Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer (7 page)

At the outbreak of World War II, fearful that a wave of anti-German, anti-alcohol hysteria would once again devastate their industry, America's brewers fell all over themselves trying to prove their patriotism. They retooled sections of their plants to manufacture parts and equipment for the military. They conducted highly publicized programs encouraging their employees to buy war bonds. And they launched ad campaigns that seem almost laughable today, tying their product to the war effort by suggesting that drinking beer would help defeat the enemy.

Hoping to head off any government-imposed rationing of grain similar to that which occurred during World War I, the industry dispatched its lobbyist to Washington to convince lawmakers that beer was not only vital to the American economy, it was also a necessary ingredient to maintaining morale among the troops
and
the civilian population. The U.S. Brewers Foundation borrowed a page from Adolphus Busch's pre-Prohibition playbook with an advertising campaign that promoted beer as “America's Beverage of Moderation.” Working with the government, the trade association created what became known as the “Beer Belongs” series of magazine ads, which contained the tagline, “Morale is a lot of little things.” A typical ad featured a Norman Rockwell–style rendering of a young man, perhaps a college student, lying on his bunk reading a letter from the folks back home. “A cool refreshing glass of beer … a moment of relaxation. In trying times like these, they, too, help to keep morale up.” Anheuser-Busch ran an ad that said, “Every sip helps somebody.”

The brewers' main contribution to the war effort was, of course, beer—millions of bottles and cans of it, shipped to military bases around the world under contracts with the government. “Every fourth bottle of Schlitz goes overseas,” blared one of that brewery's most memorable wartime ads, which pictured a ship bristling with big guns and slicing through the waves as if chasing down a German U-boat. The Big Three national breweries—Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, and Schlitz—sold the lion's share of the beer to the military because the smaller regional firms didn't have the production or distribution capacity to service the contracts.

In addition to providing hundreds of thousands of olive-drab cans of Budweiser to all the service branches, A-B manufactured ammunition hoists for the navy, and arranged with the Army Air Force to earmark the company's employee war bonds program for the purchase of B-17 bombers. A-B employees bought enough bonds—nearly $900,000 worth—to pay for two of the so-called Flying Fortresses, which, in a smart bit of branding, the company got the army to name
Miss Budweiser
and
Busch-whacker
.

When the government suggested that the big national shippers temporarily cease distribution on the West Coast in order to free up railroad freight cars for the military, only Anheuser-Busch agreed to do so. In a move that was both classy and clever, the company withdrew from the region with a published statement to its customers commending “the many fine beers now being brewed on the Pacific Coast,” as opposed to those brewed in Milwaukee.

When it came to personal displays of patriotism, Gussie Busch outdid all of his competitors. Six months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, at the age of forty-three, with four children, he joined the army. To be sure, he didn't sign up for combat duty; he accepted a commission as a major in the U.S. Army Ordnance Department, stationed in Washington, D.C., a posting arranged by his good friend, Missouri senator Harry S. Truman. The assignment was without doubt a cushy one, but it did require Gussie to take a leave of absence from the brewery, forsake the services of his valet and butler, and submit to the authority of the military chain of command, which couldn't have been easy for him. He reported for duty at the Pentagon in a beautifully hand-tailored uniform and by all accounts served with distinction, earning a promotion to lieutenant colonel within six months and another to full colonel in November 1944. He eventually was awarded a Legion of Merit medal for distinguished service, which was pinned on him personally by the secretary of war and worn on his lapel for the rest of his life. He couldn't have been more proud if it were a Purple Heart or a Silver Cross for battlefield heroism.

Contrary to the brewers' initial fears, anti-German sentiment never became a factor with American beer drinkers, and the war actually proved a boon to the business. Per capita consumption in the United States increased by 50 percent during the course of the conflict. Anheuser-Busch shipped nearly 3.7 million barrels in 1944, 2 million more than was ever shipped in Adolphus's time.

