For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

by Mark Pendergrast

  There was actually no immediate cause for concern, since the bill, even if passed by both houses, only made it possible for the Health Ministry to ban Coca-Cola. The lawsuit, which took years to drag through the courts, would at worst change the labeling. The moderate coalition government, led by Premier Georges Bidault, wasn’t eager to offend the Americans, who might cut off the financial spigot. Secretary of State Dean Acheson fired off a memo to David Bruce, the U.S. ambassador to France, asking him to inform Bidault that the State Department was “disturbed” by legislation that was “prejudicial to legitimate American interests,” asking Bruce to “emphasize unfavorable . . . U.S. public opinion” which would inevitably result. Bidault, anxious and conciliatory, assured the American ambassador that he wouldn’t stand for “discrimination against the product” and would prevent the Health Ministry from taking any adverse action. He was powerless, however, to control the Communist propaganda, which he described as “widespread and effective.”

  Acheson’s prediction of American outrage was accurate. Billy Rose banned French champagne from his New York nightclub. The New York Daily News suggested that “France would be smart to watch her chic little step. Should worse come to worst, we could lop off Marshall Plan aid.” The Philadelphia Inquirer commented that “this is worse than Marie Antoinette. The Commies won’t even let ’em drink Coke.” A Denver paper complained of the French habit of “snooting our beverages, soft and hard, as so much dishwater.”

  Atlanta’s mayor William B. Hartsfield, preparing for a European tour, declared his intention of bringing two cases of Coke along. “I’m going to offer myself as a living example of what happens to a lifetime drinker of Coca-Cola,” Hartsfield told reporters, though the dumpy, bespectacled politician may not have helped his cause once the French saw him. Georgia legislator Prince Preston read his concern into the Congressional Record, suggesting retaliatory laws again French wine, champagne, and perfume. It was ridiculous to pretend that Coca-Cola was a health hazard, since “doctors prescribe it for babies.” Besides, Preston said, the French were entirely too prissy. Drinking Coke would give them a much-needed “good belch.” James Farley described the French legislation as “the weirdest bit of political shenanigan I have ever encountered,” pointing out that “Coca-Cola was not injurious to the health of the American soldiers who liberated France from the Nazis. . . . Benevolent Uncle Sam, after his usual pause to refresh, may think this is one straw too much.”

  The French press jumped to the defense. Le Monde denounced “dangers that Coca-Cola represents for the health and civilization of France,” comparing the Company’s advertising with Nazi propaganda—both “intoxicated” the masses. “The moral landscape of France is at stake,” the paper concluded. French intellectual Raymond Aron foresaw the destruction of his culture, with “Coca-Cola substituted for the noblest product of the soil (I mean, of course, wine).” Some of the anti-American French statements were classic for their hyperbole: “The Yankee, more arrogant than the Nazi iconoclast, substitutes the machine for the poet, Coca-Cola for poetry.” A Frenchman at the zoo, watching a panther having diarrhea, told his son, “Voilà la production de Coca-Cola!” Encouraged, Communist deputy Gerard Duprat led a spontaneous seven-hour filibuster in the French Assembly, breaking out into impassioned oratory, waving his hands and decrying warmongers and Coca-Cola.

  Mobs overturned Coke trucks, the bottles broken and trampled as a brown stream fizzed into the gutters. At a French bicycle race sponsored by Coca-Cola, angry spectators protested by throwing debris on the track. The level of hysteria reached such a pitch that Alexander Makinsky’s wife feared the Communists might bomb their home. It was, Makinsky said, “McCarthyism in reverse,” philosophically commenting that “the best barometer of the relationship of the U.S. and any country is the way Coca-Cola is treated.” Time and patience, as Woodruff and his cronies knew, would ultimately solve their problems. In the meantime, they rushed to establish new bottlers throughout France as quickly as possible.

  Stephen Ladas, the Export Corporation’s trademark lawyer, writing in July of 1950, noted that “when Frenchmen place their millions into plants and factories and trucks, etc., they will see to it through their deputies and friends that any interference with their business is avoided.” The lawyer suggested signing bottling contracts with wine, beer, fruit juice, and soft drink interests. That way, he said, “we will bore into the enemy from within.” Ladas was correct. Through bottling contracts with Pernod and other French concerns, Coca-Cola won a few friends inside the country. In addition, a Parisian temperance leader favored the American drink, claiming that half of his countrymen were alcoholics. The Health Ministry never enforced the Boulet law, and the lawsuit was finally dropped in 1953.

