Duncan Hines (4 page)

Roy Park, Duncan Hines, Merle Johnson, Jim Cathey standing before billboard welcoming Duncan and Clara Hines to Los Angeles, August 11, 1953.

Duncan and Clara Hines being interviewed at the World's Largest Display of Duncan Hines Cake Mix on WBBC in Flint, Michigan, October 1, 1953.

Mital Gaynor, Allan Mactier, presenting Duncan Hines with a Duncan Hines cake, Blackstone Hotel, Omaha, Nebraska, March 10, 1954.

Duncan Hines at home in the kitchen in Bowling Green, Kentucky, 1950s.

Duncan Hines, Clara Hines and Nelle Palmer, just before they sailed for Europe, on the deck of the
S. S. Liberte
. New York, April 8, 1954. Left to right: Roy Park, Nelle Palmer (in hat), Mrs. Roy (Dottie) Park, Clara Hines, Dr. Arthur Hunt, Duncan Hines, Adelaide Park (the Park's daughter).

Clara and Duncan Hines in Hines's new office, Ithaca, New York, June 28, 1954.

Mention the name “Duncan Hines” to Americans under fifty-five today and the image their minds will undoubtedly conjure is a cake mix package. No one can blame them if they fail to recognize the significance of the man for whom the cake mix is named. Was Duncan Hines named for two men, one named Duncan and the other named Hines, who jointly created a nationally recognized brand name? Or was Duncan Hines a real person? Few know the answer.

On the other hand, mention the name “Duncan Hines” to Americans over fifty-five and a much different picture emerges. To this group the sensation upon hearing the name brings forth emotions usually reserved for one deemed reverentially special. To them Duncan Hines was a man, not associated with cake mixes, but one who recommended the best places Americans could eat and sleep when traveling along the country's early paved highways at a time when they were thirsty for such knowledge.

To the generation that followed them, the name Duncan Hines not only brings back fond memories of someone who looked after the traveling public's gustatory and nocturnal needs, it also brings to mind a name and face whose visage was affixed to over 200 grocery store products at a time when Americans were looking for something more substantial than the usual fare served in supermarket cans and packages. This generation knew that if
Duncan Hines put his name and reputation behind a particular packaged product, it was assuredly the store's best foodstuff and more than worthy of their hard-earned dollars.

Overall, though, what both groups most remember about Duncan Hines is that the name, whatever its context, meant the highest possible quality found anywhere. For example, if Duncan Hines recommended a restaurant, it was widely assumed to be one of the country's absolute best. If he recommended an inn where one could spend the night, it was instantly assumed to be one of the highest quality lodging facilities in America. If he recommended a particular recipe, few competing concoctions could surpass its taste. If he recommended an item found on grocery store shelves, it was naturally assumed to be made from the finest quality ingredients. Duncan Hines never recommended anything that was merely good or passable; his recommendation meant it was the last word in excellence.

Anyone could recommend something. And they did, long before Duncan Hines arrived on the scene. The difference, Americans soon discovered, was that when comparisons were made, the things Duncan Hines recommended truly were the best. Unlike today, his judgments of things superior did not come lightly; once mentioned, however, whatever he recommended soon became highly regarded throughout the nation. But there was another ingredient that placed him a cut above the normal dispensers of information, one instructive to all American generations: his judgments were solely his own. He let no one influence his decisions. He was fiercely independent. He could not be bought at any price—and he let everyone know it. Although restaurateurs, innkeepers and presidents of food manufacturing firms would have gladly sacrificed their fortunes for the honor of having satisfied his favor, Duncan Hines went to great lengths to isolate his emotions from any seductions they may have offered. He was determined—at all costs—to protect the integrity of his name and reputation, because he recognized their value and what it meant to the millions who placed their faith in him.

Duncan Hines rose to fame simply because he possessed human qualities many Americans wanted to see in their fellow man: character, uncompromising honesty, and integrity. For many Americans it was refreshing to find someone who had those traits. Because of the principled stance Hines took on restaurant sanitation and a whole range of other issues, Americans regarded his every word with the highest esteem; in their eyes, he was one who would never lie or deceive them. He was, they felt, one of their own and was looking after their interests. For this generation, if Duncan Hines said a particular restaurant meal made “a man wish for hollow legs,” it did. And there was no argument about it.