But all was not well back at the St. Louis brewery. That summer, Gussie got a phone call from a trusted employee at the plant telling him that a batch of beer had overfermented and tasted bad, but his brother, Adolphus III, was going to bottle and ship it anyway. Gussie was appalled. He immediately countermanded Adolphus and ordered that the tainted beer, a million dollars' worth, be poured down the sewer. Adolphus was furious and threatened to resign as president, but the board of directors talked him out of it. Still, he never forgot what his younger brother had done.

Gussie returned to St. Louis in June 1945, but not to the mansion on Lindell Boulevard. His time in Washington, and his rumored romantic liaisons there, had left him and Elizabeth utterly estranged. Along with his eighteen-year-old daughter Lotsie, he moved into a six-bedroom apartment in the so-called Bauernhof at Grant's Farm, an elaborate U-shaped medieval German–style structure his father had built to house his prized horses, cows, cars, carriages, and farm staff. The main house at Grant's Farm had been vacant since shortly after his father's suicide in 1934, but was still maintained and used for family get-togethers at Christmas and Easter and occasional company parties. Gussie's mother, Alice, lived a few hundred yards down the lane in a two-story colonial home the family referred to as “the cottage,” which was built for her after her husband's death and qualified as a cottage only in comparison to the three-story, thirty-four-room, fourteen-bath mansion.

Gussie's homecoming was attended by speculation in the newspapers that he would run for mayor, but he dismissed questions about his candidacy as abruptly as he did the tendency on the part of some people to address him as “Colonel Busch.” He was flattered by the talk, but not tempted. His eyes were focused on the brewery, and he didn't like what he saw.

In many ways, business had never looked better. Americans were drinking more beer than ever before; overall production had doubled during the war. Anheuser-Busch, Pabst, and Schlitz were gaining significant market share at the expense of regional brewers thanks to returning GIs who had tasted their beer for the first time while on active duty. Profits were up; the St. Louis plant could not brew enough to fill its orders.

The problem, as Gussie saw it, was that for the first time since the turn of the century, Anheuser-Busch was No. 2. On his brother's watch, Pabst had taken the lead. Pabst was A-B's longtime archenemy. Gussie's grandfather Adolphus had competed maniacally with “Captain” Frederick Pabst for decades, no doubt in part because Pabst, too, had gotten his start in the business by marrying the brewery owner's daughter. In 1894, after a panel of judges in Chicago awarded Pabst lager the first-place blue ribbon in a competition for “America's best beer,” Adolphus personally pursued one of the event's judges across Europe in an unsuccessful attempt to get the decision overturned in favor of second-place Budweiser. The rebranded “Pabst Blue Ribbon” beer outsold Budweiser for the next six years.

Like his grandfather, Gussie couldn't bear to be beaten, whether in equestrian competition, gin rummy, or business. A-B's fall from first place reportedly caused him to grouse that “being second isn't worth anything,” but the quote seems uncharacteristically tepid for a man given to coarse expression. People who knew him always suspected that a reporter had cleaned up what he really said, which could not have been printed in any publication at that time—“Being second isn't worth shit.”

As for his own No. 2 position, fate intervened in August 1946 when, after eight days in the hospital, Adolphus III died of cardiac failure brought on by stomach cancer. He was fifty-five and had been ill for some time. Six days later, Gussie was named president of the company at a special meeting of the board of directors, where there were mixed feelings about the passing of the torch. Adolphus had not been a particularly dynamic or visionary leader, and his drinking had troubled some members of the family and the board, who thought it sometimes impaired his judgment, as in the tainted beer incident. For the most part, however, they regarded him as a calm, competent, reasonable steward of the company, and a gentleman. Gussie, on the other hand, was volatile, bumptious, hot-tempered, tyrannical, rude, obstinate, impatient, and vindictive. Yet he was also charismatic, fun-loving, infectiously exuberant, and possibly the most brilliant beer salesman who ever lived. Not even his grandfather worked a saloon with such determination or delight—striding across the room, his hand outstretched, his distinctive voice overpowering the din: “My name is Gussie Busch, and I'd like to buy you a Budweiser.”

