A favorite prank of youngsters of the early 1950s was to call someone on the telephone and ask for “Arthur.” Ignoring their confused response, the caller would say, “When Arthur Itus (arthritis) comes in, tell him that Hattie call(ed) (Hadacol).”
(“Hadacol Once Known as Cure-All." bcyesteryear.com.)
You probably haven't heard about the prank. And, chances are that few have even heard of Hadacol. It's a classic story with a huckster, snake oil, and a medicine show. Allow me to relate the patent-medicine reality.
Hadacol was a trendy “medicinal” product marketed in a thin black eight-ounce bottle with a red and yellow label, advertised as a dietary supplement and selling for $1.25 (“family economy size” – 24 ounces For $3.50) in the late-1940s. Expensive? You bet. The eight-ounce bottle would be around $11.00 in today's currency.
Whatever ailments people had, Hadacol was presumed to cure it: high blood pressure, ulcers, strokes, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, pneumonia, anemia, cancer, epilepsy, gall stones, heart trouble and hay fever just to name a few. The company began paying people for testimonials that showed health benefits resulting from use of the product, some responses boarding on the ridiculous.
"Two months ago I couldn't read nor write. I took four bottles of Hadacol, and now I'm teaching school."
– 1949 Hadacol radio testimonial
The label displayed five vitamins and four minerals, blended in a mixture of honey and … 12% alcohol. The alcohol was a “preservative,” its founder would say. Then he’d grin and chuckle.
That principal ingredient made Hadacol quite popular in the dry counties of the southern United States and with underage drinkers. Plus, the hydrochloric acid in the mixture meant it would be delivered through the body faster than it would be otherwise. Even at 24 proof – roughly the same potency as a bottle of wine – the concoction was an “answered prayer” for many seeking a bottle.
The minimum recommended daily dosage was four tablespoons, but who was counting? People obviously felt better, no matter their ailment. Just ask them.
“I have taken five bottles of Hadacol. Before I took Hadacol I was very nervous. My family was affected because I was so irritable. Then my sister suggested that I take Hadacol and I started taking it. After the second bottle, I felt like I had taken all the troubles of the world off my shoulders. My family thinks Hadacol is wonderful because my disposition is 100% better and I am not the least bit irritable. That’s because I always have a bottle of Hadacol on the kitchen shelf. Hadacol is the most wonderful product on the market.”
– Mrs. J.P. Macure of New Orleans, Hadacol testimonial
Hadacol reportedly smelled awful and tasted like swamp—by design. LeBlanc figured people expected medicine to taste bad.
(Peter Carlson. “Dudley LeBlanc, the Hadacol Huckster.” historynet.com. April 2018.)
Hadacol was everywhere, on radio, on billboards, in newspapers and magazines, and at the local pharmacy. At one point it was reported that Hadacol was second only to Coca-Cola in dollars spent on national advertising.
It was even sold in liquor stores and bars. People paid for a bottle even if they had no food in the pantry. From grassroots beginnings – thirty employees and a $2,500 loan – the business grew to more than nine hundred employees and $3 million in sales in its first year alone. In 1949, LeBlanc sold $2.5 million – today, about $25 million – worth of his elixir.
Founder – Dudley J. LeBlanc
The founder of this popular concoction was Dudley J. LeBlanc, a colorful Louisiana Senator and businessman. He made millions selling his "cure-all elixir” to the masses.
LeBlanc would claim that its inspiration came from an episode in 1943 in which he suffered with a severely sore toe that spread pain throughout his body. Relief allegedly came from an old friend, a country doctor, who injected a substance that instantly obliterated LeBlanc’s misery.
The doctor wouldn’t say what the miracle drug was, but LeBlance claimed he managed to swipe his doctor's miracle bottle. Then, he analyzed the container’s contents (claiming it consisted largely of B-complex vitamins), added a few ingredients, and created his own patent medicine – Hadacol.
(Miss Cellania. “Hadacol, the Last of the Medicine Shows.” Mental Floss. Hadacol, the Last of the Medicine Shows | Mental Floss. February 09, 2010.)
