The last big medicine show closed in the early 1960s, but the form had begun a slow fade in the 30s. By the mid-forties, there were perhaps two dozen big shows left, a tiny fraction compared to the shows’ heyday.1 Like a dying star, medicine shows had one last fiery explosion from 1949 to 1951. The fireworks emanated from the forceful personality of Dudley J. LeBlanc, a Louisiana Cajun who transformed the Bible Belt into the Hadacol Belt. Hadacol Caravans were extravaganzas that made Dudley LeBlanc a household name and gave delighted audiences much more than their money’s worth. The shows were no less popular with their stars, who relished a visit to their vaudeville roots. LeBlanc’s rise from backwoods businessman to high-profile impresario is the American Dream in Technicolor.
Dudley LeBlanc, or “Coozan” Dudley (every Cajun was somebody’s cousin), was a politician, salesman, and medicine-show operator extraordinaire. Possessed of a natural inclination for hokum and a love of the spotlight, LeBlanc parlayed a $2,500 investment into an annual income of $24 million. Born in Youngsville, Louisiana, in 1894 to a family of sharecroppers, LeBlanc traced his ancestry back nine generations to Acadia and France. He spoke only the Cajun patois until he was ten, and later used his ethnicity to full effect in shaping a celebrity persona. He toiled for a time as a pants presser to pay for some education, served in World War I, then hit the road as a salesman of tobacco, shoes, and his own patent medicines: Dixie Dew Cough Syrup and Happy Day Headache Powder. He served on the Public Service Commission, beating a Huey Long–backed candidate for the post, and went on to serve in both houses of the Louisiana legislature, playing up his Cajun background.2 In the 1920s, he sold burial insurance until Governor O.K. Allen, a Huey Long crony, pushed through the passage of stricter insurance laws. In 1932 LeBlanc ran for governor himself, promising to put Long in the penitentiary if he won—he didn’t. Long accused LeBlanc of transferring dead bodies out of expensive coffins and burying them in cheap pine boxes, and LeBlanc was easily defeated in the primary. 3
Dudley J. LeBlanc.
LeBlanc sold his insurance business for $300,000 and promptly lost the proceeds in the stock market. His next move was a return to patent medicine. Two shipments of Dixie Dew Cough Syrup and Happy Day Headache Powder were seized by the FDA for fraudulent labeling, but that merely put a temporary crimp in his career. LeBlanc had a more serious obstacle ahead.
In the early 1940s, LeBlanc was crippled by an ailment that swelled his legs and big toe. Although he exhibited classic symptoms of beri-beri (a nerve disease caused by an inability to assimilate thiamine), three doctors diagnosed his problem as either severe gout or arthritis. None of his doctors were able to offer relief. As a last resort, LeBlanc permitted a local doctor to administer some shots and within a week, LeBlanc’s symptoms had subsided. Within ten weeks, he was walking on crutches. LeBlanc’s curiosity was piqued. He asked the doctor, “Doc, wazzat stuff you got in dat l’il ole bottle?” The doctor answered, “Dude, you crazy? You think I give away my secrets to a man in the patent medicine business?” When LeBlanc returned several days later for another injection, the doctor was busy and asked his nurse to do the honors. “She wasn’t so smart as him,” LeBlanc reported years later. “Nor so careful either. She left the bottle on the table. When she finished I gave her that old Southern Chivalry, you know, ‘after you, Gertrude.’ As soon as she turned her back I shoved the bottle in my pocket.”4 LeBlanc read the label and got some books to figure out what it meant. The active ingredients, he discovered, were simply B vitamins.5 After reading every available book on vitamins, he analyzed all the patent remedies on the market to see what they contained and why. “Then I figured,” LeBlanc said, “this is it.” The Hadacol phenomenon was about to explode.
Working out of the barn on his farm in Erath, Louisiana, with “two pretty Cajun girls” for assistance, he stirred up noxious-smelling concoctions in wine barrels. The girls stirred the potions with boat oars and everybody else fled from the odor, variously described as ripe bananas and burning rope. When he was satisfied that he had found the right formula, he named it Hadacol. The name came from his old company, the Happy Day Company, with an L tacked on to represent his surname. He later joked about the name, saying, “I hadda call it something.”
