Cocktails in cinema, vintage spirits, absinthe, liqueur history

Good Food

KCRW

Society & Culture

4.5 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Bottoms up! We're all about the tipple this week.

Historian Hadley Meares looks at how Hollywood sips cocktails on the big screen
Aaron Goldfarb follows collectors hunting for vintage spirits
Sociologist Nicola Nice takes a look at how women brought the cocktail home
Lesley Jacobs Solmonson explains how liqueurs went from the hands of the apothecary to those of the mixologist
Evan Rail plays detective, looking back on an absinthe enthusiast who became a con artist

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Transcript

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0:00.0	From KCRW, I'm Evan Klyman, and you're listening to Good Food.
0:05.1	Of all the gin joints and all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.
0:18.8	What's that your plane?
0:20.2	Oh, just a little something on my own.
0:21.6	I'll stop it. You know what I want to hear.
0:23.6	No, don't.
0:24.6	You played it for her. You played for me.
0:26.6	Well, I don't think I can remember.
0:28.6	If you can stand it, I can.
0:30.6	Play it.
0:32.6	Yes, boss.
0:45.8	Whether it's Humphrey Bogart's French 75 in Casablanca or Audrey Hepburn's Mississippi Punch in Breakfast at Tiffany's or James Bond's martini, shake and not stirred, of course, old Hollywood movies have a way of making cocktails look like the apex of leisure
0:57.4	and sophistication. Journalists and historian Hadley Mears is here to discuss the various depictions
1:03.9	of on-screen sipping. Hi Hadley. Hi, thanks for having me. You know, so much of my enjoyment of watching old movies are these moments of people, you know, making drinks, sipping drinks.
1:19.2	It just, there's something about the whole process about how people hold their glasses, hold the bar shaker, add ingredients. It just adds this whole other layer of
1:32.2	the reality that's being created in the movie. When do cocktails show up on this screen in early
1:38.9	cinema? You know, it's really interesting. There's this really cool lady named Cheryl Charming,
1:43.9	who owns this blog called Miss Charming, and she kind of charts the evolution of cocktails and alcohols
1:50.9	throughout the movie. And according to her, one of the earliest examples she could find is all the way
1:56.8	back in 1917. And it's in an early film called The Adventure, and Charlie Chaplin makes what it seems to be,
2:05.1	a whiskey and soda.
2:07.2	And so that is probably one of the earliest examples of someone drinking an actual mixed drink
	...

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