Of All the Gin Joints

by Mark Bailey

  Houseman, who had already coaxed Citizen Kane out of the impossibly besotted Herman J. Mankiewicz, was not fazed by the pronouncement. To seal the deal, the two men lunched at Perino’s, where Chandler downed three double martinis before the meal and three stingers after. Houseman would observe that his mood seemed much improved.

  And so for the final eight days of shooting, Chandler wrote from home. As planned, he was utterly ruined with booze every waking second. Because he ate no solid food—none—Paramount provided a doctor to inject glucose into his arm twice daily. He was also given six secretaries, working in three relays of two each, and a direct line both to Houseman’s office and the studio switchboard. Limousines were made to wait outside, ready to run pages to the set at a moment’s notice.

  In the end, the plan actually worked. The Blue Dahlia was completed on time. And while it was initially rejected by the Production Code for, among other things, excessive references to alcohol, it went on to earn Chandler an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. A real Hollywood ending.

  Except this was a noir drama, and so required a final twist. Houseman later discovered that Chandler hadn’t exactly been sober earlier in the shoot, as he’d claimed. In fact, he’d been on a binge since before The Blue Dahlia began and was having trouble even driving himself to the production lot. What had seemed like a heroic act of self-sacrifice—Chandler throwing himself off the wagon for the sake of art—was nothing more than an elaborate scam to stay home and get loaded. For Chandler it was all or nothing. Or, to hear one of his characters say it, “I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”

  HARD-BOILED DETECTIVES are a thirsty lot. Nick and Nora Charles of The Thin Man were Dashiell Hammett’s (and perhaps cinema’s) thirstiest. Still they brought a certain sophistication to their intoxication. As Nick famously said, “Always have rhythm in your shaking. Now a Manhattan you shake to fox-trot time, a Bronx to two-step time, and a dry martini you always shake to waltz time.” It was martinis they loved most.

  For Raymond Chandler, the detective was Philip Marlowe, played first by Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, then in later years by Robert Mitchum in Farewell, My Lovely, as well as by Elliott Gould in The Long Goodbye. In the latter, Marlowe says, “Alcohol is like love. The first kiss is magic, the second is intimate, the third is routine. After that you take the girl’s clothes off.” As for what kind of drink, Chandler himself tells us straight, “A real Gimlet is half gin and half Rose’s Lime Juice and nothing else. It beats martinis hollow.”

  It should be noted that The Long Goodbye (1973), directed by Robert Altman, was set twenty years after the novel was published. And yet Philip Marlowe remained true to form, even in by-then health-conscious Los Angeles: he smokes like a chimney, a cigarette always drooping from his lips; he’s a loner, disinterested in the hippies next door eating hash brownies and practicing tantric yoga. Marlowe is every bit the private dick; he even wears a jacket and tie and drives a 1948 Lincoln convertible. But Marlowe doesn’t drink gimlets. In fact, the one cocktail he orders is a Seven & Seven, truly a cocktail of the times. Easy to drink and impossible to screw up, one sip and you can taste the hard-boil softening.

  RAYMOND CHANDLER’S GIMLET

  1½ OZ. GIN

  1½ OZ. ROSE’S LIME JUICE

  Pour gin and lime juice into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes. Stir well. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Can also be served on the rocks in an Old-Fashioned glass.

  Chandler’s is not a bad recipe and certainly simple enough to make, but if too tart, change the ratio of gin/lime juice to 2/1. And add a lime wedge as garnish.

  SEVEN & SEVEN

  2 OZ. SEAGRAM’S SEVEN WHISKEY

  6–8 OZ. 7UP SODA

  LEMON WEDGE

  Pour Seagram’s Seven into a Collins glass filled with ice cubes. Fill remainder of glass with 7Up. Stir gently. Garnish with lemon wedge, if you wish.

  PERINO’S

  3927 WILSHIRE BLVD.

  4101 WILSHIRE BLVD.

  BACK IN 1925, NOBODY would have predicted that a young waiter named Alexander Perino, fired from his job at the Biltmore Hotel after dropping a tray of tea and crumpets, would become one of Los Angeles’s most successful restaurateurs. But in 1932, seven years later, his eatery would open and go on to become one of the city’s’ finest restaurants for the next half-century.

