I hadn’t given this book even a first look before today, but Doug Stailey drew my attention to it indirectly regarding the Bebbo cocktail.
As Stailey pointed out, the whole thing shamelessly plagiarizes Boothby’s World Drinks (1930) right down to the layout.
Turns out, along the lines of Hollywood Cocktails, the “author” seems to have elected to arbitrarily rename some of the drinks. For example, “Bald Head” becomes “Balmy”, “Bees Knees” becomes “Bebbo”, “Between the Sheets” becomes “Betty”, “Birdie” becomes “BIM”, … That’s when I gave up.
Some of these new names survived through further replication. For example, Marco & Gale replicated the “Bebbo” in their 1937 How and When. And, well, you’ll now find a Bebbo recipe in the Madrusans’ 2026 Cocktail Companion.
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The Bebbo does indeed seem to have taken a life of it’s own as it was also included in Trader Vic’s Bartender Guide of the 1940s and the Jones Complete Bar Guide of the 1970s.
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Good finds.
We see how the Bebbo became thought of as a Bees’ Knees variation with some added orange juice. Any examples of orange juice in a Bees’ Knees prior to Boothby (1930)?
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Crosby Gaige’s 1941 Cocktail Guide and Ladies’ Companion did this a lot through out that tome. For example, the Napoleon from The Savoy Cocktail Book (gin, Dubonnet, Fernet, curaçao) gained new life with Gaige’s name of Don’t Give Up the Ship. Others were forgettable name alterations and didn’t override the original call.
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That Boothby Bee’s Knees recipe was 1934 as confirmed by my reprint and EUVS. The 1906 reprint that I have put out by Anchor Distilling and the 1908 version on EUVS lack the Bee’s Knees (as do the 1891/1900 editions).
I’m confused how a 1933 book plagiarized a 1934 book? The 1934 book expanded on Boothby’s work and was published 4 years after his death. It’s possible that the editors/ghost authors of that book looked around for new material to gussy up the last one put out by Boothby while he was alive.
I’m referencing the 1930 “Swallows” edition of Boothby’s World Drinks, not the 1934 edition.
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My bad. I never knew that this one existed before today. I’ve looked through all the others.
Unfortunately, this practice of stealing and renaming recipes requires quite a bit of effort to sort out. You have to actually recognize the formula from elsewhere. Lurie made it relatively easy by plagiarizing one single book and then keeping the new names lexically similar to the old ones.
“Don’t Give Up the Ship” isn’t similar to “Napoleon”. I guess we add Gaige’s book to the list of books that need it some day.
He fit a lot of the names to the book’s theme of women, dating, and marriage.