Hadacol was no worse than the average nostrum and probably better than most, containing vitamins B1, B2, B6, nicotinic acid, pantothenic acid, iron, manganese, calcium phosphorus, hydrochloric acid, honey, citric acid, and 12 percent alcohol.6 In short, with the exception of the alcohol, it was the sort of thing bought piecemeal today by thousands of consumers in health food stores.
LeBlanc gave samples to his neighbors, who reported that the formula made them feel good. He put it on the market, and it was an immediate success. Grateful consumers claimed that Hadacol relieved “anemia, arthritis, asthma, diabetes, epilepsy, heart trouble, high and low blood pressure, indigestion, eye and skin disorders, blindness, migraine, swelling, cataracts, gallstones, paralytic stroke, tuberculosis, and ulcers.”7 A Louisiana druggist recalls, “They came in to buy Hadacol when they didn’t have money to buy food. They had holes in their shoes and they paid $3.50 for a bottle of Hadacol.”8
The alcohol content in Hadacol gave some consumers and federal regulators pause. LeBlanc, like Lydia Pinkham before him, claimed that alcohol was a necessary preservative. Still, an eight-ounce bottle was the alcoholic equivalent of two stiff cocktails. That was nothing new for a patent medicine, but LeBlanc took matters a step further by marketing aggressively to children. LeBlanc invented a comic-book character, Captain Hadacol, who, in one issue, exhorts a boy to chug-a-lug eight bottles of the stuff for “immediate super strength.” The alcohol in eight bottles of Hadacol equaled a pint of bonded whiskey, a dose more likely to induce a super case of alcohol poison-ing than super strength—or at the very least, a head-pounding hangover. The saving grace of that marketing tactic was that the foul-tasting Hadacol was even less appetizing to children than spinach.
Some people who abstained from alcohol on moral or religious grounds readily indulged in Hadacol, just as they had done with other patent medicines. In dry counties in the midwest, druggists sold it by the shot. It was the beverage of choice at some high school parties. “Teenagers,” one pillar of an Illinois town complained, “can get plastered on Hadacol.”9 Hadacol cost about one-quarter as much as a comparable amount of wine. It was, in short, a cheap, if not exactly palatable, way to get drunk. LeBlanc, whose preferred beverage was Old Forrester, laughed off suggestions that Hadacol was consumed for its intoxicating effect. He thought it tasted like dirt, but naturally had a convincing explanation: “It contained vitamins and they come from dirt and that’s how it tasted.”10 A less enthusiastic taster described the flavor as “bilgewater.”
While the medicine may have been inexpensive in comparison with liquor, the mark-up was nevertheless outrageous. It cost 21 cents per pint to produce and sold for $1.25. LeBlanc boasted in his advertisements that he paid $550 for a gallon of vitamin B6, but neglected to mention that the amount was stretched to cover 125,000 pints of Hadacol. A long course of treatment was recommended for everyone, which ensured continuing sales. Twelve weeks was the time it took, so the label said, to feel the full effect of the product. One pint lasted four days, so the average user spent $26.50 just to try the medicine.
LeBlanc tried without success to garner the approval of the medical community. Even though his advertisements stated that “Hadacol is recommended by many doctors,” the only medical man in his employ was an L.A. Willey, who had been convicted in California for practicing medicine without a license. LeBlanc sent letters, with Willey’s facsimile signature, inviting doctors to try Hadacol on their patients on a fee-per-patient basis. The ill-advised gesture brought the wrath of the American Medical Association (AMA) upon LeBlanc. An AMA investigator wrote in the association journal that
It is to be hoped that no doctors of medicine will be uncritical enough to join in the promotion of Hadacol as an ethical preparation. It is difficult to imagine how one could do himself or his profession greater harm, from the standpoint of the abuse of the trust of a patient suffering from any condition. Hadacol is not a specific medication. It is not even a specific preventive measure. It could not be eligible for serious consideration by the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry.11
The AMA was unimpressed by Hadacol, but ordinary consumers continued to swallow both the advertising slogans and the product.
