Duncan Hines (43 page)

¹²⁵
Duncan Hines,
Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1955) 60.

¹²⁶
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 80.

¹²⁷
Spiller, 16 August 1993.

¹²⁸
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 3. It was while Hines was learning the use of his new vehicle that he was given the news of his father's death. Duncan's father, Edward Hines, had retired to his peaceful bungalow on the Gasper River in Warren County, Kentucky, some years earlier. In either late 1918 or early 1919, not long after the death of his son, Markham, the elder Hines's health began to deteriorate. Because of his condition, his family brought him back to Bowling Green where they could better look after his needs. At first he stayed at his daughter Annie's home at 902 Elm Street, but he was later moved to his son Porter's residence at 1337 Park Street, where he died at age 77 on Sunday 15 February 1920, at 12:55
P.M.

¹²⁹
Ibid., 5.

¹³⁰
Spiller, 10 May 1994.

¹³¹
Illinois Census
,
1920
, Chicago, Illinois.

¹³²
William Lawren,
The General and the Bomb: A Biography of General Leslie R. Groves
,
Director of the Manhattan Project
(New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1988) 54.

¹³³
In the 1940s Leslie Groves, who by then had risen to the rank of General, became the director of the Manhattan project during World War II; later he was immortalized in the 1989 Paul Newman film
Fat Man and Little Boy
.

¹³⁴
Groves, 8 September 1994.

¹³⁵
Maj. Gen. Richard H. Groves to author, 8 October 1994.

¹³⁶
Duncan Hines to Mrs. Leslie R. Groves, 11 March 1950.

¹³⁷
Duncan Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
(Chicago: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1936) 9. Hines was probably trying to render a well-turned romantic phrase. In fact, he avoided driving at night.

¹³⁸
Spiller, 10 May 1994.

¹³⁹
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 80.

¹⁴⁰
Spiller, 16 August 1993.

¹⁴¹
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 80.

¹⁴²
Ibid.

¹⁴³
David M. Schwartz, “Duncan Hines: He Made Gastronomes Out of Motorists,”
Smithsonian
15 (November 1984): 88.

¹⁴⁴
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 16.

¹⁴⁵
Courier-Journal
(Louisville KY), 4 April 1941.

¹⁴⁶
Schwartz, “Duncan Hines,” 88.

¹⁴⁷
Press release, Duncan Hines Institute, Inc., Ithaca NY, February 1959, 3.

¹⁴⁸
“Duncan Hines 1880-1959,” General files, Kentucky Library, Bowling Green KY, 1959.

¹⁴⁹
James A. Cox, “How Good Food and Harvey ‘Skirts' Won the West,”
Smithsonian
18:130.

¹⁵⁰
Schwartz, “Duncan Hines,” 87.

¹⁵¹
Ibid., 88, 90.

¹⁵²
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 16. Hines's notebook was constantly being updated with additions and subtractions. Between 1905-1930 there were many more restaurants that had been listed, but in 1930 there were about 200.

¹⁵³
Schwartz, “Duncan Hines,” 88, 90.

¹⁵⁴
Spiller, 16 August 1993 and 10 May 1994.

¹⁵⁵
Chicago, Illinois, city directory, 1928. This firm was located at 320 East 21st Street at the intersection of 21st Street and Calumet Avenue, just one block from the Mead-Grede company.

¹⁵⁶
Chicago, Illinois, city directory, 1930. It was located at 124 Polk Street in Chicago.

¹⁵⁷
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 6.

¹⁵⁸
Chicago, Illinois, city directory, 1934. E. Raymond Wright, Inc. was located at 856 West Adams Street.

¹⁵⁹
Hines drove his own automobile, not a company-provided one; nor did the company pay his gas, oil, and repair expenses. He bore those costs himself.

¹⁶⁰
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 7-12.

¹⁶¹
Unfortunately, the author has been unable to determine in which Chicago newspaper the article appeared. There were more than a half-dozen operating in Chicago at the time.

¹⁶²
Courier-Journal
, 16 April 1941.

¹⁶³
Schwartz, “Duncan Hines,” 90.

¹⁶⁴
Exactly how many restaurants his memorandum notebook actually contained will never be known conclusively as it has not survived, possibly because it was treated as a fluid, disposable document.

¹⁶⁵
Courier-Journaly 7
July 1957.

¹⁶⁶
n. a., “Meet Duncan Hines,”
Moonbeams
(November 1958): 5.

¹⁶⁷
Duncan Hines,
Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1955) 28.

¹⁶⁸
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc. and Carl A. Barrett, civil action no. 1844 (1940) 19-22.

¹⁶⁹
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 21-22. Almost all the collected material Hines used to create his initial publication and any other paperwork from his days in Chicago is long gone. In the deposition cited above, Hines said (p. 22): “…in moving twice from Wright's [business] to my home and [then later to] Kentucky [,] I discarded many of those [files] because
they became too bulky and too cumbersome to handle. Many of the magazines and things of that like were too voluminous and I discarded lots of those…”

¹⁷⁰
Hines incorporated Adventures in Good Eating, Inc. in May 1936.

¹⁷¹
Hueser was probably one of Wright's employees.

¹⁷²
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 23-24.

¹⁷³
Interview with Edward Beebe, 7 March 1995. Months earlier, Harold Beebe had suggested to Hines that he put his restaurant knowledge in a book.

¹⁷⁴
Invoice # 5897.

¹⁷⁵
Milton MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,”
The Saturday Evening Post
211 (3 December 1938): 16.

¹⁷⁶
Duncan Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
(Chicago: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1936) 9-10.