The name was short for his former enterprise – the Happy Day Company (maker of Happy Day Headache Powders and Dixie Dew Cough Syrup – which LeBlanc stopped selling when he ran into some trouble with the FDA). He added an “L” for LeBlanc and his new product, “Hadacol,” was born. However, many years later when someone asked how he named the drug, LeBlanc said, "Well, I hadda call it something."
Legend has it that LeBlanc mixed his first batch in wine barrels in his barn, assisted, he said, by two “pretty Cajun girls” who stirred the stuff with oars.
A four-term Louisiana state senator, Dudly LeBlanc was a Democrat from Erath in Vermilion Parish in southwestern Louisiana. He also ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1944 and 1952. He was not a medical doctor, nor a registered pharmacist, but he had a strong talent for self-promotion.
Evidently a born entrepreneur, LeBlanc put himself through college in Lafayette, Louisiana by running a clothes pressing business. Then he put four brothers and two cousins through college as well. LeBlanc sold shoes, tobacco, patent medicine, and funeral insurance. He also ran a funeral home, which benefited greatly from insurance sales.
Hadacol cemented LeBlanc's reputation as the quackery Barnum of his day. He swamped the radios with testimonials about his miracle potion. He wrote a jingle, "Hadacol Boogie," that was popularized in song by Jerry Lee Lewis. Infatuated by his power, LeBlanc turned out "Captain Hadacol" comic books and Hadacol water pistols.
Time magazine once described LeBlanc as "… a stem-winding salesman who knows every razzle-dazzle switch in the pitchman's trade."
Mental Floss reports …
“The Food and Drug Administration objected, not to Hadacol itself, but to LeBlanc's claims that it cured cancer, epilepsy, asthma, and other diseases when it clearly did not.
“Wanting to avoid trouble, LeBlanc pulled those claims, but the damage was done. The new health claims were vague, but he couldn't do anything about the testimonies consumers gave. Without specific diseases, Hadacol became a cure-all for whatever people hoped it would cure. The medicine made people feel better – and that was all that mattered.
“LeBlanc is said to have instigated rumors that Hadacol was good for sexual potency, a tip that was slyly alluded to in the medicine shows. Hadacol was said to be recommended by doctors, although the only doctor named was Dr. L.A. Willey, who later turned out to be a Californian convicted of practicing medicine without a license. To enlist doctors for endorsements, LeBlanc offered free samples and a payment for each patient a doctor could recruit for research.”
(Miss Cellania. “Hadacol, the Last of the Medicine Shows.” Mental Floss. February 09, 2010.)
The Hadacol Caravan
In April 1951, President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur, generating enormous controversy. LeBlanc responded by announcing that he’d be happy to hire MacArthur as vice president of Hadacol. He also offered to hire any parrot able to squawk “Polly wants Hadacol” – and promised that his pitchbird would live in a “gold cage,” traveling America in a limousine with the parrot’s name in gold on the doors. No parrot was ever found, but the media ate up the offer.
(“The Pampered Parrot. Time Magazine: Manners & Morals. October 09, 1950.)
Maybe this idea was LeBlanc's inspiration for the Hadacol Caravan, his traveling medicine show.
LeBlanc dispatched convoys of cars, trucks, and buses – 130 vehicles – packed with singers, dancers, acrobats, jugglers, magicians, comedians, and personalities that played one-night stands across the South.
The Hadacol Caravan was no run-of-the-mill minstrel show. LeBlanc spent an unheard of $75,000 per week on talent alone – roughly $3 million per month in today’s dollars. Onstage was an orchestra and chorus girls.
Performers included Roy Acuff, Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, George Burns and Gracie Allen, James Cagney, Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland, Dick Haymes, Harry Houdini, Bob Hope, Carmen Miranda, Minnie Pearl, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Ernest Tubb and the Grand Ole Opry Band, Rudy Vallée, and Hank Williams.
Former heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey would take to the stage to extol the virtues of Hadacol. Even novelty acts like Ted “Shorty” Evans, the British giant who topped out at nine feet and three-and-a-half inches, and who consumed fourteen eggs and twenty cups of coffee for breakfast, weighed in on the benefits of taking Hadacol every day.