  One of the few Hollywood restaurants specializing in haute cuisine, the swank eatery drew such luminaries as Frank Sinatra, who occasionally played the Steinway in the bar, and Cole Porter, who once wrote a song on the back of a menu. Bette Davis had a booth permanently reserved in her honor; child-star Margaret O’Brien had a Shirley Temple–style cocktail named after her. Bugsy Siegel was a regular during the 1940s, and Richard Nixon celebrated the announcement of his trip to China with crab legs and a bottle of Château Lafite in 1971.

  Given Alexander Perino’s humble beginnings as a waiter, it should be no surprise that the service was impeccable. There was even a strict policy that dictated no member of the staff was allowed to wait on more than eight diners at a time.

  In 1950 the restaurant moved two blocks west, to a larger location designed by renowned architect Paul R. Williams (who also handled the expansion of Chasen’s). The result was described by a restaurant critic as “early thirties Grand Hotel.” The oval dining room boasted banquettes bathed in peach and pink. One of the chandeliers cost $150,000. Dessert carts were pure silver and dishes were stamped with the restaurant’s name on the bottom.

  Three decades later, around 1983, newspapers reported growing financial trouble at Perino’s. The newest owner in a long line, Frank Esgro had come in with a laundry list of bold ideas that were absolutely unnecessary. Esgro would open and close a lavish second location downtown (a loss of $7.5 million) and did things like advertising a new $12.50 Sunday buffet (the loss of dignity was incalculable.) But when Perino’s entered bankruptcy proceedings in January 1986, a court-appointed trustee revealed that he knew the real problem. “Too many waiters,” he told the Los Angeles Times.

  JOAN CRAWFORD

  1904–1977

  ACTRESS

  “If they want to see the girl next door, let them go next door.”

  Joan Crawford’s life encompassed several periods of fame/infamy: her early starlet years; her biting, witty cougar period; her brief blue-blood moment as the heir to the Pepsi fortune; and her posthumous reinvention (courtesy of her daughter Christina) as the worst mother in the lower forty-eight. The last phase, sadly, became the most enduring, thanks to camp biopic Mommie Dearest (1981) and its signature line: “No more wire hangers!” Born Lucille LeSueur in San Antonio, Crawford debuted on Broadway in 1924 and landed a contract with MGM later that year. Her stage name was chosen in a magazine contest sponsored by the studio. A constant presence in dance contests around Los Angeles throughout the late twenties, she would spend much of the next decade as one of the top box-office draws in Hollywood. Her best known early films are Grand Hotel (1932) and The Women (1939). By the early 1940s, however, she had come to be considered box-office poison. She scored several major comebacks: an Oscar-winning performance in Mildred Pierce (1945), the Academy-Award nominated Possessed (1947) and Sudden Fear (1952), and her unforgettable turn opposite longtime rival Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Crawford left Hollywood respected as a tireless professional and, despite a posthumous image as an abusive mother, remains one of the true stars of her time.

  THERE WOULD BE a few requests forthcoming, but know this: “Miss Crawford is a star in every sense of the word,” the document read. “You do not have to make empty gestures to prove to Miss Crawford that she is a star of the first magnitude.”

  In 1964, Joan Crawford’s film career had been sputtering for a couple of years. The brilliant Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was her last major role. She continued to work, but her recent movies had been campy horror thrillers
aiming to capitalize on Baby Jane. For one strange gig, she actually replaced her daughter Christina, thirty-five years her junior, on four episodes of a soap opera (The Secret Storm) while Christina was on sick leave. The event would make it into Mommie Dearest.

  And so, with her movie career stumbling toward self-parody, Crawford focused on her responsibilities as a global representative and board member of Pepsi Cola, the company at which her late husband, Alfred Steele, had climbed to the rank of CEO before his death in 1959. This meant a lot of traveling. And wherever Crawford went, she took “The Document” with her—a set of instructions sent to hotels in advance that outlined her demands as a privileged guest and her guidelines for hotel staff behavior.