  The French controversy may have helped rather than hindered Coca-Cola sales. “Probably no other product in the world,” observed one Company executive, “has received such an extensive amount of gratuitous editorial mention.” It was, as Milton Bellis, an American living in Paris, noted, “a press agent’s dream.” The Communists’ claim that Coca-Cola would poison innocent French men, women, and children with its mysterious 7X formula only piqued the native curiosity, rendering Coke “an enchanting, exotic temptation: THE FORBIDDEN DRINK!” Watching a belly dancer in a French dive redolent with hashish smoke, Bellis noticed that Coca-Cola constituted a third of the drinks. Makinsky, too, realized that the younger generation viewed Coke as an “emancipation” from parental authority.

  Nonetheless, the French fears of Coca-Cola’s domination of their country proved, at least in the short term, ill founded. For decades, the Gallic per capita consumption would lag behind most other countries. As one American journalist observed in 1950, “The Frenchman replace wine with a soft drink? Fantastic!” Not even Coca-Cola, he wrote, could “wean the Frenchman away from the grape.”

  AGITATION AROUND THE WORLD

  While the French uproar captured all the headlines, Coca-Cola faced similar threats and rumors at midcentury around the world, particularly in neighboring European nations.* In Italy, the Communists asserted that Coca-Cola turned hair white and caused the dread disease, Coca-colitis. “Tremble!” advised an Austrian newspaper. “Coca-Cola is on the march!” Alarmed Viennese were informed that the American soft drink company intended to market cuckoo clocks whose birds announced the hour by chirping, “Coca-Cola! Coca-Cola!” Another Communist-inspired story claimed that the huge Lambach bottling plant was actually manufacturing atomic bombs. Soviet guards in Austria clutched their stomachs, exclaiming “Coke nix gut, make kaput.” Belgian brewers urged their association to buy Coca-Cola franchises and then refuse to bottle the soft drink, which their Health Ministry declared a harmful laxative. In Morocco, Pepsi-wielding Francophiles attacked Coke drinkers, and vice versa, since Coca-Cola represented the independence movement. In Cyprus, vandals defaced Coca-Cola signs with the hammer and sickle. Even the British became concerned when a female Labour Party member vilified Coca-Cola in the House of Commons, asserting that her countrymen shouldn’t waste money on the American drink.

  In Switzerland, Company men waged a bitter battle against health legislation that would have prohibited the drink because of its phosphoric acid. As in other countries, the mineral water, fruit juice, and beer industries lobbied hard against Coca-Cola. Burke Nicholson Jr., the Coke executive sent to Switzerland to douse the flames, found that “we had some people who had talked rather big,” bragging of the advertising avalanche about to descend on the Alpine valleys. In reality, he said, the Coke business was a tiny infant. “It was like people climbing up on furniture and yelling ‘Snake! Snake!’ and a tiny little worm would come out.” The Defense Center Against Coca-Cola, which printed its own magazine and placed defamatory articles in other local media, initiated a well-coordinated Swiss campaign against Coca-Cola. While the Communist press was predictably rabid, the Defense Center material complained only of Coca-Cola’s “loud propaganda and the free distribution of products,” aggressive Ame
rican tactics “unknown in the Swiss sector of beverages.” Unless such promotions were stopped, Switzerland would become Americanized by Coca-Cola, ballpoint pens, and nylon stockings.

  Eventually, by maintaining a low profile, remaining patient, and promoting the drink more subtly, the Company prevailed. Coke’s public relations firm, Hill & Knowlton, arranged an “educational” tour of bottling plants for Swiss hairdressers and barbers, assuming that they gossiped with their customers. The Company sponsored a contest, consisting of carefully tailored queries about Coca-Cola—for example, Question: “For every Swiss franc spent on Coca-Cola, what percentage stays in the country?” Answer: “94.2%.” The winner, who just happened to be the son of a prominent Swiss brewer, received a free trip to the United States.

