Ten Fun Things I Learned about Prohibition Cocktails: Guest Post by Susanna Calkins

Susanna Calkins:
Ten fun things I learned about Prohibition cocktails when writing my new series

When I first started writing my new series, The Speakeasy Murders, set in 1920s Chicago, I knew I was going to have to start doing some cocktail research. I didn’t know much about cocktails other that they pre-dated Prohibition, but became popular in the 1920s. I also knew that juices, sugar, honey, fruits, spices, herbs, and eggs were all added to different liquors to mask the terrible taste of the swill they were imbibing.

So as any good writer would do, I thought I should do authentic research on cocktails. And how better to do this than vowing to try one hundred Prohibition-era cocktails by the time my book came out. Gin Rickeys, Bees’ Knees, Aviations, Gin Blossoms...I was ready! But, I got through about 35 concoctions and hit the absinthe-based ones and I basically gave up on that ridiculous quest. So instead I turned to 1920s-era newspapers, where I learned ten intriguing things about Prohibition-era cocktails:

1. Cocktails make women too masculine! Early on in the Prohibition, women were warned to “shun liquor or have beards.” By 1923, there was a sense among some scientists that “the number of women having slight growths of hair on their lips and chins has increased 10 per cent....The opinion of the majority is that the increasing masculinism [sic] of modern women is making them like men.” Right! Blame the cocktail for social change.

2. Fresh air and a new hat are the only cocktails women need! Contemporary syndicated columnist Antoinette Donnelly wrote regular features on health and beauty, with headlines like: “Imbibe plenty of fresh air cocktails,” “Cosmetics act as mental cocktail to lots of people,” and my favorite, “A new hat is often just the cocktail a weary girl needs.” Why have real cocktails (which will only make you masculine), when you can be rejuvenated by your own beauty or a walk in the park?

3. Children will be damaged if they witness parent’s “Whoopie” (cocktail drinking)! Paraphrasing an expert on parents and children, the Chicago Daily Tribune wrote in 1929: “The child, no matter how young, knows it when the parents have gone to cocktail parties and such.” Way to blame the parents!

4. Cocktails can test true love! Throughout the decade, important questions about cocktails regularly appeared in the advice columns. After Doris Blake posed to her readers, “Is it so clever for girls living in an apartment to keep a gin cupboard stocked for “callers?” Two young women explained, rather wisely, that “If you want to find out what stuff friends are made of, put them on a dry evening. The good ones will stick, but watch the rest flee.” Greater wisdom just cannot be found.

5. Cocktail shakers banned from the movies! In 1927, Will H. Hayes, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Exhibitors’ Association of America, proclaimed that “no picture will thereby be allowed to enter any shot of drinking scenes, manufacture or sale of liquor, or undue effects of liquor, which are not necessary parts of the story.” Clearly just the sight of a cocktail shaker could drive a person to drink. And distribute. And sell.

6. Cocktails cause death! For the first seven years of Prohibition, it was common for people to illegally re-distill woodgrain alcohol (methanol intended for industrial purposes), making it reasonably palatable. Though drug stores carried signs warning people not to drink woodgrain alcohol, they also posted signs above emetics in case someone did anyway. So there were occasional deaths from “bad hooch,” which people seemed to take in stride. This attitude changed in 1927, however, when the U.S. government created a new formula for industrial alcohol, seeking to deliberately denature the alcohol with a new chemical formula that basically doubled the poison in the substance. Massive fatalities resulted from the poisoned hooch over the next few years, with 33 people dying in 3 days in New York in 1928, but the formula wasn’t changed. The U.S. government was essentially condoning and supporting murder.

7. Cocktails bring about “war on chemists!” In 1927, soon after the U.S. government made the change to the woodgrain alcohol mentioned above, Prohibition agents (“Drys”) began to target chemists who were aiding and abetting bootleggers. As the Acting Prohibition Commissioner explained, “We have found that some of the chemists derive much of their income from the practice of testing liquor for the bootleg trade.” Essentially, they would rather people die than be allowed to test the alcohol for poison.

8. Cocktails cause another Great War! For years, the European elite spoke disdainfully of cocktails, most likely alarmed by the pernicious spread of the “cocktail disease from America” through the continent. As one famed French columnist noted, “These drinks have aromas like that of old vegetables, cheese boxes, etc. that are displayed in the refuse cans on a Paris morning.” But in 1928 a number of newspapers across Italy wrote simultaneous condemnations of cocktails, which may have been more of a comment on Mussolini’s hold on the press, than actual refutation of the drink.

9. Cocktail-related items made great gifts! In 1928, newsmen across New York noted how the new dry laws had caused stores to fill their windows with “Prohibition by-products,” just in time for the Christmas holiday. The “thirsty-minded” were enticed to buy such things as automatic cocktail shakers, collapsible spoons, funnels, corkscrews, liquor testing devices, “leather encased hip flasks to survive a taxi crash,” and travelling bags fitted up like a miniature bar. Shoppers could also buy supplies to make their own hooch, including hops, grapes, and barrels. They could even buy tailored clothes with hidden pockets for their flasks. Who doesn’t need a collapsible spoon?

10. Oh, and the cocktail napkin was invented in the 1920s. No one seems to know when or why, but I’m assuming they needed something to spit their drinks into when the rotgut overran the juices and sugars. 

