PHOTO: JON EDWARDS PHOTOGRAPHY/STOCKFOOD
credited the Elks as being an impor- tant part of the Salvation Army’s success in France during World War I. “I say without hesitancy,” Commander Booth said, “that our organization could not have achieved its excep- tional success in this war, but for the splendid, practical, tangible aid that was rendered to us by the Elks.”
u Salvation Army USA National Commander Evangeline Booth credited the BPO Elks, who had helped to send the “Doughnut Lassies” overseas, for being an important part of the Salvation Army’s success in France during World War I.
Post-War Popularity It is not known what the future of the doughnut might have been in the United States if it hadn’t been for the Salvation Army’s Lassies and the Elks support that helped the Salvation Army serve US soldiers in France during World War I. What is known, however, is that US soldiers returning from the war brought a taste for doughnuts home with them, and soon after the war, there was a rise in the demand for doughnuts. Local bakeries were swamped with orders for the tasty treats, and doughnuts quickly became a popular snack food in movie theaters.
By 1920, doughnut sales in the United States had reached $20 million annually (about $218 million in
40
u In 1920, Adolph Levitt unveiled a machine that mass produced doughnuts, paving the way for even more efficient machines, which help provide Americans with the approximately ten billion doughnuts they now consume annually.
today’s dollars), and that same year, doughnut production became auto- mated for the first time when an immigrant living in New York City named Adolph Levitt employed engineers to design a machine to mass produce doughnuts. He dubbed the machine the “Wonderful Almost Human Automatic Donut Machine,” and when he installed it in the window of his Times Square bakery, he literally stopped traffic. Soon, he was marketing the machine and packages of doughnut mix to bakeries all across the country.
The American doughnut received another boost when, according to legend, movie star Mae Murray accidentally dropped a doughnut in her coffee while eating in New York City at either Lindy’s deli or the Roseland Ballroom. A doughnut dunking fad ensued, and it became so
popular that it was even depicted in the 1934 film It Happened One Night, where in one scene Clark Gable teaches Claudette Colbert the proper way to dunk a doughnut. As a further testament to the doughnut’s popular- ity during the 1930s, the doughnut was declared “the food hit of the Century of Progress” at the Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago (also known as the 1933–1934 World’s Fair).
The interest the American people showed in doughnuts during the 1930s and succeeding decades was hardly lost on entrepreneurs of the time. In 1931, Adolph Levitt opened Mayflower Donuts, which became the first American doughnut shop chain, and in 1937, baker Vernon Rudolph, who had been selling doughnuts to local grocery stores, decided to cut a hole in the wall of his bakery in Winston-Salem, North
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PHOTO: THE SALVATION ARMY INTERNATIONAL HERITAGE CENTRE
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