  In Germany, the brewers, winegrowers, and soft drink manufacturers formed the Coordination Office for German Beverages, which the Coca-Cola men saw as a “mastermind of conspiracy.” All of the familiar stories surfaced, along with a defamatory pamphlet entitled “Coca-Cola, Karl Marx, and the Imbecility of the Masses,” asserting that Coke, not religion, was the opiate of the people. Walter Oppenhoff finally convinced Pope Brock, the Company’s Atlanta general counsel, that he should sue for libel, and the German court ordered the campaign stopped.

  Coca-Cola’s battles against slanderous stories weren’t limited to Europe, however. Around the world, wherever the new drink appeared, so did outrageous rumors. In Egypt, Coke sales temporarily plummeted when a Muslim demagogue asserted that the drink was made with pig’s blood—not only disgusting but against his religion’s prohibition against pork. In the Philippines, word spread that Coca-Cola made teeth fall out and that a San Miguel Coke employee had fallen into a vat of syrup, the dissolved body adding flavor to the drink. Company men quickly started a counter-rumor: the story was true, but it was a Pepsi vat.

  In Japan, where Coke was only available to the U.S. military, the drink reputedly sterilized women. In Brazil, on the other hand, Coca-Cola supposedly caused cancer and rendered macho Latin men impotent—such a serious charge that Coke men, winking knowledgeably, whispered that the drink was an aphrodisiac. In fact, the negative stories often backfired on the drink’s opponents. An inadvertent message conveyed that the mysterious drink had strange and magical powers. Spontaneous myths surfaced in Barbados that Coke would turn copper to silver. In Haiti, an old woman was reportedly revived by the drink—long enough to rewrite her will to include her grandson, at any rate—and in Russia, women used smuggled syrup to smooth wrinkles.

  In Trinidad, however, the association of Coca-Cola with the American soldier hurt more than helped. Before World War II, native sentiment had favored an American takeover from the hated British, but, by the end of the war, locals were infuriated by American racism and conspicuous consumption. The song “Rum and Coca-Cola” originated in Trinidad and, with its bouncy Calypso beat, achieved enormous popularity in the United States. The lyrics, however, indicated the islanders’ bitterness. While the men got drunk on rum and Coca-Cola, “both mother and daughter” were “working for the Yankee dollar.”

  Coca-Cola, the overseas men soon learned, generally required repeated sampling before people found it palatable. Predisposed by Communist propaganda, first timers vied to outdo one another with disgusting similes to describe the taste. A Tokyo shoe-shine boy commented that it resembled dog medicine, while a Brazilian maintained it had the bouquet of a burnt comb. A poetic Irishman, thoughtfully swirling the liquid in his mouth, described the flavor as “foot’s asleep.” More graphically, Italians asserted that drinking Coca-Cola was like “sucking the leg of a recently massaged athlete.” One sentimental Japanese waitress, however, described it as “the sweet-and-bitter taste of first love.”

  Philosophical about the Communist antagonism, Woodruff said that it was natural for the Reds to resent Coca-Cola, since it was “the essence of capitalism.” Another executive explained that “with Coca-Cola, every shopkeeper makes a profit and becomes a member of the bourgeoisie. That’s why the Commies are anti-Coke.” In America, the Reds recognized a losing battle, advising fellow travelers that they shouldn’t antagonize the American proletariat by disparaging the workers’ drink. After a leftist meeting filled with valiant speeches against the imperialistic American beverage, Italian Communists retired to a cafe, where they all quaffed Coca-Cola. Even in France, one of the Communist deputies, holding up a half-empty Coke bottle, complained, “Isn’t it a tragedy? I drink it and I have to vote against it.”

  BLESS THIS BOTTLE, OH LORD

  Company men prudently adapted themselves to local cultures, particularly where religious leaders acknowledged the sacred nature of the drink. When Jim Farley attended the Cork, Ireland, plant opening, he prayed right along with the Catholic priest who blessed the plant. Similarly, nine orange-robed Hindu priests walking barefoot through the new Bangkok bottling plant sanctified it by dabbing gold paint on the equipment and workers’ foreheads. Coke officials made sure that governmental muftis officially announcing the month-long fast of Ramadan all held Coke bottles and that there were plenty of bottles to quench thirst after dark.

  Since “everybody is a customer for Coca-Cola,” explained a Company executive, “we just can’t be offensive and stay in business. We can’t offer a measure of hospitality with a drink and be inhospitable ourselves.” Consequently, Coca-Cola representatives were determinedly good-natured and malleable as long as people imbibed their brown liquid. They hoped to make Coca-Cola an “integral part of every community . . . woven into the pattern and customs of every land.”

