Mary Pickford
From The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails
is a Prohibition-era cocktail, with Bacardi rum, pineapple juice, and grenadine, named after the silent movie star (1892–1979). According to Basil Woon’s 1928 book When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba, Hotel Sevilla-Biltmore bartender Fred Kaufman invented the drink to commemorate Pickford’s visit to Havana; newspaper accounts confirm that she vacationed there in December 1922, when Kaufman most likely created his drink. Purportedly one of the three most ordered cocktails in Cuba during Prohibition (after the Daiquiri and El Presidente), the Mary Pickford became particularly popular at Constantino Ribalaigua’s Bar La Florida, where Woon observed him making six at a time. See Daiquiri, El Presidente.
*Recipe: Shake well with ice 60 ml pineapple juice (preferably fresh), 30 ml white rum, and 5 ml grenadine; strain into chilled cocktail glass.
See also Floridita, Ribalaigua y Vert, Constante.
Leaves, Holly. “Touring North America: Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford en route to New York and Many Eastern Points.” Hollywood Magazine, September 29, 1922.
Woon, Basil. When It’s Cocktail Time in Cuba*. New York: Horace Liveright, 1928.
By: Jeff Berry
This definition is from The Oxford Companion to Spirits & Cocktails, edited by David Wondrich (Editor-in-Chief) and Noah Rothbaum (Associate Editor).