Who would be crazy enough to reinstate Prohibition? It was obvious from within a year or two after the 18th Amendment went into effect that the main accomplishment of making liquor illegal was creating powerful networks of organized crime. The repeal of that epic mistake, achieved by the 21st Amendment, should have been the end of it. But, at least in the realm of fiction, a yearning for Prohibition persisted.
In 1948, Humphrey Bogart’s character in the film Key Largo imagines a world uncorrupted by the gangsters who had thrived in the age of bootlegging. He has in mind one gangster in particular, Rocco, played by Edward G. Robinson. Bogart has found himself up against the once-powerful mob boss in a remote Florida hotel, shuttered for the summer. But given the chance to shoot it out with Robinson, Bogie shamefacedly refuses to pick up a pistol, saying, “One Rocco more or less isn’t worth dying for!”
Rocco has a handful of gunsels with him. For their part, they dream of the day when Volstead returns and the mobs rule again. “I bet you two or three years,” says a henchman, “Prohibition comes back.”
It’s touching, their belief in the magic of Prohibition, but not plausible. The Noble Experiment had proved such a catastrophic bust that the idea anyone would even think of running the experiment again would be like doing the Bikini Atoll tests again, but this time with the camera crews in closer, say, shooting from the old battleships’ decks.
But what do I know? Rocco’s thugs had it right. By 1949, legislation was introduced in the Senate that would have, in effect, restored Prohibition.
The bill, S. 1847, was introduced by Sen. William “Wild Bill” Langer of North Dakota and made it “unlawful for any distiller, brewer, vintner, manufacturer, wholesaler, or retailer or for the agent, broker, or factor of any of them, engaged in the sale of alcoholic beverages to cause to be transported in the mails or otherwise from any State or Territory or the District of Columbia any newspaper, periodical, news reel, photographic film, or record for mechanical reproduction advertising alcoholic beverages or containing the solicitation of an order for alcoholic beverages.”
And that was just Section 1. What followed were similar paragraphs restricting publishers, common carriers, radio broadcasters, and more. Seven restrictive sections in all.
But hadn’t the 21st Amendment settled all that? Hardly. Langer’s bill was an exercise in expanding federal power in ways that sidestepped the Constitution. It not only constrained repeal. The legislation put restrictions on speech that threatened the First Amendment’s protections.
It was clever, no doubt. After the end of national Prohibition, many states and localities maintained rules regulating the sale of alcohol. Langer’s bill prohibited any advertisement for booze that would be seen in those states. But of course, in an age of national publications and national travel, that meant no alcohol ads whatsoever. The publisher of Life could hardly guarantee that a copy of the magazine wouldn’t be read on a train passing through a dry county.
Fortunately, the senator’s bill would eventually be voted down in a closed-door committee session — one that left no record of the yeas and nays.
The irony is that while Langer was trying to dry up the liquor business, there was an alcohol frenzy going on in the state he represented. Wildcatters struck oil in North Dakota in 1951, drawing to the state a very thirsty crowd of oilmen. They set up operations in Bismarck, packing in the Prince Hotel and its bar, the Blue Blazer Lounge.
Two oilmen, Wendell Smith and James Curran, suffering hangovers from the previous night’s drinking, implored bartender Gebert “Shorty” Doebber to come up with something soothing. Shorty came up with a blend of creme de cacao, sweet cream, and soda water on ice in a highball glass. It became a sensation.
Langer is long forgotten to all but historians, but the North Dakota oilmen’s drink of choice, the Smith and Curran, can still be ordered in any decent bar, coast to coast. Give it a try, though don’t let the barman mistakenly substitute Kahlua for the cacao. And don’t call it a Smith and Kearns, which is a corruption of the honor the drink gave to James Curran. But do make a toast to Langer’s failure.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
