Everyone is hereby invited to party like it’s 1933.
Stick this in yer diary! Live on Instagram @silverscreensuppers
Hello, my lovelies. A big announcement. I have a new THING and it is a gorgeous limited edition reprint of a rare 1933 cocktail booklet.
This delightful dinky book was originally created to commemorate a competition organised to celebrate the end of prohibition. Celebrities of the day were invited to submit a cocktail of their own creation.
Stars such as Marlene Dietrich, Carole Lombard, W.C. Fields and the Marx Brothers have entries in the book as well as several writers such as Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Here’s a little video where I chat a bit about the book and the cocktails to be found within it.
The booklet was privately published sometime soon after the competition, presumably as a gift for V.I.P.s and those who had entered their tipples for consideration. Original copies are very rare indeed – it took me many years to find one for sale and it was VERY expensive. I commissioned my lovely local bookbinder Fraser at Unit 33 Studios in Bexhill to make a fabulous facsimile of the book.
It is a thing of great beauty and I absolutely love it.
I call it The Shaker Man Book because of the cute little fellow on the front.
There are only 100 Shaker Man books
I have set up a BRAND NEW Etsy shop and you can pre-order there. They will all be packaged up and sent to you by yours truly during the week of 15th July. If you are buying as a gift, just let me know and I’ll include a special message on a card with the book.
I will be sending out info on ingredients for the cocktails I’ll be shaking up at the book launch party very soon over on the Dinner and a Movie Substack, so you can shake along with me if you like. I am definitely going to demonstrate the Carole Lombard concoction,
and probably Marlene’s fave too.
Here’s a video demo of the American Tragedy cocktail which is in the booklet. It’s a recipe created by Theodore Dreiser, the author of the book on which A Place in the Sun is based, this was the film for June over on my Dinner and a Movie Substack. I talk a little bit about the cocktail book too, so do have a gander if you are interested.
Here’s the original, alongside the facsimile. By the way, although newspaper reports of the day said that only 2 women had been allowed to enter (Marlene Dietrich and Carole Lombard), Bebe Daniels managed to sneak in there too!
Original cocktail booklet on the left, facsimile on the right.
If you want to know more about the cocktail competition, I’ve written more about it here.
