Max "Bunny" Sparber

HOLLYWOOD sometimes has a reputation for ersatz glamor and phony class, which is a bit unfair. Sure, the town has produced it's share of junk, but it also can claim a real history of elegance and sophistication, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Horror actor Vincent Price, as an example, was a world-class art historian and collector, while Dragnet creator and star Jack Webb was a dyed-in-the-wool jazz fanatic; come to think of it, so is Clint Eastwood.

Hollywood also sometimes has a reputation for having a short memory, which is also unfair. Sit in on film pitches with even the tackiest filmmakers and you'll discover cineastes with an encyclopedic knowledge of classic film. But if Hollywood's memory is often long, it is also often shallow. People might be able to point out the former home of Errol Flynn, near Hollywood Boulevard, but they won't be able to point to the spot where the hot fudge sundae was invented, just a few blocks away. There's a lot of interesting snippets of history that get lost out there and are just waiting to be documented, from Hollywood's rather active garage band scene, which has almost completely been eclipsed by the popular folk rock pouring out of Laurel Canyon at the time, to Hollywood street gang problem in the 50s, which found teenagers battling out near Hollywood high with switchblades -- and some of these teens went on to be advisers on Rebel Without a Cause!

But this is the Bottle Gang, and so we'll take responsibility for the piece of history that concerns us -- namely, cocktails. Hollywood has produced a few classics and a few that have slipped into obscurity, all of which are worth revisiting and enjoying a new. And so we give you a drinker's tour of Hollywood, because there are few things you need more on the Boulevard of Broken Dreams than a good, stiff drink.

THE MOSCOW MULE: It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when vodka was virtually unknown in America, drunk almost exclusively by expatriates from Eastern Europe and Russia. When John G. Martin, who had purchased the recipe for Smirnoff vodka from distillers who had fled the October Revolution in Russia, attempted to market his liquor, he was met with such disinterest that he briefly began calling it "white whiskey" for sale in the south. Martin met with a fellow named Jack Morgan, proprietor of the Cock 'n' Bull saloon on Sunset Boulevard (9170 Sunset Boulevard, to be precise) in 1941, and Morgan had a similar problem -- he had produced quite a lot of ginger beer, and it wasn't selling well. The two decided to combine the ingredients and add lime, and a new cocktail was born, the Moscow Mule. Some stories place the actual birth of the beverage at New York's Chatham Hotel, but wherever it was born, it quickly became associated with the Cock 'n' Bull, and fast became a cocktail craze in Hollywood. As a result, vodka began to gain popularity in the US, and it is now the most popular liquor in the world.

The Moscow Mule is relatively easy to make, consisting of one part vodka, one part lime juice, 3 parts ginger beer, and a dash of Angostura bitters. Unfortunately, people get tripped up on the subject of ginger beer, believing they need a beer that is flavored with ginger (which actually exists, and can be found in some of the better liquor stores). In fact, Cock 'n' Bull's ginger beer was a soft drink, similar to ginger ale, but with a greater ginger "kick" to it, and can be hard to track down. If you're patient, you can order some online, and if you're crafty, you can make it yourself, but, however you go about it, the ginger beer is really he key to making a proper Moscow Mule. In a pinch, it can be made with ginger ale, but it won't have the intense ginger flavor of the original drink, and you're going to want to cut back on the lime, which will otherwise become quite predominant. Just mix the ingredients together and serve over ice; traditionally, the Mosocw Mule was served in a copper mug, and you can often find authentic Moscow Mule mugs on eBay. It's a terrific warm weather drink, especially since the copper mug keeps the cocktail especially cool.

