The Bloody Mary , a spiced mix of vodka and tomato juice, is one of the drinks that, in the mid-twentieth century, turned vodka from an eastern European spirit into a global one. Indeed, it is undoubtedly one of the world’s most popular mixed drinks. Even after voluminous research and debate, though, its history remains as murky as the drink itself. As with the Margarita, there are many claimants to its invention, and its origin is a long-vexed question. See Margarita. The evidence, spread between the usual cultural detritus from which cocktail history is constructed—a heterogeneous mass of bartender’s guides, nightlife columns, marketing brochures, diaries, pulp novels, liquor-store advertisements, and the like—is both copious and contradictory.
In such cases, it is often best to begin at the end of the process that led to the drink’s rise to popularity and work backwards. The first time we find the Bloody Mary’s three essential components—vodka, tomato juice, and its distinctive name—united is in Dorothy Kilgallen’s Voice of Broadway column, November 1939, where she writes that the “newest hangover cure to entrance the headholders” at New York’s 21 Club “is called a ‘Bloody Mary’—tomato juice and vodka.” Within days of this mention, columnists Lucius Beebe and Walter Winchell would chime in to say the same thing. See
George Jessel and Fernand Petiot
The most serious claimants to being that point of origin are George Jessel (1898–1981), an American entertainer, and Fernand “The Frog” Petiot (1900–1975), a French bartender who worked at Harry’s New York Bar in Paris and then the St. Regis Hotel in New York from 1934 until his retirement in 1966. See Harry’s New York Bar. Jessel claimed to have first mixed vodka and tomato juice in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1927, while Petiot claimed that he was the one who invented the “real” Bloody Mary by taking that vodka and tomato juice mixture and adding the spices (others later claimed that he came up with the base combination as well when he was at Harry’s). Unfortunately, there is no contemporary evidence for either claim, although Jessel was strongly associated with the vodka–tomato juice combination by 1939, and possibly as early as 1934, while the St. Regis had a vodka bar under Petiot’s tutelage in 1936, and the drink, spices and all, was a documented specialty of the hotel since at least 1941. In the absence of further evidence, the evaluation of their claims must rest there.
A Hangover Cure
If, however, we set aside the personalities, the general outline of the drink’s early history is much clearer. It begins in the early 1920s, with hungover American drinkers prying open cans of stewed tomatoes, straining out the liquid in them and drinking it for its vitamins (canned tomato juice was then a rare novelty). By the end of the decade, the canned juice had taken off and was widely available. It had made it into the speakeasies, as evidenced by the sign columnist Odd McIntyre saw in one in 1927: “Try tomato juice for that hangover.” The next step was inevitable. McIntyre again, from 1929: “A popular cocktail diversion of the moment is composed of equal parts tomato juice and gin… . Broadway seizes on any panacea for the day-after throb.” It is possible, of course, that the idea of thus fortifying the tomato juice came from Jessel, a denizen of those same Broadway speakeasies, but the sporty crowd that patronized such places could certainly be counted on to discover the idea without outside prompting. Indeed, as the head of the Department of Agriculture’s Food and Drug Control Division noted in 1928, while “non alcoholic cordials” such as tomato juice were very popular, “in many cases people add alcohol” to them.
The Tomato Juice Cocktail
But alcohol wasn’t the only thing that Americans were adding to their tomato juice. Once it became a popular drink, it fell victim to the American propensity for tinkering, and beginning in 1927 the press made frequent references to a non-alcoholic “Tomato Juice Cocktail” (this may have been the creation of Chicago hotelier and restaurateur Ernest Byfield). Served as an appetizer, it was intended to provide the stimulating kick of a real cocktail without running afoul of the dry law. Recipes varied in detail, but the Trenton Evening Times summed up the general consensus in 1928 when it noted that “many like to chill the [tomato] juice and season.” The seasonings? “Salt, lemon juice, Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce.”
This, too, would soon get alcoholized: Cocktail Parade, a 1933 booklet, contains a gin-spiked “Tomato Juice Pick Me Up” with lemon and Worcestershire. From there, it was a short step to using vodka (the mix first appears in print in the 1936 account New York financial advisor Dwight Farnham published of country-house life in Connecticut) and spicing the whole thing à la Tomato Juice Cocktail. In a 1964 interview, Petiot claimed that the spices were his particular contribution to the Bloody Mary and that the tomato juice–vodka combination and the name belonged to Jessel (at the St. Regis, the drink was known as the Red Snapper).
A Popular Drink
By the end of World War II, the Bloody Mary was widely known, if not always accepted: he-man columnist Robert Ruark summed up the opposition in 1949 when he dubbed it a “nauseous blend,” perhaps attributable to “dastardly foreign forces.” In 1951, Jack Townsend, president of the Bartenders Union of New York, was still lumping it in among the so-called freak drinks. By that time, the members of his union must have served hundreds of thousands of them, since less conservative drinkers had made the drink a sensation. Indeed, along with the Moscow Mule, the Bloody Mary would largely facilitate the stunning growth vodka enjoyed in the American market (and in cocktail bars everywhere) in the 1950s. See Moscow Mule.
When, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the canon of popular drinks was largely renegotiated, sending the old Manhattan and Old-Fashioned and their ilk out to pasture, the Bloody Mary, freak no more, stood at the head of the new order (even if, as New York Magazine discovered when it tested the versions local bars were turning out, its actual vodka content was often minimal). At the same time, the usual variations that accrue to such a widely popular formula began to appear. Some have their own names: replace the vodka with tequila and you have the Bloody Maria; replace the tomato juice with Clamato juice and you have the Bloody Caesar; with beef broth, the Bull Shot (invented at Detroit’s Caucus Club in the mid-1950s) and the Bloody Bull (with a 50-50 mix of broth and tomato). See Bloody Caesar; Bullshot; and Bloody Bull. There are many more. Among the most common additions to the basic formula is horseradish (attested to in the Tomato Juice Cocktail since at least 1934), but the spices attempted are legion. Garnishes originally began with a simple lemon wedge, moved on through the now-iconic celery stalk (used in Tomato Juice Cocktails from 1929 and also attributed to Ernest Byfield) and various pickled vegetables, and now have evolved, if that’s the right word, into cantilevered arrangements of skewered food items such as shrimp, bacon, chicken wings, fried chicken, cheeseburgers, and pizza. This is perhaps not a sign of health.
Nonetheless, although the cocktail revolution of the twenty-first century has somewhat dimmed the Bloody Mary’s luster, it is still almost universally available and remains one of the few drinks almost every ordinary drinker knows how to make.
Recipe: Roll or gently shake 45 ml vodka, 120 ml tomato juice, 15 ml lemon juice, 3 dashes Tabasco sauce, and 3 dashes Worcestershire sauce with ice. Pour into a highball glass. Garnish at will.
See also tomato juice and vodka.
Cocktail Parade. Scarborough, NY: Canapé Parade, 1933.
Farnham, Dwight. A Place in the Country. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.
Jessel, George. The World I Lived In. Chicago: Regnery, 1975.
Kilgallen, Dorothy. “The Voice of Broadway” (syndicated column). November 22, 1939.
McIntyre, O. O. “New York Day-by-Day” (syndicated column). June 22, 1927, and January 19, 1929.
“The Talk of the Town.” New Yorker, July 18, 1964.
“Tomato Juice Is Very Popular.” Trenton Evening Times, October 18, 1928.
By: David Wondrich