While on vacation in Oxnard, California, I visited a retro bar named “1901 Speakeasy.” There is 1901 in the name because that’s the year the building was built. The bar was in the basement of an Italian restaurant and could only be accessed by outside stairs. It featured such drinks as the Ward Eight. A Boston bartender made the drink on
election night, when a local political boss won his seat on the Massachusetts state legislature thanks to some election rigging in Boston’s Ward Eight voting district. It wouldn’t be the 1920s Prohibition era without seedy politics. Drink ingredients included Templeton rye whiskey, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, fresh-squeezed orange juice and grenadine. Another featured drink was the Mary Pickford. She was America’s sweetheart in the 1920s, starring in silent movies alongside famous actors like Charlie Chaplin. The story goes that she, her husband Douglas Fairbanks and Chaplin were in Havana when a bartender whipped up a tropical concoction and named it in her honor. Ingredients include white rum, pineapple juice, maraschino liqueur and grenadine. An additional drink was named the Southside. One story is that the Southside got its name thanks to — in true 1920s fashion — some gangsters on the South Side of Chicago looking for a way to cover up their not-so-great hooch. Ingredients include mint, gin, lime juice and simple syrup. Prohibition era speakeasies were mysterious places where risk-takers gathered. Let’s learn more about them.
According to Wikipedia, a speakeasy — also called a blind pig or blind tiger — is an illicit establishment that sells alcoholic beverages, or a retro style bar that replicates aspects of historical speakeasies.
Speakeasy bars came into prominence in the United States during the Prohibition era (1920–1933, longer in some states). During that time, the sale, manufacture and transportation of alcoholic beverages was illegal throughout the United States. Speakeasies largely disappeared after Prohibition ended in 1933. The speakeasy-style trend began in 2000 with the opening of the bar Milk & Honey in New York.
Etymology
The phrase "speak softly shop" — meaning a "smuggler's house" — appeared in a British slang dictionary published in 1823. The similar phrase "speak easy shop," denoting a place where unlicensed liquor sales were made, appeared in a British naval memoir written in 1844. The precise term "speakeasy" dates from no later than 1837 when an article in the Sydney Herald newspaper in Australia referred to “sly grog shops, called in slang terms "speakeasy's" [sic] in this part – Boro Creek.”
In the United States, the word emerged in the 1880s. A newspaper article from March 21, 1889, refers to "speak easy" as the name used in the Pittsburgh-area town of McKeesport, Pennsylvania for "a saloon that sells without a license". Speakeasies were "so called because of the practice of speaking quietly about such a place in public, or when inside it, so as not to alert the police or neighbors." Although failing to account for earlier usage outside the U.S., a common American anecdote traces the term to saloon owner Kate Hester, who ran an unlicensed bar in the 1880s in McKeesport, supposedly telling her rowdy customers to "speak easy" to avoid attention from authorities. Many years later, in Prohibition-era America, the "speakeasy" became a common name to describe a place to get an illicit drink.
Different names for speakeasies were created. The terms "blind pig" and "blind tiger" originated in the United States in the 19th century. These terms were applied to establishments that sold alcoholic beverages illegally, and they are still in use today. The operator of an establishment such as a saloon or bar would charge customers to see an attraction — such as an animal — and then serve a "complimentary" alcoholic beverage, thus circumventing the law.
In desperate cases it has to betake itself to the exhibition of Greenland pigs and other curious animals, charging 25 cents for a sight of the pig and throwing in a gin cocktail gratuitously.
[They] are in a mysterious place called a blind tiger, drinking the very bad whiskey for which Prohibition is indirectly responsible.
"Blind tiger" also referred to illegal drinking establishments in which the seller's identity was concealed.
A drawer runs into a wall of what appears to be a billiard saloon. You pull out the drawer, drop in your change, shove the drawer back, call for what you want and then pull out the drawer again and there it is, "Straight" or "Spiked" just as you'd have it. Nobody is heard or seen, and the blind tiger — apparently without any keeper — works like a charm.
History
Speakeasies, though illegal, were numerous and popular during the Prohibition years. Some were operated by people who were part of organized crime. Even though police and agents of the Bureau of Prohibition would often raid them and arrest their owners and patrons, they were so profitable that they continued to flourish. The speakeasy soon became one of the biggest parts of American culture during this time. Several changes happened as speakeasies formed; one was with integration. People of all races — black or white — would gather together and even mingle. People would mix together and have few or no problems.
Another change that occurred was more participation from women. Many businesses would set up their speakeasies to attract women to get more profits. Women also began to insert themselves into the business of speakeasies. Texas Guinan, a former screen and stage actress, opened many speakeasies during Prohibition such as the 300 Club and the El Fey. Guinan greeted customers with "Hey Suckers" and admitted she'd be nothing without Prohibition. Her two biggest competitors were Helen Morgan and Belle Livingston.
Culture was also affected by speakeasies during prohibition and the speakeasy became a focal point. An example to show this was in the movie theaters. Companies were restricted from depicting alcohol on screen, but some still continued to do so because they felt it showed the way Americans lived, such as the scene in “Our Dancing Daughters” in which Joan Crawford dances on a table in a speakeasy.
The poor quality bootleg liquor sold in some speakeasies was responsible for a shift away from 19th-century "classic" cocktails that celebrated the raw taste of the liquor — such as the gin cocktail, made with Genever sweet gin — to new cocktails aimed at masking the taste of rough moonshine. These masking drinks were termed "pansies" at the time — although some, such as the Brandy Alexander, would now be termed "classic."
