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How Narragansett Beer Survived Prohibition (But Still Couldn’t Escape the Government)

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, anyone who walked into a New England tavern and ordered a beer probably got a Narragansett. That wouldn’t have been a surprise, since the sign outside probably said, “Narragansett Lager Beer” along with the name of the tavern.

Narragansett, fondly known as ‘Gansett, ranked for decades as New England’s most popular beer. The Red Sox drank it, Dr. Seuss created its mascot and Captain Quint crushed a can of it in Jaws. You just couldn’t miss its slogan, “Hi, Neighbor! Have a ‘Gansett!”

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of Jaws, Narragansett brought back a vintage 1975 can.

Though Narragansett beer survived Prohibition, it couldn’t escape the U.S. Justice Department. Government lawyers actually tried to enforce antitrust laws back in the 1960s . However, they ignored other threats to competition — including a certain St. Louis-based beer maker.

The old Rhode Island beer died in the 1980s, but that isn’t the end of the story.

Birth of Narragansett Beer

In December 1890, the Narragansett Brewing Co. brewed its first commercial beer in its new brewery in Cranston, R.I. Six German-Americans had pooled $150,000 to start the company. You may recognize one of their names: Jacob Wirth. He was the same Jacob Wirth who ran a popular restaurant in Boston’s Theater District that survived until 2018.

Jacob Wirth

Rounding out the original six were John H. Fehlberg, Augustus F. Borchandt, Herman G. Possner, George M. Gerhard and Constand A. Moeller.

The old Narragansett brewery.

People liked the light, sparkling beers that came out of the German breweries cropping up after the Civil War. In New England they really liked Narragansett lager.

By 1914, Narragansett had enough customers to build its own bottling plant on its 42-acre complex. That made it the biggest beer brewery in New England.

Prohibition

On Jan. 17, 1920, Prohibition took effect, banning the sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. Many breweries went under, but Narragansett survived. Fortunately for the company, it already had a business delivering ice, with its own icehouse, ice pond and refrigeration machines. Narragansett continued to deliver ice through Prohibition.

Narragansett also obtained a license to brew and sell porter for medicinal purposes. People then thought its low-alcohol and high-iron content benefited pregnant women. Only five other U.S. breweries were allowed to do so. The brewery called it Narragansett Dark.

Narragansett also survived by turning its pilsner into a near beer with an alcohol by volume content of less than 0.5 percent. And it made ginger ale, sarsaparilla and root beer, along with a malt tonic for recovering invalids.

Narragansett, Part of the Culture

Shortly after Prohibition ended in 1933, the Haffenreffer family of Boston brewers bought the Narragansett brewery. One of the Haffenreffers attended Dartmouth College with Theodor Geisel, later Dr. Seuss. Narragansett hired Geisel to illustrate advertisements for the beer. Today people collect the company’s metal trays imprinted with Chief Gansett, along with such slogans as “Gangway for Gansett.”

After World War II, the Haffenreffers decided to make Narragansett the dominant beer in New England. The company embarked on an aggressive advertising and promotional campaign.

In 1944, Gansett officially sponsored the Boston Red Sox, thus becoming the first alcohol company to sponsor an American sports team. People still remember Red Sox announcer Curt Gowdy praising the “straight from the barrel taste.” Mike Nichols also called it a “straight from the barrel taste” in a hilarious animated commercial with Elaine May. (You can watch it here.)

Then Narragansett beer began its “Hi, Neighbor! Have a Gansett!” ad campaign. The company promoted Gansett beers at ball parks, concert arenas and golf courses with attractive young women called Gansett Girls. Irehne Hennessey, Betty Vickowski and Penny Sojka started off as the female faces of Narragansett, also known as the Hi Neighbor Girls.

Becoming the Biggest

Narragansett grew into New England’s largest brewery. In 1959, it brewed for the first time one million barrels of beer. To celebrate, the brewery gave each employee a gold-plated bottle of Gansett. By the 1960s it had an 80 percent share of the Rhode Island market, and 65 percent throughout New England. At its peak, Narragansett employed 850 people.

During the 1950s and 1960s, J. Joseph Garrahy worked for Narragansett as one of its top salespeople. According to legend, the many, many people he met in his job ended up voting for him, first for the Rhode Island state Senate, then as lieutenant governor and finally for four terms as governor. A popular governor, people viewed him as a friend of the working class.

