THE MARY PICKFORD

The Mary Pickford

MARY PICKFORD

1 ½ measures white rum

1 ½ measures pineapple juice

¼ measure grenadine

Dash of maraschino juice

Cocktail cherry to garnish

A Mary Pickford

My love of cocktails combined with my love of film and film history this fine Easter Day. April 8^th is Mary Pickford’s birthday and I felt the need to honor her with a cocktail. Pickford was a silent film star in the 1910s and 20s. As you can see, she was a really pretty and a talented actress — America’s first “sweetheart.” She was also very smart, and paved the way for Hollywood actresses with demands for a say in production and high salaries. In 1941, she was the only woman among a group of actors who founded United Artists. I fell in love with Pickford in film classes in college. Pursuing a minor in film was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I loved every class.

I also loved the MARY PICKFORD cocktail. It was a hard sell among the family members who gathered for Easter today, but the ones who passed missed out on a good cocktail in my opinion. To make the MARY PICKFORD, I put the ingredients listed above into shaker, added ice, gave it some shakes and strained it into those classic plastic glasses that define a large gathering. To finish, I added some ice to the glasses and plopped in some maraschino cherries as garnish.

I wonder if Pickford liked hanging around the pools in Hollywood, because the MARY PICKFORD cocktail is very beach or pool-appropriate. Pineapple juice is the dominate taste and the rum is barely detectable. It tastes similar to a Mai Tai or a Hawaiian Punch, and it only got better as the ice melted. The cocktail did have a strange, bitter aftertaste though, so I’m not sure how many I could drink in a row. But if I was by a pool, watching MARY PICKFORD in Coquette (1929), and eating chocolate eggs, I bet it’d be about four.

Drink Up^

Cocktail Connie