My '70s Vintage Pinaud Eau de Quinine: The Hair Tonic of Actor John Wayne (Well, Not Exactly My Bottle, but a Bottle Exactly Like It)

John Wayne's Toiletry Travel Kit, Electric Razor Fetish Intact. (Click to Enlarge)

My Near-Identical Bottle of The Duke's Tonic.

Guys that Used Quinine. Bunch of Damned Colonizers!

Let's talk about cancel culture for a moment. (This is usually where people get up off their campfire log and say they're going to bed early.) When it comes to the actor John Wayne, who died in 1979, cancel culture actually has its moment; if you're going to cancel anyone from that era, he's not a bad pick. In several interviews that he gave later in his career, he openly criticized people of color, saying (and I'm paraphrasing) that until they change their culture, "white supremacy" should remain the status quo. He actually used that phrase unambiguously, so there's no mincing his words. 

It's an ugly sentiment, something nobody should express, and certainly not publicly, least of all an influential actor with millions of fans. He also said (and again, I'm paraphrasing) that there was nothing wrong with how America was colonized, and that the native peoples were just as awful as the European settlers, and should have "shared" the land without being so ornery about the whole getting pushed-out and murdered thing. Again, not great stuff from Wayne there. Totally can see why someone in 2024 would take a hard pass on engaging with any of his material, or his historical legacy. Few wore their political ideas on their sleeve as openly as he did, and it's impossible to not take umbrage at his remarks. 

With that said, there is an important caveat, and one the cancelers will dislike: Wayne was a product of his time, and you can't judge people of the past by the moral standards of the present. It's tempting, naturally. Who doesn't want to condemn Thomas Jefferson for his ownership of hundreds of slaves? What possible objection could there be to erasing the legacy of George Washington, who refused to publicly condemn slaveholders years after he stopped imprisoning African people for his own benefit? Why wouldn't you want to cold-cock a beer-drinking John Wayne fan if you know that he idolizes a bigot, a wealthy and "privileged" colonizer who said that African Americans are inferior to whites? 

But two things can be true at once; Wayne can have toxic opinions, and also hail from a bygone America. John Wayne began his adult life a century ago; he was born 117 years ago and graduated high school in 1925. He grew up in a time when crystal radio sets were wowsers technology. He came of age during the Great Depression. When he was making his bones, our great-grandfathers were just getting themselves together and figuring out their lives. And guess what? If you emerged from the twenties and thirties, you had vile tribal beliefs about ethnicity and race, and your firsthand everyday experiences with institutionalized segregation ingrained and normalized all of them. 

I bring this up because I find myself able to set aside my disapproval of Wayne, the man, and appreciate that he had good taste in toiletries. There is no getting around the now-proven fact that John Wayne had good taste in personal care products, as evidenced by the discovery of a travel kit owned by The Duke, which led to a sale of the whole lot by Heritage Auctions in 2016. HA states, "These items were originally sold in the Heritage Auctions (Los Angeles) auction titled 'The Personal Property of John Wayne,' sale 7045, October 6-7, 2011, Lot 44521, final price realized was $1792.50; included is the original COA (Certificate of Authenticity) from Ethan Wayne, John Wayne's youngest son." 

I assume they were resold via Heritage to the current owner, who is apparently "actively responding to (though not necessarily routinely accepting) offers," whatever that means. For $3,750 or more, JW's toothbrush is yours. Apparently he used both Lilac Vegetal and Eau de Quinine, the mark of a true Pinaud fan, which is rather surprising -- celebrities are usually associated with fancy-pants fare like Acqua di Parma, Creed, Christian LaCroix, etc. When you think "wealthy," you think niche. Even for a guy like Wayne, who was getting his nuts bounced around on Morgans long before any of us were born, the assumption is that he used expensive toiletries, as befitting a millionaire. 

Yet this was markedly not the case; Wayne's bags contained hum-drum items like Johnson's baby powder, Pepsodent toothpaste, a comb with "A personal gift from Cary Grant" on it, and the Pinaud items. I do take issue with the Pepsodent, however. It doesn't really look like a true vintage tube from the seventies, or at least it seems a touch newer than it should, but I could be wrong. The rest all looks legit, although I have to ask, what on earth was Wayne doing with Cary Grant's comb? Of all the actors, he's the last one I'd associate with John Wayne (Grant never appeared in a Western). 

Does this change Pinaud's cachet? Does it go from lowly drugstore aftershave to Hollywood royalty because we now know that John Wayne preferred it? Lilac Vegetal is widely derided as smelling like cat piss, and suffers the "Veg" moniker on countless forums, yet we learn that it enjoyed the esteem of the most macho man of the silver screen. Does this change your impression of it? Will people think twice before they wrinkle their noses and say it smells like feline water? And what about Eau de Quinine? My bottle looks a touch older than The Duke's, perhaps by five or more years, judging by how the volume is printed on the bottom, and the natural browning of the label on mine, versus the fairly bright label on Wayne's. His is probably late seventies (newish when he died), while mine looks like it might be mid-sixties, maybe early seventies. 

Unlike Lilac Vegetal, which smells quite different in vintage form compared to the current stuff, my vintage Eau de Quinine smells identical to my new bottle. There is absolutely zero difference in the scent, other than the vintage smelling a hair stronger, with slightly better projection and longevity. Same rosewood and smooshed cherries smell, same strange, vaguely antiseptic drydown, and I notice a bit more tackiness on skin with vintage that I do with the new version. This feels like it could hold hair, albeit weakly, while the current stuff couldn't hold the down on a baby's butt. I truly believe that Eau de Quinine is overlooked as Pinaud's oldest surviving product; by all measures, a quinine-based product is a thing of the early-to-mid-nineteenth century, and only survived into the Edwardian era thanks to the extensive colonization of South American and African territories. 

The anachronistic nature of Eau de Quinine makes it a novelty nowadays, and it is now associated with world-famous cinema gunslinger John Wayne. It doubles as a cologne, and in vintage form, more so than current, it actually performs like a solid fragrance, with enough tenacity to at least make it to lunchtime. I'm never sure what the "feel" of this fragrance is, because it's so old-school, so not of this snowflakey post-woke world, and it has more functional than fashionable connotations, what with malaria and all. Malaria, that disease mosquitos spread like peanut butter across third-world countries. You've heard of it, right? Anyway, forget the cat piss, cheap aftershave, and the like; JW was worth $6.5 million when he croaked, and if Lilac Vegetal and Eau de Quinine were good enough for him, they're just fine for me, colonialism be damned.