¹⁷⁷
Ibid., 11.

¹⁷⁸
Ibid., 30. A typical dinner at the Beaumont Inn in 1936 cost about $1.25.

¹⁷⁹
David Schwartz, “Duncan Hines: He Made Gastronomes Out of Motorists,”
Smithsonian
15 (November 1984): 94.

¹⁸⁰
The restaurant was Kleeman's, located at 212 Sixth Avenue, North.

¹⁸¹
Undated Chicago newspaper clipping.

¹⁸²
Another fact about himself that Hines revealed in this article was that he would drive “to Chicago Avenue to buy the household coffee” and then drive clear over “to No-Man's Land on the north shore for milk and cream.”

¹⁸³
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
.

¹⁸⁴
Hines never referred to this group as “dinner detectives.” That term was first used two years later by Milton MacKaye in his widely read 1938
Saturday Evening Post
article on Hines.

¹⁸⁵
“Meet Duncan Hines,”
Moonbeams
(November 1958): 5.

¹⁸⁶
Interview with Cora Jane Spiller, 10 May 1994.

¹⁸⁷
Milton MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,”
The Saturday Evening Post
211 (3 December 1938): 16.

¹⁸⁸
Adventures in Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc. and Carl A. Barrett, civil action no. 1844 (1940) 26.

¹⁸⁹
Interview with Edward Beebe, 7 March 1995.

¹⁹⁰
“Meet Duncan Hines,” 5.

¹⁹¹
Interview with Robert Wright, 25 May 1994.

¹⁹²
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 16.

¹⁹³
Invoice #9080.

¹⁹⁴
Invoice #9226. This particular order was processed more quickly than others. It was placed by Hines on 11 August 1937 and was ready for delivery on 27 September 1937. In addition, surviving invoices reveal that it took the Wright Company—from the date of order to the date of delivery—approximately 45 to
60 days to produce one of Hines's books. Hines once stated that he made seven cents on each book. If this was the case, however, his business was definitely dropping into a bottomless pit of debt, because at that rate he was only earning $350.63 for 5,009 units—not enough to even pay his printing bill. Moreover, it is unlikely that taxes and operating costs subtracted $1.43 from each manufactured unit. Hines usually sold all his books, and 5,009 copies at $1.50 per copy gave him, theoretically, $7,513.50. With 40% of the profit on each book going to his distributors, a more realistic figure is that Hines was left with $4,508—still a substantial amount in 1937.

¹⁹⁵
Invoice #9558.

¹⁹⁶
Duncan Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 2
^nd
ed. (Chicago: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1937) 198.

¹⁹⁷
Adventures In Good Eating, Inc. v. Best Places To Eat, Inc., 23.

¹⁹⁸
This was an interesting, indeed, amusing act for a man who just two years earlier was tired of being pestered with telephone calls.

¹⁹⁹
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 2.

²⁰⁰
Ibid., 11.

²⁰¹
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 16-17.

²⁰²
John Dunning,
On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 440-41. McBride's radio show was heard on WOR, New York (1934-1940); CBS (1937-1941); NBC (1941-1950); and ABC (1950-1954).

²⁰³
Joseph Gustaitis, “Prototypical Talk Show Host,”
American History
28/6 (Jan/Feb. 1994): 48-49.

²⁰⁴
Spiller, 10 May 1994.

²⁰⁵
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 12.

²⁰⁶
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 17.

²⁰⁷
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
(Bowling Green KY: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1941) xv.

²⁰⁸
Ibid., xiii-xv.

²⁰⁹
MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,” 17.

²¹⁰
Interview with Maj. Gen. Richard Groves, 10 August 1994.

²¹¹
What follows is a seven-month record of the Hines's vehicular peregrinations across the North American continent. The purpose of what follows is to give the reader an idea of what the Hines's recreational life was like during this time. It is also as complete a record as is available of their final year together. This information comes from a 1937 expense sheet and travel log, among other sources.

²¹²
Duncan Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 17th ed. (Bowling Green KY: Adventures in Good Eating, Inc., 1941) 295.

²¹³
Duncan Hines,
Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey
(New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1955) 136. Mader's is still the same Old World Bavarian restaurant it was when Charles Mader first opened for business in 1902. It was located at 1041 North 3rd Street; the address is now 1037 North 3rd Street.

²¹⁴
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 109.

²¹⁵
Ibid., 97.

²¹⁶
Ibid., 234.

²¹⁷
Ibid., 172.

²¹⁸
Ibid., 107. This establishment was located at 1132 Auburn Street.

²¹⁹
This restaurant was located at 619 North Michigan Avenue.

²²⁰
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 105.

²²¹
Ibid., 104.

²²²
The Lowell Inn is still in existence and is operated by the Palmers' son, Arthur.

²²³
Hines,
Food Odyssey
, 138.

²²⁴
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 168.

²²⁵
Hines,
Food Odyssey
, 139.

²²⁶
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 168.

²²⁷
Milton MacKaye, “Where Shall We Stop for Dinner?,”
The Saturday Evening Post
211 (3 December 1938): 82.

²²⁸
This was most probably Gordon McCormick.

²²⁹
Hines,
Food Odyssey
, 248.

²³⁰
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 106.

²³¹
This restaurant was located at 128 East Main Street.

²³²
This restaurant was located at 137 East Broad Street.

²³³
Hines,
Adventures in Good Eating
, 229.

²³⁴
Groves, 10 August 1994.

²³⁵
Donnelley's offices were in Chicago at 350 East 22nd Street; the books were manufactured in their printing plant in Crawfordsville, Indiana, at 1301 East Wabash Avenue.