What’s In A Name – The Florodora

I have missed two blogs since my last due to familial obligations and found myself today casting about for a theme to get me back on track.  Since I have an interest in the origin of drinks, and their names, I thought I would borrow from a previous effort and use the title “What’s In A Name” with the related drink(s) appended.  If this works, I may do more in the future.

In the early 1900's, preceded by the operettas of the 1880's, the American public became enamored with musical comedy.  The play Floradora receives much of the credit for this craze.  A popular play in England in 1899, Florodora opened in the Casino Theater of New York in 1900.  

The play involves the imaginary island of Florodora on which a perfume of the same name is made.  Said island was stolen from its rightful owner whose daughter still works in a factory on the island.  The rest of the plot is convoluted to the extreme but the cast, chorus line, and music seem to have compensated successfully.  A feature of the theater was a manikin in the lobby spraying “La Flor de Florodora” on the theatergoers.

After a slow initial start, publicists started promoting the play in a manner seen repeated by the movie studios in their heyday.  TV news coverage of the Kardashians pales to that given the Florodora troupe.  Newspapers featured daily stories about the cast members, their personal lives, how well they regarded one another and worked together, their romances and marriage prospects, and of the huge sums of money that the chorus girls were making by speculating on Wall Street.  To the latter, one has to wonder if their fiduciary success was due more to the stage door sugar daddies than Wall Street, but maybe I have seen too many old movies.  Ultimately, Florodora exceeded 500 performances.

Florodora was the first  musical comedy to use the device of “stunning” fashionable evening gowns, worn by attractive women, to create a memorable high point in a performance, a trend continued in the Follies of the 1920’s and 30’s.  Women would go to see the latest fashions, men to see attractively dressed women. 

At the time, the music was considered “bewitching,” and people were often heard humming or whistling the tunes.  Leslie Stuart, the composer, said his formula for writing the music of Florodora was to:

“…take one memory of Christy Minstrels, let it simmer in the brain for twenty years.  Add slowly for the music an organist’s practice in arranging Gregorian chants for the Roman Catholic Church.  Mix well and serve with a half dozen pretty girls and an equal number of well-dressed men.”

The original “Florodora sextette” or the “big six,” none over 5’4”, was so popular with the American public that chorus girls for years afterwards, claimed to have been part of the original sextette. Francis Belmont, an original “sextetter,” in true movie showgirl fashion, managed to marry an English duke.

Florodora, its music, and its stars were immensely popular in the early 1900's.  Like movie related marketing today, the musical comedy became linked to a variety of products.  A soft drink in Cuba, race horses and pedigreed dogs, assorted food products, china, dolls, cigars (“three for 10 cents”) and a hybrid long staple cotton named Florodora were but a few.  Having a fondness for ice cream, one of my favorites is the “Florodora Sundae” – 1 banana, strawberry ice cream, strawberry fruit, nuts, and whipped cream.

In 1920, there was a revival of Florodora, with more chorus girls, and more lavish costumes and staging.  It was so popular that Fannie Brice was inspired to do a parody in the Follies.

Riding its second wave of popularity, it once again gave advertisers a useful marketing hook.  Florodora actresses modeled veils in Cosmopolitan magazine.  A massage vibrator was advertised to help women achieve “Florodora” beauty and sponsored a Florodora beauty contest.  Use of “Florodora” in marketing persisted into the 1930’s, as both a product name, and as a derogatory expression for something passé from a previous era.  There was also a movie entitled “The Florodora Girl.”

In my books, there are at least three "Florodora" related recipes.  The first two, the Florodora cocktail and the Florodora Fizz, from a 1913 text, are the earliest recipes I have found.  The Florodora Fizz definitely predates the book. 

A 1902 advertising magazine, The Advisor, states “The Florodora Fizz has replaced the Ping Pong Punch as the fashionable drink of the season.”  

The Florodora Cooler, easiest for the home bar, is from a publication of the 1930’s.  It is probably a Prohibition era drink being gin based, its other ingredients doing well to make the “bathtub” gins of the Roaring Twenties more palatable.

My Imaginary Packard

As mentioned in a previous blog, in 1965 my father bought me a 1951 Dodge "B" series pickup truck.  It was a well-used farm vehicle and I was kept busy looking for used parts, nominally better than its existing components.  This necessitated outings to junkyards filled with interesting vehicles of all description, as well as farm and industrial machinery.  Expeditions to these emporiums of cast-offs were as enjoyable as any amusement park.  I was able to find and remove the parts desired, and had the opportunity to “salvage” fair bit of pocket change.  While scavenging parts, I would run my hand through the space between the seat back and bottom of the old bench seats and usually come up with a bit of coin---not to mention the odd bit of filth.

