WILLIAM HENRY DETHLEF KOERNER | SALOON ON HIS BEAT

The artist

Ruth Koerner Oliver, Santa Barbara, California (by descent)

S. Hallock du Pont, Jr., Florida, 1973 (acquired from the above)

By descent to the present owner

Charles Francis Coe, "Hooch," The Saturday Evening Post, December 29, 1928, p. 4, illustrated (as "Well," Flenger Insisted, "You Watch Your Step. You Got to Play Along With Us, Too. It Ain't All on Our Side")

Charles Francis Coe's story Hooch teased, "There were two cops. One was straight and one wasn't." Although a fictional story, Coe's novel profiled the real life gangsters, corrupt politicians and the business of rum racketeering during the Prohibition era in Chicago. Koerner was commissioned to illustrate the vivid and often gruesome details of Coe's story. The present work was one among the many story illustrations he produced for articles in the Saturday Evening Post.