Dorothy Parker and the Earlier A. A. Milne Business

August 3, 2018| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 4:00 pm

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With A. A. Milne back in movie theaters today, it’s time to revisit the beef that Dorothy Parker had with the author. The feud was flamed by her mentor, Franklin P. Adams, always known as FPA.

It’s common knowledge about what she thought about Winnie the Pooh, from Mrs. Parker’s book review published in The New Yorker, about The House at Pooh Corner, from October 1928:

And it is that word “hummy,” my darlings, that marks the first place in “The House at Pooh Corner” at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.

However, this is a year after Mrs. Parker had found herself in a mess about Milne. Her publisher, Boni & Liveright, were marketing her debut poetry collection Enough Rope with advertising copy, “America’s A. A. Milne is a lady. She is Dorothy Parker.” Not very smart.

Mrs. Parker wrote a response for FPA called “When We Were Very Sore.” This was published on March 10, 1927 in the New York World. She likely wasn’t paid for this verse, which is written in the Milne style. FPA had a lot of fun with this one. He quipped, “What lady was America’s A. A. Milne? Answer: That was no lady, that was Dorothy Parker.”

When We Were Very Sore

6 Women You Didn’t Know Were Members of the Algonquin Round Table6 Women You Didn’t Know Were Members of the Algonquin Round Table

January 15, 2015| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 11:55 pm

This article was written for the Huffington Post.

Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber were the only women sitting at the Algonquin Round Table, correct? That’s what I thought before I started researching my new book The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. After all, these are the only females among the wits in most accounts, anecdotes, and cartoons. But I was delighted to uncover the names and stories of the other members of the Vicious Circle, women that had fascinating and full lives. Even though their names aren’t as common today as Parker and Ferber, the rich history and accomplishments they left behind are still relevant.

The Algonquin Hotel, 59 W. Forty-fourth Street, sits in the middle of “Club Row” a block west of Times Square. In June 1919, not long after he returned from serving in the army, Alexander Woollcott was treated to a free lunch here. Woollcott was the acerbic theater critic on the Times, and his hosts were two Broadway publicists, Murdock Pemberton and John Peter Toohey. The flacks struck out in interesting him in the playwright they were pitching —Eugene O’Neill of all people — but they did dream up the prank of holding a welcome home luncheon for Woollcott.

The men invited a colorful cast of characters from newspaper city rooms, magazine offices, and the Broadway milieu. As the legends hold, Parker, at the time a Vanity Fair staffer and freelance poet, and Ferber, novelist and short fiction dynamo, were popular members. But among the famous men — columnists Franklin P. Adams and Heywood Broun, composer Deems Taylor, playwrights Marc Connelly, George S. Kaufman, and Robert E. Sherwood, and humorist Robert Benchley — women were always in the midst.

Reading contemporary newspaper columns and sifting through recollections, at least 30 men and women were Round Table members. These half-dozen women are unique and deserve to be remembered, and that’s why they are in my book.

Margalo Gillmore, actress

Margalo Gillmore was the baby of the Vicious Circle, a Broadway actress barely out her teens when she joined the group for lunch. Her parents and grandparents were also actors, and she started onstage in high school. Growing up, her mother said that if she was working and needed to eat, to go where Ethel Barrymore and Gertrude Lawrence lived: The Algonquin. Gillmore appeared in early O’Neill dramas, including The Straw (1921) and racked up scores of credits. She worked in every medium, from silent pictures to live television. Her father, Frank Gillmore, was a founder of Actors Equity, and she earned one of the first union cards after the 1919 strike that shut down Broadway. She toured constantly and was a working actress for fifty years. In 1954, an audience of 65 million TV viewers saw her in Peter Pan as Mrs. Darling. In 1986 Gillmore was the last member of the Round Table to pass away. I was stunned to discover her gravestone, in Kensico Cemetery in Westchester County, has the Equity logo carved into it.

Jane Grant, reporter

Jane Grant has slipped through the cracks as a pioneer feminist and a barrier-breaker in print media. With her first husband, Harold Ross, the two launched a “humorous weekly” in 1925 from their Hell’s Kitchen apartment, a fact long overlooked. In a 1945 letter, Ross wrote, “There would be no New Yorker today if it were not for her.” Grant pushed Ross to realize their dream, introduced him to the chief financial backer, and found some of the most famous names in the magazine’s history, such as Janet Flanner. Leaving out how Grant helped launch The New Yorker, she led a life like few others in the Jazz Age. She was the first female reporter in the city room at the Times. Grant interviewed Caruso and Chaplin, and was the first Times woman to visit China, Russia, and Nazi Germany. In addition, in 1921 she was a co-founder, with her close friend Ruth Hale, of the Lucy Stone League, a forerunner of the Women’s Liberation Movement. The group fought to allow women to maintain their maiden names after marriage. Grant wrote for more than 30 years. When she died in 1972, the Times buried her obituary on page forty-four.

