Book Read Free

Duncan Hines

Page 32

by Louis Hatchett


  350 It was located in Nashville on 8th Avenue South.

  351 Williams, 31 March 1995.

  352 Moore, 31 August 1994.

  353 Interview with Sara Jane Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  354 Spiller, 10 May 1994; Moore, 31 August 1994.

  355 Chicago Daily News, 14 April 1940.

  356 Nashville Banner, 15 May 1940. At the time of this review, Adventures in Good Eating was in its seventh edition and Lodging for a Night was in its third.

  357 Spiller, 16 August 1993 and 10 May 1994.

  358 Frank J. Taylor, “America’s Gastronomic Guide,” Scribner’s Commentator 10/6 (June 1941): 15. In 1940 the only notable lodging in Bowling Green was the Helm Hotel.

  359 Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  360 Spiller, 16 August 1993 and 10 May 1994.

  361 One of the newest members of Hines’s household was a large Doberman named Bruno. The dog viciously snarled at every stranger he met at the door until Hines told him to stop. No one liked Bruno, except Hines. The dog’s behavior terrified the members of Hines’s immediate family. Bruno was, by all accounts, afraid of nothing; the dog possessed a natural assurance that the world should and would obey his every command. The world was his to do with as he pleased. One day Bruno gave this assumption the ultimate test. According to family members, the dog wandered onto the nearby railroad track, stepped before an approaching locomotive, ordered the gargantuan, onrushing machinery to stop—and was shocked when it did not. As a result of this miscalculation, Bruno was evenly spread across the train track for the next quarter-mile. Interview with Duncan Welch, 7 March 1995.

  362 Later Davis became both a Kentucky state legislator and an undergraduate dean of two colleges.

  363 Interview with Paul Ford Davis, 9 April 1993.

  364 By the time the guidebooks ceased publication in 1962, the total number of restaurants and lodgings had increased to approximately 9,000 listings.

  365 Davis, 9 April 1993.

  366 A country ham generally weighs between 15-20 lbs. and Hines made $15-$20 each time he sold one.

  367 Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  368 Davis, 9 April 1993; Spiller, 10 May 1994.

  369 Interview with Robert Wright, 25 May 1994.

  370 Davis, 9 April 1993.

  371 Duncan Hines to A.C. Roberts, 23 December 1946.

  372 Davis, 9 April 1993.

  373 Wright, 25 May 1994.

  374 The dinners were usually held at Chicago’s Sheraton Hotel at 505 North Michigan Avenue; the event was usually held on a Tuesday in either March or May, but at the first dinner in 1941 it was held in October.

  375 Duncan Hines speech at Duncan Hines Family Dinner, Chicago IL, 7 October 1941, 1-8.

  376 Duncan Hines, speech for Regional Meetings of Listed Places, June 1942.

  377 Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  378 In 1948 Hines published Duncan Hines’ Vacation Guide; pine green was the color he assigned to both book and rental signs.

  379 Ibid.; Duncan Hines speech before Regional Meetings of Listed Places, June 1942.

  380 Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  381 Courier-Journal (Louisville KY), 16 April 1941.

  382 Frank J. Taylor, “America’s Gastronomic Guide,” Scribner’s Commentator, vol. 10, no 6 (June 1941), p. 13.

  383 Taylor, “America’s Gastronomic Guide,” 16.

  384 Ibid., 17.

  385 Ibid., 17-18.

  386 Courier-Journal (Louisville KY), 16 April 1941.

  387 MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 80.

  388 Interview with Cora Jane Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  389 MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 80. That comment was made in 1938. Some people have argued that, despite the passage of over six decades, nothing has changed.

