# The literature and film of drinking culture
**URL:** https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110
**Category:** Cocktail Kingdom Library
**Created:** [April 24, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110 "2019-04-24T16:51:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 17
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2019, 4:51pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/1 "2019-04-24T16:51:08Z")
While we’ve been chewing on the daunting task of identifying a Cocktail Canon (perhaps more accurately described as a Mixology Canon), we realized that there was a lot of fiction, commentary, and perhaps even some histories (and movies) that are equally or more significant. We’re running a separate list here for the sake of manageability. Please contribute.
**P.G. Wodehouse, the Jeeves canon; numerous novels and stories (1915-1974)**
**Hewson Peeke, _Americana Ebrietatis_ (1917)**
**Don Marquis, _The Old Soak and Hail and Farewell_ (1921); _The Old Soak’s History of the World_ (1924)**
**Bruce Reynolds, _A cocktail continentale_, (1926)**
**Hemingway, _The Sun Also Rises_ (1926)**
**Frank Shay, _My Pious Friends and Drunken Companions_ (1927)**
**John Thomas, _Dry Martini: A Gentleman Turns to Love_ (1927)**
**Bruce Reynolds, _Paris with the Lid Lifted_, (1927)**
**Frank Shay, _Drawn From the Wood_ (1929)**
**Basil Woon, _When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba_ (1928)**
**Gilbert Seldes, _The Future of Drinking_ (1930)**
**George Ade, _The Old-Time Saloon_ (1931)**
**Wilfred J. Funk, _Manhattans, Bronxes and Queens_ (1931)** (doggerel)
**W. S. Van Dyke/Dashiell Hammett, _The Thin Man_ (film, 1934)**—massively successful Hollywood idealization of alcohol-soaked leisure class
**Don Marquis, _Her Foot is on the Brass Rail_ (1935)**
**Joseph Roth’s ‘The Bust of the Emperor’ (1935)** — regards Europe’s ambivalence toward cocktails post WW1
**Marjorie Hillis, _Live Alone and Like It: A Guide for the Extra Woman_ (1936)**—unsure how well known this was, but chapter 10 is “A Lady and Her Liquor”
**Jack Hanley, _Let’s Make Mary: Being a Gentleman’s Guide to Scientific Seduction in Eight Easy Lessons_ (1937)**—appalling yang to Marjorie Hillis’s yin?
**Charles, B. Driscoll, _The Life of O. O. McIntyre_ (1938)**
**Evelyn Wells, _Champagne Days of San Francisco_ (1939)**
**Raymond Chandler, the Philip Marlowe canon; seven novels and several short stories (1939-1958)**
**Lucius Beebe, _Snoot If You Must_ (1934)**
**Charles Jackson, _The Lost Weekend_ (1944)**—because you’ve got to take the good with the bad
**John McNulty, _Third Avenue, New York_ (1946); rep. as _This Place on Third Avenue_ (2002)**
**Bernard DeVoto, _The Hour_ (1949)**
**Ian Fleming, _Casino Royale_ and other works, 1952-1961**
**André Simon, _Drink_, 1953** (maybe doesn’t belong here)
**Gregor von Rezzori’s ‘Oedipus at Stalingrad’ (1954)**—regards Europe’s ambivalence toward cocktails post WW1
**Cyril Ray (editor), _The Compleat Imbiber_ (1956-1960s)**
**Helen Cromwell and Robert Dougherty, _Dirty Helen_ (1966)**—An autobiography of notorious brothel and saloon keeper. Great insight into Midwestern saloon culture, pre-Prohibition, during Prohibition and post-Prohibition.
**Hunter S. Thompson, various works ~1971-2011**
**Kingsley Amis, _On Drink_ (1972)**
**Kingsley Amis, _Everyday Drinking_ (1983)**
**Kingsley Amis, _How’s Your Glass?_ (1984)**
**Raymond Carver, _Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories_ (1989)**
**Didier Nourrison, _Le buveur du XIXe siècle_ (1990)**
**Pete Hamill, _A Drinking Life_ (1995)**
**Roger Donaldson/Heywood Gould, _Cocktail_ (film, 1988)**—redefines drink mixing as theater by having Tom Cruise practice flairing
**_Sex in the City_ (tv, 1998-2004)**—romantic comedy/drama that significantly stimulated interest in the US in drinking something—anything—from a V-shaped cocktail glass; popularized the Cosmopolitan Cocktail
**Robert Sellers, _Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed_ (2008)**
---
### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2019, 5:36pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/2 "2019-04-24T17:36:17Z")
I added a couple here just to help roll the ball. This is a very interesting category that needs people to weigh in, particularly for the non-English stuff.
---
### Author:  [@cocktaildoodle](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/cocktaildoodle)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2019, 10:05pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/3 "2019-04-24T22:05:48Z")
Would the Ian Fleming novels fit here? Our favorite MI6 agent was always pretty good about drinking like a local. Except of course for that time in New Orleans when Felix had to remind him to drink Sazeracs instead of Bourbon.
---
### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [April 24, 2019, 10:48pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/4 "2019-04-24T22:48:44Z")
I think he would. Bond was influential as hell and Fleming knew his drinks.
---
### Author:  [@AudreySaunders](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/AudreySaunders)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2019, 5:24am UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/5 "2019-04-25T05:24:59Z")
**Robert Sellers, _Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, and Oliver Reed_ (2008)**
---
### Author:  [@francois](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/francois)
#### Post date: [April 25, 2019, 8:22am UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/6 "2019-04-25T08:22:02Z")
What about the Basil Woon or Bruce Reynolds 1920’s type of guides? Would they fit here? They’re literary, in a sense, and offer great comments on drinking culture in the very important cities they describe.