From the start of the Hadacol venture, LeBlanc understood the value of advertising. He started by collecting testimonials from his neighbors, on whom he had first tested the product. Testimonials made good advertising copy, and were also a clever way to get around governmental restrictions on fraudulent claims. Recipients of free samples also got a form on which they could enumerate the ills that Hadacol had cured. The label itself made the relatively conservative claim that Hadacol was good for nervousness, indigestion, insomnia, and other minor ills.
Users, in contrast, were free to claim cures of cancer and other life-threatening diseases. Outlandish testimonials came in by the hundreds.12
“I no longer suffer from asthma,” wrote a man from Iowa, Louisiana. “Crippling rheumatism for 10 years long … now I walk again,” wrote a woman from St. Martinsville. “Was suffering terribly from a disease of the blood … now back to work,” wrote a man from New Orleans. “I do not have heart trouble anymore,” wrote a woman from Port Arthur, Texas. “This is to certify,” wrote a man from Arnaudsville, “that I … was suffering from ulcers of the stomach… One doctor told me that I had cancer… I decided to be operated on and my wife persuaded me to take Hadacol…. I can now eat almost everything … even pork. In fact, I feel perfectly well. I work hard in the field with no ill effect.”13
Some praised the remedy in terms too vague to mean anything, like the customer who wrote, “I was disable to get over a fence. After I took eight bottles of Hadacol … I feel like jumping over a six-foot fence and I am getting very sassy.”14 Hadacol, according to its consumers, was good for everything from tuberculosis to delirium tremens. LeBlanc took elaborate measures to authenticate testimonials, sending a team of employees to the letter-writer’s house. The team photographed the user, made audio recordings, and collected corroborating testimony from neighbors and relatives. The government couldn’t challenge these heavily documented testimonials, to the great frustration of several Federal Trade Commission bureaucrats. They smelled something fishy in LeBlanc’s operation, and it wasn’t the Hadacol.
The Food and Drug Administration also kept a wary eye on LeBlanc’s operation. Inspectors found no illegal statements on Hadacol labels, but thought that the slogans on Hadacol trucks crossed the line into fraud. LeBlanc agreed to repaint the trucks, and promised to stop saying that Hadacol would “restore youthful feeling and appearance,” or ensure “good health.” References to cancer were excised from company literature, and all that LeBlanc could claim was that “Hadacol was good for what ailed you, if what ailed you was what Hadacol was good for.” His advertisements now whispered rather than trumpeted his message. One print ad depicted a man climbing over boulders labeled fatigue, nervousness, and tiredness. Small print at the bottom said, “when due to lack of Vitamins B1, B2, Niacin and Iron.”15 By 1949, advertising had turned Hadacol from a moderately successful regional product with sales of $60,000 a year into a retail monster that produced $24 million in annual revenue.
By 1950, LeBlanc was pouring a million dollars a month into advertising, and recouping four times that amount in sales. On November 13 of that year, a memorable day for LeBlanc, orders came in for $1,570,000 worth of Hadacol. LeBlanc routinely bought print advertising in 700 daily and 4,300 weekly newspapers. More than 500 radio and television stations ran a million spots per year. Ads included sales figures, implying that millions of satisfied customers couldn’t be wrong, so why not join the club? LeBlanc read testimonials in both English and French on Louisiana radio programs. The testimonials included such a wide sampling of the population that any listener could find someone with whom to identify.16
Promotional items, aimed mostly at children, blanketed the South. There were Hadacol Dolls, Hadacol Squirt Pistols, Hadacol Cowboy Holsters, and glow-in-the-dark Hadacol T-shirts that turned pint-sized wearers into nocturnal billboards. LeBlanc handed out Hadacol Lipsticks to pretty waitresses, saying, “Take this for your ruby lips, Honey, and give it back to me a little at a time.” LeBlanc commissioned two songs, “Everybody Loves That Hadacol,” and “Hadacol Boogie,” which were placed in jukeboxes:
Down in Louisiana in the bright sunshine
They do a little boogie-woogie all the time
They do the Hadacol Boogie, Hadacol Boogie
Hadacol Boogie, Boogie-woogie all the time.
