize the significance of the man for whom the cake mix is named. Was Duncan Hines named for two men, one named Duncan and the other named Hines, who jointly created a nationally recognized brand name? Or was Duncan Hines a real person? Few know the answer.
On the other hand, mention the name “Duncan Hines” to Americans over fifty-five and a much different picture emerges. To this group the sensation upon hearing the name brings forth emotions usually reserved for one deemed reverentially special. To them Duncan Hines was a man, not associated with cake mixes, but one who recommended the best places Americans could eat and sleep when traveling along the country’s early paved highways at a time when they were thirsty for such knowledge.
To the generation that followed them, the name Duncan Hines not only brings back fond memories of someone who looked after the traveling public’s gustatory and nocturnal needs, it also brings to mind a name and face whose visage was affixed to over 200 grocery store products at a time when Americans were looking for something more substantial than the usual fare served in supermarket cans and packages. This generation knew that if Duncan Hines put his name and reputation behind a particular packaged product, it was assuredly the store’s best foodstuff and more than worthy of their hard-earned dollars.
Overall, though, what both groups most remember about Duncan Hines is that the name, whatever its context, meant the highest possible quality found anywhere. For example, if Duncan Hines recommended a restaurant, it was widely assumed to be one of the country’s absolute best. If he recommended an inn where one could spend the night, it was instantly assumed to be one of the highest quality lodging facilities in America. If he recommended a particular recipe, few competing concoctions could surpass its taste. If he recommended an item found on grocery store shelves, it was naturally assumed to be made from the finest quality ingredients. Duncan Hines never recommended anything that was merely good or passable; his recommendation meant it was the last word in excellence.
Anyone could recommend something. And they did, long before Duncan Hines arrived on the scene. The difference, Americans soon discovered, was that when comparisons were made, the things Duncan Hines recommended truly were the best. Unlike today, his judgments of things superior did not come lightly; once mentioned, however, whatever he recommended soon became highly regarded throughout the nation. But there was another ingredient that placed him a cut above the normal dispensers of information, one instructive to all American generations: his judgments were solely his own. He let no one influence his decisions. He was fiercely independent. He could not be bought at any price—and he let everyone know it. Although restaurateurs, innkeepers and presidents of food manufacturing firms would have gladly sacrificed their fortunes for the honor of having satisfied his favor, Duncan Hines went to great lengths to isolate his emotions from any seductions they may have offered. He was determined—at all costs—to protect the integrity of his name and reputation, because he recognized their value and what it meant to the millions who placed their faith in him.
Duncan Hines rose to fame simply because he possessed human qualities many Americans wanted to see in their fellow man: character, uncompromising honesty, and integrity. For many Americans it was refreshing to find someone who had those traits. Because of the principled stance Hines took on restaurant sanitation and a whole range of other issues, Americans regarded his every word with the highest esteem; in their eyes, he was one who would never lie or deceive them. He was, they felt, one of their own and was looking after their interests. For this generation, if Duncan Hines said a particular restaurant meal made “a man wish for hollow legs,” it did. And there was no argument about it.
A final factor that contributed to the American reverence for what Duncan Hines had to say was his selflessness. It was widely known among the American public that Duncan Hines turned down fortune after fortune simply because he would not sacrifice his name for financial reward. The man who said “Every man has his price” never met Duncan Hines. Nothing could sway his opinion if he thought something under consideration was even remotely questionable. For a generation of Americans, the name Duncan Hines was, as someone once put it, “the next best thing to God.”
What follows is a little known chapter in the annals of America’s cultural history that has never before been adequately detailed. It is the story of an average man who came to America’s attention, was perceived by them as unusually trustworthy and who, because of that perception, became an American icon. Surprisingly, the public’s perception and the reality were nearly identical.
1
BOWLING GREEN
There is a cartoon from the 1940s that, at one time, was every restaurant owner’s nightmare. The scene is a dining room of a fancy four-star restaurant. A waiter has accidentally spilled an entire tray of food onto the head and lap of a nicely-attired customer. The customer, neatly dressed in his evening tuxedo, is trying to stifle his anger and frustration as a large lump of lasagna rolls off the side of his head. The man’s indignant wife says to the waiter in a calm, controlled, yet icy voice, “Just wait ‘till Duncan Hines hears about this!”1
This is the story of how such a potential nightmare came to be. It concerns a man with a penchant for excellence, primarily in matters of food, who raised both the standard of the nation’s restaurants and their customers’ eating habits by setting himself as an example of the ideal patron. In this role he exhorted his fellow Americans to demand, as he did, only the best from the nation’s public kitchens.
Duncan Hines’s constant search for excellent restaurants throughout America resulted in filtering out the multitude of poor and mediocre restaurants and directing attention to those truly worthy of consideration. Through his many guidebooks from 1936 to 1962 Duncan Hines favorably remarked on restaurants that were not only excellent but deserved celebration for the atmospheric and culinary enjoyment they afforded hungry and weary travelers. He made famous the restaurants that strove to put an appealing sparkle into their patron’s meals. These restaurants were not only exceptionally clean, they were also noted for their high quality food. He pointed Americans toward restaurants well worth time and trouble to discover, restaurants in out-of-the-way locales too good to pass up. A Duncan Hines recommended restaurant, most Americans believed, was one where taste buds could savor extraordinary culinary delights hardly found anywhere else. For twenty-seven years millions bought his books, took his advice, and were much wiser and happier for it. The words may not mean much today, but not long ago the phrase “Recommended by Duncan Hines” really meant something.
