Dunking Donuts (1930s)

Fri May 16 02:05:28 UTC 2003

   Actress Mae Murray supposedly started this.  Dunkin' Donuts says it, so it's gotta be true.  I visited the NYPL's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and went through every single clipping for Mae Murray.  There were a lot of clippings, but not a single "donut."
   "Sinkers" dates from the late 1800s...Some ridiculous Hanson Gregory "doughnut hole" stories are added here.

(BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE)
   6 January 1892, BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE, pg. 4:
   ...men who have succeeded in their calling have not disdained "coffee and sinkers" or beef and beans--that was all that he had to offer, except doughnuts and pie--...

(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)(Search for "doughnut" and "dunk")
  Doughnut Holes And Their Uses; Cruller Addicts Held Unable to Value Them Rightly; WILLIAM H. BROWN.; New York Times (1857-Current file), New York, N.Y.; Jun 4, 1933; pg. E5, 1 pgs

  Doughnut Holes And the Cruller; Regulation of First May Be Twisted Into Second ; V.H. PENN.; New York Times (1857-Current file), New York, N.Y.; Mar 5, 1933; pg. E5, 1 pgs

  Other 4 -- No Title; 1/2x VUJUBE&T KU2^; The Washington Post (1877-1954), Washington, D.C.; Jan 1, 1931; pg. 10, 1 pgs:
His napkin tucked beneath his chin,
He fights the food.  He fights to win.
I'd hate to be a Goofus Lunk
And in my coffee doughnuts dunk.

  DOUGHNUT HOLES ENGAGE EXPERTS; Small-Hole Cake Is by Far the Best for Dunking, One Declares; ZOLTAN GOTTLIEB.; New York Times (1857-Current file), New York, N.Y.; Dec 21, 1930; pg. 48, 1 pgs
(("Did either Mr. Holbrook or Mr. Brown try to dunk doughnuts?  The doughnut with the big hole wobbles uncertainly and in some cases has even been known to sink!  (Sinker (Coll. Amer. slang): a doughnut which goes under.)  But the small-hole doughnut remains on the surface proudly, temptingly.  Its bouyance is never threatened by a superfluity of hole."))

  COLLYER'S COMMENT on the SPORT of KINGS; BY BERT F. COLLYER; The Washington Post (1877-1954), Washington, D.C.; Sep 22, 1926; pg. 16, 1
(A horse is named Prince K. Doughnut.  False hit--ed.)

(PROQUEST HISTORICAL NEWSPAPERS)(Search for "Mae Murray")
  How Doughnuts Won America; By SALLY L. STEINBERG; New York Times (1857-Current file), New York, N.Y.; May 6, 1981; pg. C4, 1 pgs
("The actress Mae Murray popularized the dunking fad at Lindy's when she accidentally dropped her doughnut into her coffee.")
(Sally Steinberg wrote THE DONUT BOOK in 1987.  Steinberg is related to Adolph Levitt, who invented the doughnut machine in the 1920s--ed.)

(GOOGLE)
  http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Cafe/3464/doughnut.html
Doughnuts originated in 16th-century Holland. They were cooked in oil, and were so greasy that the Dutch called them olykoeks, or "oily cakes."
The Pilgrims, who'd lived in Holland, brought the cakes with them when they came to America. Their version: a round doughy ball about the size of a nut, a doughnut.

The origin of the doughnut hole: Captain Hanson Gregory, a 19th-century Marine sea captain, was eating a doughnut while sailing through a storm. Suddenly the ship roked violently and threw him against the ship's wheel, impaling his cake on one of its spokes. Seeing how well the spoke held his cake, Gregory began ordering all of his cakes with holes in them.

Doughnuts were popularized in the U.S. after the salvation Army fed doughnuts, cooked in garbage pails and served on bayonets to troops during World War I. Soldiers got so hooked on them that they were called "doughboys."