Joseph Garrahy

Then when the U.S. Navy announced plans to scrap the battleship USS Massachusetts, her former crew campaigned to save her as a museum ship. Narragansett Brewery led the fundraising effort with paid advertisements, which ultimately succeeded in saving “Big Mamie,” now in Battleship Cove in Fall River, Mass.

Falstaff Buys Narragansett — Finally

In 1964, the St. Louis-based Falstaff Brewing Co. offered to buy the Narragansett company for about $20 million. Falstaff, then the fourth largest U.S. brewery, had no market share in the Northeast. It intended to run Narragansett as a wholly owned subsidiary.

Two days before the sale closed, the U.S. Justice Department brought an antitrust suit against Falstaff. It took nine years for the resolution of the case, which finally ended in 1973 when a U.S. district court ruled in favor of Falstaff. But nine years of legal wrangling couldn’t have helped the Rhode Island brewery.

Not everybody…

In hindsight, the case shows how much attitudes have changed about corporate concentration. When the antitrust case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Byron White wrote the decision that acknowledged the consolidation of the New England beer market.

He noted that the number of brewers operating plants in New England fell from 32 in 1935, to 11 in 1957, to six in 1964.

But White suggested Falstaff would have figured out a way to enter the New England market anyway, and sent the case to a lower court. In the end, Falstaff won the case and took over Narragansett in 1974.

Modern Times

While government lawyers tried to prevent Falstaff from entering the New England market by buying a brewery, Anheuser-Busch built a state-of-the-art brewery in Merrimack, N.H. It opened in 1970 and gave stiff competition to Narragansett.

Then in 2008, a multinational brewing company called InBev bought Anheuser-Busch, creating a beery behemoth. The consolidated company, based in Leuven, Belgium, acquired more companies and ultimately grew into a multinational giant called Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV. Meanwhile, Falstaff and its new acquisition, Narragansett, sputtered.

In 1964, Falstaff and Narragansett had combined sales of about $155 million. In fiscal year 2020, Anheuser-Busch InBev reported sales of $46.9 billion, more than 300 times the combined revenue of Falstaff and Narragansett back in the day.

Rebirth of Narragansett Beer

Beset by competition, legal problems and an aging facility, Narragansett shut its doors in 1983. The company sold its equipment to China and tore down buildings in Cranston, leaving a small trolley barn that burned in 2005.

Now on your grocer’s shelves.

That year, Rhode Islander Mark Hellendrung, former Nantucket Nectars president, began to restore the Narragansett brand as a heritage beer. According to Bloomberg News, Narragansett beer is cool again as millennials in Brooklyn, N.Y., bars now drink it.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, Narragansett Beer came up with a novel promotion: Get a vaccine or get a friend vaccinated, and the next round is on us.

With thanks to Ashleigh Bennett and Kristie Martin, “Rhode Island Beer: Ocean State History on Tap” and to David Zax, “The Many Pop-Culture Moments of Narragansett, the “Forrest Gump of Beers”” in Fast Company.

Image: Narragansett logo By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=32655382. Narragansett beer ads courtesy NarragansettBeer.com. Jacob Wirth By Biruitorul – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4004137. This story was updated in 2022.

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Karl Muck Departs the Boston Symphony Orchestra in World War I Era Scandal

Henry Lee Higginson founded the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1881, and for nearly 40 years made it an unparalleled success. Until, that is, the last year of his life when musical director Karl Muck became enveloped in a scandal that turned the symphony into a political flashpoint during World War I.

Karl Muck

When America entered World War I in April of 1917, Higginson had reason to worry about his conductor. Muck, then 57, was born in Germany and had connections in government circles. Still, he was a musician, not a military man.

Karl Muck

Higginson had been somewhat bold to engage Muck in the first place. He had conducted the orchestra from 1906 to 1908 as a guest, and Higginson brought him back in 1912 more permanently. The press praised the decision. The BSO had traditionally used unknowns in the role of conductor, rather than more famous, established conductors like Muck.

Higginson talked about the issues surrounding the war with Muck, and he agreed to stay apolitical. And for a time, it worked. The BSO continued its performances, and Muck kept quiet.

By 1917, orchestras were starting to add The Star Spangled Banner to their concert lineups and the BSO was slow to adopt the custom. After a November concert in Providence, Muck was accused of refusing to play the national anthem. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, correct. Muck didn’t like anyone telling him what he had to perform. Still, he had not refused. A request to perform the song did not reach him. Higginson had simply ignored it.