As was typical for that time, a separate jazz and blues show was staged for black customers. LeBlanc shelled out top dollar here as well, often featuring well-known or up-and-coming black entertainers such as “Peg Leg Sam” Jackson, Bert Williams, and T-Bone Walker.
(S. Derby Gisclair. “The Last Great Medicine Show.” 64 Parishes – Project of Louisiana Endowment For the Humanities. Summer 2018.)
The price of admission was two Hadacol box tops for adults, and one for kids, and the performances drew enormous crowds. According to musician Weldon "Big Bill" Lister, who performed in the Hadacol Caravan, "The only way you could get into that show was with a Hadacol boxtop, And believe me, we played to crowds of ten, twelve thousand people a night. Back in those days there wasn't many auditoriums that would hold that many people. We played ball parks, race tracks - you know anywhere where they had enough big bleachers to handle those kind of crowds."
Of course, Hadacol was available at concession stands and advertised on stage, with comedians joking about its alleged powers as an intoxicant and an aphrodisiac. According to legend, Hank Williams wrote “Jambalaya” after listening to the caravan’s Cajuns and their colorful way with language.
(Peter Carlson. “Dudley LeBlanc, the Hadacol Huckster.” historynet.com. April 2018.)
In 1951, LeBlanc even invaded Los Angeles with truckloads of Hadacol and an army of salesmen. The NBC-TV game show You Bet Your Life brought the entrepreneur onstage as a guest. “Hadacol, what’s that good for?” asked host Groucho Marx.
“Well,” LeBlanc replied, grinning impishly, “it was good for $5 million for me last year.”
It may have been exaggeration at the time, but Hadacol had grossed millions. Still, LeBlanc spent most of that money on ads and caravans. By then, the cagey Cajun knew his business was tanking. He owed huge sums in taxes and the Federal Trade Commission was investigating him for deceptive sales practices. He decided to unload the company before it collapsed.
Peter Carlson of History Net reports …
“In September 1951, LeBlanc announced that he’d sold his Hadacol corporation to a group of New York businessmen for $8 million. Later, he said the actual price was $250,000, plus a chunk of future profits. Either way, the buyers got snookered. The company they bought owed suppliers $2.2 million and more than $650,000 in federal taxes. They ended up bankrupt. LeBlanc shrugged. 'If you sell a cow and the cow dies,' he said, 'you can’t do anything to a man for that.'
“LeBlanc may have bamboozled New York City slickers but that didn’t translate into votes at home: He finished seventh in the 1952 Louisiana Democratic primary for governor. Meanwhile, the feds were investigating and, in 1957, they charged him with tax evasion. LeBlanc beat that rap. He was now flogging another patent medicine, which he called “Kary-On.” His new joy juice resembled Hadacol, except for one key difference: hardly anybody wanted to buy it.”
(Peter Carlson. “Dudley LeBlanc, the Hadacol Huckster.” historynet.com. April 2018.)
Death and Legacy
Dudley LeBlanc died of a massive stroke on October 22, 1971, while a patient at Abbeville General Hospital, where he had been admitted for emergency surgery for a gastric ulcer three days earlier.
LeBlanc's contributions to Cajun culture and southwestern Louisiana were deemed so important that his birth home, a small two-roomed Acadian-style wooden house built between 1821 and 1856, was relocated from his home in the LeBlanc community to Lafayette, Louisiana to the Acadian Village. This authentic re-creation of 19th-century life in Southwest Louisiana is an open living museum featuring homes like Dudley LeBlanc's on a bayou in a 32-acre park, with exhibits, demonstrations and even a chapel where weddings are held
In 1996 a documentary film entitled "Cajun Renaissance Man" about LeBlanc's life and his passion for his Acadian roots, his love of politics and his patent medicine was produced by his filmmaker granddaughter, M. M. Le Blanc, for PBS.
The novelist and biographer Steven Longstreet compared LeBlanc with Huey Long, while LeBlanc was still living: "He's as good a speaker and as quick a thinker as Long was. But I don't think he has Long's streak of cruelty, and he has the quality that Long never had – the ability to laugh at himself." In 1993, LeBlanc was posthumously inducted into the maiden class of the Louisiana Political Museum and Hall of Fame in Winnfield.
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