***

Susanna Calkins, author of The Speakeasy Murders and award-winning Lucy Campion historical series, holds a PhD in history and teaches at the college level. Her historical mysteries have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark and Agatha awards, among many others, and The Masque of a Murderer received a Macavity. Originally from Philadelphia, Calkins now lives in the Chicago area with her husband and two sons. Learn more at http://www.susannacalkins.com/.

Research - Enough vs Too Much? Guest post by Terrence McCauley

Terrence McCauley is an award-winning writer of crime fiction. His first techno-thriller, SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL, was published by Polis Books in July 2015. Polis also reissued Terrence's first two novels set in 1930 New York City – PROHIBITION and SLOW BURN. In 2016, Down and Out Books also published Terrence's World War I novella - THE DEVIL DOGS OF BELLEAU WOOD. Proceeds from sales go directly to benefit the Semper Fi Fund. Terrence has had short stories featured in Thuglit, Spintetingler Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Big Pulp and other publications. He is a member of Mystery Writers of America, the International Thriller Writers, and the International Crime Writers Association. A proud native of The Bronx, NY, he is currently writing his next work of fiction.

Terrence McCauley:

Research – Enough vs. Too Much?

Whether you’re writing a period piece or a techno-thriller set in modern day, research plays an important role in the believability of your work. However, one must strike a balance between just enough research and too much. Easier said than done.

If you don’t do enough research – particularly in a period piece – your work will come off as flat and unbelievable. Readers love to pick nits and they’re entitled to so. After all, they’ve paid good money for your work and deserve to have a decent product. They’ll gladly call out a writer who has made even the slightest mistake. Describing a ’69 Mustang in a story set in ’65. A phrase used in an era before it was invented. A battle that took place in the summer of 1918, not in the fall. A misused police term in a procedural. You get the idea.

A writer can also run the risk of being too meticulous in their research as well. They can get paralyzed by details to the point where their work comes off as expository, more white paper than novel. This can be a time-consuming process that takes the writer away from physically working on their story. It can also weigh down the story with too many juicy tidbits dug up in research that risks boring the reader and allowing them to drift. Tom Clancy and Dan Brown come to mind as examples of this kind of problem. Both writers are/were very successful, but both tend to dump a tremendous amount of information on the reader’s heads in the course of a novel. Acronyms and factoids and protocols and history. It might be incredibly interesting to the author, but will the reader care? Even if such details do play an important role in the overall plot, are you risking losing reader interest by introducing too many facts? Will they even get the plot twist if it’s buried too deeply within the details?

I’ve had the good fortune to have published novels and short stories in several genres. PROHIBITION and SLOW BURN were both set in 1930s New York City. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and A MURDER OF CROWS are techno-thrillers set in modern day New York and London. Although all four novels are told in the same thematic universe and are all related, the 1930s were a much different era than the digital age of today. How did I do it?

By doing enough research to be dangerous, not deadly. While I was working on a novel years ago, I was struggling with the problem of putting in too much information as opposed to not enough. My mentor, Wesley Gibson, gave me the best writing advice I’ve ever received: you’re writing a novel, not a text book. Show me enough detail to frame the story, then concentrate on the story itself.

That advice has served me well in the years since. In PROHIBITION, I wrote about gangsters and political bosses that were inspired by real people and events I had uncovered in my research, but not to the point where you felt like you were reading about a James Cagney character. I made sure I stayed away from referencing well-known mobsters like Al Capone and Lucky Lucciano. You mention one of them in a story and you’re playing with fire. So many people know so much about their lives that one mistake will lose a discerning reader. In SLOW BURN, I wrote about a murder-kidnapping case set in 1930s New York. I asked a couple of police officers I know to read it and see if I made any mistakes. They liked it because I didn’t dwell on enough facts to make them say a particular event or method was impossible. I didn’t have to attend an autopsy to convey the sense of a crime scene. I kept it general and let the characters tell the story.

In SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL and A MURDER OF CROWS, I had the benefit of being able to read about technology revealed by recent whistleblowers like Edward Snowden and others. I learned about technology and capabilities that I didn’t know existed before, but I didn’t use them to tell my story for me. These facts were important ways to move the plot along and make it interesting, but not to the point where I leaned on them too much. I knew readers cared about details, but they care about characters more.

Balance is important, both in life and in doing research for a writing project. The reader expects the writer to know what they’re talking about. But the reader shouldn’t be bored in the process. Large chunks of expository paragraphs tend to turn a reader off, but hints of facts sprinkled in through the story will create a nice pace that will keep the writer at the keyboard and the reader turning the page.

*****
About A MURDER OF CROWS

For years, every intelligence agency in the world has been chasing the elusive terrorist known only as The Moroccan. But when James Hicks and his clandestine group known as the University thwart a bio-terror attack against New York City and capture The Moroccan, they find themselves in the crosshairs of their own intelligence community.

The CIA, NSA, DIA and the Mossad are still hunting for for The Moroccan and will stop at nothing to get him. Hicks must find a way to keep the other agencies at bay while he tries to break The terrorist and uncover what else he is planning.

When he ultimately surrenders information that leads to the most wanted terrorist in the world, Hicks and his team find themselves in a strange new world where allies become enemies, enemies become allies and the fate of the University - perhaps even the Western world - may hang in the balance.

Can Hicks and the University survive an onslaught from A MURDER OF CROWS?