Movie Mixology
It's Oscar time again. And on Sunday, I suggest you get dressed up and fix a round of drinks before settling in for the red-carpet coverage and awards ceremony. It only makes sense, since cocktails and movies are as natural an American pairing as apple pie and ice cream. Drinks are a specialized tool for a film director: An elixir can move a plot forward or define a moment perfectly, give the audience a belly laugh or pull us to the darkest corners of a character's life.
In The Godfather Part II, I'm convinced that when Fredo, half in the bag already, pesters his brother about the Spanish word for banana Daiquiri, Michael Corleone makes a mental note to spend some time alone with him at the lake house.
One of the most famous silver-screen bars is Rick's Café Americain in Casablanca, and what the characters order there says a lot about them. In a dramatic scene, Victor Lazlo, a leader of the Czech underground, requests two glasses of Cointreau, but Nazi sympathizer Captain Renault waves off the order and brings him champagne instead. Lazlo tries to refuse unsuccessfully. The next day, Lazlo asks for two cognacs, refusing steadfastly to have champagne, a celebratory beverage, in Nazi-occupied Casablanca.
Some of my favorite cocktail pairings on film are in Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch. Marilyn Monroe has bubbly with potato chips, and for Tom Ewell, it's two whiskey sours with a peanut butter sandwich (for breakfast, of course).
The martini has been featured in so many movies it deserves an Academy Award. According to the spectacular book The Martini by Barnaby Conrad III, there was a period in Hollywood history when directors even called the last shot of the day a "martini shot."
Some of the martini's scenes are comic, as in 1958's Auntie Mame, when 10-year-old Patrick prepares a martini for Mr. Babcock of the Knickerbocker Bank. The mood is anything but comic in All About Eve, which garnered 14 Oscar nominations (and six wins), when a combative Bette Davis slams back her first dry martini and like a good stewardess instructs the group to fasten their seatbelts for a bumpy night.
The Vesper, a twist on the martini, is famously shaken for special agent James Bond in Casino Royale. But Joan Crawford's classic dry martini is most definitely stirred in 1946's drama Humoresque, whose screenplay was co-written by Clifford Odets.
Nick and Nora Charles knock off martinis like toy soldiers one-by-one in rapid succession in the Thin Man series as they effortlessly solve crimes between sips.
During the Oscars, I'll certainly be having a martini. Just make mine with gin, stirred, wet, and very cold, with a small chilled pimiento-less Spanish olive and a twist... and when you choose the glass, remember: I want a drink; I don't want a bath.
Click here to find Dale Degroff's recipes for a whiskey sour and champagne cocktail.
This story was originally published at Behind the Bar: Movie Mixology. For more stories like this, subscribe to Liquor.com for the best in all things cocktails and spirits.