  Devout Company men who had been trained never to dilute their drink with any other substance soon learned that, in the overseas business, it was best to look the other way. Signor Pretti told skeptical Italians, “Ah, but you must try Coca-Cola in the wine.” In the Caribbean, rum and Coca-Cola was known as a Cuba libre. In Bolivia, locals mixed the American soft drink with pisco, a native brandy, to produce a poncho negro. The Austrians liked it with schnapps, while the British diluted their beer with the soft drink. Filipinos mixed their Coke with a potent native corn liquor, selling the concoction in jelly jars. Finally, as the Cold War thawed somewhat at the Geneva Summit conference in 1955, some Soviets suggested mixing a “coexistence cocktail” of vodka and Coke.

  Once past initial resistance, Coca-Cola representatives pushed their product in every conceivable way, including Tasmanian car trials, Brazilian waiter races with open bottles, Peruvian home delivery, and a white South African anniversary celebration of the Zulu defeat. In some well-established overseas businesses, bottlers could act out what remained tantalizing fantasies for their American counterparts. In the Philippines, for instance, where the United States had dominated since military intervention at the turn of the century, refreshment stands and Coca-Cola coolers were routinely installed in schools, while Company men blanketed Manila with neon Coca-Cola signs and twenty-four-sheet posters. The worldwide signs looked nearly identical, since the Company inaugurated “pattern advertising,” using the same illustrations and message—all portraying middle-class white Americans.

  To combat allegations that the drink was a health hazard, the Company sponsored numerous sporting events, identifying Coke with robust bikers, soccer players, and boxers. At the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, Coca-Cola donated a cooler to the Russian compound, snapping photos of the Soviet athletes drinking the imperialistic American soda. Four years later, at the Melbourne Olympics, Russian and Czech participants downed 10,776 bottles of Coke—Company representatives, of course, keeping careful records of each Communist gulp.

  OUR LATIN AMERICAN NEIGHBORS

  During World War II, Coca-Cola had made substantial strides in South America, a major untapped market in the Western Hemisphere unaffected by the war overseas. After the war, business south of the border boomed, despite the widespread rumors about Coca-Cola’s health effects. As a counterpart to the European Marshall Plan, the World Bank, which emerged in the postwar world as another Americ
an-dominated institution, promoted projects in Latin America and worked sympathetically with Coca-Cola. Mladin Zarubica’s continuing saga illustrates the tight military/government/business network. Eugene Black, new head of the World Bank, was the former chief disbursement officer for the Army in Italy. Impressed with Zarubica’s handling of the huge Austrian Coke plant, Black asked Export president James Curtis if he could “borrow” the Coke man. Curtis was only too glad to comply, since Zarubica could perform double duty. While on salary from Citibank in Montevideo, he conducted surveys of potential bottling franchises, with the full knowledge of the bank. “Don’t forget that Coke was a major customer for Citibank,” Zarubica recalled years later. The detailed surveys covered every aspect of a territory, including age and sex distribution, natural resources, the water situation, cultural prejudices, available refrigeration, and weather.

  As a result of Zarubica’s surveys, Robert Woodruff’s nephew Morton Hodgson opened and operated a chain of South American bottling plants in Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. These plants were partially owned by the Joroberts Corporation, a syndicate of forty Augusta National Golf Club members put together by golfer/investor Bobby Jones and Cliff Roberts, a New York investment banker. Most members of the Georgia club were well-connected corporate giants who flew from New York for a few rounds of golf and business. Joroberts investors thus included the heads of U.S. Steel and General Motors.

  At the same time, Bill Bekker, a Dutchman who had pioneered the Italian and Spanish bottling industries, was establishing a Coca-Cola kingdom in Argentina, where he ruled with the same iron will exercised by Max Keith in Germany. An astute but stingy businessman, Bekker resented intrusion or advice from the New York Export office, simply throwing directives in the trash if he considered them nonsense. All who worked for Bekker lived in fear of his tread. Sweltering in cubbyhole offices above the bottling plant’s din, they worried about Bekker sneaking around to catch them goofing off. The great man himself had a red light outside his door that, when lit, indicated that he was deep in thought and not to be disturbed. He drove himself as hard as he did his employees, often working late into the night.