Lew
Cody (1884-1934) was a popular American movie actor of the silent and early
talkie era. He specialised in the role of the handsome, debonair - but
occasionally villainous - man-about-town. He played this role to popular
perfection in Cecil B. de Mille’s 1919 film Don’t
change your husband. In this movie, Gloria Swanson was a bored housewife
lacking attention from a busy husband, and is pursued by the tall, dark, and
handsome man played by Cody. She divorces the bore and marries the attentive
new lover – eventually only to find that he too neglects her. He also turns out
to be a bit of a slob with an over-fondness for smelly-on-the- breath onions, and
to make matters worse, he has another lover on the side.
Several
years later, in 1925, Cody played the character of Prince Carlos in the silent
movie, The Sporting Venus, and
naturally the media were all agog at his appearances around town. The
onion-eating habit was still associated with Cody, as is shown in a New York Times piece about him at the
time.
CODY
ADMITS ONION HABIT
-
Adores
Venice and Coney
Also
Latest Jazz
-
Laments
Fall from Comedy
to
Satire
-
Exalts
Women, But Remains
Blithe
Bachelor
-
By
Alma Whitaker.
No, it isn’t credible.
Could a sophisticated villain like Lew Cody have such deplorably low tastes? How
dare he be so disgustingly human? Why, he ought to have breakfast in evening
dress and live almost exclusively on caviars and truffles. Just see him in “The
Sporting Venus” at Loew’s State Theater this week – man-of-fashion, wealth
stuff – and who, I ask you, could believe that he entertained as recently as
last Wednesday night with corned beef and cabbage – and onions enough to spread
the tale back in New York.
ONION
MENU
This is how the menu
read – to all intents and purposes: Pickled onions, young green onions, boiled
beef with cabbage and onions, onion salad with a dash of garlic, beer (as near
as obtainable and … )
“Good heavens, what
dessert could you ever serve with a dinner like this?” I ask?
“Bicarbonate of soda
and sensen, [?]” he informed affably.
But that isn’t all.
Menus were printed on paper bags – for the convenience of guests wishing to
take home anything they could not stoke away on the premises!
CODY
DINNER
Now, you might suppose
that was a freak dinner – nothing of the sort. Lew Cody, host, specializes in
just that effluviatic type of formal banquet, and a cook is hired specifically
on that plebeian understanding.
But the really
harrowing part of last Wednesday’s event is that the patrician, lordly,
supercultured John Barrymore was the
guest of honor at a function that also included Seena Owen, Marshal Nolan,
Frank and Mrs. Borzage, James R. Quirk,
Lowell Sherman, Jack Gilbert, Mabel Normand, Renee Adoree, Mae Ayer, Mr. and
Mrs Roscoe Arbuckle, and several others. Can a Barrymore feast thus vulgarly
and live?
“Why, I thought you
were an epicure, supercultured palate gourmet, a connoisseur de luxe …” I
murmured anxiously.
“I am,” he reassured
me, “especially when it comes to onions. I am very fussy about my onions.”
I was disappointed that the architect of this menu
did not come up with an onion dessert for this meal. The cook would only have
had to go to William Ellis’ farming and household manual The Country Housewife’s Family Companion published in 1750 to find
the perfect recipe:
Onion
Pye made by laboring Mens Wives.
They
mix chopt Apples and Onions in equal Quantities,and with some Sugar put them
into Dough-crust and bake them: This by some is thought to make as good a Pie
as Pumkins do. It is a Hertfordshire
Contrivance.
P.S.
Previous post ‘Knowing your onions’is here.
No comments:
Post a Comment