It’s almost Independence Day weekend and, as our nation veers towards either electing its first woman president or it’s last male president, maybe it makes sense to honor one of the few founding mothers kids my age were ever taught about in school.
Yes, I admit, the actual role Mrs. Ross played in creating the Stars and Stripes is up for grabs. It seems that the story about her making that first flag for General Washington apparently emerged in 1876, about a century after our nation was born. Still, when the legend becomes fact, we do like John Ford and print the legend here at DOTW.
Here’s a cocktail reportedly from the 1950s named for the most famous seamstress in early American history. Rescued in our century by Gary Regan in The Joy of Mixology, it’s a very pretty cocktail that would definitely look good next to Old Glory.
The Betsy Ross Cocktail
1 1/2 ounces brandy…better make it Laird’s Straight Apple Brandy
1 1/2 ounces ruby port
1/2 ounce curacao
1-2 dashes Angostura/aromatic bitters
Combine the ingredients in a mixing glass or cocktail shaker and stir. Shaking won’t ruin the taste, but it won’t improve it that much, and it will make the drink ugly. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass and toast Betsy Ross. Even if she didn’t actually make that first flag, she’s probably as good a stand-in as any for all the women we’ve never heard of who had just as much to do with making this country great as those guys we keep hearing about all the time.
Although today’s drink comes to us from David Embury’s 1940s cocktail classic, “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks,” it doesn’t really have any particular story to go with its classy provenance or courtly name. Embury just presents it as one of a series of drinks “based on an Applejack Sour.” It’s potentially a very sweet drink, at least on paper, since it includes both simple syrup (or sugar) and a very sweet orange liqueur. Still, the notoriously booze-severe Emory cautiously approves.
As I’ve mentioned here about 20,000 times, my approach to Drink of the Week is that these are reasonably quick and easy to make cocktails for the home, not major DIY projects. While I love the companies that send me free drinks and (for the most part) really good cocktails, if a recipe calls for, say, a ginger-asparagus-truffle reduction syrup, I’ll skip it. If it demands that I use freshly ground nutmeg, I’ll very likely just stick with the store-bought pre-ground stuff, thank you very much. In other words, I’m kind of lazy and I think you might be, too!
A truly smart and well-written sex comedy is a thing of beauty and not an everyday occurrence — rare in the past and rarer still in the present. Indeed, my film-besotted compatriots and I had relatively modest hopes for Melvin Frank’s 1968 near-farce, “Buono Sera, Mrs Campbell,” at this year’s TCM Fest. For the most part, we were expecting an entertaining but possibly rather routine 1960s romp and were there largely to check out its legendary star. That would be Italian bombshell-turned photographer and sculptor Gina Lollobrigida, a rather amazing woman on numerous counts who, at 88, still has a few thoughts on her mind and an innately humorous sensibility. The movie, much to our delight, turned out to be nearly as extraordinary as its star.
For fans of classic era film musicals, 1953’s “The Bandwagon” usually ranks somewhere just below “Singin’ in the Rain” in terms of sheer greatness. Devotees of director Vincente Minelli might even argue it’s somewhat better. At the same time, like it’s competition, the final film I saw at this year’s TCM Fest is not a movie that takes itself seriously. Indeed, the whole point of the film is that even just a little too much gravitas can have some pretty disastrous show business outcomes. It’s also a given by the conclusion that, when something isn’t working, it’s best to throw out your original idea and start something new.