While my friends were interested cars like the '57 Chevy, the Mustang, and even the Corvair, I had a penchant for anything odd, massive, and quirky.  For that matter, I still do.

In one salvage yard near Carthage, NY, there was a smallish 1920's fire engine that the owner said he would sell for $300.  The red paint and gold lettering were still shiny, the chrome bright, and it was replete with a bell and a chrome radiator cap with a glass thermometer.  The only thing it lacked was ladders.  Unfortunately, $300 was no more easily available than $3000.  Sometimes one has to be content to admire from afar.

My old Dodge was reliable.  It ran as well at 15 below zero as it did at 85F.  Most problems were not difficult to resolve and it would run fine with the cheapest grade of gasoline available, which was sometimes as low as 74 octane.  The truck was meant for work, not for youthful bravado.  It wouldn’t "burn rubber"---except in reverse.  Never the less, it was all mine and just the ticket for fishing or rabbit hunting.

The single most annoying problem was the gearshift.  The "three on the tree" had an "L"-shaped crank at the bottom that operated the shift linkage to the transmission.  The serrated hole in the crank, that secured it to the shift column, was stripped and it would slip, no matter how tightly I torqued the nut, leaving me stuck in, or out, of gear.

Having saved up some money, working as a stock clerk in the Camp Drum Post Exchange, I finally decided to have it repaired.  The nearest garage was in the village of Black River.

Smelling of dust and petroleum products, with an exposed wood beamed ceiling, decorated with the usual "cheese cake" calendars put out by auto parts companies, and with well used tools hanging on the walls, it looked like a movie set for the St. Valentine's Day Massacre.  My kind of place.

At the time, the owner/mechanic seemed old, though in hindsight he was probably in his 50's.  He was also friendly, helpful, and cheap.  After explaining that the part was no longer available, he said to give him a day and he would see what he could do.  When I returned, he explained that he had braised over the stripped out serrations in the crank and hand-filed new ones, charging me less than $25.  The repair worked fine.  Twenty years later, I benefitted from his explaining this field-expedient repair, using it to fix a similar problem on an arbor press.

While my Dodge, the mechanic, and the garage are all history, they are not the reason I recall the visit.  In the dim, back corner of that old garage, against the right wall, there was a hulking form covered by a dusty tarpaulin.  When I asked what was under the canvas, the mechanic took me over and removed the tarp.  It was a 1936 Packard sedan with a "straight eight."  The car was big, black, dusty, and had the ominous grace of a dreadnought.  That behemoth sparked my imagination.  I asked how much he wanted for it, laughable today since I had no  prospects of having funds and there is no way my father could have been talked into being involved in such a bit of whimsy.  The shop owner said it was not for sale and that it had a cracked block anyway.  The End.

Well, not quite the end.  From that time forward, I have had a nagging desire for a 1936 Packard sedan.  Marriage, children, jobs, age, and a singular lack of ability to focus on anything for any length of time, have all conspired to move me from "cool" and "fun" vehicles (in my eye, not necessarily that of others) to more reliable, and less interesting transportation.  I drive a Toyota Tundra, my spouse a Buick Enclave.  Both are good, solid transportation and more reliable than anything made in the 20th century.  Still, while our cars are good, I would not use "great" in any sense of the word.  That "great" Packard only exists when I daydream about what I would do, or could have done, if I were single and fancy free---about as likely as flying pigs.

There are two vintage cocktails, the Twin Six and the Packard Twins (yep, an engine not a pair of porn stars,) named for another masterpiece of Packard engineering, the "Twin Six," a V-12 engine which was to be later replaced in popularity by the “Single Eight”.  First produced for the 1916 model year, there were 24,000 vehicles with Twin Six Engines manufactured by 1920.  In that same year, Packard announced that they would double production of the Twin Six.  True to Robert Burns comment on the plans of mice and men, sales of the Twin plummeted between 1920 and 1924 with sales of about only 11,000 Twin Six equipped vehicles during that time.

So, let us raise a toast to Packard for giving us the stuff of dreams.

Fancy Drinks and How to Make Them, 1935

The Savoy Cocktail Book, 1930