Not the most shining moment in the history of Bartender Creativity, perhaps, but that was the story. New York illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, creator of the iconic Gibson Girl-with her high-piled hair and ample bosom - purportedly asked his bartender for something new and was given a martini with onions. With its reference to Gibson Girls, “All About Eve” even mentions the man long thought to be behind the cocktail. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” It’s all air kisses at that little shindig the Gibsons passed around among the theater sophisticates are perfect for people who secretly hate one another’s guts. The drink makes far more sense in its other movie cameo, the famously tense party scene in “All About Eve” (1950), when Bette Davis tells her guests, “Fasten your seatbelts. Would you order a cocktail guaranteed to give you onion breath? (You could read her lips, even though the censors insisted the line be redubbed with the less blatant “I never discuss love on an empty stomach.”) She has told you, as you peruse the menu, that she never makes love on an empty stomach. She has told you where to find her sleeping berth. She’s bantering with you as racily as the Motion Picture Production Code of the time will allow. Let’s take a poll, readers: You’re traveling with a cool, seductive Hitchcock blonde. It’s his flirtation with Eva Marie Saint in the dining car of that cross-country train, when Thornhill orders a Gibson. (The subtle implication that Thornhill survives this deathtrap because he’s accustomed to driving loaded would not earn the film a stamp of approval from Mothers Against Drunk Driving.)īut it’s not the bibulous “Mad Men”-style meeting or the forced imbourbonation that bothers me. Later, the same thugs pour bourbon down his throat and force him to drive, assuming he’ll end up dead. Thornhill - played with that droll elegance so particular to Cary Grant - is hauled away at gunpoint from a martini-enhanced business meeting. Plenty of drinking happens in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic “North by Northwest,” not all of it consensual. While it has never won an award for Best Supporting Cocktail, it’s a drink with a Hollywood pedigree, including cameos in two of the American Film Institute’s top 100 American films. With the Oscars ceremony around the corner, the Gibson deserves a nod. A Gibson hinges on its garnish: Crunching into a flavorful allium at the beginning of the drink brings out new flavors in the gin and vermouth, adding a salty-sour note that transforms the martini into a cold, delicate onion soup, at once both aperitif and appetizer. When it’s made with a fresh pickled onion, I prefer a Gibson to the standard martini with its olive or lemon twist.
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