Sunny Sund book out now

Many of you no doubt already know that there's a new book about Sunny Sund (Don Beach's first wife) out now, written by her daughter: https://www.amazon.com/Sunny-Sund-Behind-Beachcomber-Hollywood-ebook/dp/B0CPTJZ4TT

I thought this passage was a mind-blower:

"Her daily routine was a testament to her unwavering dedication to a unique cocktail diet: Salty Dogs for breakfast, Bloody Marys for lunch, with a midday switch to vodka Gibsons that surely kept her on her toes. After an afternoon nap, she'd kick off the evening with Old Fashioneds, then swing back to vodka before dinner. As a grand finale, she'd gracefully sip scotch to round off the night before passing out. And on those rare occasions when she craved dessert, a Pernod on the rocks might do the trick."

Not surprisingly, she died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 64.

Holy Moley! I feel hungover just from reading that.

I couldn't manage one day of that kind of drinking, much less a daily routine. Oy

Yeesh ... when an alcoholic owns a bar.

So I've read the whole book now, and it's an odd read. First, it's surprisingly short and is more of a collection of anecdotes than a biography. Plus, a good chunk of the book is about the author (Sunny's daughter) than about Sunny, even though the title of the book would lead you to think otherwise.

But there's really not much meat here to the stories. There's not a lot of info on why Sunny was so successful with the three Don the Beachcombers she was running. There's a lot of name dropping of famous people, especially actors. Very little information is sourced so you're left wondering if a story is true or legend. Several images in the book are too small and blurry to read, including several pages of a letter and a few news articles. A lot of details are repeated -- I think it's stated that Sunny was "a beautiful Nordic blonde" about 50 times. Ok, we get it!

Most chapters end with a cocktail recipe, and several are different from Beachbum Berry's DtB recipes. But there's no source of the recipes given, so I don't know if they were among her mother's papers, the author got them from a former DtB bartender or if she just created her own versions. Perhaps the oddest recipe is for the Zombie, where it's claimed that Don's Mix is actually passion fruit juice!

In short, this book really needed to be co-written by a good editor and researcher. I guess it's worth reading for what info there is, but I've got doubts about a lot of the stories simply because much of it seems to be hearsay.

Thanks for the writeup. I've got the book, and it's on my to-read list. As it's written by her daughter, I worried that it would be just a bunch of filial hagiography.

I'd be interested in your take of the book when you're finished