THE MAI TAI: A New Orleanian named Ernest Raymond Beaumont Gantt is almost singlehandedly responsible for the Polynesian craze of the middle part of the 20th century. You know him better as Donn Beach, proprietor of Don the Beachcomber, a bar and restaurant that opened in 1931 in Hollywood and operated fr decades at 1727 North McCadden Place. Donn Beach personally invented hundreds of tropical cocktails, and we will detail two of them here. The first is the Mai Tai, and it's a tricky one to pin down, as a competitor also claims to be the inventor: Victor Jules Bergeron, Jr. of the Oakland-based Trader Vic's. (Donn Beach's recipe is said to date back 11 years before the Trader Vic version was invented.) The two men had significantly different recipes, and so we shall give you Donn Beach's here:

2 oz (or 1/4 cup) water
3/4 oz or 1-1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 oz or 2 tablespoons fresh grapefruit juice
1 oz or 2 tablespoons sugar syrup
1 oz or 2 tablespoons dark rum
1-1/2 oz or 3 tablespoons golden rum
1/2 oz or 1 tablespoon Cointreau or triple Sec
1/4 oz or 1/2 tablespoon Falernum syrup
2 dashes or scant 1/2 teaspoon Angostura bitters
1 dash or scant 1/4 teaspoon Pernod or other anisette-flavored pastis

Shake all the ingredients in a shaker with ice and strain into a tall highball glass filled with crushed ice. Garnish with fruits and serve with a straw.

Those determined to make this version might have trouble with one ingredient, Falernum syrup, which is a mix of almond, ginger and/or cloves, lime, and sometimes vanilla or allspice and is an essential of tropical drinks, but is not widely available for purchase. Better liquor stores may have the version that is manufactured by Fee Brothers, but your best bet is probably just to buy it online; it's also possible to make it for yourself.

As to where the name came from, well, that's a good question. Trader Vic tells of making the cocktail and giving it to Tahitian friends to taste, whereupon one of them called out "Maita'i roa!", meaning "It is good!" in Tahitian. And this story is plausible, but there is evidence that Donn Beach, who had originally called his drink "Original Beachcomber Rum Concoction," had changed it to Mai Tai on his menu before Trader Vic ever got around to making his.

Ultimately, the disputed origin doesn't really matter much. Donn Beach's Mai Tai is so different from Trader Vic's that it should be considered an entirely different cocktail that coincidentally has the same name, and Donn Beach's version is indisputably from Hollywood.

THE ZOMBIE: While Trader Vic and Donn Beach battled over who invented the Mai Tai, there is one concoction that is indisputably Beach's. We speak of the notorious Zombie, a drink so potent that when Beach first made the drink in the late 30s, he complained that the cocktail had left him feeling like a zombie all weekend, inadvertently giving the drink its name. Indeed, Beach's Zombie was so potent that his restaurant limited customers to purchasing two, and it's no wonder -- Donn Beach's cocktail contains three and a half times the amount of alcohol contained in a typical cocktail.

The trouble with the Zombie isn't its history, the trouble is in it's recipe. Specifically, the trouble is that Donn Beach was pretty cagey about his recipes, and often wouldn't even reveal them to his bartenders, instead simply premixing the drinks for them to pour. As the cocktail became popular, other Polynesian restaurants attempted their own version, and, in the end, the drink became diluted down to a fruity rum concotion, which is the fate of many tropical cocktails. Also, Donn Beach played with the recipe himself, and so there are several recipes that we know to be authentic, but all are slightly different. You read about these recipes in the recently released Sippin' Safari by Jeff "Beachbum" Berry, and, if the mood strikes you, experiment with them -- all are delicious. In the meanwhile, we'll give you one to start with that was written down by Donn Beach himself in 1950:

1oz unsweetened pineapple juice
1 oz fresh lemon juice
1 oz fresh lime juice
1 oz passion fruit syrup
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1 dash Angostura biters
1 oz gold Puerto Rican rum
1 oz 151 proof Demerara rum
1 oz white Puerto Rican rum

Dissolve the brown sugar in the lemon juice. Combine it with everything else in a cocktail shaker with crushed ice. Shake well, and pour it all into a collins glass. Garnish with a mint sprig.