Duncan Hines’s story begins not in a restaurant but in the sleepy south-central Kentucky town of Bowling Green. Like many other families who settled in that area during the early part of the nineteenth century, Hines’s forebears were originally from Scotland and England. Edward Ludlow Hines, Duncan’s father, was born near Bowling Green on 5 November 1842. He was the third son of Fayette and Anne Cook Hines.2 It was often reported that Edward Hines was a former Confederate army captain, but in fact he never rose beyond the rank of lieutenant.3 Edward Hines enlisted in the Confederate Army at Camp Boone in Tennessee on 1 June 1861 and joined the 2nd Kentucky infantry under Col. Roger Hansen. He su
rrendered on 9 May 1865, as a member of Company E, the 9th Kentucky Cavalry under the command of William P. C. Breckinridge.4 During his four years of service he was never captured by enemy Union soldiers and was proud of it. Except for a short stay in the hospital, he never left his post.5 Edward Hines received several battle scars on his stomach as a result of his war service and this left his health in rather precarious shape. For the rest of his life, he had to take care that he did not over-exert himself and make his infirmity still more serious. As a result of this physical limitation, he never had anything resembling “nine-to-five” employment. The elder Hines’s war papers reveal the confession that he joined the Confederate States of America not because he had any particular love of the South or because he had any hatred for the North but rather because, not knowing anything about the people North of the Ohio River, he naturally considered them enemies who had a tendency to look down on him and his way of life. Class envy being qualification enough to participate in the nation’s most epic bloodbath, he went off to war at age twenty to battle the Yankee heathen upstarts.6
Hines’s mother, Eliza Cornelia Duncan, was born in Warren County, Kentucky, of which Bowling Green is the county seat, on 10 August 1846. She was the daughter of Joseph Dillard Duncan and Jane Covington Duncan. Eliza, known as Cornelia, was raised near Warren County’s Browning, Kentucky.7 The story of how Cornelia met her husband is an interesting one. During the Civil War Edward Hines was riding with some troops across a field and Cornelia, running an errand for her mother, was walking to a neighbor’s house. When Edward and his men came upon her and stopped her, he noticed the bottle of cordial she was holding in her hand. The bottle was destined for a neighbor’s mother who was ill. Edward asked her to hand it over, Cornelia refused. When he sternly repeated his demand, she persisted in her refusal, telling him the liquid was not intended for him or his troops but for a sick neighbor. When he realized she would not hand it over; he took his horse by the reins and proceeded down the road on horseback with his fellow soldiers-in-arms. As they rode away, he confided to one soldier that he was “going to come back some day and marry that girl.” And he did. After the war’s conclusion, and after a romantic courtship, Edward Ludlow Hines and Eliza Cornelia Duncan married at the residence of J. D. Duncan in Bowling Green, Kentucky8 on 11 November 1869.9 A reception in a house on College Street followed, and an account of the wedding was published in the local newspaper the following day.10
Before the Civil War and after, Edward Hines sporadically attended school at various locations in Warren County and eventually graduated from Bowling Green’s Warren College.11 A career in law interested him, but since Warren College did not grant law degrees, Hines most likely read law with a local attorney and passed a bar exam to obtain his law license. To support his wife and his budding family, he was appointed to several positions, one of them being the master commissioner and clerk of the Warren County Circuit Court, a position he held for several years.12
With the exception of his time as commissioner and clerk of the county court, Edward Hines seems to have never been employed at any job for any considerable length. This circumstance undoubtedly was due to the stomach wounds he received during the war and which gradually worsened with each passing decade. In fact, as he grew older, the wounds eventually led to the deterioration of his health. During the time he served in his capacity as the Warren County circuit court clerk, he continued to practice law, but because of the precarious state of his health, he never handled more than one case at a time.13
As an extracurricular avocation, Edward Hines was active with Warren County’s local Civil War Veterans group. When Jefferson Davis died in 1889, he wrote a letter to the local newspaper asserting what a fine and great man was the former President of the Confederacy.14 Hines was “an old time Democrat,”15 as was just about everyone from the South who fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War.16 He was widely regarded as an educated man by the community, and everyone knew, especially his family, of the high priority he put on reading. The elder Hines even wrote a few long, interesting treatises. One of these tracts was a combination biography and war memoir; another volume by his hand explicated his personal philosophy; still another told of his world and times. He also wrote many long, philosophical letters to members of his family.17 Edward Hines kept himself busy with one activity or another, especially when it involved Bowling Green. Regardless of his activities or whatever occupied his attention, this state of affairs remained in place until the late 1890s, when he retired to a home he had built at the mouth of the Gasper River, 10 miles northwest of Bowling Green in rural Warren County. It was in this idyllic spot that he spent his last years in comfortable contemplative isolation.18
