Three brutal-looking men sit in front on wooden stools, playing a game of cards. You flash your membership card, and they give you a good looking over. Then one of them takes the gun out of his waistband, and raps the butt against the door in a quick pattern.
A blue eye appears in the peephole, glaring. And then, at last, the door swings open. Once inside, you make a beeline to the crowded bar, dodging tipsy couples doing the Charleston and ignoring the mobsters making deals in the shadows. In the haze of cigarette smoke, your friends find a table close to the stage, where the jazz band is sweating underneath the spotlights.
You order a round of Mary Pickfords, a bright red cocktail made with white rum, pineapple juice, grenadine, and Maraschino liqueur, served chilled with a cherry. Alcohol may be illegal, and the police may break down the door any minute, but it can be fun living dangerously.
After all, what fun is a girl's night out without a drink or three? Federal law prohibited the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcohol in America from January 17, to December 5, Most people assumed that women, at least, would abide by the new law, given their active role in the temperance movement.
In the s, women were not only drinking at cabarets, but operating speakeasies, smuggling bootlegged liquor, and even brewing homemade moonshine. Grab your flask, an alibi, and get ready to run from the fuzz. Michael A. Ward, aired October 2, , PBS, 96 minutes. Olivia B. In , when the state of Massachusetts passed a law banning the sale of booze, an enterprising tavern owner started charging patrons to come and see a striped pig at his establishment—the drinks were incidental, being free with the price of admission.
