The Great Fried Chicken Debate of 1934

 

Now that I have your attention....

The Great Fried Chicken Debate

When you think of fried chicken, you probably think of Southern Fried Chicken or more famously Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But when the Great Fried Chicken Debate broke out in 1934, it didn’t start in the South but in, of all places, Chicago, occasioned by a cartoon in the Chicago Tribune.

On Sunday August 19, 1934 the Trib published a cartoon-story by its Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist John T. McCutcheon lamenting the fact that he couldn’t find authentic fried chicken in any Chicago eatery.

His story went like this:

Once there was a man from the corn belt who came to the city and made his fortune. After making it and before losing it, he decided to present a memorial to the city as a mark of his gratitude.

"The city doesn't need any more statues or libraries or museums or hospitals or asylums-it can scarcely support the ones it has. A city can never have too many fountains, but they, too, have to be kept up. But there is one thing this city lacks completely. I've searched the restaurants, the hotels, the clubs, the houses, and not one soul have I found who knows how to fry a spring chicken properly, à la old home cooking when I was a boy! Here they fry the juice all out and forget to leave the scrapings in the gravy - all the music and poetry that makes the real fried chicken the masterpiece of culinary is missing.

"My memorial shall be a recipe for fried chicken - if I can find one!"

After a long, fruitless search for a perfect fried chicken recipe, the man from the corn belt happened to befriend a lonely Hindu at A Century of Progress [another name for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair].

“I am most deeply grateful, sahib,” said the venerable Hindu, bowing low, “I wish to reward the spirit even more than the service itself. I am very old and I have absorbed all the wisdom of the mystics for thousands of years before me. I have the power to grant you any wish. I can arrange it so that you need never take more than one putt on a green; or that you will make a safe hit every time you go to bat; or I can make you irresistible to any lady of your choice, be she high or low. Speak! Shall I make you rich beyond the dreams of avarice?”

"O, no, thank you! I'm trying to keep my income tax down."

" Well then, perhaps there is something else you desire?"

“Yes,” said the man from the corn belt. "I have one great aspiration. I want the perfect recipe for fried chicken--one that will restore the lost art to countless millions who now see their hopes turn to ashes every time they order it. Grant me this wish and I will endeavor to make this city the fried chicken center of the world.”

Scarcely had he spoken the words when the venerable mystic drew from the folds of his robe a slip of rice paper which he rubbed softly in his hands, muttered a few strange words, and then handed to the wistful suppliant.

On the blank sheet of paper these memorable words slowly took form:

 ....

What followed was what McCutcheon considered to be the One True Way to make fried chicken. (See bottom of column for recipe)

Boy, did that ignite a firestorm of indignation and outrage. Readers from all over the country – the Trib was sold nationwide – wrote in, keeping the Letters columns spinning for the next month.

McCutcheon’s recipe wasn’t just wrong, it was Wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

One of the first letters came from Fannie Patz of 5746 South Park Avenue, Chicago:

TO: THE FRIED CHICKEN DEPARTMENT.

I read the recipe for country fried chicken in Mr. McCutcheon's Sunday cartoon. To my knowledge it is all wrong. Chicken fried by that recipe is not fried, but roasted, and will never taste like fried.

If you really want to eat real fried juicy chicken try my way. I have a reputation of knowing how to fry chicken the best that you or any one has ever tasted in any country or any city. You need not believe what I say. One can only prove things by eating it. I am from the south, am a private person. I do not run any restaurant or eating house, but know how to fry chicken. If you ever have an opportunity and chance to eat some you would always want to eat it and enjoy it.

I just had to laugh when I read this recipe. Putting in all that water would be juicy, but watery, and lose all taste.

Try my fried chicken. All you have to do is to let me know when you want it and where, and I shall be very glad to fry it for you, and if you will like it that is all I would wish. Then you could write my recipe. 

