Forbidden Cocktails by Andre Darlington
“Pre-Code Hollywood” refers to movies made within the brief span between the advent of talking pictures (1927) and the imposition of strict film censorship, as spelled out in the Hollywood Production Code (1934). Many films made during that short era are surprisingly racy. Others address social conditions with a frankness that the Code later suppressed.
One transgressive aspect of pre-Code Hollywood had to do with alcohol. Just about everyone in those movies was drinking, often to excess, at a time when the sale of alcohol was banned by Prohibition. Most Americans were scofflaws when it came to Prohibition, fortunes were made by selling beer and booze, and the movies reflected this in their funhouse mirrors.
Author Andre Darlington’s Forbidden Cocktails takes an imaginative look at drinking and films in the pre-Code era. Illustrated with movie stills and full-color lobby posters, Forbidden Cocktails provides a summary of 50 films featuring illicit drinking, each coupled with the recipe for a cocktail “inspired” by that film. The history lessons are mostly correct, although the author errs in asserting that the Production Code was “duly enforced” until 1968. More accurately, the Code loosened in the late 1950s and early ‘60s until finally replaced by an “age-appropriate” ratings system similar to the G through NC-17 in place today.
Darlington’s movie synopses are fun to read and the cocktails he suggests are intriguing. He recreates Jean Harlow’s reported favorite drink, a rum martini with a dash of orange bitters, but most are concocted from his own imagination. However, historical research grounds the choices he makes. Turns out that before James Bond, most martinis were neither dry nor shaken.
Forbidden Cocktails: Libations Inspired by the World of Pre-Code Hollywood, is published by TCM and Running Press.
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