Post-War Years

The Cock ‘n Bull’s association with the Moscow Mule gave it an expanded national profile and soon the restaurant was nearly as famous as its customers. In 1946, Life Magazine, the pictorial sister publication to Time, named the Cock ‘n Bull one of the five most famous bars in the country. Another Los Angeles bar, the Zebra Room in the swanky Town House Hotel on La Fayette Park, also made the list.

The Cock ‘n Bull’s famous customers helped spread the word about the Moscow Mule. In an interview in 1947 with Greer Garson in 1947 in advance of her new movie, “Desire Me,” with Robert Mitchum, Los Angeles Times gossip columnist Hedda Hopper wrote that Mules were Garson’s favorite cocktail. The actress chose, not a copper mug, but “a glass of alarmingly huge proportions,” Hopper said, and then topped it off with what appeared to be Angostura bitters.

Washington Wallop

The collapse of America’s alliance with the Soviet Union in the late 1940s put all things Russian in a bad odor. As Cold War paranoia swept the country, a rumor that Smirnoff was a Soviet import threatened the company’s bottom line. New York’s unionized bartenders organized a boycott, refusing to “shove slave labor liquor across the wood in any American saloon.” Smirnoff responded with a robust PR campaign to assure the drinking public that its vodka was made in the U.S.A and as American as mom and apple pie. The company got an assist from Walter Winchell, perhaps the most influential columnist of the day. “The Moscow Mule drink is U.S. made,” he wrote in 1951, “so don’t be so political when you’re thirsty. Three are enough, however, to make you wanna fight pro-Communists.”

Even so, there were faint-hearted efforts to rebrand the Moscow Mule as the “Washington Wallop.” But the inventors stood firm. “Some people holler about those things,” bartender Wes Price told a magazine writer, “but 99 percent of my customers don’t pay any attention to that name. Art is art. To change the name of my drink because of the world situation would be like refusing to listen to Tchaikovsky’s music.” Serious efforts to rebrand the mule faded away, as did, eventually, America’s anticommunism hysteria.

‘My Name Is Kim Novak’

In Richard Bare’s memoir, he recounts an incident at the Cock ‘n Bull in the 1950s when he approached a tall, Nordic looking woman drinking with a friend in the bar. “After the second Daniels,” he wrote, “I noticed a striking blonde seated with a gentleman at a nearby table. I was struck by the lady’s beauty and magnetism. I gathered my courage, moved over to her table and introduced myself, wanting to know if she was interested in getting into pictures.”

“’Not anymore,’ she cooed. ‘My name is Kim Novak.’”

“I literally crawled back to my barstool. Danny [Leo, the bartender] was no help, laughing and telling the others I tried to discover Kim Novak, who had already starred in two movies for Columbia” The movies were “Picnic” in 1955 and “The Eddy Duchin Story” in 1956. Novak’s star turn in “Vertigo,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock was two years off, as was perhaps her best performance in “Bell, Book and Candle,” with Jimmy Stewart.

A Groovy Jingle

The shift toward pop culture in the 1960s brought a rebirth to the Sunset Strip as the epicenter of the rock ‘n roll “youthquake.” Reflecting the cultural shift, in 1965, Smirnoff updated its marketing of the Moscow Mule by rebranding it as the Smirnoff Mule. The repositioning was backed up with an ad campaign meant to appeal to the rock ‘n roll generation. The company recorded jazz pianist Skitch Henderson and singer Carmen McRae performing a groovy jingle about the mule and even hired dancer “Killer Joe” Piro to invent a new dance that Wall Street Journal columnist described as “a sort of deranged Watusi to go along with an overgrown boogaloo jingle.” The lyrics were “Stand stubborn/Stop sudden/Look cool. Turn it on/Take it off/The Smirnoff Mule!”

Around that same time, a former Cock ‘n Bull bartender hit the big time in Hollywood. Dick Martin became a household name as half of the comedy team Rowan and Martin. In 1967, he and Dan Rowan launched “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-in” on NBC. It was an overnight sensation and soon became the hottest comedy hour in the 1960s.

In 1970, after a long absence from the Cock ‘n Bull around the time he was directing “Green Acres,” Richard Bare dropped by the bar. “I signaled Danny Leo, the bartender, for the usual and, although I had not been in recently, he remembered that I was a Daniels man sour mash all the way,” Bare wrote.
“You run into Dick, lately?” Danny asked, referring to Dick Martin.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact,” Bare said. “I was coming out of an Academy screening the other night and he pointed at me and said, ‘Daniels and water!’ I bet you couldn’t do that after three years.”

Rowan and Martin had been hired by George Schlatter, the producer of “Laugh-in” and another Cock ‘n Bull regular. “Laugh-in” launched the careers of Lily Tomlin and Goldie Hawn who were part of an ensemble cast of comedians that included Jo Anne Worley, Ruth Buzzi, Arte Johnson and others.

Sacrilege

Jack Morgan, the co-founder of the Cock ‘n Bull, co-inventor of the Moscow Mule, screenwriter and decorated war hero, died on March 18, 1974, in Santa Barbara, following what the Princeton Alumni magazine called a series of debilitating illnesses. He was a member of Princeton’s class of 1921and had a B.A. and an M.A. from Oxford University. He was survived by his wife Phyllis Cleveland, his son John Ainsworth II, daughter Joan Morgan Candy, brother, Percy T. Morgan, Jr and his seven grandchildren. Jack’s brother Percy died six years later in Montecito.

Jack Morgan’s children, Jack Jr. and Joan, ran the Cock ‘n Bull successfully for 13 years. The restaurant had started in the golden age of Sunset Strip cocktail culture and had weathered the Strip’s turbulent 1960s, but conditions on the boulevard deteriorated in the 1970s and remained depressed through the ‘80s.

In 1987, the Morgan family decided to sell. “We got a wonderful offer that we couldn’t refuse,” said John Morgan Jr., son of the founder and a co-owner with his sister, Joan Candy. “Our children aren’t interested in taking it over and we didn’t want to have strangers running it. Plus, the traffic and parking problems around here are just getting worse and worse.”

The buyer was Hornburg Jaguar, which was already doing business in the older building adjacent to the restaurant on the corner of Sunset and Cory Avenue. The car dealer would gut the Cock ‘n Bull and turn it into an automobile showroom and connect the two buildings by opening up an archway between them.

Richard Bare summed it up. “What sacrilege.”