  390 David M. Schwartz, “Duncan Hines: He Made Gastronomes Out of Motorists,” Smithsonian 15 (November 1984): 92.

  391 Paddleford, “60,000 Miles of Eating,” 12.

  392 Hines, Adventures in Good Eating, 296.

  393 Paddleford, “60,000 Miles of Eating,” 12.

  394 Interview with Cora Jane Spiller, 16 August 1993 and 10 May 1994.

  395 Undated Philadelphia newspaper clipping.

  396 MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 84.

  397 Park City Daily News, 1 December 1945.

  398 MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 84.

  399 Ibid., 84.

  400 Ibid., 82.

  401 Duncan Hines speech at Regional Meeting of Listed Places, June 1942.

  402 Interview with Cora Jane Spiller, 10 May 1994.

  403 Anna Rothe, ed., Current Biography 1946 (New York: H. W. Wilson Company, 1946) 259.

  404 Duncan Hines speech for Regional Meetings of Listed Places, June 1942.

  405 Duncan Hines testimony given before the Ohio State Health Commissioner’ Conference, Columbus OH, 24 September 1942.

  406 Duncan Hines Rotary Club speech, Cave City KY, 18 August 1943.

  407 Park City Daily News, 29 September 1943.

  408 Duncan Hines to members of Duncan Hines Family, 15 February 1943.

  409 Interview with Sara Jane Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  410 Press release, “History of the School of Hotel Administration,” Cornell University, 3.

  411 In a letter to Robert V. Menifee, dated 16 November 1949, Hines insisted that he never profited from his company beyond expenses. He wrote that he gave “the entire capital stock of [Adventures in Good Eating, Inc.]…to the Duncan Hines Foundation, which is an irrevocable trust…. The foundation receives all the dividends. I personally do not participate.”

  412 “As Duncan Hines Sees It,” Table Topics 7/4 (July 1944): 1-2.

  413 Duncan Hines speech at Duncan Hines Family Dinner, Chicago, Illinois, October 1945.

  414 Marion Edwards, “They Live to Eat,” Better Homes and Gardens 23/3 (March 1945): 31. It was at this time that Hines also began including in his guidebooks eating and lodging accommodations in the American territories of Alaska and Hawaii, as well as Mexico and Canada.

  415 Park City Daily News, 11 December 1945.

  416 Edwards, “They Live to Eat,” 30.

  417 Ibid., 30-31.

  418 Ibid., 31.

  419 Ibid., 70.

  420 Hines, 30 August 1993.

  421 Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  422 Park City Daily News, 6 December 1945.

  423 Interview with Edward Beebe, 7 March 1995.

  424 Death certificate of Emelie Tolman Hines, 9 November 1986. She died at the Manor Care retirement home in Boynton Beach, Florida. She was buried in Lakeworth, Florida.

  425 Interview with Cora Jane Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  426 Ibid., 10 May 1994.

  427 Ibid., 16 August 1993.

  428 Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  429 Park City Daily News, 5 October 1944.

  430 Interview with Robert Wright, 23 May 1995. While published accounts claim her mother died in 1905, Wright believes the mother of his half-sister, Clara, died in 1907.

  431 Spiller, 10 May 1994; Wright, 25 May 1994.

  432 Her father was Cumberland College’s first academic dean.

  433 Telephone interview with Charles Shackelford, Cumberland College, Williamsburg, Kentucky, 23 May 1995.

  434 Courier-Journal (Louisville KY), 9 August 1983.

  435 The Talisman, Western Kentucky Normal School, 1930, 21; 1931, 23; 1932, 17.

  436 Courier-Journal, 9 August 1983.

  437 Park City Daily News, 5 October 1944. Clarence Nahm was buried in a family plot in Louisville’s Adath Israel cemetery.

  438 Warren County, Kentucky Marriages (1918-1965), Groom’s List, A-J 1 (Bowling Green KY): 1992.

  439 Spiller, 10 May 1994.

  440 Ibid., 16 August 1993.

  441 Park City Daily News, 16 March 1959.

  442 Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  443 Clementine Paddleford, “60,000, Miles of Eating,” This Week Magazine (12 January 1947):
12.

  444 Phyllis Larsh, “Duncan Hines,” Life 21/2 (8 July 1946): 17.

  445 Courier-Journaly 9 August 1983.

  446 Wright, 25 May 1994.

  447 Duncan Hines, Adventures in Good Eating, (Bowling Green KY: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1946) xvi-xix. In this latest edition he also listed 173 dinner detectives.

  448 Duncan Hines to J. A. Frohock, 11 December 1942.

  449 Duncan Hines speech, 29 March 1946, 3.

  450 Larsh, “Duncan Hines,” Life, 16-17.

  451 Ibid. Mrs. McKay told Life she knew better than to offer Hines a free meal or to serve him large portions; nor did he want special treatment. He preferred to be served like any other.