The marriage of Edward and Cornelia Hines produced five sons and a daughter, plus four other siblings who died in infancy—not an uncommon occurrence in those days.19 Duncan Hines’s oldest brother, Hiram Markham Hines, was born 9 March 1871.20 As a young man Markham worked in Bowling Green for a time before moving out west. There are two theories as to why he left Kentucky. One is that he was always in poor health, and traveling west for any disorder, then as now, was the cure prescribed. The other theory was that he was engaged to a woman in Auburn, Kentucky, who died of typhoid fever; this incident left Markham a very sad young man, and he may have left after his loved one’s death. Regardless of the cause for departure, Markham’s act to leave Bowling Green in the late 1880s, set an example for his younger siblings, most of whom would follow in his footsteps to seek their fortune. While Markham spent his years on the western frontier, he wrote his father and siblings frequently, often detailing for them the outlaws he had seen and the adventures he had experienced. It was a thrill for his younger brothers and sister when the postman approached the house and handed them a letter containing new stories from the land beyond the Mississippi River. When news from Markham would arrive at the Duncan household, Joseph Duncan would reply to his grandson with a letter, often allowing little Duncan to scribble notes to his older brother at the bottom of the page. One cute surviving comment from Duncan, characteristic of a boy his age, had him asking his brother to shoot a jackrabbit for him. Very little is known about Markham Hines. He moved frequently, eventually returning to Bowling Green to enter the Spanish-American War of 1898. At the war’s conclusion, most of his time was spent caring for his aging and ailing father.21 His own health was in perilous shape as well, and at age 46 on 10 October 1917, Markham Hines died in his father’s home.22
A year after Markham’s birth, a second son was born to Edward and Cornelia Hines on 8 April 1872; unfortunately, the child died on 13 May. The boy was never named.23
Annie Duncan Hines, Edward and Cornelia’s only surviving daughter, was born on 5 April 1873. Following her mother’s death, she went to Frankfort to live with her uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Duncan; later she attended a finishing school for girls, the Ward Seminary in Nashville. She had many suitors but only one caught her attention, a young Bowling Green grocery merchant and distant cousin, Arthur Scott Hines. After a short courtship, they were married on 23 December 1896, in Nashville, Tennessee. Their union produced three children, two of whom bore the name Duncan. Throughout the years of their marriage, Annie and Scott Hines lived in two houses in Bowling Green, one on upper Main Street and one at 902 Elm Street; the latter residence would figure prominently in Duncan Hines’s later years. Scott Hines was a popular figure in Bowling Green, and was twice elected its mayor (1925-1929, 1941-1942). He died on 19 May 1942, and Annie followed his death with her own on 4 December 1951.24. Annie, as a sister, was protective of her brothers, but particularly of her younger brother, Duncan, and throughout her life showed much concern for his safety and welfare.25
Edward and Cornelia’s fourth child was named after his father. Edward Ramsey Hines was born on 14 November 1874. Like Markham, as soon as his education had been completed Ed Hines also pulled up stakes and journeyed westward. He first moved to Arizona in 1890 at the age of sixte
en, but prospects for a successful life there did not materialize as he had hoped, and he later returned to Bowling Green, where he accepted a job in the Warren County Court Clerk’s office under the supervision of Captain W. H. Edley. It was thought he would stay in this position, but, again like his brother, he was restless and was soon in search of another city to call home. He eventually settled in St. Louis, Missouri, where he became a legal adviser to the Railroad Terminal Association, a position he held until his death on 5 December 1935.26 At the time of his death, Ed Hines’s siblings had come to think of him as the most distinguished member of the clan. Ed had made a success of his life, and his brothers and sister were proud to claim him as one of their own.27
The fifth child from Edward and Cornelia’s marriage, a son, William Warner Hines, was born in Bowling Green on 23 December 1875. Warner, as he came to be known, attended local public schools, St. Columba Academy, and Ogden College before serving in the Spanish-American War as a member of Company B in the Third Volunteer Infantry. Warner and his brother Markham were one of eleven sets of brothers serving in Company B.28 After the war he married Martha Hampton Porter at her home on Upper State Street in Bowling Green on 7 October 1905.29 Although their marriage produced no children, they adopted a son, who was already named William.30
Warner Hines was engaged in many forms of employment over the years, most of them related to the insurance industry. He worked for the Lamar Life Insurance Company of Jackson, Mississippi, a real estate firm in New Orleans, as an investment broker in Lexington, Kentucky, and an outfit that sold oil in Texas.31 Later he moved to New York to work for another insurance company. In 1932, he moved from New York to Nashville where he became an executive with the Spur Oil Distributing Company, a company that owned a chain of gas stations throughout the South. Warner, a quiet, retiring Southerner, was now not far from his boyhood home, Nashville being only an hour’s drive away. After his retirement from the oil giant in 1944, Warner Hines returned to Bowling Green, where he lived out his remaining years.32 Warner had suffered from a heart ailment for years, and at 9:30 on Wednesday morning, 17 August 1948, a heart attack claimed his life. He was buried in Bowling Green alongside his brothers.33