Douglas Fairbanks Recipe
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The Douglas Fairbanks is one of a variety of cocktails named for film luminaries. Movie stars have celebrated the merits of the cocktail as well as lamented its abuses. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire helped to immortalize the cocktail. The first words Greta Garbo uttered on screen were “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.” Asked about how she was mixed up in a delicate situation, Mae West replied, “Like an olive in a dry Martini.” These celebrities all have cocktails named after them. Thinking about those who played alcoholics in movies, however, there is no Ray Milland, Jack Lemmon, or Nicolas Cage, which shows that it pays to be respectful to your cocktail on screen.
Like sandwiches, drinks have been regularly baptized for stars, and the Mary Pickford, named for the early motion picture icon, is one of the earliest. It was so popular in its time that Douglas Fairbanks, who later married Pickford, asked a bartender in Cuba to name a cocktail after him. The bartender did. Wouldn’t you? Most of the stars have faded into history, and so have their drinks. Presented here is one of the dusty relics.
- 1 1/2 ounces gin
- 1 ounce apricot brandy or sweet vermouth
- 1/2 ounce fresh lime juice
- Twist of lemon peel
- Shake the gin, brandy, and lime juice with ice; then strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Garnish with lemon peel.
Oops. a quick P.S to my comment: the "under 5 minutes" clearly applies to non-bartenders working understandably at a leisurely pace. But the drinks are pretty simple and if it takes a bartender even twenty seconds to make, he should start thinking of another line of work.
The Doug Fairbanks Sr. cocktail sounds worth tasting, though not a big fan of gin. I was a bartender for thirty-years plus, having only recently abandoned ship, and so I have a couple questions and/or remarks: while apricot brandy and sweet vermouth are obviously both "sweet," they're not compatible substitutes for each other: use apricot brandy, no matter the amount, you have an enirely...+READ
The Doug Fairbanks Sr. cocktail sounds worth tasting, though not a big fan of gin. I was a bartender for thirty-years plus, having only recently abandoned ship, and so I have a couple questions and/or remarks: while apricot brandy and sweet vermouth are obviously both "sweet," they're not compatible substitutes for each other: use apricot brandy, no matter the amount, you have an enirely different cocktail deserving another name. How 'bout calling one of them Doug Fairbank's JR.?
Mae West's famous remark about feeling like an olive in a dry martini is very funny on the face of it. However,whether a martini is dry or "wet" has nothing to do with the live, but refers to the use of vermouth. In the old days, the ratio was something like 5-1, but for at least the last twenty years bartender's have been waving the vermouth over the gin (or vodka) or throwing in a quick splash, or doing an
"in and out" -- the vermouth is swirled until it "coats" the inside of the glass; then the vermouth is tossed and the chilled gin (or vodka) poured in, theoretically absorbing the subtle taste of the vermouth.
And while I'm at it, it's time to get rid of that lousy, dreary pimento stuffed olive when you think of the vast selection of olives available to us now. I'm all for tradition, but I'll take my martini (vodka, please) with a big cherry pepper.-COLLAPSE