America's 51st state

Glamorous American bars were once a familiar sight in London, catering to US and British citizens alike, but only two of the historic ones remain. On the eve of Thanksgiving, Robert Crossan goes in search of both

- Robert Crossa

MARILYN MONROE, by all accounts, didn't much enjoy her sojourn to England in 1956. She was here to film the risible M box-office turkey The Prince And The Showgirl with an irascible Laurence Olivier, who earned Monroe's permanent opprobrium by demanding that she 'try and be sexy'. The film, by many accounts, aged the already hardly Hebe-esque looks of Olivier by 15 years.

Norma Jean (1926-1962) did find respite from the diurnal rigours of filming in a bar whose name alone would have been a tonic for her homesickness. Not that The Savoy's American Bar had ever approved much of tonic, or anything so otiose when it came to the making of cocktails.

The increasingly bibulous Monroe didn't sink the bar's 'Montgomery' creation-a hospital pass of a drink made with a 15:1 gin-to-vermouth ratio but Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) did, according to the bar's most venerated bartender Harry Craddock. The latter published The Savoy Cocktail Book in 1930 and it is still in print now.

Today, the American Bar serves up drinks of a potency that, although more than satisfying to neophyte cocktail sippers, might well be considered tap water by former guests including the aforementioned Hemingway, author F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and singer Frank Sinatra (1915-1998). "Tastes have absolutely changed since those days,' says Chelsie Bailey, current head bartender and only the third woman to have the role. 'I bought The Savoy Cocktail Book when I was 22 and just starting out as a career bartender but, I have to be honest, I think 80% of the recipes in there are terrible! They're not balanced and we don't have any of them on the menu today. American drinks, back in 1893, typically contained two or three different drinks, with very minimal dilution. Whereas, in Britain, we were drinking fortified wines and spirits with good measures of tonic waters and sodas.'