  To wit: Ms. Crawford required a three-bedroom suite: one room for her, one for her personal maid, and one for her wardrobe. She required two rooms for the pilots of the Pepsi corporate jet. She required a uniformed security officer outside her suite twenty-four hours a day, someone “from Pinkerton or a similar organization”; city policemen and hotel detectives were unacceptable. And she required that the staff be prepared to handle twenty-eight pieces of luggage (not twenty-nine, not twenty-seven, but twenty-eight exactly). These twenty-eight pieces of luggage contained, among many other things, an ungodly number of shoes, several picnic hampers, a large supply of liquor, and an ax with a three-foot haft.

  * * *

  These twenty-eight pieces of luggage contained, among many other things, an ungodly number of shoes, several picnic hampers, a large supply of liquor, and an ax with a three-foot haft.

  * * *

  Try not to get hung up on the ax; notice instead the part where it says she traveled with her own supply of liquor. Was the idea that, out of discretion, Crawford brought her own booze with her? Apparently not, because “The Document” went on to outline her additional alcohol requirements: “Two fifths of Smirnoff 100-proof vodka. One fifth Old Forester bourbon. One fifth Chivas Regal scotch. One fifth Beefeater gin. And two bottles Moët & Chandon champagne.” And she would need a whole new set for each stop of her travels.

  After Steele’s death—especially during the filming of Baby Jane, when drinking was practically part of the production schedule—Crawford’s intake had reached new heights. And now it seemed she had figured out a way to put it all on the Pepsi tab. It worked for a solid decade, though not without ever-increasing protests from her husband’s replacement, Donald Kendall, whom she playfully nicknamed “Fang.”

  In 1970, on the exact day that Crawford reached the mandatory retirement age of 65, Fang announced her retirement. She would learn about it in what was an altogether different kind of document, the newspaper—it was the end of a remarkable run.

  ROMANOFF’S

  326 NORTH RODEO DR.

  140 SOUTH RODEO DR.

  240 SOUTH RODEO DR.

  WHEN EMPEROR MICHAEL ROMANOFF first arrived in Los Angeles, his royal bloodline was kept a secret. He was just the lowly grandson of British prime minister William Gladstone. Or so he told people. But at some point, Romanoff admitted the truth: he was, in fact, the nephew of Czar Nicholas II, an emperor by lineage, in hiding under a fake name by necessity.

  In short order, Romanoff became a trusted business partner and friend to some of the industry’s biggest players. But the peculiar thing about this arrangement was that every single one of his new and powerful friends also knew that he was a complete and utter fraud—that the Emperor was, in fact, a two-bit hustler with seventeen (known) aliases. And yet they still did business with the guy. It seemed to make no sense. Or did it?

  Born Hershel Geguzin (possibly) in Lithuania (or else Brooklyn), the future Michael Romanoff was such a notorious scam artist that the New Yorker had already published a five-part feature detailing his numerous schemes and fabrications before he had even arrived in Los Angeles. But everyone who met him in Hollywood found themselves in surprised agreement: Romanoff was a charming and worldly gentleman, never mind who he actually was.

  So when Romanoff set his sights on opening a restaurant in the heart of Beverly Hills, investors readily demonstrated their trust in his business savvy. Charlie Chaplin, Robert Benchley, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Darryl F. Zanuck, John Hay “Jock” Whitney—each ponied up $7,500 to the known con man. And Romanoff rewarded their trust not by absconding with their money, but by actually opening the restaurant, Romanoff’s, on Rodeo Drive—and turning it into one of the most successful and renowned eateries of all time.

  To discuss the food he served would be to miss the point entirely. Romanoff himself refused to pray at the altar of the celebrity chef or even acknowledge that it existed. “A restaurant,” he said, “is only as good as its owner’s personality.” He wanted people to pray at the altar of him. And soon enough, they did.

  Romanoff derived his power quite brilliantly—from the building’s floor plan. The front room was reserved for his most favored patrons, the best of the best. (Bogart practically took up residence.) And to get anywhere else in the building, you had to walk through this VIP room. Which meant that lesser celebrities (and all civilians) suffered the indignity of marching through the VIP room before being seated in the large, steerage-seeming dining room. It was excruciating. The worst part: If you walked through, you were forced to watch your more successful peers watching you. Try turning that into confidence back on set.