Ruth Hale, feminist

Ruth Hale sued the U.S. State Department because she wanted a passport issued in her own name, not as the wife of her husband, Heywood Broun. She lost that fight but brought attention to the cause of the Lucy Stone League, an organization that came to define her. Hale was a writer, columnist, critic, and publicist in pre-World War I Manhattan. She and Broun went to Paris as war correspondents, then came back to New York and became one of the city’s most talked-about literary couples. From West Side apartments she directed efforts to support equal rights for women in the 1920s. Hale also ghostwrote for her more famous husband. Hale quit New York and retired to a farm in rural Connecticut, where she died alone.

Beatrice Kaufman, editor

Beatrice Kaufman was not a member of the Round Table because she was married to George S. Kaufman, the newspaperman turned successful playwright. The Vicious Circle didn’t tolerate wives very much, and Bea Kaufman carved her own life for herself as an editor, working under Carmel Snow at Harpers Bazaar. The Kaufmans had an open marriage, so in 1936 when George was mired in a national sex scandal with actress Mary Astor, Bea not only defended her husband, she was the one to move him to Bucks County to avoid the press. Bea was always the first to read his new work, and he leaned on her consistently. She was close friends with the Marx Brothers, Moss Hart, and the Gershwins. Kaufman parlayed her social standing into a job with Samuel Goldwyn as a movie script reader. Late in life she also tried writing plays, but none were successful. Perhaps Bea Kaufman’s best role was as her husband’s sounding board and guardian; following her 1945 death George wrote few hits.

Margaret Leech, double Pulitzer-winner

Margaret Leech was a Vassar grad who started her career working for the Condé Nast magazines that were not named Vogue or Vanity Fair. She wrote articles and stories, and in her 30s had three romance novels published. With Heywood Broun she co-wrote a bestselling biography of New York’s anti-vice crusader, Anthony Comstock. Leech crafted short fiction for popular magazines, with her most famous, “Manicure,” set in the world of a nail salon, included in The Best Stories of 1929. The collection found Leech sharing company with Willa Cather. Her life took a dramatic turn in 1928 when she married the much-older and wealthy Ralph Pulitzer, scion of Joseph Pulitzer and the president-publisher of the World. Leech had children and travelled the world, and upon her husband’s death in 1939 she returned to writing. She became a serious presidential historian, and devoted the rest of her life to it. Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865 (1941) is considered a classic about the Civil War era. It was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history. Eighteen years after she won her first Pulitzer Prize, Leech won her second, for In the Days of William McKinley published in 1959. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in History, and is still the only woman to have won it twice in the category.

Peggy Wood, actress

Peggy Wood had a calling to the acting profession that kept her working for sixty years. Born and raised in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, the daughter of a magazine editor, Wood made her Broadway debut in 1911 and worked until the 1970s. She appeared in early talkies with Will Rogers, and was a close confidant of Noël Coward. She was the original Ruth in the three-year Broadway run of Blithe Spirit. When Wood was starring in Coward’s Bitter Sweet, Harpo Marx visited her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were as good as this?” he asked her. “I’d have married you long ago!” When she wasn’t onstage, she was writing about it, for newspapers, books, and magazines. Wood married a fellow member of the Vicious Circle, poet John V. A. Weaver, in 1924. If Peggy Wood is remembered for anything almost forty years after her death, it’s that she co-starred in The Sound of Music in 1965 as Mother Abbess. She was nominated for an Oscar for best supporting actress.

Last Day for the Doormen of the Algonquin HotelLast Day for the Doormen of the Algonquin Hotel

February 4, 2024| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 11:15 am

Kevin Wilkes and Peter Cruz.

Visitors to the Algonquin Hotel will no longer see two of the legendary personalities greeting all visitors to the front door. On February 2, veteran doormen Peter Cruz and Kevin Wilkes retired on the same day together. At the Algonquin, Kevin had 32 years of service and Peter 46 years. The day before, the staff held a grand surprise retirement party for the pair in the Oak Room.

I caught up with them at their usual spot in the lobby, greeting guests, grabbing luggage, holding the doors open, and smiling and saying hello to all.

Peter started in the “back of the house” in the kitchen not long after his student days at LaGuardia High School for Music and Art. He was born on the Bowery to parents who had immigrated from Puerto Rico. Kevin is also a native New Yorker and an alum of Thomas Jefferson High in New Lots, Brooklyn.

The interview is edited and condensed for clarity.

Question: When did you guys start?

Kevin: 1992.

Question: What were you doing before you came here?

Kevin: Same thing, I actually worked over at the Drake Hotel.

Question: And how’d you get the job here?