  452 Ibid., 16.

  453 Ibid., 17.

  454 Spiller, 16 August 1993.

  455 Park City Daily Newsy 29 September 1946.

  456 Clementine Paddleford, “60,000 Miles of Eating,” 10-11.

  457 This was an exaggeration, but if stretching the truth led to cleaner restaurants, so much the better.

  458 Paddleford, “60,000 Miles of Eating,” 12.

  459 Duncan Hines, “How to Find a Decent Meal,” Saturday Evening Post (26 April 1947): 99.

  460 Paddleford, “60,000 Miles of Eating,” 10-11.

  461 Herald-Tribune (New York), 12 May 1947.

  462 Hines, “How to Find a Decent Meal,” 18.

  463 Ibid., 18-19.

  464 Ibid., 19.

  465 Ibid., 97.

  466 Duncan Hines speech, December 1947, 6.

  467 Ibid., 100.

  468 Frank J. Taylor, “America’s Gastronomic Guide,” Scribner’s Commentator 10/6 (June 1941): 16.

  469 To better appreciate the changes that swept through the emerging motel industry between 1940 and 1960, consult Warren James Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel, 1910-1945 (Cambridge and London: MIT Press, 1979).

  470 Duncan Hines, Lodging for a Night 23rd ed. (Bowling Green KY: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1947) ix.

  471 Belasco, Americans on the Road: From Autocamp to Motel 1910-1945, 170.

  472 Interview with Cora Jane Spiller, 10 May 1994.

  473 Duncan Hines, “How to Find a Decent Meal,” Saturday Evening Post (26 April 1947): 100.

  474 Ibid., 102.

  475 Ibid.; Spiller, 10 May 1994.

  476 Hines, Adventures in Good Eating 17th ed., 111.

  477 Ibid., 295.

  478 Ibid., 107.

  479 Ibid., 224.

  480 Ibid., 254.

  481 Ibid., 70.

  482 Park City Daily News, 4 September 1947.

  483 Carol Lynn Gilmer, “Duncan Hines: Adventurer in Good Eating,” Coronet 23/1 (November 1947): 100-101.

  484 Horace Sutton, “The Wayfarer’s Guardian Angel,” Saturday Review of Literature 31/27 (November 1948): 38.

  485 Gilmer, “Adventurer in Good Eating,” 104.

  486 Ibid., 102-104.

  487 Ibid., 104.

  488 Ibid., 104-105. Coronet magazine also reported Hines had been involved in two lawsuits during his career. One from 1940 involved a man named Carl A. Barrett, who had published a restaurant guide, portions of which had obviously been lifted from Adventures in Good Eating. Hines proved plagiarism in court by pointing out planted typographical errors which had been copied verbatim. On the other occasion Hines brought suit against a racketeer who was representing himself as one of his representatives and was selling “Recommended” by Duncan Hines” signs to listed restaurants. Ibid., 105-106.

  489 Hines all along anticipated the coming economic boom. On 18 August 1943, he told members of the Cave City, Kentucky Rotary Club that “as soon as the war is over, there will be the largest [market for] tourist travel this country has ever known.”

  490 The book was copyrighted 1948 but did not reach the public until early 1949.

  491 Spiller, 10 May 1994.

  492 Duncan Hines, Duncan Hines Vacation Guide (Bowling Green KY: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1948) i.

  493 Interview with Sara Jane Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  494 Horace Sutton, “The Wayfarer’s Guardian Angel,” 38.

  495 Hines, Duncan Hines’ Food Odyssey (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1955) 173.

  496 Sutton, “The Wayfarer’s Guardian Angel,” 38-39.

  497 Greensboro Daily News (North Carolina), 31 July 1960.

  498 Anne Murray, “History of Roy Park,” 1992.

  499 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  500 Roy Park speech, Cornell University Graduate School of Business and Public Administration, 2 November 1976, Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, file # 3981.

  501 Roy H. Park, “When Dangerous Opportunity Knocks,” Ithaca College Quarterly (December 1987): 21.

  502 “An Adventure in Food Marketing: A Case Study of a New Entrant in America’s Biggest, Fastest Growing Industry,” Tide: The Newsmagazine for Advertising Executives (3 August 1951): 2.

  503 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  504 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 2.

  505 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  506 Roy Park press release, n. d.

  507 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  508 Roy Park press release, n. d. Cooperative chores were not the only thing occupying Park’s mind. On 3 October 1936, Park married Dorothy Goodwin Dent, a native of Raleigh; the two were married for fifty-six years.

  509 Roy Park, “Notes from Lempret, Former Editor of the Omaha Magazine,” typescript, n. d., Park Communications, Ithaca, New York.

