BOOZING WITH BRODERICK

So, last night on Turner Classic Movies I watched The Mob, a very noir movie with some cracking dialogue, starring Broderick Crawford as Joe Damico, a cop who needs to redeem himself by going undercover as a longshoreman on the New York docks, and cracking the case, the details of which (as usually is the case in thee things) were slightly lost on me.  It was based on a novel by Ferguson Findley titled The Waterfront and was actually made three years before Brando’s On The Waterfront.

Broderick Crawford is no Brando but I’ve always liked him a lot as an actor, ever since Highway Patrol.  Crawford had his struggles with the bottle, and parts of that show had to be shot on private roads, because he’d lost his license through drunk diving.  Still, he lived to 74.

In The Mob, for reasons which again escape me, he has to pretend to come from New Orleans, and goes in the bar of the fleabag hotel where the bartender is named (I kid you not) Smoothie.  

The conversation goes like this:

Smoothie: What’ll it be?

Johnny Damico: White wine and beer.

Smoothie: Come again.

Johnny Damico: White wine and beer.

Smoothie: Mixed together?

Johnny Damico: No.  A glass of each.

Smoothie: That beats me.  I had a nut ask me once for a glass of gin and a candy bar.  This is a new one.

Stranger drinking at the bar: I knew guys used to drink white wine and beer.  Down in New Orleans.

Johnny Damico: I spent some time there.  Have a drink?

And Johnny Damico is trusted, at least for a while.

I’ve looked online, and in various books in the Psychgourmet Archive, and I can’t find any evidence that people in New Orleans, or anywhere else, drink a glass of white wine with their beer.  It doesn’t sound terrible, but it doesn’t sound that great either.   It certainly doesn’t sound very likely.  And when, in the interests of research, I tried it myself, it wasn't totally bad, but it wasn't good.  So ... can any reader enlighten me?