Walk into a Hollywood bar today and order a “martini” and you’ll probably get some variation of a vodka-vermouth drink served in a wide-rimmed glass; an olive may make an appearance. If the joint is high-class, or caters to nostalgic types, your “martini” might be made with gin, or perhaps you’ll be asked which you prefer. However, flash back 88 years to the middle of the roaring 20s and you’d be hard pressed to find a bartender who’s heard of Vodka, and your martini would probably come “on the rocks”; as long the cops weren’t watching.

While steeped in mystery, the invention of the martini is widely credited to the town of Martinez near San Francisco which developed the drink sometime in the late 1800s. Possibly served to local tourists by the Occidental Hotel, the drink originally appears in bar books in 1888 with recipes calling for a concoction of gin, vermouth, Boker’s bitters (no longer available), maraschino liquor, and a lemon twist. 

By the middle of the 1920s, prohibition was in full swing and the favorite drink recipes of the day had to cope with this reality. At the same time, an increasingly sophisticated social society was out on the town searching for something to define an evening. The martini could fill both demands. Made from readily available gin, martinis rapidly rose to popularity as a drink of choice. Classy and exotic, a martini was the quintessential symbol of the independence and new ideas that permeated the Jazz Era.    

Gin stems from a concoction which was originally crafted by Italian monks in the middle ages. Billed as a medicinal remedy for many years, it was the Dutch who distilled the first recreational gin, then known as genever (the Dutch name for Juniper from which the name gin is derived), in the 1600s. A sordid history of tariffs, lax regulation, poverty, and new industry followed suit. By the late 1700s gin’s reputation was so bad that the British crown was forced to begin regulating the production of gin and thereafter the quality improved dramatically. With the introduction of prohibition in the United States, however, gin returned to its back ally roots, often dubbed “bathtub” gin for its poor quality. Despite this reputation, the ready availability of gin propelled its acceptance at the bar and with the rising popularity of the martini it appeared gin was here to stay. 

Famous for its smooth, odorless taste, vodka was born from the marriage between the cold of Northern Europe and the distillation techniques of Italian monks. While Russia, Poland, the Ukraine, and the Scandinavian countries may not be able to claim the invention of the spirit, they certainly perfected its art and vodka is synonymous with these regions to this day. Designed to be as odorless and tasteless as possible, vodka is today the base of choice for a wide range of bar recipes; including the modern martini. However, in the 1920s, vodka was known only from strange foreign plays and the novels of writers like Tolstoy. It was not until the late 1940s that vodka gained traction in the US domestic market with the arrival of Vladimir Smirnoff, a Russian refugee famous for distilling vodka for the czar prior to the revolution. A series of clever marketing schemes, and the adoption of the drink by rising star James Bond, brought vodka to the forefront of the American imagination and by the 1960s the spirit had eclipsed gin as the go to martini mixer. 

Today both gin and vodka are routinely listed in many famous martini recipes. Throughout the years, the martini has managed to retain its mystique, and still represents some of the same yearnings that propelled the concoction to fame during the roaring 20s. Sophisticated and elegant, the martini remains in a class by itself; just don’t be surprised when Victoria Clarke’s is made with gin.

1.     Pour the ingredients into a mixing glass filled with ice cubes.

2.     Stir for 30 seconds.

3.     Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

4.     Add a dash of orange or Angostura bitters if desired

5.     Garnish with the olive or lemon twist.

A special thanks to our friends at Lindsted Composition for their research--we are not sure how many martinis were consumed during the writing of this article.

It’s a common misconception – if you can call obscure film trivia common – that sound first came to films with Warner’s 1927 blockbuster The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolson. While The Jazz Singer can fairly be credited as the first commercially successful talking picture, the history of sound in film reaches back a full 40 years to a string of developments in sound recording that actually pre-date the invention of the moving picture itself.

As a visual effects specialist hard at work on a visually fulfilling film project of my own, I sometimes forget that there was a time when sound was at the forefront of film special effects. It may be hard for modern entertainment enthusiasts to imagine watching a movie without sound effects, or even talking, but it is well understood that early films had neither. This was not, however, due to a lack of effort on the part of sound engineers and inventors. The story is a fascinating one, intuitively enmeshed in the very history of Europe and America through the involvement of notables such as Thomas Edison.