 

That drew a quick response from a restaurateur in the northern suburb of Libertyville, Illinois:

Even my milk-fed chickens, doomed to get it in the neck at an early date, cackled derisively at the criticism Fannie Patz hurled at Mr. McCutcheon's recipe for fried chicken.

I operate a restaurant, specializing in fried chicken dinners, and for four years I have cooked chicken à la McCutcheon. Many real connoisseurs of good food have informed me that neither in the south nor abroad have they tasted such delicious chicken.

With this in mind I cannot afford to let Fannie's claim to superiority go unchallenged, and I hereby invite her to meet me in a fried chicken contest. This could be staged, say at A Century of Progress, with the outcome to be decided by competent, impartial judges. What say, Fannie?

D. H, HOLMES.

 

And the letters kept coming, back and forth and back and forth, including a quick rejoinder from Mrs. Patz:

CHICKEN A LA PATZ

I read the letter in today's paper challenging me to a fried chicken contest. Well, Dear Editor, 1 would gladly accept the challenge, but do not want to spoil the other fellow’s business, as he is in the restaurant business and I am not. The following is my own recipe for fried chicken. I always received great praise for it from every one that ever ate same:

The chicken should weigh about three pounds. Dissect, wash thoroughly, drain but do not dry with a cloth. Season with pepper and salt, roll in flour. Use half butter and half of any other kind of fat, drippings preferred. Use a deep frying pan. Let fat get hot, but not smoking hot. Lay as many pieces in the bottom as it will hold. Do not crowd. Keep turning each piece until it is a golden brown. Cut in about three slices of onion. Let them brown with the chicken. When all chicken is brown, remove onions, put all ths chicken in a long roasting pan, pour the butter which you fried it in over chicken, cover and put it in a slow oven for three quarters of an hour, basting same occasionally during that time.

MRS. PATZ.

 

And on they came:

FRIED CHICKEN DEPARTMENT.

The fried chicken controversy has been interesting, but the most important point of all has thus far been entirely overlooked by the letter writers. There are various recipes, various methods of seasoning, and some people will prefer one and some another. But regardless of the recipe, one cannot fry chicken perfectly unless a skillet or pan is used which is thick and heavy enough to spread the heat evenly, allow for slow cooking, and prevent the meat from becoming dried out, tasteless, and stringy. For frying chicken you can't beat the old fashioned cast iron skillet that grandmother used. The deeper the skillet the better.

[Mrs.] MAE HEISE of Chicago.

 

Your cartoon in today's edition was a joy and an inspiration. Not that I care to know how you think fried chicken should be prepared, but at least and at last you have hit on a subject where you can offer a constructive suggestion. It sounds reasonable and certainly might inspire some good. The material that usually fills the space provided for a cartoon has never before, to my knowledge, in recent months, given any solution, suggestion, hope, inspiration, or recipe for anything either political or otherwise, and my sincere hope is that you will continue to give culinary recipes until you can conceive a constructive, useful, possible or feasible recipe for our emerging from the difficult plight in which our present day civilization finds itself due to the selfishness and nearsightedness of a small minority.

DISGUSTED in Chicago

 

Finally Mr. McCutcheon got the imprimatur of his recipe from none other than the most famous fried chicken man of Kentucky, national restaurant critic Duncan Hines, author of the guidebook “Adventures in Good Eating.” (This was five years before Harland Sanders of Corbin, Kentucky perfected his pressure cooking method of frying chicken in eleven herbs and spices. In fact at the time of McCutcheon’s original cartoon Sanders was running Sanders Court, which Hines praised in his 1935 guidebook for its country ham, no mention of fried chicken.)

In his companion cookbook “Adventures in Good Cooking,” Duncan Hines wrote:

Mr. John T. McCutcheon noted cartoonist agrees with me that there are mighty few public eating places where one may find Fried Chicken that is properly prepared and cooked. Seldom is it found to be thoroughly done yet tender and well-seasoned.