A final factor that contributed to the American reverence for what Duncan Hines had to say was his selflessness. It was widely known among the American public that Duncan Hines turned down fortune after fortune simply because he would not sacrifice his name for financial reward. The man who said “Every man has his price” never met Duncan Hines. Nothing could sway his opinion if he thought something under consideration was even remotely questionable. For a generation of Americans, the name Duncan Hines was, as someone once put it, “the next best thing to God.”

What follows is a little known chapter in the annals of America's cultural history that has never before been adequately detailed. It is the story of an average man who came to America's attention, was perceived by them as unusually trustworthy and who, because of that perception, became an American icon. Surprisingly, the public's perception and the reality were nearly identical.

There is a cartoon from the 1940s that, at one time, was every restaurant owner's nightmare. The scene is a dining room of a fancy four-star restaurant. A waiter has accidentally spilled an entire tray of food onto the head and lap of a nicely-attired customer. The customer, neatly dressed in his evening tuxedo, is trying to stifle his anger and frustration as a large lump of lasagna rolls off the side of his head. The man's indignant wife says to the waiter in a calm, controlled, yet icy voice, “Just wait ‘till Duncan Hines hears about this!”
¹

This is the story of how such a potential nightmare came to be. It concerns a man with a penchant for excellence, primarily in matters of food, who raised both the standard of the nation's restaurants and their customers' eating habits by setting himself as an example of the ideal patron. In this role he exhorted his fellow Americans to demand, as he did, only the best from the nation's public kitchens.

Duncan Hines's constant search for excellent restaurants throughout America resulted in filtering out the multitude of poor and mediocre restaurants and directing attention to those truly worthy of consideration. Through his many guidebooks from 1936 to 1962 Duncan Hines favorably remarked on restaurants that were
not only excellent but deserved celebration for the atmospheric and culinary enjoyment they afforded hungry and weary travelers. He made famous the restaurants that strove to put an appealing sparkle into their patron's meals. These restaurants were not only exceptionally clean, they were also noted for their high quality food. He pointed Americans toward restaurants well worth time and trouble to discover, restaurants in out-of-the-way locales too good to pass up. A Duncan Hines recommended restaurant, most Americans believed, was one where taste buds could savor extraordinary culinary delights hardly found anywhere else. For twenty-seven years millions bought his books, took his advice, and were much wiser and happier for it. The words may not mean much today, but not long ago the phrase “Recommended by Duncan Hines” really meant something.

Duncan Hines's story begins not in a restaurant but in the sleepy south-central Kentucky town of Bowling Green. Like many other families who settled in that area during the early part of the nineteenth century, Hines's forebears were originally from Scotland and England. Edward Ludlow Hines, Duncan's father, was born near Bowling Green on 5 November 1842. He was the third son of Fayette and Anne Cook Hines.
²
It was often reported that Edward Hines was a former Confederate army captain, but in fact he never rose beyond the rank of lieutenant.
³
Edward Hines enlisted in the Confederate Army at Camp Boone in Tennessee on 1 June 1861 and joined the 2nd Kentucky infantry under Col. Roger Hansen. He surrendered on 9 May 1865, as a member of Company E, the 9th Kentucky Cavalry under the command of William P. C. Breckinridge.
⁴
During his four years of service he was never captured by enemy Union soldiers and was proud of it. Except for a short stay in the hospital, he never left his post.
⁵
Edward Hines received several battle scars on his stomach as a result of his war service and this left his health in rather precarious shape. For the rest of his life, he had to take care that he did not over-exert himself and make his infirmity still more serious. As a result of this physical limitation, he never had anything resembling “nine-to-five” employment. The elder Hines's war papers reveal
the confession that he joined the Confederate States of America not because he had any particular love of the South or because he had any hatred for the North but rather because, not knowing anything about the people North of the Ohio River, he naturally considered them enemies who had a tendency to look down on him and his way of life. Class envy being qualification enough to participate in the nation's most epic bloodbath, he went off to war at age twenty to battle the Yankee heathen upstarts.
⁶