  The system gave Romanoff a perversely large amount of power in Hollywood. Not a businessman or army-general’s type of power, better: He created perceptions of status in an industry built on perception. Romanoff had, by force of will, built a tiny kingdom in which he became the actual emperor.

  And maybe this is what explains the town’s genuine affection for the man who’s real name was Hershel Geguzin; they understood his con in a deep and primal way. Just like a movie star, Emperor Romanoff was pursuing an exaggerated version of the American Dream, of the idea that a boy from the Ukraine whose highest previous station was pressing men’s pants could convince people that he was royalty, that he was an emperor—and then become one.

  BING CROSBY

  1903–1977

  SINGER AND ACTOR

  “When you can drink champagne from a cooler in your dressing room in the middle of the day, you’ve reached the pinnacle.”

  Considered one of the original “crooners” for his intimate, conversational singing style, Bing Crosby is rivaled only by Sinatra, Elvis, and the Beatles as the most successful pop singer of the twentieth century. He had an unprecedented run of forty-one chart-topping songs, including “White Christmas” (1942), which was for more than fifty years the best-selling single of all time. Crosby was the biggest box-office draw in the world from 1944 to 1948 and seventh highest-grossing movie star ever. He won four Academy Awards for Best Song and one for Best Actor (Going My Way, 1944; also nominated for its sequel, The Bells of St. Mary’s, the following year). The star or featured player of ten different radio series from 1929 to 1958, Crosby’s desire to prerecord his weekly Philco Radio Time series for ABC led to the development of reel-to-reel tape machines, revolutionizing the entertainment industry. (He was also indirectly responsible for the invention of the laugh track, about which the less said, the better.) Crosby gracefully adopted the role of elder statesman as television and rock and roll rose to prominence in the sixties and even won a Peabody Award for television contributions in 1970. His unlikely duet with David Bowie (“Little Drummer Boy”) aired on a Christmas special months after his death.

  THERE WAS A LOT riding on this, and Bing Crosby knew it. He’d just had a long, fruitless summer in Los Angeles. It was 1929, and Crosby and the other members of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra—twenty-four men in all—had lived comfortably in a specially built lodge on the back lot of Universal Studios, waiting to shoot a musical called The King of Jazz. Whiteman had even secured a fleet of Fords for the entire band, each with a spare tire cover emblazoned with the orchestra’s logo. Crosby picked a convertible.

  The summer was fun, but the s
cript was taking forever, so everyone split in August, having done exactly nothing. Now it was November 16, the Saturday after the first week of principal photography. Crosby went to the UCLA–St. Mary’s football game at the Coliseum, which UCLA lost 24–0. But Crosby was a St. Mary’s fan, so when the studio threw a party at the lodge that night, nobody had more to celebrate than he did.

  * * *

  Everyone knew Crosby had been drinking too much. He always did; Binge Crosby, they’d call him. Like clockwork, he’d be the most plastered guy after every show.

  * * *

  It wasn’t just the game, either; it was the movie, his career, everything. In addition to the numbers he was playing with his trio, the Rhythm Boys, he’d been given a solo vocal by Whiteman—the tune “Song of the Dawn.” His big break had finally come. All the twenty-six-year-old singer had to do was wake up Monday morning and grab the bull by the horns. And since he still had Sunday to recuperate, after the party, he volunteered to take a female guest back to her room at the Roosevelt Hotel.

  Everyone knew Crosby had been drinking too much. He always did; “Binge” Crosby, they’d call him. Like clockwork, he’d be the most plastered guy after every show. Later, after he became a household name, his ability to drink in moderation—or abstain altogether—led most to believe he didn’t have an alcohol problem. And likely he didn’t. But in the late twenties, everybody seemed certain of the opposite.

  Crosby and his unknown charge made it to the Roosevelt Hotel, but turning into the driveway, Crosby smashed into another car. Both he and his companion flew over the convertible’s windshield and onto the pavement. Crosby emerged shaken but unscathed. Later, he said that the girl just had cuts and scrapes, but several biographers claim that she was actually knocked unconscious. When the cops arrived, Crosby told them that another car had bumped him from behind. The only problem being, there was no other car. He spent the night in jail.