Kevin: Where I worked it was slow over there and I went over to the union to try to get something, like a temporary (position), and they told me about this hotel. The personnel manager that worked at the Drake Hotel was at the Algonquin. They said, “I think you might know him. Go over.” Because it was only supposed to be a temp job because one of the guys had hurt his back or something. So, he was out for six months. It was like, “Well Kevin, this might just be a six-month thing.” And then once I came in, they were like, “Listen, he’s not coming back. You’re going to be here.” And I have been here ever since then. It was supposed to start as a temp job.

Question: What was this place like in the early nineties? What was the neighborhood like?

Kevin: I mean, it was the same. I mean the clubs. I think we were the only real hotel on the block other than the Iroquois. But our hotel stood out because of the history and everything, so that really made it nice.

Question: What about you? When did you start?

Peter: I started in 1978. I came here to work the back of the house, the stewarding position, and I was there for many years and within that I became store room person. I became the executive steward after a while and I always inquired about working at the front of the house. Finally, I was able to get a position there through the help of my coworkers. I’ve been here ever since.

Question: What year did you become a doorman? Is that the title?

Peter: Front service captain? Yeah, he was the bell captain, I was bell captain. And I’ve been here ever since and it’s been wonderful.

Question: When you started, how many bell staff were there?

Kevin: We had a full crew there. I believe it was…

Peter: Four or five.

Kevin: No, it was five. It was five.

Peter: Both staff…

Kevin: And three door members.

Peter: So, eight of us all together total in our section here.

Question: What do you like about the job?

Peter: For myself, the history, the people, the history back then. The cabaret. It was started when I started here. I saw Steve Ross stroll in one day and it’s been magical ever since.

Question: What keeps you here, Kevin?

Kevin: When I worked with the Drake, because it was a bigger hotel, they used to always tell me, “You don’t have time to talk to the guests. You got to keep it moving, you got to keep it moving.” And when I started here, it was like, “Wow, I get to socialize, I get to know the guests personally.” And that’s what I really liked about the hotel because you actually had a relationship with the guests and their experience in staying here. Also, they shared their history that they were telling me about at the hotel in those early years. So, it was really nice. I really enjoyed it.

Question: Who has been your favorite guest?

Kevin: It’s been so many. I think Maya Angelou took the words out of my mouth. To me, coming from the south, it was dealing with a respectful elder, like a great aunt or something like that. And she would just ask you how your family was. And I mean, I have her book that I’m taking home. I forgot I had it and she actually
autographed it. I took it home yesterday. It was like I was looking through the locker and cleaning it out. I was, wow, I forgot about this. I looked through it. Wow. She actually autographed it.

Question: That’s so cool.

Kevin: Really was. And also meeting the cabaret performers, they were all like family. They were the same performers. I remember, I think it was my second year and I got to meet Andrea Marcovicci as I was coming out the elevator. At that time, we were doing the New York Celebration here in the lobby and she called me over during her performance. The lobby was packed. And she says, “Come here.” She started serenading me. It was just like, “wow.” I couldn’t believe it.

Question: I believe it. She sang to my parents in the elevator.

Kevin: That’s Andrea for you. She’s so nice.

Peter: Harry Connick, Jr. He got his start here. Young guy. So nice, so friendly. From New Orleans… he played the Oak Room. Before he would go on, he would hang out with all of us staff in the kitchen. We loved him. He was so good with us, the kitchen, the dishwashers.

Question: Who’s somebody that you met that you didn’t think they were going to be so nice and was really great to you?

Kevin: There was one gentleman, his name was Mr. Kaufman. He actually owned, I think it was an Army and Navy store or something. I never forgot him. One time he called down and he said that he needed assistance with the luggage. So, in knowing him, I knew what he had. I kind of just went up by myself. It was a suitcase and a garment bag. And at that time our luggage carts were like shopping carts without the basket. And when I went up to get him, he actually screamed at me. He says, “Where’s the cart?” I said, “What cart? I can carry it down.” He says, “No, I want a cart.” So, I head back down, get the cart, and go up to him. But I thought it was hilarious. The two pieces of luggage.

Question: What’s it like here in the summer? What’s the difference between summer and winter working here?

Peter: Well, supposedly it’s supposed to be slow here in the summer, but for the past few years that has never been the case. It’s pretty good. There’s always a busy time in the city. People come to stay and for a lot of them it’s their first time. We end up getting a lot of repeat guests out of that because of the way we carry ourselves, the way the front desk carries themselves. And even after Cabaret was gone, they loved the atmosphere. Sure, sure. Yeah, definitely. And the location. That was something.

Kevin: That’s like a lot of groups. We had the Baker Street Irregulars year after year after year. I mean, how many years you think we had?

Peter: More than a decade.

Kevin: But it was nice working with groups like that and also seeing elder groups coming in that would tell you that how many years they came, like Mrs. White with her group, she would bring busloads in.