No obvious French or Spanish equivalent to Amis or DeVoto come to mind at the moment. For what it’s worth, though, Europe’s ambivalence towards cocktails in the years following WWI is, to my mind, best described in a key scene of Joseph Roth’s ‘The Bust of the Emperor’ (1935) and the first third of Gregor von Rezzori’s ‘Oedipus at Stalingrad’ (1954) makes very clever use of an American bar called Charley’s as a refuge for Weimar sleepwalkers. Adding them to the list would probably stretch its actual scope beyond recognition, though.
---
### Author:  [@RobertSimonson](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/RobertSimonson)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 3:43pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/7 "2019-04-26T15:43:13Z")
“Dirty Helen” by Helen Cromwell and Robert Dougherty. An autobiography of notorious brothel and saloon keeper. Great insight into Midwestern saloon culture, pre-Prohibition, during Prohibition and post-Prohibition.
“The Sun Also Rises” by Hemingway.
“The Lost Weekend” by Charles Jackson (because you’ve got to take the good with the bad)
---
### Author:  [@FrankCaiafa](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/FrankCaiafa)
#### Post date: [April 26, 2019, 8:44pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/8 "2019-04-26T20:44:26Z")
“A Drinking Life” (1995) Pete Hamill
“Where I’m Calling From: Selected Stories” (1989) Raymond Carver
All Hunter Thompson.
More bad with the good…
---
### Author:  [@dougfitz](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/dougfitz)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2019, 3:02am UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/9 "2019-05-16T03:02:33Z")
In a lighter vein: the collected films of W.C. Fields.
Groucho Marx used to tell about visiting Fields and discovering dozens and dozens of cases of liquor hidden in his attic. “But Bill,” Groucho joked, “Prohibition is over.”
Fields deadpanned: “It may come back.”
---
### Author:  [@ben](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/ben)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2019, 6:04pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/10 "2019-05-16T18:04:29Z")
Doug, I tell that story all the time! Mostly to explain what happened to my living room.
So, what constitutes a book or film that is part of the drinking culture? Is it merely featuring drinking? Or does it have to get deeper into the culture around it, or even the practices? For example, Philip Marlowe always drinks, usually bourbon, but only in “The Long Goodbye” is a cocktail recipe mentioned (a pretty terrible one for a fifty-fifty Rose’s and gin Gimlet).
---
### Author:  [@francois](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/francois)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2019, 6:38pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/11 "2019-05-16T18:38:25Z")
I’d exclude stuff that only features drinking. It needs to tell us something deeper, I guess. It’s amazing to see Cary Grant having a Martini at The Plaza’s Oak Room in North by Northwest, but that’s just a setting, a place used as any other place could have been used. Henry Fonda’s multiple Mint Juleps in Jezebel plays a much more important role, they have a wider significance.
(Although I wouldn’t consider N by NW Oak Room scene as sufficient, I would definitely add to this list Carol Reed’s Our Man in Havana (1959) if only for _that_ scene filmed at Sloppy Joe’s, with the bar’s real bartender making the drinks - when fiction turned documentary)
---
### Author:  [@ben](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/ben)
#### Post date: [May 16, 2019, 7:26pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/12 "2019-05-16T19:26:53Z")
“Our Man in Havana,” book and movie both, is suffused with drinking—the daily Daiquiri breaks are an important part, and the plot even hinges on the protagonist being a collector of whisky miniatures. Even though the bars are, as you say, settings, they seem crucial settings. You couldn’t tell the story of “Our Man in Havana” without Sloppy Joe’s; it’s part of the life of the characters in Havana. You could tell the story of “North by Northwest” with plenty of different settings. I’m not sure what that means for a test, of course.
---
### Author:  [@martin](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/martin)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2019, 3:11pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/13 "2019-05-30T15:11:10Z")
Anyone familiar with William Juniper’s _The True Drunkard’s Delight_ (1933)? Interesting?
---
### Author:  [@Splificator](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/Splificator)
#### Post date: [May 30, 2019, 6:09pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/14 "2019-05-30T18:09:16Z")
Not as much as you would think.
---
### Author:  [@federicosardi](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/federicosardi)
#### Post date: [June 28, 2020, 12:02am UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/15 "2020-06-28T00:02:05Z")
“Vida nocturna” (Night Life, 1955) Leo Fleider.
[![]( " - YouTube") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbZ0EaKTzCk)
The movie is set on a cabaret in Buenos Aires. Here you’ll find tango, some music from the caribbean, gangsters, champagne, cocktails and more. The barman that appears in a couple scenes is Santiago “Pichín” Policastro, the author of the beautiful book “Tragos mágicos” (Magical Drinks, 1955).
> **[1955 Tragos Magicos by Pichin](https://euvs-vintage-cocktail-books.cld.bz/1955-Tragos-Magicos-by-Pinchin)**
>
> Federico Cuco's Collection
> EUVS Collection
> Pichín ha demostrado que es un creador, y acaso en este sentido, único en el mundo. Pichín ha creado su propia línea de cócteles o "tragos", como les llama familiarmente. Muchos de éstos ya son clásicos en...
---
### Author:  [@RobertSimonson](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/RobertSimonson)
#### Post date: [June 30, 2020, 9:30pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/16 "2020-06-30T21:30:16Z")
You mean the person at the 3-4 minute mark in the film?
---
### Author:  [@federicosardi](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/u/federicosardi)
#### Post date: [June 30, 2020, 9:44pm UTC](https://spiritsandcocktails.community/t/the-literature-and-film-of-drinking-culture/110/17 "2020-06-30T21:44:29Z")
That’s him. He can also be seen mixing cocktails around the 10 minute mark in a longer scene where he also has some lines (mostly advice about women if I recall correctly).