We know their public personas, but what do Louisiana’s statewide elected officials do when they’re off the clock?
“Collecting sports memorabilia and Louisiana history stories have been my passions, as of late,” says Lt. Governor Jay Dardenne. He loves to recount those stories he’s learned of the characters and quirks that have made the Bayou State both strange and wonderful. One of his favorite tales involves former state Senator Dudley LeBlanc of Abbeville.
“Dudley LeBlanc was a patent medicine salesman, as was Huey Long,” Dardenne begins. “He decided he could do better than the stuff he was selling, so he invented his own patent medicine--Hadacol.”
Dardenne says LeBlanc’s recipe was a closely guarded secret.
“Hadacol was Vitamin B and a lot of other elixirs,” Dardenne says, as he mimes mixing a bit of this and that. “It was sold in the pharmacies in many places. It was sold in the bar rooms in other places.
“It was 12-percent alcohol by volume,” he adds, with a chuckle. And the brochure that came with it promised users relief from whatever ailed them.
“This medicine would cure cancer tuberculosis, paralysis, epileptic fits, delirium tremens, neuralgia, migraines,” Dardenne says, as he tick the diseases off on his fingers. ”But of course, it didn’t do anything. Oh, it might have made you feel a little better at 12 percent alcohol, and it put a little pep in people’s step.”
But Dardenne says the real story is the man behind the medicine—who became a multimillionaire when he sold the his Hadacol company in the 1950s.
“Dudley LeBlanc was a marketing genius,” Dardenne says admiringly, and then goes on to describe LeBlanc’s traveling road show, known as the “Hadacol Caravan”.
“Jack Benny, Bob Hope, Mickey Rooney, Dorothy Lamour, Lucille Ball—anybody who was anybody in show business was part of this caravan, this tour,” he explains, adding that the Hadacol Caravan packed people into municipal auditoriums all across the nation in the late 40s and early 50s.
“And the only way you got into the show was to clip the coupon off the box that contained the bottle of Hadacol,” Dardenne says, shaking his head in wonder.
So, has the Lt. Governor ever sampled this magical elixir?
“I have smelled it,” he says. “And it’s nasty!”
An unopened box and unopened bottle of Hadacol are displayed prominently—along with Dardenne’s prized LSU sports memorabilia—in the Lt. Governor’s office.