Popular Culture
In 1917, Bill W. (William Griffith Wilson), co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, consumed his first Bronx Cocktails as a World War I soldier. He did so at a dinner party thrown by the wealthy wives of other soldiers, a social situation that Bill found awkward and made him feel inferior. He found drinking them to be, at the time, transformative; he described it as removing a "strange barrier that had existed between me and all men and women." This began his alcoholic episode which persisted until December 11, 1934.
Peruvian agent Elvira Chaudoir code-named "Bronx" (after the name of the cocktail) by MI5 during the Double-Cross System WW 2 espionage operation.
In F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel This Side of Paradise (published in 1920), Amory Blaine, the central character, orders a Bronx Cocktail after Rosalind, his fiance, breaks off their engagement.
In the 1934 film The Thin Man, sleuth Nick Charles (William Powell) says that a Bronx must always be shaken to "two-step time."
In the 1973 novel Marion's Wall, by Jack Finney, a Bronx cocktail is what the narrator's wife orders when possessed by the spirit of a flapper. The bartender doesn't recognize the drink.
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