Gussie bounded onto the Anheuser-Busch throne determined to return the company of his father and grandfather to its rightful place at the top. His first order of business was increasing capacity to meet demand. His plan called for a $50 million upgrade of the Pestalozzi Street plant and the construction of a new $34 million plant in Newark, New Jersey. Some board members worried about the cost of the new plant and argued for the cheaper option of acquiring an existing plant and refitting it, as Schlitz and Pabst were already doing in New York. Even though it was duly incorporated, with stockholders and a board of directors, A-B bore little resemblance to a modern corporation. It was in every sense a family business. Of the fifteen members of the all-male board, seven were either direct descendants of Adolphus Busch or married to direct descendants, two were grandsons of Eberhard Anheuser, and the rest were cronies of Gussie. One local writer likened the board to “the cast of a rousing Rudolph Firml operetta, with Adolphs, Augusts, Eberhards and Adalberts crowding each other off the corporate stage.... There's a Wagnerian air to the whole enterprise.”

Family members held more than 70 percent of the company stock, with Gussie controlling the largest block. In addition to his own shares, he had the power to vote the shares that his father left to his mother in trust, so it was not particularly difficult for him to get his way. If all else failed, his temper usually did the trick. When told he couldn't do something, his response was typically, “I can't? Just watch me.”

Gussie won board approval for the expansion plan, including the new plant, but climbing back into first place took a lot longer than he thought it would. Despite a big increase in Budweiser sales, Schlitz came out on top in 1947, while Anheuser-Busch dropped to fourth place. For the next six years, Gussie worked tirelessly to knock Schlitz from the No. 1 position, personalizing the battle in the same way that Adolphus had done with Pabst half a century before. His near obsession with beating Schlitz was partly due to a personality trait—throughout his life, he'd always needed an enemy to compete against; it's what energized him and inspired him to do his best. But it also derived from his realization that the war had changed the brewing landscape, and the future would be determined by which of the three superpowers came to dominate. As it was with geopolitics, so it was with beer.

In the summer of 1949, Gussie took a break from the brewery and traveled to Europe with his buddy Tony Buford, A-B's chief counsel. After a stay in Paris and a visit with Gussie's aunt Wilhelmina (Adolphus's youngest daughter) in Munich, they took a train to Lucerne, Switzerland, where they stopped for lunch one day at a restaurant called the Swiss House. Gussie was immediately taken with the hostess, a tall blue-eyed blonde named Gertrude Buholzer. Partway through his meal he approached the proprietor and asked, “Who in the hell is that beautiful girl?”

“That's my daughter,” said Willy Buholzer. “Why do you want to know?”

Gussie replied awkwardly that they were in town looking to purchase schnauzers to breed at his farm in the United States and wondered if she knew where they could acquire some of the dogs. The two Americans paid their bill and left, but they returned the next day. This time, Gussie asked Willy Buholzer if he could meet his daughter. “Trudy” was accustomed to male customers making a fuss over her. At twenty-two, she was stunning, vivacious, and educated. She spoke four languages—French, German, Italian, and English. Her father told her she didn't have to meet the Americans if she didn't want to, but she said she'd be happy to take them to some people she knew who had the dogs. At the end of the day with her, Gussie proposed, never mind that he was twenty-seven years her senior and still married.

Trudy was more amused and intrigued than smitten. She was already engaged to a man named Hans, who was thirty-eight and owned a house on Lake Lucerne. “My parents were crazy about Hans,” she recalled later. Still, she agreed, and her parents acquiesced, when a besotted Gussie invited her to visit him in America.

Gussie paid for her ocean passage and met her boat in New York, where they stayed for a week at the Plaza Hotel. They went shopping for “New York shoes,” took a carriage ride through Central Park, and hit the hottest show on Broadway,
South Pacific
with Mary Martin. Then he pulled out the stops with a journey to St. Louis via private train car with its own chef and waiters. Stepping off the train in St. Louis's Union Station, Trudy was struck by how ugly the city looked, choked with smoke and covered in soot, so far removed from the lakes and trees of her homeland. She was unnerved, too, by the number of black people on the street; they were a rarity in Switzerland. Belleau Farm, where Gussie put her up during her stay, was much more like home, with its rustic lakeside lodge and fields full of wildlife.