The quality of the alcohol sold in speakeasies ranged from very poor to very good, depending on the owner's source. Cheap liquor was generally used because it was more profitable. In other cases, brand names were used to specify the liquor customers wanted. However, sometimes when brand names were used, some speakeasies cheated; they lied to their customers by giving them poor quality liquor instead of the higher-quality liquor the customer ordered. Prices were four to five dollars a bottle.
Varieties
From the beginning the speakeasy was relatively small with little or no entertainment involved, but through gradual growth it popularized and expanded to many different areas with new additions of entertainment and eventually made the speakeasy one of the biggest businesses during Prohibition.
In many rural towns, small speakeasies and blind pigs were operated by local business owners. These family secrets were often kept even after Prohibition ended. In 2007 secret underground rooms thought to have been a speakeasy were found by renovators on the grounds of the Cyber Cafe West in Binghamton, New York.
Speakeasies did not need to be big to operate. "It didn't take much more than a bottle and two chairs to make a speakeasy." One example for a speakeasy location was the 21 Club in New York. This is one of the more famous of the speakeasies and operated until 2020. The 21 Club was only part of a series of businesses owned by Charlie Berns and Jack Kriendler. They started the business in Greenwich with a place called The Redhead and later moved onto the next operation The Puncheon Club. The 21 Club was special because of its system to remain under the radar. It was a unique system that used a doorkeeper to send a warning to the bar that it was in danger. Although raided by police on many occasions during Prohibition, the premises staff had methods to protect the club from the authorities. As soon as a raid began, a system of levers was used to tip the shelves of the bar, sweeping the liquor bottles through a chute and into the city's sewers. The bar also included a secret wine cellar, which was accessed through a hidden door in a brick wall which opened into the basement of the building next door.
Part of the vault was remodeled to allow a party of up to 20 guests to dine in private. The club also stored the private wine collections of John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Hugh Carey, Ernest Hemingway, the Nordstrom sisters, Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Gloria Vanderbilt, Sophia Loren, Mae West, Aristotle Onassis, Gene Kelly, Gloria Swanson, Judy Garland, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Marilyn Monroe. The bar is mentioned several times in David Niven's memoirs “Bring on the Empty Horses;” he was given a job by J+C selling liquor following the end of Prohibition and went there with director John Huston on their return from the war.
At Christmas time, the regular clientele received silk scarves decorated with a motif of the club insignia. Each scarf is numbered and has the jockey logo and also features the railings associated with the building. Some of the most unusual and desirable were designed by Ray Strauss, founder of Symphony Scarves, in the 1950s and '60s. A number of these can be seen in a 1989 book by Andrew Baseman, “The Scarf.” Siggie Nordstrom had a collection of several dozen of these she'd received through the years.
The speakeasy spread all over New York with businesses such as the Bath Club and O'Leary's on the Bowery. The Bath Club had musicians perform in their place to keep it unique. This idea of musicians spread throughout the speakeasy business and soon enough many of them had musicians.
History of Prohibition
Some kind of limitation on the trade in alcohol can be seen in the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi c. 1772 BCE — the longest, best-organized and best-preserved legal text from the ancient Near East — specifically banning the selling of beer for money. It could only be bartered for barley: "If a beer seller do not receive barley as the price for beer, but if she receive money or make the beer a measure smaller than the barley measure received, they shall throw her into the water."
In the early 20th century, much of the impetus for the Prohibition movement in the Nordic countries and North America came from moralistic convictions of pietistic Protestants. Prohibition movements in the West coincided with the advent of women's suffrage, with newly empowered women as part of the political process strongly supporting policies that curbed alcohol consumption.
The first half of the 20th century saw periods of prohibition of alcoholic beverages in several countries:
- 1918 to 1920: Prohibition in Canada nationally, as well as in most provinces including:
1901 to 1948 in Prince Edward Island.
1919 to 1919 in Quebec.
- 1907 to 1992 in the Faroe Islands; limited private imports from Denmark were allowed from
1928.
- 1914 to 1925: Prohibition in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union.
- 1915 to 1935: Prohibition in Iceland — wine legal from 1922, but beer still prohibited until
1989.
- 1916 to 1927 in Norway — fortified wine and beer were also prohibited from 1917 to 1923.
- 1919 in the Hungarian Soviet Republic, March 21 to August 1; called szesztilalom.
- 1919 to 1932 in Finland — called kieltolaki, "ban law."
- 1920 to 1933: Prohibition in the United States.
-
After several years, Prohibition failed in North America and elsewhere. Rum-running or bootlegging became widespread, and organized crime took control of the distribution of alcohol. Distilleries and breweries in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean flourished as their products were either consumed by visiting Americans or illegally exported to the United States. Chicago became notorious as a haven for Prohibition dodgers during the time known as the Roaring Twenties. Prohibition generally came to an end in the late 1920s or early 1930s in most of North America and Europe, although a few locations continued prohibition for many more years.
In some countries where the dominant religion forbids the use of alcohol, the production, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages is prohibited or restricted today. For example, in Saudi Arabia and Libya alcohol is banned; in Pakistan and Iran it is illegal with exceptions.
1929 film “Speakeasy”
“Speakeasy” is a 1929 American pre-Code sports drama film directed by Benjamin Stoloff and adapted by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan and Edwin J. Burke. The picture was produced and distributed by Fox Film Corp. Lola Lane and Paul Page played the lead roles. John Wayne had a minor role in the film as a speakeasy patron. All film elements to this movie are considered lost, but Movietone discs of the soundtrack survive.
Comments