[Beginning this week, we'll be rerunning some favorites from The Celluloid Pantry while Nora enjoys a writer's residency at the Millay Colony for the Arts. We'll be back with all-new posts December 4.]
A crisp and delicious gin-based cocktail, the Gibson has a dramatic past.
In the 1930s, the magazine illustrator, Charles Dana Gibson stopped in for a drink at the New York Players Club, an elegant social club for people of the theater. When Gibson asked the bartender make something "a little different," he mixed up a concoction of gin and vermouth identical to a Martini in nearly all respects. The difference, however, was the garnish. Like a brilliant understudy, a cocktail onion stood in for the olive, winning over a new fan base.
In All About Eve (1950), veteran stage actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis), fears she will be usurped by her starry-eyed young protégé, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). Always eager to help her idol, the fresh-faced Eve has become involved in all aspects of Margo's life—including, Margo fears, her fiancé, Bill (Gary Merrill).
Hosting a cocktail party in honor of Bill's birthday, Margo's one-liners have as much snap and zing as the stiffest of drinks. When asked if she knows she ordered domestic gin for the party by mistake, Margo shoots back, "The only thing I ordered by mistake is the guests. They're domestic too, and they don't care what they drink as long as it burns!"
Her best friend Karen (Celeste Holm) knows something is amiss. She turns to Margo, who is drinking a one of a series of Gibsons, remarking, "We know you, we've seen you like this before. Is it over, or is it just the beginning?"
Margo plucks the onion from her cocktail, then drains the glass with a flourish.
"Fasten your seatbelts," she enunciates, "it's going to be a bumpy night."
Gibson
makes one cocktail
1 3/4 oz. gin
1/2 oz. dry vermouth
pearl cocktail onion
Combine the gin and vermouth in a shaker over ice. Shake and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a pearl onion.
- Nora
Yes. One of the best so far.
Love that scene.
Yay! Gibsons! Yay! Bette Davis! Yay! All About Eve! Yay! Nora!
Gibsons are definitely in my top twenty cocktails. In fact, in 1999, I declared them the cocktail of the new millennium. It had something to do with the futuristic glisten of the pearl onions. I think I was right.
I'm a huge fan of Gibsons. I find that a lot of the bars in Atlanta don't stock the requisite cocktail onions, which is a bummer. I keep threatening to make my wife carry a jar in her purse for me. Anyway, I also designed a shirt in honor of my favorite cocktail, so if you want to have a look, you can see it at my site DailyShirts.com - I called it A Bumpy Night.
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Good drink, great movie and the inspiration for my Flickr name :)
view Eve in Hochelaga's profile
Love love love Gibson's -- very frustrating how few bars stock onions -- thank goodness I also like olives!
But 1/2 oz of vermouth??? No way! Just a drop or two, please!
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