  510 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 2.

  511 North Carolina State College News, August 1955.

  512 Roy Park press release, n. d.

  513 The cooperative is now known as Agway.

  514 Park, “When Dangerous Opportunity Knocks,” 22.

  515 Park, “Notes from Lempret,” n. d.

  516 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3; Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960; North Carolina State College News, August 1955.

  517 According to another undated Roy Park press release, some of his clients, in addition to the Dairyman’s League, included “the American Cranberry Growers, Southern States Cooperative, the Pennsylvania Farm Cooperative, the North Carolina Farmers Cooperative Exchange, the Philco Corporation, and the agricultural interests of Victor Emmanuel.”

  518 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  519 Park, “Notes from Lempret,” n. d.

  520 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  521 Roy Park speech, 2 November 1976.

  522 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  523 Park, “Notes from Lempret,” n. d.

  524 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  525 Roy Park speech, 2 November 1976.

  526 David M. Schwartz, “Duncan Hines: He Made Gastronomes Out of Motorists,” Smithsonian 15/8 (November 1984): 87-88.

  527 Murray, “History of Roy Park,” 1992.

  528 Park, “Notes from Lempret,” n.d.

  529 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  530 Roy Park speech, 2 November 1976.

  531 North Carolina State College News, August 1955.

  532 Daily News (Bowling Green, Kentucky), 5 May 1988.

  533 Roy Park speech, 2 November 1976.

  534 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  535 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  536 North Carolina State College News, August 1955.

  537 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  538 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  539 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  540 Roy Park speech, 2 November 1976.

  541 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  542 Ithaca [N.Y.] Journal, 15 May 1963; “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 4. The name Park abandoned, Agricultural Advertising & Research, became Hines-Park’s marketing research arm, popularly known thereafter as Ag Research.


  543 Greensboro Daily News, 31 July 1960.

  544 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3.

  545 North Carolina State College News, August 1955.

  546 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3-4.

  547 North Carolina State College News, August 1955.

  548 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3-4.

  549 Park City Daily News, 4 June 1950.

  550 Park, “Notes from Lempret,” n. d.

  551 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 3-4.

  552 Schwartz, “Duncan Hines,” 96.

  553 Press release, Duncan Hines Institute, Ithaca NY, 1 October 1957, 3.

  554 Park City Daily News, 4 June 1950.

  555 “An Adventure in Food Marketing,” 4.

  556 Earlier in the year Hines had approved a coffee, a butter, and even an oleomargarine bearing his name; the latter must have possessed an unforgettable flavor given his low opinion of margarine.

  557 Park City Daily News, 4 June 1950.

  558 “Duncan Hines Is A Big Success As Label,” Food Mart News (November 1952): 78.

  559 Advertisement, Look (17 July 1951).

  560 J. Allen, Northwestern Miller, “Duncan Hines Cake Mix Line to Enter Market,” (3 July 1951).

  561 Courier-Journal (Louisville, Kentucky), 25 September 1949.

  562 Duncan Hines to Mrs. Leslie R. Groves, 11 March 1950.

  563 Park City Daily News, 23 April 1950.

  564 Duncan Hines, Duncan Hines’ Food Odyssey (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1955) 155.

  565 Duncan Hines scrapbooks, private collection.

  566 Duncan Hines speech, 10th Annual Duncan Hines Family Dinner, Chicago IL, 8 May 1951, 6.

  567 Ibid., 3-4.

  568 Hines, Food Odyssey, 133.

  569 Duncan Hines speech, 8 May 1951, 3-4.

  570 Hines, Food Odyssey, 134.

  571 Interview with Duncan Welch, 7 March 1995 and 28 March 1995; diary of Clarence Welch, January 1946 to 2 November 1946.

  572 Interview with Robert Wright, 25 May 1994; Vincent P. Barabba, Director, Historical Statisticals of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, Part 1, (Washington D C: Bureau of the Census, United States Department of Commerce, 1975) 296, 303.

  573 Wright, 25 May 1994.

  574 Interview with Sara Jane Meeks, 7 June 1994.

  575 Wright, 25 May 1994. Robert Wright also said the average order not from individuals was usually for about 10 books. Bookstores and establishments that Hines recommended received a 40% discount. The Williams company handled all large orders; a typical order to Marshall Field in Chicago, for example, was for 200-300 books.

 

‹ Prev