Carnegie Hall

The issue simmered and rose up again as the end of 1917 approached. Muck and the BSO were scheduled to play three nights at New York’s Carnegie Hall the following year. The socialites of New York, led by Mrs. William Jay, began agitating against his performance, as well as German opera performances.

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Their fight broke into the press. Higginson tried to calm the waters by spreading the story that Muck was Swiss. While he was born in Germany, his father had obtained a Swiss passport for him as a youngster and Higginson tried to pass the conductor off as a neutral party.

By the end of December, however, the controversy was growing. The City of Pittsburgh banned Muck from performing. Leaders in Springfield, Mass., said they would not rent space for a BSO concert.

And in New York, Mrs. Jay continued her protests and letter-writing. She did not want Muck performing at Carnegie Hall.

The press reported, “Her letters were without effect on Major Higginson, except to move him to inform Mrs. Jay that her letters were a distinct annoyance.”

Officials in Washington, D.C. forced cancellation of a BSO concert there. They declared Muck, along with 22 other members of the orchestra, was an enemy alien and not allowed to enter the city.

On March 14, 1918, Muck strode to the podium at Carnegie Hall. The press reported he received a 1-minute and 42-second standing ovation. When the crowd quieted, he struck up a rendition of The Star Spangled Banner that received another ovation.

Arrest

The public controversy over Muck died, temporarily. Behind the scenes, however, pressure to remove Muck was growing. Higginson privately laid out his intentions. At the close of the season in May, he would announce Muck’s departure and he, himself, would also resign. He never got the chance to put his plans into action.

On March 25, police arrested Muck as a hostile alien. He resigned from the symphony at the end of March. Then at the start of April he was sent to a Georgia internment camp, with 4,000 others of German descent.

Muck and several others had to be taken to the camp under guard amid threats from people who said they would take him from the train and hang him. For his part, Muck said he was pleased with the change. He couldn’t smoke cigarettes at the Cambridge, Mass., jail, something he could do in the internment camp.

Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer had promised to rein in the practices of the Justice Department, but it was no aid to Muck. The Justice Department wanted to question him about his friendship with Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm and his knowledge of the Kaiser’s plans for America.

As April progressed, Swiss officials dropped their defense of Muck. They no longer claimed he was a Swiss citizen. Higginson resigned from the orchestra, handing it over to a board of directors.

Arrest of Karl Muck (center)

Deportee

Since his first day at the camp, Muck and others were offered the option of being sent to Germany if they wished. At the urging of his wife, Muck finally agreed to deportation, and in August of 1919 he was boarded a ship to Europe.

He gave interviews in which he was bitter about his treatment. America was under mob rule, he said, though he said his life in the internment camp was largely comfortable. He noted that the BSO had 29 musicians in the internment camp, and he doubted the symphony could recover.

Back in Germany, he told reporters that his internment resulted from police and FBI looking at his shorthand notations for the music to Bach’s The Passion of St. Matthew. They mistook it, he said, for some sort of spy code. He would conduct the Berlin Philharmonic that fall.

Henry Higginson

In November 1919, just four days after the official end of World War I, Henry Higginson died at age 85 from complications of surgery earlier in the year. Boston mourned the successful banker and Civil War soldier. No one had questioned his loyalty during the Muck affair, or his decision to stand by Muck, though some thought it curious.

The public was about to hear the final piece of the story.

The Real Story

In December, the newspapers in Boston and New York published a “Now it can be told” account of Karl Muck’s internment and deportation. “Love and Intrigue Mingle in the Story of Karl Muck Deported Orchestra Leader,” read the headlines on a series of articles that began just before Christmas.

This account of the story revealed that when police investigated Muck they learned of his affair with Rosamond Young, a 20-year-old opera singer from a wealthy Boston-area family. He had met her years before when she visited Germany.

Police pressured him with a threat of a morals charge into accepting internment. Higginson had also realized the scandal would end any possibility of salvaging Muck’s job.

Following his arrest, Muck had asked the girl to burn his letters to her, but she did not, and police discovered them. The newspapers published excerpts revealing an odd mix of incriminating details that showed Muck to be both infatuated with the girl and still very much in love with Germany.

“Dream of me darling. Dream of the throbbing moments we spent together, and dream of the hours we will yet spend,” he wrote in one letter.