A-standing on the corner with a bottle in my hand,
And up stepped a woman, said, “My Hadacol Man.”
She done the Hadacol Boogie, Hadacol Boogie
Hadacol Boogie, Boogie-woogie all the time.
If your radiator leaks and your motor stands still,
A-give her Hadacol and watch her boogie up the hill.
She’ll do the Hadacol Boogie, Hadacol Boogie,
The Hadacol Boogie makes you Boogie-woogie all the time.17
LeBlanc even advertised for a parrot that could say “Polly wants Hadacol.” The bird would be put up in a hotel and introduced to a pretty lady parrot. No such bird was ever found, but the story made the papers, which was more to the point.18 (P.T. Barnum would have approved.) Perhaps the most insidious marketing gimmick was the issuance of Hadacol credit cards to kids. The cards entitled children to get a free bottle of Hadacol from their local druggist, sell it, and return with the money for more. Hadacol boxtops could be traded for things kids really wanted, like air rifles and roller-skates.19 LeBlanc knew that the best sales representatives were the ones who worked for free.
The more he advertised, the more he sold; the more he sold, the more his profits were taxed. LeBlanc needed to find a way to both advertise and offset a tax bill that at one point amounted to over $300,000. As he fretted over the problem one sleepless early morning, the solution came to him in a brainstorm. He jumped out of bed, jumped into his Cadillac, and drove to his office eighteen miles away to flesh out the plan. Thus was born the Hadacol Caravan, the largest medicine show ever produced.20
LeBlanc’s scheme was to put on a free show (admission was actually two Hadacol boxtops). The show would provide a tax write-off and open up new territory at the same time. First, he had to create a demand, so he blitzed the radio waves with advertising that took the form of a contest: The listener was invited to name a tune, usually something simple like “Little Brown Jug.” Winners got certificates for a free bottle of Hadacol, available, according to the contest promotion, at local drugstores. The problem was, as LeBlanc well knew, that drugstores in virgin territory didn’t stock Hadacol. Druggists all over the country had to fend off hordes of mostly middle-aged female customers who marched from store to store in search of their prize. When a Hadacol truck finally appeared, druggists were willing to pay whatever it cost to have the item on their shelves. In Atlanta alone, ten trucks of Hadacol were sold out in four days, amounting to almost a quarter of a million dollars in sales. In Los Angeles, LeBlanc hired legions of housewives to canvass stores in order to create the perception that there was a demand for the product.
The next step in the marketing plan was to create anticipation for LeBlanc’s medicine show, the Hadacol Caravan. Newspapers and radio programs saturated towns with ads for the event, promising prizes and the appearance of famous performers. After a location had been primed, the Hadacol Caravan rolled into town to close the sale and create a permanent market. The demand would probably have continued without the show, but the caravan solidified customer loyalty and gave LeBlanc a huge tax deduction. “I spent a cool half a million for talent and stuff on this tour,” LeBlanc crowed, “but I sold more than three million bucks of Hadacol along the way.”21 The show was spectacular, and anticipation ran so high that, it was rumored, Hadacol boxtops were counterfeited in some areas. The Caravan had seventy trucks, twenty-five cars, two air-conditioned buses for the talent, a photolab truck, two beauty-queen floats, three sound trucks, three airplanes, two calliopes, and sometimes a train called the Hadacol Special. LeBlanc filmed the shows for the towns not fortunate enough to be on the route.
