Thanksgiving and The History of a Roy Rogers and Shirley Temple Drink (2024)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!

Charly and I wish you and your families a wonderful day, with lots of blessings.

Someone sent me a comment the yesterday, and it sparked this post. She had never heard of a Roy Rogers, so I decided checked the history of a how both the Roy Rogers and Shirley Temples got their names.

The Shirley Temple came first, there are different versions of how it came about. One is that the bartender at Chasen's in Beverly Hills decided to make a special drink for Shirley Temple who was eating there with her parents. Another version is that the Brown Derby in Hollywood made the non alcoholic drink and named it after her, since they named a lot of their drinks after various actors and actresses back then. It is also said that the Royal Hawaiian came up with the drink since she and her family vacationed at their hotel a lot back then. Whatever the history is it seems that the Shirley Temple came to be a drink sometime in the late 1930's or early 1940's.

The history of the Roy Rogers is a little murkier. Apparently, Roy Rogers did not drink alcohol. So this may be one reason that a non alcoholic drink was named after him. They say maybe this is just the boy version of a Shirley Temple. It sounds a little more masculine for a boy to ask for a Roy Rogers then a Shirley Temple.

I hope this answers any questions about these two drinks. Just some fun little tidbit of trivia to stuff in the back of your brain. They were very common for kids to order in the 60's, at least in Los Angeles.

Have a great Thanksgiving!!!