In 1534, somewhere in Italy, an agriculturist studies a vining plant of the nightshade family and describes its yellowish fruit in his journal as pomo d’ oro. That same year, in Rome, Pope Clement VII excommunicates Henry VIII from the Catholic church for the king’s unsanctioned annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon and subsequent remarriage to Anne Boleyn. To the all-too-sober eye, this coincidence might seem irrelevant, but a more informed glance reveals that the first event establishes the existence of the tomato, while the second sets the conditions by which the name “Bloody Mary” will be introduced to the English language.
Henry VIII’s only child by Catherine, Mary Tudor – called Lady Mary instead of Princess Mary because the annulment makes her technically illegitimate – suffers both because of her reduced status and because she is a pious Catholic. When circumstance puts her on the throne in 1553, she immediately reverses the self-serving religious reforms of her father, realigns England with the Catholic church, and, before her death in 1558, burns 277 Protestants at the stake for the crime of heresy. By this campaign, Mary I earns the nickname “Bloody Mary,” a moniker that will travel through nearly four centuries of history until it is joined with the tomato by a bartender’s inspiration. (NOTE: “Bloody Mary” is most likely not a reference to her violence but to transubstantiation and a reference to Tudor laws known as “The Bloody Acts.”)
Before we arrive at the modern Bloody Mary, though, let’s pause along the timeline in the 1890s, where another coincidence seems to set an important precedent. Bartending guides of the decade begin to publish recipes for the Tomato Juice Cocktail, a nonalcoholic refreshment made with juiced tomatoes, various salts, and peppers. Meanwhile, Merriam-Webster establishes c. 1896 as the first appearance of the word “brunch,” a composite meal of breakfast and lunch that will eventually become the primary setting for the Bloody Mary.
In 1911 Paris, a Scotsman named Harry MacElhone opens one of the main portals in the continuum of drinklore and calls it Harry’s New York Bar. Destined for mythological fame because of the legendary expatriates who drink there (Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein, Gershwin), Harry’s is also the birthplace of the Sidecar and the Bloody Mary.
Mixological anthropologists most consistently cite 1924 as the year in which Harry’s barman Fenand Petiot first pours spirits into something resembling the Tomato Juice Cocktail. Any further elaboration on this single fact, including all tales as to how the cocktail is named, ought to be taken with a grain of celery salt. MacElhone’s nationality serves as an excuse for several loosely knit yarns linking the name “Bloody Mary” to Mary, Queen of Scots (Mary Stuart), and a general (but understandable) ignorance of English royal history keeps these stories alive.
Leap back 20 years to 1904 and the corner of 55th Street and Fifth Avenue in New York City. Towering an unprecedented 18 stories above the ground is New York’s first “skyscraper” hotel, the luxurious St. Regis. It is the realization of a dream for millionaire John Jacob Astor IV, whose vision has led to one of the most successful blends of old-world-elegance and the modern conveniences of the dawning industrial age. What is important to the drinklorist, though, is that Fernand Petiot moves to New York in 1934 to become barman at the St. Regis, and he brings his invention with him. The hotel management allows Petiot to introduce his cocktail but insists that its name, conjuring images of Protestants ablaze, is far too vulgar for their patrons. The drink is redubbed the Red Snapper for its similarity in color to the spiny food fish.
Gossip might have you believe that Astor himself requested the name change and/or that he personally hired Petiot away from Harry’s because of his fondness for the drink. But these stories are as wet as Astor was in 1912, when he went down with the ill-fated Titanic.
John Jacob Astor
Met with disaster
When that unsinkable
Ship did sink.The poor millionaire
Would die unaware
Of his finest hotel’s
Famous drink.Built the St. Regis
But death most egregious
Was both too soon
And too grimTo taste a Red Snapper
Although a red snapper
Might have indeed
Tasted him.
While Petiot perfected his invention – spicing it up, establishing the recipe known today as a classic Bloody Mary – he was watched by a figure as a much a part of drinking history as his cocktail. Old King Cole is the title and subject of the 28-by-8-foot painting that hung behind the bar of 1934, just as it hangs behind the bar now known as The King Cole Bar. The grimace on King Cole’s face and equally inscrutable looks of his attendant courtiers give the painting a mysterious aura, as though all of the figures are in on a joke we just missed.
Painted in 1906 by Maxfield Parrish as a commission for the tap room at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Times Square, King Cole has presided over at least five bars in his lifetime. Perhaps the countenances of the figures were conceived in anticipation of the many stories, lies, and dirty jokes they would inevitably hear or the many famous people they would watch toast to good fortune, drown much sorrow, or just get comfortably stinko. In fact, the secret of Old King Cole is known to the bartenders and long-devoted patrons, but once it is learned, the painting can never again be viewed outside its context. One rumor that you may dismiss, however, is that Ernest Hemingway had anything to do with the painting’s conception. In 1906, Papa was only 6 years old, and it is unlikely that Parrish would consult an anonymous child in Illinois regarding subject matter.
During King Cole’s reign at the Knickerbocker, he may have witnessed the invention of another cocktail even more famous than the Bloody Mary. Among the many self-proclaimed inventors of the modern martini was Martini di Arma di Taggia, who claimed to have poured the first while tending bar at that hotel. If this doesn’t prove that drinklore is, in fact, the ether that binds all human existence, consider the further irony that his claim is dated 1912 – the year of the Titanic disaster. One might even note that it was an abundance of ice – a crime in martini making – that brought down the unsinkable ocean liner, but that might be a stretch.
The Knickerbocker ceased operations in 1921, and although the building still stands, its once-grand lobby [at the time this article was published] is presently a Gap store (maybe Martini di Arma di Taggia wore khakis). One legend of the hotel’s closure is that its most famous resident, Enrico Caruso, followed his favorite painting to the St. Regis, but there is only a grim shred of truth to this. The great tenor “followed” the painting, but not to the St. Regis. By 1921, the scythe of Prohibition had razed the landscape, and without a bar to rule, King Cole was crated and put into storage. Likewise, Caruso was crated and put into storage, as 1921 was the year he died.
For all budding drinklorists, a visit to the King Cole Bar for a Red Snapper is an absolute necessity. Take a seat with a good view of the king, and you will find that in this oblong, cherry-wood space, you have just become part of the frame for this famous mural. Order a Red Snapper, taste one of the best classically prepared Bloody Marys in your life, and if you linger long enough, you might begin to sniff out the secret of Old King Cole.