The best, most famous stars of the day hired on to flack Hadacol: George Burns and Gracie Allen, Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Mickey Rooney, Cesar Romero, Carmen Miranda, Dick Haymes, Connie Boswell, Chico Marx, Jimmy Durante, Dorothy Lamour, Rudy Vallee, Milton Berle, Minnie Pearl, Hank Williams and the Drifting Cowboys, and Roy Acuff and the Smokey Mountain Boys. Assorted acrobats, clowns, and dancing girls filled out the program. Many of the headliners had been in vaudeville before their successes on Broadway, radio, or film. Roaming the country doing sketch comedy and song-and-dance routines was a walk in the park to these seasoned troupers, who nicknamed the tour “The Gravy Train.”22
The first tour in 1950 did one-night stands in eighteen cities. A typical Hadacol Caravan day started with a parade with floats and sound trucks. Most of the Hadacol executives were on board. At LeBlanc’s insistence, they had left the operation of the business to a skeleton crew. The show preliminaries started about 7:30 p.m. in a large stadium where clowns and acrobats ran through the bleachers to entertain the crowd while the seats filled. One clown, dressed like a policeman, drank from a giant bottle of Hadacol. Every drink made his special glasses light up. “Coozan” Dudley not only made no bones about the intoxicating effects of Hadacol, but laughed about it openly. At 8 p.m., LeBlanc rolled into the stadium in his big white Cadillac.23 He’d say a few words and then retire to his box for the rest of the show. George Burns and Bob Hope were alternating masters of ceremonies. The Tony Martin band started things with some Gershwin tunes, then the Chez Paree Chorus Line displayed bathing attire of yesteryear. The women were generally greeted with shouts of “Yahoo, Hadacol!” Another band would play, perhaps Sharkey Bonano and His Dixieland Band, followed by comedy routines that featured Hadacol jokes.
The humor in the show was suggestive. LeBlanc hinted broadly that Hadacol was an effective aphrodisiac, and any old joke that was remotely to the point was rewritten to include the product name. (Hadacol jokes became part of the national culture, which created a welcome diversion from the inflated health claims that had the FTC breathing down LeBlanc’s neck.)24 Singers and comics alternated; then toward the end of the show, the winners of the local beauty pageant took the stage with the winners of the boxtop drawing. A big finale featured everyone and, for the final flash, fireworks went off and a big electric sign came on that read, “HADACOL FOR A BETTER TOMORROW.”25
By the spring of 1951, LeBlanc was deluged with requests from performers to join his second show. He ensconced himself in a room at the Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel, where, surrounded by starlets, he heard every “wannabe” with a dog act or magic trick who managed to wangle an audition. Joining their ranks were real estate agents eager to broker the site of the next Hadacol factory. His stay in Los Angeles resulted in a radio broadcast that included the cream of Hollywood. When Groucho Marx asked what Hadacol was good for, LeBlanc retorted, “It was good for five and a half million for me last year.”26 The second caravan started out in the late summer of 1951, touring the South and Midwest for crowds of ten to thirty thousand. Bob Hope, Jack Benny, and Milton Berle took turns as master of ceremonies. Hank Williams, very popular with the country music fans, performed in all the shows. The Hollywood and country music contingents got along very well.
Hadacol Caravan ad.
The shows generated so many orders for Hadacol that the Lafayette factory went into constant production. LeBlanc’s friends and relatives loaded and drove delivery trucks around the clock to meet the demand. The Hadacol operation was as informal as the Cajuns who ran it. Bookkeeping was spotty, and LeBlanc himself winked at employees who gave him ridiculously vague reports of orders and sales. Hadacol, LeBlanc assumed, would provide plenty of money for everybody.27
LeBlanc was a legendary profligate, buying yachts, taking friends on junkets to New York, handing out gold pen-and-pencil sets, and generally driving his business into the ground. While on the surface the second caravan was a big success, by September 1951 the company was deep in debt. To the shock of employees and investors both, LeBlanc sold the business for a mere $250,000. The new owners had the Hadacol name, $8 million in debt, and fourteen lawsuits.
LeBlanc made another run for governor, hoping his celebrity would translate into votes. He placed seventh in the race, and went home to Abbeville, Louisiana. The last, biggest medicine show was gone for good, and the form had passed into history.28