Some years ago Mr. McCutcheon prepared a cartoon on this subject which ran in the Chicago Tribune. It brought forth an enormous response from all over America. People in all sections of the country sent in their favorite fried chicken recipe but none has taken the place of the following which was given to Mr. McCutcheon by Mary Fletcher, the cook down on humorist George Ade’s Farm in Indiana.

 The Recipe At the End of John T. McCutcheon's Cartoon-Story:

So Dear Reader, after all that introductory material, here is the recipe that cartoonist McCutcheon claimed came from the Hindu mystic by way of Mary Fletcher at George Ade’s farm in northwestern Indiana:

 

Country Fried Chicken as Espoused by John T. McCutcheon and Endorsed by Duncan Hines

1 spring chicken (2 ¾ pounds) - Dress and Joint the chicken the day before it is to be fried. Put the joints into cold salt water for at least an hour and then put them on ice.

2 tablespoons flour - Before frying roll each piece lightly in flour and fry in one-third butter and 2/3 lard.

Add salt and pepper after the pieces are in the skillet. Fry slowly until brown. Then put all the pieces in a roaster and pour a little water over them also some butter. Cover the roaster and keep it in a slow oven (300 degrees F.) and steam for an hour to an hour and a half. Add a little more water if needed to keep the pieces from getting dry.

Add in a lightly browned but not too thin cream gravy all the scrapping from the skillet and roaster.

 

This May Be Col. Sanders’ Kentucky Fried Chicken Recipe

Chicken is fried in every state but the state most identified with fried chicken is Kentucky (John Egerton and Ronni Lundy are both Kentucky natives). And you know why: Corbin, Kentucky gas station and diner owner Harland Sanders, who perfected his method of cooking it in 1939 and closely guarded his secrets, especially his special blend of eleven herbs and spices.

In 2016 the Chicago Tribune got a Fried Chicken recipe from Harland Sanders’ nephew Joe Ledington, supposedly the real Kentucky Fried Chicken recipe including the original “eleven herbs and spices.”

From a handwritten note Joe found in his Aunt Claudia Sanders’ photo album:

11 Spices – Mix With 2 Cups White Flour

1) 2/3 Ts Salt

2) 1/2 Ts Thyme

3) 1/2 Ts Basil

4) 1/3 Ts Origino (sic)

5) 1 Ts Celery Salt

6) 1 Ts Black Pepper

7) 1 Ts Dried Mustard

8) 4 Ts Paprika

9) 2 Ts Garlic Salt

10) 1 Ts Ground Ginger

11) 3 Ts White Pepper

Leddington said as important as the breading was the cooking method. "It was individually hand-breaded and dropped in those pressure cookers. You cooked it until it started turning brown. And then you put the lid on the pressure cooker and brought it to 12 pounds of pressure for 10 minutes. And then you started letting the pressure off, and when you uncapped it and the pressure was off, it was perfect: golden brown and fall-off-the-bone."

 

Colonel Sanders was, in real life, a cantankerous old cuss. The Kentucky Fried Chicken corporation, which bought his name, image, likeness, recipes and voice, paying him $200,000 a year for life, couldn’t buy his soul.

And when Kentucky Fried Chicken came out with a new version of his chicken, Extra Crispy, in 1973, he went on the road to promote it. Well, not exactly. He told Mimi Sheraton of the New York Times that it made him gag. And in an interview with Bob Carr of the Freeport, Illinois Journal Standard, he said, "If anybody ever catches me eating Extra Crispy, I hope they throw me out of the store. There's a place for some of it... I guess...maybe in the South, where they might like fried dough balls with chicken skin.”

Freeport, Illinois is two hours west of Chicago, where this whole Great Fried Chicken Debate originated. In 1934.

 

Jean Dixon, the Ageless Prophet

 

The Prophet Who Never Aged: Jean Dixon

 Unless you were a Washington, D.C. real estate agent, you had probably never heard of Jean Dixon before May 13, 1956.

That was when she was featured in the newspaper supplement Parade Magazine as “The Woman Who Predicts Events in Washington – Correctly.”