In another, he promised he would take the girl with him to Germany and marry her.

“It will be only a very short time when our gracious Kaiser will act upon my request and recall me to Berlin,” he wrote. Once there,”our Kaiser will be prevailed upon to see the benefit to the Fatherland in my obtaining a divorce and making you my own.”

Valuable Servant

Muck explained that he wanted to return to Germany sooner, but had agreed to stay in the United States at the request of Germany’s ambassador to America:

“He insisted I am the fatherland’s most valuable servant in this country. In the name of our gracious Kaiser he begged me to remain here.”

No evidence emerged that Muck provided any material aid to the Germans. The closest thing to an actual allegation against him was his loyalty to Germany and, in the event of an invasion, he belonged to a group of German Americans who would help the enemy.

Muck would have many more successful years as a conductor in Germany before he died in 1940.

Images: Boston Symphony Hall By mooogmonster – CIMG2733, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=955273. With thanks to Melissa D. Burrage, The Karl Muck Scandal; Classical Music and Xenophobia in World War I.

This story was updated in 2022.

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Images of New England Observing Memorial Day in WWII

New England observed Memorial Day during World War II with special solemnity. For many, the memory of fallen heroes was fresh, raw and intense.

The Roosevelt administration sent photographers into the field to record how Americans honored their war dead. They worked for the Office of War Information, and would go on to lead illustrious careers.

How Ashland, Maine Observed Memorial Day

Rural Aroostook County lost 239 young men in World War II, either missing in action, killed in action or killed in the line of duty.

Many of the young men from tiny Ashland, Maine, in the county were drafted, and so Memorial Day took on a somber significance.

Legionnaires and Boy Scouts

The town, a farming community, had fewer than 1,000 residents, so the ceremonies featured hardly any young men.

John Collier took these photos of the ceremonies in Ashland in 1943 for the Office of War Information. After the war, he became an anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of visual anthropology and applied anthropology.

In Ashland, Collier noticed all boys and young men marched in the Memorial Day parade. Almost none watched from the audience.

The parade about to begin

Below, a Congregational minister offered a prayer for divine guidance through the years of war.

Prayers

Though only a small farming center with a population under 1000, Ashland had a good band with lots of purple trim and gold braid for the Memorial Day ceremony.

Keeping the beat

A bugler sounded Taps during the ceremonies.

Honoring their sacrifice

Gloucester, Mass., on May 31, 1943

Gordon Parks took these photos showing how Gloucester, Mass., observed Memorial Day in 1943. Parks, then 30, was working for the Office of War Information. He would later become well known for his photo essays of the civil rights movement for Life magazine — and for directing the 1971 film Shaft.

He also composed music and wrote fiction and poetry. His best known work is The Learning Tree, an autobiographical novel about a poor young African American growing up in segregated rural Kansas during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He received 20 honorary doctorates before he died in 2006 at the age of 93.

Here he captures one of the speakers at the Gloucester Memorial Day ceremony.

Solemn words

Gloucester, a fishing community, also held memorial services for fishermen lost at sea. Here relatives of fishermen wait their turn to toss flowers into the water.

Waiting their turn.

A Legionnaire played Taps during the Gloucester ceremony.

Again

When the parade ended, the ROTC band took a rest.

Southington, Conn., 1942

These Memorial Day photos of Southington, Conn., were taken by Fenno Jacobs during World War II for the Office of War Information. Jacobs, born in Waltham, Mass., was a rebellious child who didn’t get past the eighth grade. He joined the Merchant Marine, then took up photography. By the time the OWI hired him he had worked for Time, Life and National Geographic.

Jacobs belonged to a team of photographers who spent the month in Southington, Conn., taking pictures of residents at work and at leisure. The photos were compiled into a booklet designed to show friends and enemies in Europe the traditions and values of typical American families. Military planes dropped thousands of copies over Europe during the German occupation.

The photo below shows the parade marching past the Southington Town Hall on Memorial Day in 1942.

The flag at half-staff

Southington had a large number of residents with German, Polish and Italian ancestry. Their immigrant ancestors came to work in the mills during the 19th century.

A nicely decorated bicycle on the left

The Catholic congregation gathered in the St. Thomas cemetery for an outdoor Mass.

Remembering those who have passed

After World War II, Southington became a bedroom community and the population grew to over 42,000 people.

After the parade

Photos courtesy Library of Congress. This story was updated in 2022.

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