The perfect cocktail for ‘Deadline — U.S.A.’
The following text is excerpted from “Eddie Muller’s Noir: Cocktails Inspired by the World of Film Noir by Eddie Muller,” Copyright © 2023. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
“Deadline — U.S.A.” paired with the recipe below for the “Journalist” cocktail:
“This 1952 offering from 20th Century-Fox, written and directed by Richard Brooks, may not be a full-fledged film noir, but it is the best movie ever made about the newspaper business, which makes it the perfect accompaniment for this cocktail — one of my personal favorites. The drink first appeared in the 1930s in Harry Craddock’s indispensable ‘Savoy Cocktail Book,’ most likely adapted from the Spanishborn Periodista. It seems at first like a variation on a “perfect” Martini, combining sweet and dry vermouth in a gin base. But it has a citrus card up its sleeve that makes this drink uniquely refreshing.
“In ‘Deadline — U.S.A.’ Humphrey Bogart stars as Ed “Hutch” Hutcheson, managing editor of The Day, an East Coast metropolitan daily newspaper about to be sold to a rival chain by its indifferent heirs. Hutch tries to prove his paper’s value by pinning a murder rap on the city’s biggest crime kingpin, while simultaneously trying to forestall the demise of his beloved paper and his foundering marriage. Brooks wrote the part specifically for Bogart, who specialized in that blend of cynicism and idealism essential to any good editor in chief. The film features a fantastic array of supporting characters, all of whom drink a lot. In fact, booze is a major factor in the film. Brooks uses it in many ways: to loosen the tongue of a wary witness, to seduce an ex-wife, to discredit a reporter, to toast old triumphs and fresh defeats. The scene in which the staff holds a wake for the paper at their corner saloon — all of them overserved and sentimental — is a personal favorite. I initially saw this movie with my father, himself a veteran newspaperman . . . it was the first time I ever saw him cry.”