Cap'n's Cabaret #7: Hooray for Hollywood!

Hollywood! Tinsel Town, the city of glamour and glitz, fantasy and illusion, where dreams come true and any shop girl can be a top girl...if she pleases the tired businessman. Fame and fortune await...at least for those who it doesn't chew up and spit out.

But that's not the fate for us at the Cabaret, my friends! We're gonna be Stars! Mr. Siegel has set us up with a major studio...and we're talking the Silver Screen, folks! Tonight is a very special evening, for we're partying with the cast from the latest Busby Berkeley production, Hollywood Hotel, staring Dick Powell, Rosemary Lane, Hugh Herbert, and Ronald Reagan...not to mention the music of the great Benny Goodman!

We have it all tonight, folks: hot jazz, cool drinks, the biggest stars, bright lights, fabulous sets, and dancing girls galore! Stand back, folks, for tonight's Cabaret will be a Production!

Tonight we feature the amazing coreography that is Busby Berkeley's signature. Berkeley may not have invented the musical, but he certainly made it Big. Dancing girls on complex, multi-level sets, in the water and in the air, doing spectacular patterns and complex routines. Move over, Jolsen, because if a single man symbolizes the Dream and Illusion of Hollywood's Golden Age it is Busby Berkeley!

Don't let the Norman Bates look fool you...this guy was Fabulous!

And who better to write the music than that famous Hollywood lyricist Johny Mercer! The man behind countless hits of Broadway and Tinsel Town, Mercer is the co-founder of Columbia Records. Yea, folks, we're BIG TIME here at the Cabaret!

Now That's lookin' Fabulous! 

And speaking of fabulous: tonight's entertainment...behold!

Witness the amazing grandure of Busby's famous Waterfall scene from 1933's Footlight Parade [follow the link for the video; they blocked embedding code - what's a Hollywood Episode without a Rights issue?]. It's one of Busby's grandest, featuring more bathing beauties than you can ever imagine, all in one of the largest and most glamourous Art Deco sets ever constructed!

And while you enjoy tonight's feature presentation, enjoy a Brown Derby Cocktail, a Hollywood Original! Maybe.

Also known as a De Rigeuer, and possibly created earlier, possibly by the Vendome club, but probably not by the Derby, the Brown Derby Cocktail is, like a lot of things in Hollywood, of disputed ownership. That said, this sweet-tangy libation was all the rage among the big stars of Golden Age Hollywood. What better to match the grandeur?

The Brown Derby or De Rigeuer Cocktail:

2 parts Bourbon

1 part Grapefruit Juice

1 part Honey [1]

Shake rigourously over cracked ice, enough to mix in the honey, strain into a chilled cocktail glass.

1 - Or substitute honey syrup (equal parts honey and water) for an easier-to-mix option.