The headline touted that she had predicted the “President’s illness and the Kremlin shakeup.”

But the article, by Jack Anderson, Drew Pearson’s long-time assistant, and Fred Blumenthal, chronicled many more predictions by the “crystal-gazer.” Yes, Jean Dixon really did use a crystal ball.

They began with an illustration of her power of prescience from the previous summer:

Dixon was getting her hair done when she “suddenly slid out from under a hair dryer and dashed to a phone to call her real-estate office. ‘George,’ she told her assistant urgently, ‘get an ambulance and a doctor quickly. Mr. Mitchell is having a heart attack.’

“The call is stamped on George Miller's memory for life. ‘Mitchell, one of our salesmen, was sitting at a desk behind me,’ he explains. ‘He had just returned from vacation, and I had never seen him looking better. With the telephone still in my hand, I turned to look at him. As I did, he keeled over with a heart attack.’”

Dixon had predicted a colleague’s heart attack (!) just as she had previously predicted Winston Churchill's postwar election defeat and triumphant comeback, Eisenhower’s heart attack, even Native Dancer’s defeat in the 1953 Kentucky Derby (he went off as the prohibitive favorite at 3-5).

At least according to Anderson and Blumenthal.

For years after the Parade article she issued annual prognostications for the year ahead.

That’s what kept her in the public eye.

But what kept her in the newspapers was a daily astrology column that ran in hundreds of papers, including the Kingsport Times-News, from 1968 until March 30, 1997, two months and four days after her death, which she had not predicted.

And while she aged, her column picture remained the same. She was the Dorian Gray of the newspaper world.

When she died in 1997 the column announced her death at age 79. She was actually 93. But you couldn’t tell it from her picture.

She didn’t look a day over 64, which was her age when her column started and her column photo was taken.

That’s why I call her The Ageless Prophet.

Jean Dixon's 1967 column sig

Jean Dixon's 1980 column sig

Jean Dixon finally changed her column photo in 1985

That’s really not so unusual in the newspaper world. A columnist gets her or his picture taken for the column photo or “column sig” as it’s called in the newspaper world and then that same photo runs for years. And years.

Dear Abby looked youthful until 1974, almost 20 years after her column began, when she finally changed her column photo.

Dear Abby in 1957

Dear Abby in 1974

Dear Abby in 1996

But at least she did change her column sig photo every now and then, at least six times over the half century she wrote her column, by my count.  

From scanning old newspapers, it appears Jean Dixon changed her column sig once, in the early eighties.

Curious members of the public who attended her funeral must have wondered who the elderly lady was in the casket. It was the 93-year-old who had been posing as a 61-year-old for decades.

 

 

Jean Dixon’s 1956 Predictions:

“Vice President Richard Nixon she considers underestimated. The crystal ball "shows his shadow encircling the world." Of New York's ex-Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, she says flatly: "He will be assistant President in Ike's second term."

“On the world scene, 'Mrs. Dixon came up with this exclusive forecast for PARADE: “Prime Minister Nehru of India will not remain in power much longer. He will recede into the background and his policies will not prevail. One of two men will take over. Their names passed through the crystal quickly, but they appeared to be Deshmuki and Desra."

“Looking Farther Ahead Mrs. Dixon thinks Americans should be most concerned with the more distant future — specifically the 1960s, which the crystal shows as "years of upheaval at home and international eruptions abroad, but not necessarily war." She adds: “Russia will do some good things, but also some terrible things. Americans will have to rise personally, physically, mentally and spiritually to the challenge."

“As for the 1960 election, Mrs. Dixon thinks it will be dominated by labor and won by a Democrat. But he will be assassinated or die in office “though not necessarily in his first term."

“Despite these clouds, she does see some brightness in the future. "Things will get better, much better, in the '70s." she says. “In that decade, we will really have peace."

 

 

Your Ever-Aging Author

Of course this is all an excuse to post my old column sigs, or at least the ones I can find. I wrote a column for somebody or other for 49 years. I can find nine different column sigs so I must have changed column photos on average every five or so years. In some cases I also changed newspapers. In addition I wrote a column for a few newspapers, including the New York Daily News that didn’t use column sigs.

