Stanton Hill ("Stan") Delaplane (12 October 1907 – 18 April 1988) was a

travel writer The genre of travel literature encompasses outdoor literature, guide books, nature writing, and travel memoirs. One early travel memoirist in Western literature was Pausanias, a Greek geographer of the 2nd century CE. In the early modern per ...

, credited with introducing

Irish coffee Irish coffee ( ga, caife Gaelach) is a caffeinated alcoholic drink consisting of Irish whiskey, hot coffee and sugar, which has been stirred and topped with cream (sometimes cream liqueur). The coffee is drunk through the cream. Origin Differe ...

to the United States. Called "last of the old irreplaceables" by fellow-

columnist A columnist is a person who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs. They take the form of a short essay ...

Herb Caen Herbert Eugene Caen (; April 3, 1916 February 1, 1997) was a San Francisco humorist and journalist whose daily column of local goings-on and insider gossip, social and political happenings, and offbeat puns and anecdotes—"A continuous love le ...

, he worked for the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and Michael H. de Young. The pa ...

'' for 53 years, winning a

Pulitzer Prize The Pulitzer Prize () is an award for achievements in newspaper, magazine, online journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States. It was established in 1917 by provisions in the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made ...

for reporting in 1942.

Early life

Delaplane was born in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

, and attended high school there and in Santa Barbara and

Monterey, California Monterey (; es, Monterrey; Ohlone: ) is a city located in Monterey County on the southern edge of Monterey Bay on the U.S. state of California's Central Coast. Founded on June 3, 1770, it functioned as the capital of Alta California under b ...

Career

Delaplane's career as a journalist began as a writer for ''Apéritif Magazine'' from 1933 to 1936, when he joined the San Francisco Chronicle as a reporter He won the

Pulitzer Prize for Reporting The Pulitzer Prize for Reporting was awarded from 1917 to 1947. Winners *1917 Pulitzer Prize, 1917: Herbert Bayard Swope, ''New York World'', for articles which appeared October 10, October 15 and from November 4 daily to November 22, 1916, inclu ...

in 1942 for a depiction of the State of Jefferson, a

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

that residents of far northern

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

and southern

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

proposed semi-seriously in order to publicize their grievances. He also won National Headliner Awards in 1946 and 1959. In 1944 and 1945 he served as a war correspondent in the

Pacific Ocean theater of World War II The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

Irish coffee

After drinking

Shannon Airport Shannon Airport ( ga, Aerfort na Sionainne) is an international airport located in County Clare in the Republic of Ireland. It is adjacent to the Shannon Estuary and lies halfway between Ennis and Limerick. The airport is the third busiest ai ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel, the Irish Sea, and St George's Channel. Ireland is the s ...

, Delaplane convinced Jack Koeppler, then owner of the Buena Vista Cafe in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, to start serving it at his bar. On November 10, 1952, the two spent hours perfecting the Irish method for floating the cream on top of the coffee, reportedly to the point where Delaplane almost passed out on the cable car tracks outside.

Postcards

Beginning in 1953 Delaplane published a syndicated humorous travel column called "Postcards". In later years Delaplane would write his travel dispatches (which he called "postcards") from his home on Telegraph Hill, finishing them over a

martini Martini may refer to: * Martini (cocktail) * Martini (vermouth), a brand of vermouth * Martini (surname), an Italian surname * Martini (automobile company), a Swiss automobile company * Automobiles Martini, a French manufacturer of racing cars * M ...

and cigarettes by the piano at the

Washington Square Bar and Grill Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered ...

before sending them to the newspaper building by messenger. His writing style was characterized by very short sentences and sentence fragments, which he said was for the benefit of

San Francisco Municipal Railway The San Francisco Municipal Railway (SF Muni or Muni), is the public transit system for the City and County of San Francisco. It operates a system of bus routes (including trolleybuses), the Muni Metro light rail system, three historic cabl ...

riders who had to read the paper while being jostled by the commuter train. He was known for exaggerating and sometimes fictionalizing his stories, and wrote often of the North Beach neighborhood and various eccentric people who lived in San Francisco. About his writing style, British commentator

Alistair Cooke Alistair Cooke (born Alfred Cooke; 20 November 1908 – 30 March 2004) was a British-American writer whose work as a journalist, television personality and radio broadcaster was done primarily in the United States. Letter from America: Stanton Delaplane (1907-1988)
22 April 1988 broadcast. "Stanton Delaplane wrote like a young and happy and wholly successful pupil of Hemingway. He rarely wrote sentences of more than six or seven words and he could go weeks without calling on an adjective. His peculiar magic, which I often probed into and never discovered, was to keep these bare sentences rollicking along in the most effortless way, running as clean as spring water over the bed of a brook. He could not help being an entertaining writer and that is a gift that very few writers indeed can legitimately claim from the double-domed philosophers to the light-weight journalists."

Ding dong daddy

Delaplane's second Headliner award was for a semi-fictionalized account of Francis Van Wie, a Muni conductor arrested for

bigamy In cultures where monogamy is mandated, bigamy is the act of entering into a marriage with one person while still legally married to another. A legal or de facto separation of the couple does not alter their marital status as married persons. ...

for keeping 18 wives. Delaplane promoted the story into a nationwide sensation, calling Van Wie "The Ding-Dong Daddy of the D Car Line" after a popular

Louis Armstrong Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American trumpeter and Singing, vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and se ...

song, "Ding Dong Daddy of Dumas" (in reality, Van Wie never worked on the D line). The story inspired the American

swing revival The swing revival, also called retro swing and neo-swing, was a renewed interest in swing music, beginning around 1989 and reaching a peak from the early/mid to late 1990s. The music was generally rooted in the big bands of the swing era of the ...

band the Cherry Popping Daddies to write a new song about Van Wie, "Ding-Dong Daddy of the D Car Line", which

Warren Sapp Warren Carlos Sapp (born December 19, 1972) is an American former American football, football defensive tackle who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons, primarily with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Sapp played college footbal ...

and

Kym Johnson Kym Herjavec (née Johnson; born 4 August 1976) is an Australian professional ballroom dancer and television performer who appeared in the first three seasons of the Australian version of ''Dancing with the Stars'' as a professional dancer, b ...

performed as part of their second-place finish in '' Season 7'' of

Dancing With The Stars ''Dancing with the Stars'' is the name of various international television series based on the format of the British TV series '' Strictly Come Dancing'', which is distributed by BBC Studios, the commercial arm of the BBC. Currently the form ...

. Delaplane's final column ran the day he died, and was a reminiscence of old days in North Beach.

Published works

* * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Delaplane, Stanton 1907 births 1988 deaths American columnists Writers from Chicago Writers from San Francisco Pulitzer Prize for Reporting winners San Francisco Chronicle people 20th-century American non-fiction writers