The French have a doughnut they call pet de nonne, "Nun's Fart." According to legend, a nun living in the abbey of Marmoutier was preparing food for a religious feast. Suddenly she farted, and the other nuns laughed at her. She was so embarrased that she dropped the spoonful of dough she was holding into a pot of boiling oil, accidently making a doughnut.

Doughnut-dunking was first popularized at the Roseland Ballroom in the '20s, when actress Mae Murray slipped and accidentally thrust a doughnut into a cup of coffee.

The glazed doughnut is almost three times as popular as any other type of doughnut.

(GOOGLE)
  http://www.mel-o-cream.com/facts.html
Around 1847, Elizibeth Gregory, a New England ship captain's mother, made a deep-fried dough that used her son's spice cargo of nutmeg, cinnimon, and lemon rind. She made the deep fried cakes for son Hansen and his crew so they could store the pastry on long voyages...and to help ward off scurvy and colds. Mrs. Gregory put hazel nuts or walnuts in the center, where the dough might not cook through, and called them doughnuts.

Hansen always took credit for the hole in the doughnut. Some doughnut historians think that Hansen was a bit of a cheapskate and was just trying to save on food costs. Others say that he gave the doughnut its first hole when, in the middle of a terrible storm and in order to get both hands on the ships wheel, he crammed one of his mothers fried sensations onto one of the wooded spokes of the wheel. Yet another tale claims that he decided, after a visit from an angel, that the doughy center of the fried cakes had to go.

Her son Hanson presented "his" creation to the people who apparently sang and danced for days in praise of the best fried cake they had ever tasted. Is the doughnut heavenly food? 17th century America thought so, but unfortunately Hanson was eventually burnt at the stake for being a witch in the mid-19th century. Today, the town of Clam Cove, Maine has a plaque in honor of Captain Hanson Gregory, the man who invented the hole in the donut.

In the Middle of World War I, millions of homesick American "doughboys" were served up countless doughnuts by women volunteers, trying to give the soldiers a taste of home.

The first doughnut machine was invented in 1920, in New York City, by a man named Adolph Levitt, a refugee from czarist Russia. Levitt's doughnut machine was a huge hit causing doughnuts to spread like wildfire.

Mel-O- Cream Donuts was founded in 1932 by Kelly Grant Sr., who provided fresh delicious donuts to restaurants and corner grocery stores. Click here to view the History of Mel-O-Cream.

By 1934, at the World's Fair in Chicago, doughnuts were billed as "the hit food of the Century of Progress". Seeing them made by machines "automatically" somehow made them seem all the more futuristic.

Doughnuts became beloved. Legend says that dunking donuts first became a trend when actress Mae Murray accidentally dropped a donut in her coffee one day at Lindy's Deli on Broadway. In the 1934 film It Happened One Night newspaperman Clark Gable teaches young runaway heiress Claudette Corbet how to "dunk". In 1937 a popular song proclaimed that you can live on coffee and doughnuts if "you're in love".

During World War II, Red Cross women, known as Doughnut Dollies passed out hot doughnuts to the hard fighting soldiers.

Today, in the United States alone, over 10 billion doughnuts are made every year.

(FACTIVA)
A century of doughnuts
Eric Shinn
FROM THE DONUT BOOK/KNOPF; LIFE WRITER
464 words
17 January 2001
The Toronto Star
1
FD04

1914 - Salvation Army girls, led by Stella Young, cook doughnuts in garbage pails filled with oil to soldiers (doughboys) serving in France, home of beignettes.

1920 - 28 years after moving to the U.S. from Russia, Adolph Levitt invents the automated Wonderful Almost Human Donut Machine. Levitt goes on to found the Mayflower Donut Co. in New York City with the motto: "As you ramble on thru life, brother, whatever be your goal, keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole."

1930 - Actress Mae Murray accidentally drops her doughnut into her coffee at Lindy's Deli on Broadway, prompting Hollywood elite such as Eddie Cantor, Zero Mostel and Johnny Carson to spearhead the National Dunking Association.
(Zero Mostel and Johnny Carson, in 1930??--ed.)