THE EMBASSY COCKTAIL AND SATAN'S WHISKERS: There's a lot of history on Hollywood Boulevard. The addresses 6765-6773, as an example, once held the Embassy Club, a private club-cum-speakeasy that catered to the stars of the silver screen with a sort of glamor only seen in the movies -- and no wonder, as it's interior was credited as being designed by the same man who would later design the sets for Casablanca, presumably George James Hopkins. This club produced two cocktails that are still with us. The first, named after the club, is almost identical to the Boston Sidecar, but for the amounts of liquor -- this is somewhat lighter on the rum and somewhat heavier on everything else, and includes a dash of bitters, which is never a bad idea.

3/4 oz. brandy
3/4 oz. Cointreau
3/4 oz. Jamaican rum
Juice of 1 lime, strained
Dash of Angostura bitters

Combine ingredients in a cocktail shaker with cracked ice. Shake well, strain into a chilled cocktail glass and garnish with a twist of lime.

The Embassy Club also gave us the wonderfully named Satan's Whiskers, which is a bit like a Perfect Martini mixed with orange.

1/2 oz. gin
1/2 oz. dry vermouth
1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
1/2 oz. orange juice
2 teaspoons Grand Marnier
1 teaspoon orange bitters

Shake with ice and strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with orange twist.

There is also a version of this that is called "curled," and substitutes orange Curacao for Grand Marnier, but, as the book Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails points out, it's hard to get a decent orange Curacao and the better versions can be dauntingly expensive. Orange bitters used to be impossible to find as well, but now most good liquor stores will stock the Fee Brothers version, and it is increasingly easy to get the Angostura version, which I hear is quite good.

HI HO COCKTAIL, THE LOS ANGELES COCKTAIL, AND THE MARLENE DIETRICH: There's not much available online about Hollywood's Hi Ho Club, except that it was a popular club in the 1940s and managed to introduce an astounding three cocktails to the American public. It's signature drink, the Hi Ho Cocktail, is an interesting variation of the classic martini, but substitutes white port for vermouth. The drink was originally made with Old Tom Dry Gin, which was a lightly sweetened gin that is now all but extinct. Hayman's distillery reportedly produces some, but you may be best off just using London dry gin and adding a dash of simple sugar.

2 oz gin
1 oz white port
4 dashes orange bitters
Lemon peel for garnish

Shake the gin, white port, and bitters with ice; then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.

The next cocktail from the club is named after Los Angeles itself, and so it's a bit surprisingly that it has become almost completely obscure. I suspect it's because the drink calls for one whole egg, an ingredient that still causes bartenders to fly into a panic.

1 1/2 oz blended whiskey
1/4 oz sweet vermouth
juice of 1/2 lemons
1 tsp powdered sugar
1 whole egg

Shake all ingredients with ice, strain into a whiskey sour glass, and serve.

This cocktail can also be made with rye whiskey, for those with bolder palates.

The final cocktail takes its name from one of Hollywood's great stars, a naming tradition that produced any number of undistinguished cocktails and specialty sandwiches. But the mix of whiskey and citrus here is a pleasant one, and the addition of bitters undercuts the sweetness of the drink while adding a touch of complexity.

2 ounces Canadian whiskey
1/2 ounce orange Curacao
3 dashes Angostura Bitters
1 wedge lemon
1 wedge orange

Shake well with ice and strain into a rocks glass filled with ice. Squeeze lemon and orange wedges into drink and drop them in.

We would be remiss in making this list if we didn't include the classic non-alcoholic cocktail that came out of Hollywood, the Shirley Temple, whose origin is supposed to be at Chasen's Restaurant in Beverly Hills, although the Royal Hawaiian Hotel at Waikiki in Honolulu, Hawaii, also claims to have invented it. The drink was reportedly invented for the child actor Shirley Temple, and originally called for The original drink contains two parts ginger ale, one part orange juice, and a small splash of grenadine; nowadays the orange juice is almost always omitted, which is too bad. The cocktail can also be made alcoholic with the addition of a shot of Johnny Walker Black. Rather hilariously, this drink is called the Shirley Temple Black, which was the actress's name after she married.

More Bottle Gang!