New column photos usually happen because of a newspaper redesign. The word goes forth to all columnists to go by the photography department and get a new headshot

At one newspaper I worked at, another columnist, unhappy with the photo department results, went to Glamour Shots in the mall for a new column sig. I always went with the photo department. No glamour here.

 

1969 – My first column, ever. The college paper, The UT Daily Beacon, didn’t use column sigs, just a standing head: the name of the column, in my case Staten’s Static, and my byline. “Staten’s Static" was created by the editor who had never met me and didn’t know how to pronounce my last name.

 

1970 – I had been writing for the Beacon for a year when new editor Frank Gibson decided we all needed column sigs and he wanted sketches not photos. He handed the job of drawing the sigs to my roommate, Beacon cartoonist (and Kingsport native) Dan Pomeroy, who did a bang-up job.

I argued that since I had been a columnist for a year all my readers had a picture in their head of what I looked like. Why spoil it? Frank agreed. So in my column sig I got a paper bag over my head – you know, the old joke about a blind date. This paper bag gag was a good seven years before the comedian Murray Langston put a paper bag over his head and became the Unknown Comic, and decades before New Orleans Saints fans put paper bags over their heads in shame. (I should have trademarked the Paper Bag.)

This is still my favorite column sig, maybe because that was my sig when I first met my wife.

 1975 – In between my duties as an editor, I wrote an occasional column for the Kingsport Times-News during my first stint with the paper (1975-1976). I named the column “The Innocent Bystander.” (I still like that name for a column.) We didn’t use columnist photos so there was only the column name along with my byline.

But I was soon on my way north to the Dayton, Ohio Daily News and I turned over the column and the name to my friend Margy Clark who wrote the Innocent Bystander column for the next ten years (winning Best Humor Columnist in Tennessee three times).

 

1976 – The Dayton Daily News used drawings rather than photos for columnists. My column sig was based on a photo.

 

1978 – I headed south and west to the Louisville, Kentucky Times to be TV critic.

 

1981 – We must have had a redesign because I got a new column sig.

 

1986 – Gannett bought the Louisville Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal and folded the Times. In addition to a new owner I got a new column photo.

 

1988 – I left the Courier-Journal to become a free-lance writer. But I kept writing a weekly column. My change in status spawned yet another new column photo.

 

1995 - I don’t remember why I got a new column photo but I went with the glasses and sweater look. I have no idea why. I still have that sweater, somewhere.

 

2002 – I moved back to Kingsport and signed on as metro columnist at the Kingsport Times-News. I still have this shirt, too. I decided to go back to Smiling Vince after seven years as Serious Vince.

 

2006 – I actually initiated this column photo change. I had just lost 20 pounds and thought I should have a more accurate, and Thinner Vince, sig.   

As a columnist you go back and forth on whether you want people to be able to identify you from that postage stamp photo. On the one hand you do because you pick up a lot of column ideas from people you meet in restaurants and stores. On the other hand there are times when you need a haircut or a shave or even a bath and you’d just as soon not be recognized.

I’ve always been amazed that anyone could identify me from my little photo. People would say “You’re taller than your picture in the paper.” And I would reply, “I’ve grown.”

From these column sigs you can see that I’ve also grown older.

Unlike Jean Dixon.

You Gotta Be a Football Hero...

 

D-B Football Programs from the Fifties and Sixties

A conversation with a friend about Steve Spurrier sent me digging into my collection of old football programs.

I have about a hundred D-B football programs from the fifties and sixties. If you went to a game back then, you remember them: a colorful cover and inside a team roster and individual mug shots of each player. The centerfold featured a Coca-Cola ad, a hint at how the school could afford to give the programs away free at the gate.

Beginning in 1949 Coca-Cola teamed up with a New York advertising company, Spencer Advertising, to design and produce these handsome programs. Of course Coke got the centerfold ad but local schools, high school and college, could sell their own advertising to fill the rest of the program.

