[1] MacElhone was born in Dundee, Scotland, on 16 June 1890,[2] He began working at Ciro's Club in London after World War I, before moving to Paris and buying Harry's New York Bar in 1923.
[4] Barflies and Cocktails had illustrations, a different publisher (Lecram Press, Paris), and supplement about the bar's customers and their favored drinks, but the same main list of cocktails (with minor updates from the earlier book).
These books were very popular, feature the earliest known recipes of many important drinks, and provide a record of cocktail culture as it spread internationally in the interwar period, during and immediately after Prohibition.
[4] Ciro's is also where he began working on his earliest version of the White Lady which included gin, Crème de menthe, Triple sec and lemon juice.
[5] He is often credited with inventing many other cocktails,[2] including the Bloody Mary, the Sidecar, the Monkey Gland,[6] the Paradise, the Boulevardier,[7] and an early form of the French 75.