Joe E. Lewis; Bloody Mary

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JOE E. LEWIS

"Where did you get the E?"
"I borrowed it from Lizabeth Scott."
--comedian Joe E. Lewis in THE JOKER IS WILD, pg. 325.

     I didn't find the date of the Joe E. Lewis benefit in 1928 (for Bloody
Mary purposes) in his papers (it's probably the first half of the year), but
I found other stuff in his file.
     Joe E. Lewis was a longtime bachelor.  He briefly married a woman named
Martha Stewart, but they quickly divorced.  This is from the biography THE
JOKER IS WILD: THE STORY OF JOE E. LEWIS (1955) by Art Cohn:

Pg. 174:  Know you will knock 'em dead.
Pg. 177:  (Song "Poor Little February" by Lester Lee, Danny Shapiro, and
Jerry Seelen; a New York Post clipping on 19 May 1941 mentions this "new"
song--ed.)
"Poor little Feb, go fight city hall!"
Pg. 232:  Colonel Diller faced his greatest crisis when a village in New
Guinea named Fuk-fuk was captured.  No one missed the press conference that
day.
     Diller cleared his throat and began reading the communique, "Allied
forces have taken a village that is spelled F-U-K, F-U-K--which, henceforth,
shall be given the Anglicized pronunciation of Fak-fak."
Pg. 240:  "Are you off your rocker?"
Pg. 252:  ...schleppers...
Pg. 346:  ...the Big Bug.
Pg. 347:  "I've been rich and I've been poor.  Believe me, rich is better."
(The AMDOAQ, pg. 436, states "Sophie Tucker, attributed" and notes "Some
think Joe E. Lewis said it first but, as Ralph Keyes points out in _Nice Guys
Finish Seventh_ (1992), Lewis and Tucker often performed together and either
might have borrowed it from the other."
Pg. 351:  Did you see Marilyn's picture, _Don't Bother the Knockers_?  Maybe
it was _Don't Bother to Knock_.

    From a clipping file:

"Joe Lewis kills me...in a delightful sort of way!"--Dorothy Kilgallen.
"I used to only kill quarts--now I kill gallons!"--Joe E. Lewis
--Ad for engagement at Copacabana, 10 East 60th Street, New York City.

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BLOODY MARY (continued)

    Harry McElhone's HARRY'S ABC OF MIXING COCKTAILS is undated.  It includes
"Scoff law," so it can't be earlier than 1924, but it's probably not much
later.  "Bloody Mary" might have been at Harry's Bar in 1921, but it's not in
this book!!
    According to Paul Martin's WORLD ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF COCKTAILS (1997), pg.
50:  However, the 1940's copy of _Harry's ABC of Mixing Cocktails, of which I
am lucky enough to have a copy not only fails to attribute this drink to Pete
Petiot but lists it under a different title, the Red Mary.  (Not in the NYPL
1920s book--ed.)

     From COCKTAIL AND WINE DIGEST (1945) by Oscar Haimo:

Pg. 33:  B&B
Pg. 64:  Mojito Highball...Moscow Mule.
Pg. 75:  Red Snapper cocktail  (Bloody Mary--ed.)
Pg. 93:  Zombian

     From THE STORK CLUB BAR BOOK (1946) by Lucius Beebe:

Pg. 81:  Bloody Mary
Pg. 86:  Jinx Falkenburg, however, comes up with a Sangrita which she claims
is a "favorite with bullfighters in Mexico and me," which is a not too
distant relative of claret lemonade:
(SANGRITA:  claret, pineapple juice, soda, lime juice--ed.)

     I'll plow through Walter Winchell's columns from 1928 next week.