Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #2306: Frankie Frisch Graduates To Carling

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Tuesday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1951. In this ad, part of another series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “x person, too, has graduated to Carling’s — the LIGHT-HEARTED ale!,” it features “American baseball player and manager” Frankie Frisch wearing an Oxford cap, or mortarboard, with a small red cap on top of it while holding up a glass of Red Cap Ale. He was “nicknamed The Fordham Flash or The Old Flash, was a German-American Major League Baseball player and manager of the first half of the twentieth century. Frisch was a switch-hitting second baseman who threw right-handed. He played for the New York Giants (1919–1926) and St. Louis Cardinals (1927–1937). He managed the Cardinals (1933–1938), Pittsburgh Pirates (1940–1946) and Chicago Cubs (1949–1951). He is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and the St. Louis Cardinals Hall of Fame Museum.

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Beer In Ads #2305: David Niven Graduates To Carling

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Monday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1950. In this ad, part of another series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “x person, too, has graduated to Carling’s — the LIGHT-HEARTED ale!,” it features “English actor and novelist” David Niven wearing an Oxford cap, or mortarboard, with a small red cap on top of it while holding up a glass of Red Cap Ale.

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Beer In Ads #2304: Clem McCarthy Graduates To Carling

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Sunday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1950. In this ad, part of another series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “x person, too, has graduated to Carling’s — the LIGHT-HEARTED ale!,” it features “American sportscaster and public address announcer” Clem McCarthy wearing an Oxford cap, or mortarboard, with a small red cap on top of it while holding up a glass of Red Cap Ale. “He also lent his voice to Pathe News’s RKO newsreels. He was known for his gravelly voice and dramatic style, a “whiskey tenor” as sports announcer and executive David J. Halberstam has called it.”

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Beer In Ads #2303: Paul Lukas Graduates To Carling

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Saturday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1950. In this ad, part of another series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “x person, too, has graduated to Carling’s — the LIGHT-HEARTED ale!,” it features “Hungarian actor” Paul Lukas wearing an Oxford cap, or mortarboard, with a small red cap on top of it while holding up a glass of Red Cap Ale.

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Beer In Ads #2302: Ethel Merman Graduates To Carling

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Friday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1950. In this ad, part of another series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “x person, too, has graduated to Carling’s — the LIGHT-HEARTED ale!,” it features “American actress and singer” Ethel Merman wearing an Oxford cap, or mortarboard, with a small red cap on top of it while holding up a glass of Red Cap Ale.

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Beer In Ads #2301: Burgess Meredith Graduates To Carling

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Thursday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1950. In this ad, part of another series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “x person, too, has graduated to Carling’s — the LIGHT-HEARTED ale!,” it features “American actor, director, producer, and writer in theater, film, and television” Burgess Meredith wearing an Oxford cap, or mortarboard, with a small red cap on top of it while holding up a glass of Red Cap Ale.

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Coza Powder, The Cure For Drunkenness

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The 19th and early 20th century is filled with accounts of quacks and patent medicines sold by snake oil salesman. All sorts of wild claims were made and almost without exception they were complete bunkum. I just came upon one I hadn’t seen before, something called Coza Powder, from the Coza Institute in London, England. Here’s the ad, from “The Strand Magazine,” published in 1907. I also found examples of the same ad as late as 1909, and even a couple in Spanish, so it appears to have been sold worldwide.

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There’s a lot not to like about Coza Powder, but it’s an amazing ad. First, there’s that horrific image of the bottle man being squeezed, then there’s the idea that someone could put it in your drinks without you even being aware of it. That sure sounds like a great idea to promote. They try to sell it by explaining it has “the marvelous effect of producing a repugnance to alcohol in any shape or form.”

And it’s guaranteed to be safe? Of course it is. Thank goodness for that, it hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder until they brought it up. And let’s all beware of imitations, only get genuine Coza powder from the Institute itself, the “only genuine powder for Drunkenness.”

Sounds reasonable, right? Not everybody thought so, even at the time. No less than The British Medical Journal took a look at what was in Coza powder, among other such remedies of the day and in 1909 published their findings in an article entitled “The Composition Of Certain Secret Remedies.” On the page concerning the cure for drunkenness, the first one they examined was Coza powder:
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Not surprisingly, the BMJ found that Coza powder was nothing more than bicarbonate of soda, cumin, and cinnamon. And essentially it’s 90% sodium bicarbonate and the remaining 10% is equal parts cumin and cinnamon. They put the cost — in 1909 — at 1/30th of a penny for 30 packages of the powder.

I don’t know if this is relevant, but in Portuguese, “coza” means “bake.”

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Beer In Ads #2298: Arthur Fiedler, I’ve Found Out

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Monday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from 1950. In this ad, part of a series featuring well-known celebrities of the day and the tagline “I’ve found out,” it features “long-time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra” Arthur Fiedler holding a beer and giving his testimonial about why he loves Red Cap Ale. “With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the United States. Fiedler was sometimes criticized for over-popularizing music, particularly when adapting popular songs or edited portions of the classical repertoire, but he kept performances informal and sometimes self-mocking to attract a bigger audience.”

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