How the Hallelujah Cocktail Became Famous

In the fall of 1930, word of a new cocktail spread across the United States. It was called the Hallelujah Cocktail, and it consisted of brandy and rum, shaken with lemon, vermouth, and grenadine. It was several years before Prohibition ended, so most people first learned of it not in a bar, but when they received a postcard with the recipe printed on the front. Almost all of these were mailed from Colón, Panama, at the Caribbean end of the Panama Canal. Among those receiving postcards were many delegates headed to the annual meeting of the Four Square Gospel Church in Los Angeles.

Aimee Semple McPherson, a fiery and controversial evangelist … spoke in tongues, inveighed against all manner of evil, and healed her parishioners through the laying on of hands.

The story went like this: One of the more captivating celebrities during Prohibition was Aimee Semple McPherson, a fiery and controversial evangelist. McPherson spoke in tongues, inveighed against all manner of evil, and healed her parishioners through the laying on of hands. She embraced spectacle—her church had its own art department—and was a pioneer in radio and news reel ministry.

McPherson often found herself in the news—sometimes by intent, sometimes not. In 1926, headlines blared that she had drowned while swimming in the Pacific. No body was found, despite heroic efforts. (One diver died searching for her.) Miraculously, McPherson reappeared five weeks later with a harrowing but widely disbelieved tale of being kidnapped to Mexico. A secret lover may have been involved.

In September 1930, suffering from rattled nerves, McPherson sailed from the West Coast to Havana through the Panama Canal on a tropical cruise. The ship docked in Colón, and she disembarked and explored the port under the pseudonym “Betty Adams.” It was then she stopped by the Bilgray’s Tropic Bar and Cabaret for a pop. Or so it was said by Max Bilgray, the proprietor, who claims he made a drink for her.

Bilgray, who was tall with short gray hair and wore glasses, was once described as “the most prominent man on the Atlantic side of the Panama isthmus.” He had been a saloonkeeper in Chicago and Denver, and had been operating a bar in Wyoming when Prohibition pulled the plug. He decamped south to open his bar in Panama. He put piles of money into it, spending nearly $100,000 on a garden oasis in which tipplers could relax. The revered columnist Ernie Pyle claimed the Tropic Bar was as famous as Sloppy Joe’s in Havana and Dirty Dick’s in the Bahamas.

All of this took place during the Panama Canal’s golden age, when cruise ships regularly plied the locks and affluent travelers disembarked to explore the exotic restaurants and bars. “Strict prohibition is maintained in the Canal Zone,” wrote traveler Ida Briggs Henderson in 1920, “but as there are only imaginary lines between the cities, we found the bars were wide open.”

[Max] Bilgray said he concocted a drink to celebrate McPherson’s visit, which he dubbed the Hallelujah Cocktail. It became famous, and not entirely by happenstance.

Bilgray said he concocted a drink to celebrate McPherson’s visit, which he dubbed the Hallelujah Cocktail. It became famous, and not entirely by happenstance. Bilgray printed up hundreds of postcards featuring the recipe. The first letter of each ingredient—with some fanciful adaptations (“Ice from the crest of Mt. Sinai”)—spelled out “Bilgray’s.” The card noted that this “special concoction” had been invented “in honor of the visit of AIMEE SEMPLE MCPHERSON (incognito).”

Any patron visiting his bar could compose as many free postcards as they cared to, and Bilgray would pay the postage to send them to the United States.

Among the recipients: those attending the annual convention of McPherson’s Four Square Gospel. “Three hundred delegates … were in an uproar Saturday on receipt of ‘greetings’ from M. Bilgray,” the Los Angeles Times reported. “The evangelist returned to the United States very much annoyed.” McPherson categorically denied she had ever visited Bilgray’s. Indeed, she said she was very much aggrieved by “the long streets of saloons and various types of entertainment.” She believed that “the saloons would have been more crowded and far more interesting if they had been transformed into revival meeting halls.”

McPherson’s husband, David Hutton, threatened to sue Bilgray for a million dollars for defamation of character. Bilgray was unmoved.

McPherson’s estranged mother, Mildred “Ma” Kennedy, rallied to her daughter’s defense. “I do not know how to shoot, but if I were in shooting distance I would start in on that scoundrel and make him eat the words he has directed against my little Aimee.” McPherson’s husband, David Hutton, threatened to sue Bilgray for a million dollars for defamation of character. Bilgray was unmoved. On the mirror behind the bar he wrote, “Aimee liked ’em—so’ll you. They may cost me a million dollars—they’ll cost you fifty cents.”

“We thought the whole business hugely amusing—and strangely enough, the drink is good,” wrote Charles Baker in his Gentleman’s Companion. “Any drink known probably to a hundred thousand people in the last eight or nine years in Panama alone must have had something besides postcard appeal. It should be served in a large saucer-type champagne glass.”