Thursday, June 28, 2012

Bookin' A Table At the Savoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rifhroClGI

First we need a little music, so go ahead and hit the play button. Don’t worry – you can read and listen at the same time. Jazz like this is as smooth as a gimlet.

Next we need a book. So – snap! – here’s a book! And not just any book either.

What we have on the screen is the crème de la crème of 20th century cocktail books written by Harry Craddock, head shaker at the bar of London’s elegant  Savoy Hotel. It’s still in print, but this particular one is Harry ‘s baby, a first edition from 1930. It may not look like it, but the Savoy Cocktail Book shines like the paint job on a 1930 Stuz-Bearcat ---- all metallic glitter and glam in gold, green and black. It’s so Deco it practically invented Deco. And guess what? I have TWO like copies. I knew I had one when we bought the collection by the lake in Cleveland, but the second one popped up out of a box like a rabbit from a hat.

So, now that we’ve got the music and the book we need some background.  To appreciate this book you have to know that it’s author was an American who is said to have mixed the last legal cocktail in New York the night before Prohibition kicked in. But the next morning Harry Craddock packed his bags and left in disgust for London – no backroom speakeasies for him - where he presided over the Savoy Bar from 1925 to 1939. By his own account he created 240 cocktails which may well be true considering that he has 104 containing the green siren song known as absinthe  in the book. But never mind absinthe or its spoons and sugar cubes. Harry’s signature drink was the White Lady.

So maybe we need one of those too. Okay, somebody run out and fetch some fresh lemons, Contreau, and dry gin and we’ll join the endless  stream of famous Savoy guests over the decades – George Gershwin, Noel Coward, Caruso, Charlie Chaplin, Judy Garland, Harry Truman, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and the Beatles, all raising  merry glasses of  toddies, flips, nogs, slings, highballs, fizzes, coolers, shrubs, rickeys, daisies, fixes, juleps and frappes many of which are still offered at the Savoy today. The book even offers recipes for non-imbibers in a section labeled Cocktails for a Prohibition Country. This sounds tame and IS  -- except of course for when it’s not.  Mixed in with the non-alcoholic recipes are such sly potables as the Oh Harry! which consists of one-third vermouth and 2/3 hooch whisky with a sugar cube soaked in raspberry syrup or granadine.

But enough about cocktails. There’s ART to be considered here! The book’s illustration and design, which provides most of the razzle-dazzle (though the chapter by the French novelist Collette on wine deserves a nod too) is the work of Gilbert Rumbold. You’d think that after this creation and The Wayside Book there would be more biographical data available on him, but I had to scrounge to find any and what I unearthed is not all that much. He did some advertising work for the automobile industry in addition to the books and at some point lost an arm in a train accident. By the 50’s it seems he was branded a neighborhood “character” who wandered around with his art supplies painting the environs and selling the finished works -- a sad ending for an artist who personified the feel of Art Deco. Take alook  at THIS and you’ll see what I mean about Deco …





Oh, and just so you know, the Savoy has at least one literary connection. It figured prominently in the trial of Oscar Wilde, as Wilde chose the hotel to conduct his infamous love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” for “homosexual offenses” and sent to Reading Gaol, a hard labor prison which later inspired his famous poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol. The edition below is from 1928.



Another sad story, but let’s not end on that note. Hit the button again and listen to Stompin’ at the Savoy. This time watch the video too!

3 comments:

Sundaymornancy said...

Count me in!
There's just something so festive about cocktails -- their names, their voodoo-like concoctions of ingredients, their vessels.
They appeal to the "life as it was meant to be lived" instinct in all of us.
In 1981, Larry and I stayed at the Strand Palace right across the street from the Savoy and saw Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap at the Savoy Theatre. We still have the hotel room key and a photo of the view from our room window, looking up the Strand toward St. Pauls. I think that qualifies me as a worthy recipient of a complimentary White Lady!

Anonymous said...

Quite a marvelous post today Tess. You amazed me on several different levels! Delightful music, writing, humor and knowledge. What a package!

tess said...

Thanks, guys! I had a blast doing it. Sorry it took me so long to post the comments, but I never got a notice from blogger and didn't know they were there until Nancy told me. How coo', Nancy, that you were there. Glad you both had fun with it.