Often referred to as an American Wizard, businessman Thomas Edison is credited with commercializing a number of modern inventions such as the electric light bulb, the telephone, and – more importantly to our current discussion – the phonograph. First developed in the late 1870s, sound recording devices were a quick hit among visionaries who saw their true potential. The December 22, 1877 edition of Scientific America – written just a few months after the invention of the phonograph – proclaimed that the marriage of sound and moving pictures was inevitable, notable for the fact that the motion picture part of the equation wasn’t developed for another 15 years.    

While Edison truly invented the phonograph, he did not invent the first movie – though he did try to take credit. In 1891 the first motion picture prototype was displayed by The Edison Company – with synchronized sound! 

One of the primary factors involved in killing early attempts at combining film and sound was the advent of projection technology. The first projected film was actually an American piece, now relegated to historical obscurity. The much more successful French debut of projector technology took place in 1895. This development essentially broke motion picture sound achievements of the time. Audiences were simply unwilling to sit through the numerous mechanical difficulties inherent in early attempts and no commercially viable opportunity arose. Not to be denied, a great number of inventors on both sides of the Atlantic dumped their fortunes into attempt after attempt to develop synchronized film sound. 

The earliest attempts at wedding sound to film were actually somewhat successful; however the length and depth of the films were severely limited. The early picture boxes were good for a mere 30 seconds or so of entertainment and the novelty quickly wore off. No efforts at storytelling were even attempted. Short musical pieces, novelty shows, and dance routines were the norm. However, the contained nature of the devices on which these films were displayed allowed for a rudimentary form of mechanical synchronization between the soundtrack and the film. While techniques varied from inventor to inventor, the general idea was to place two rotating drums on the same axle (or on linked axles), one containing the picture and one the sound. Because they were physically linked, the drums turned at the same speed and timing could be approximated during design.

The invention of the projected movie made this physical linkage at first impossible and later unreliable. Belts, gears, and manual synchronization, were all attempted but the results were weak and often depended entirely on the skill of the operator. In the United States, union contracts required that theater equipment could be operated exclusively by local union members, individuals who often lacked the training necessary to create a viable user experience.

Additionally, large theater audiences were unable to properly hear a simple phonograph recording and no functioning amplification technology existed. When a technique was finally developed, synchronization became even more difficult due to the addition of a third layer in the process. As a result, audiences were unwilling to sit through the films as the sound was more annoying than entertaining.

For a few years from about 1908 to 1912, acting troupes were engaged to travel with a series of films and reenact the script live during the theater presentation of the associated movie. This approach added flare but was ultimately not effective. Large scale presentation was very difficult and hiring the acting troupes was expensive, cutting into the profits of the theatres and film studios. 

As the 1920s approached, advances in synchronization techniques, along with the dropping costs and improving quality of phonographic technology, allowed inventors to develop plausibly functional film sound tracks. Unfortunately, by this time the studios were no longer interested. Many, such as Edison Motion Pictures, had been early investors in sound technology and had lost a lot of money. The silent film era was booming and the money was flowing, as such executives grew more conservative and no longer saw any need to take big risks on new technologies, content to merely improve the filming process they were already using.

Arguments even began to crop up suggesting that adding sound, especially talking parts, to films would actually make the movies less popular. Concerns about language limitations and the difficulty of translation were the norm with studios that were used to an open and easy international market for their films. 

By the later part of the 1920s, studio profits – which had seemed unstoppable in the early days – were beginning to slow. Desperate to keep the good times rolling, the studios were once again interested in trying something new – and this time the sound technology was ready to compete.

Enter The Jazz Singer. However despite the new commercial success of sound in film, a number of technical hurdles remained, some of which were not sorted out for many years. In particular, the flow and motion of early talking movies were severely limited by static recording technology – no one thought of using a boom microphone until much later; but more on that in another article.    

A special thanks to our friends at Lindsted Composition for their great research for this article.