D-B programs usually featured a Bennett and Edwards ad on the back cover with smaller ads for Dobyns-Taylor, W.B. Greene, Freels Drug, J. Fred Johnson and Oakwood Super Markets. There was usually a smaller ad for Howard-Duckett Fine Printing & Lithography of 210 East Charlemont, who printed the programs using instructions from Coke.

Coke and Spencer would provide six different program covers each season with detailed instructions for the printer on how to print team rosters in the centerfold. The center spread also included referee signs for penalties, all next to a drawing of a girl-next-door type drinking a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Example of blank Coca Cola football program centerfold

Coke and Spencer Advertising employed an array of artists, most art students in New York, to create the covers.

My favorite of all the covers I have is from the 1960 Kingsport-Morristown game (see above): a blonde cheerleader is smooching what I presume to be the hero of the game, while a reporter-type, notebook in hand, leans in for a quote. It’s Norman Rockwell set to the 1935 song “You Gotta Be a Football Hero (to Get Along with a Beautiful Girl).”

It was drawn by Fred Fixler, a Hungarian born illustrator, who would go on to become a Hollywood poster artist. His most famous creation was the poster for the Vincent Price horror film “The Pit and the Pendulum.” His most infamous creations were a series of cover illustrations he did for Brandon House’s series of lurid pulp novels of the forties and fifties. Sample titles: “Too Young to Wait,” “The Pay for Play Girl,” and “Jenny’s Games” (Cover line: “An innocent game with her sister’s husband became a nightmare of sin!”)

I can't find a Fixler paperback cover that I would be comfortable posting on this blog. If you want to see some of his lurid covers, just Google Fred Fixler and Brandon House. (I can't find any record that Random House ever sued Brandon House over the name similarity.)

But before he went Hollywood, Fixler went all in on football illustrations. 

Another artist whose work appeared on a number of D-B football programs – including the 1960 Kingsport vs. Science Hill program - was Lon Keller who is best known for creating the New York Yankees’ “top hat” logo.

I don’t think I even noticed the covers back then. I was more interested in looking at the player photos and the team roster, which included parents’ names and home address!

I knew a handful of these players but I felt like I knew everyone of them from hearing their names on Martin Karant’s Friday night broadcasts over WKPT-AM.

Some of those names were so memorable: Hoyle Seat, Denny Revell, Wally Bridwell, Jerry Reese (he had to be related to Pee Wee Reese, didn’t he?).

So for those who want to see the inside pages of the programs…

 

1956 D-B Football Program

The oldest program in my collection is from 1956, a D-B team coached by Alex Williams with assistants Bob DeVault and Jim "Red" Hoggatt. The team featured All Conference running backs Jerry Gilmer and Jerry Reese, All State end Richard Coffey and massive tackle David Steadman (listed at 203 pounds). That team finished 9-0-1 and champions of the Big 6 Conference.

 

 

1958 D-B Football Program

The ’58 team, coached by Bill Jasper, finished 7-2-1. Players included quarterback Wally Bridwell and All Big 7 running back Dale Brewer and All Big 7 tackle Bill Hammond.

 

 

 

1960 D-B Football Program

The 1960 team, coached by Bill Jasper, finished 9-1 and was named state champions in the UPI poll. Center Clay Harkleroad was named first team All-State.

 

 

 

1959 Region 1 Basketball Tournament Program

We never had regular season basketball programs, at least not that I remember, although Coke did do programs for the tournaments. I have the 1959 Region 1 Tournament Program.

Here is the cover along with rosters for D-B and Science Hill.

And yes, 5 foot 9 inch Science Hill guard Graham Spurrier is the older brother of Steve Spurrier, which is where all this discussion started, with Steve Spurrier and old football programs.

Here are a couple of Spurrier clippings from the a 1961 Science Hill football program. And also his senior directory from the Science Hill yearbook.