Peter: And what’s the name of the guy who comes all the time? The theater groups.

Kevin: Oh, George Harter.

Peter: George Harter. He used to come here and he still does. He still does. And he brings people here. He knows they are going to be taken care of. Proximity to Broadway. It’s one of our famous connections.

Kevin: I actually have got to send him a message though. Yeah. Just to let ’em know.

Peter: Yeah, absolutely.

Question: What’s the number one question people ask you every day?

Peter: They want to ask about the Round Table. What was that? Who was in there? What stories do you know about what went on with them? How eccentric was some of them, and so forth.

Question: How has it been working with the cat?

Peter: It’s been okay.

Kevin: It’s been okay. I mean, we work with more cats around. This is my fourth cat and this one is the friendliest out of all of ’em. The first cat, mixed reviews about it. Because that cat just always wandered outside. That cat would wander up to Sixth Avenue and sit on the corner and come back. Wow.

Peter: The first Matilda, right? Yeah. Yeah. She was a diva. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I was here when we had Hamlet before that Matilda, I’ve been through five cats and that cat, there was actually a book written about him and with drawings by Hilary Knight. I have that book at home. It wasn’t autographed or anything, but it’s been written and I’m glad I have it.

Question: What’s something that kept you coming into work?

Peter: Something? My comrades. The camaraderie that we have here made for a good day every day. The front desk manager, it didn’t matter, the wait staff, but mostly our core group made for great days. It was always a pleasure to come to work, even if people called out, whatever. We found ways to make it work to the satisfaction of the management staff so they knew they could rely on upon us. And you don’t see that. I don’t think you could see that going forward as much as the times we had. Those were really good, great times. What more can I say about that? But it’s been incredible.

Question: What’s a tip you would give to someone reading this about New York City that nobody else knows?

Peter: Well. I say read your book. Read your book. Because that was a mountain of information. There are things in there that I never knew, and you’re quite the researcher and I’m glad I met you.

Question: Oh, thank you.

Peter: It’s been incredible, an incredible relationship. And even though I’m away, I look forward to always looking on the hotel and hopefully if you are around, stay in touch.

Question: What are you going to do in your retirement?

Peter: Well, my plan is to move to Puerto Rico. I have a home over there that was my parent’s. Now I inherited it and I’m going to make a life out of here. They say if you can make it here in New York, you can make it anywhere.

Question: So, from 44th Street to…

Peter: …Isabela, Puerto Rico.

Question: What’s a tip that you always give to people that are asking you about something?

Peter: Send them to the Blue Bar, which is really nice. We always try to promote the restaurant and the bar.

Question: I want to ask you, what’s the hotel like today from when you started your first day?

Peter: I would have to say, well, when I started here, all of these rooms down here were always full. The lobby, what was known as the Rose Room, the Chinese Room, and the Oak Room were always full. I know, because I was the dishwasher and we got all three outlets just dump everything on us every day.

It never stopped from the moment you started to closing time, normally at 12 Midnight, set up a buffet. It was just amazing and busy. This is when Ben and Mary Bodne had the place and they kept it up until they sold it. Then I think slowly, they started cutting back and they took the Blue Bar that was here and they put it over there, which was a good idea. But now the new owners, they have the Blue Bar here now, which is nice, but it’s different. It’s just way different. Their hours of operation are different. They’ve cut back everywhere. I guess it was needed. It’s just a different role now. But that’s fine. So that said, I think it’s a good time for me to fold it in and just say goodbye and wish everyone well and that includes you.

Question: Thank you so much, Peter and Kevin. We will all miss you.

Peter: Thank you.

Kevin: Thank you.

Read more about the history of the Algonquin Hotel in the only book about it, The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press).

I Found Frank CaseI Found Frank Case

May 5, 2021| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 12:55 pm

I found Frank Case. I wasn’t even looking for him. I was in Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor, Long Island, for the first time. I was actually looking for a Doughboy for our WWI Homecoming 21 project. As I was walking along the line of graves, since I didn’t know the location, I was peering at each one as quickly as possible. At the corner of the cemetery, in the corner of my eye, was a lone mausoleum. There are not that many in Oakland, just a few, it is not Woodlawn. As I stepped closer I saw the name across the top: CASE.

I was so happy to see this. Here was the general manager and owner of the Algonquin Hotel.

I had known for many years that Case (1871-1946) had a second home in Sag Harbor. He wrote about the home in his books, as did his only daughter, Margaret Case Harriman. While Case was the most famous hotelier in America at one time, I never knew where he ended up after his death in Manhattan. I assumed, wrongly, that he had gone home to Buffalo, New York, his hometown, and where his first wife, Carrie Case, was buried in 1908 after she tragically died in the Algonquin Hotel following the birth of their son, Carrol.

Frank and Bertha Case

One thing I learned a long time ago was to never trust the Internet. When I was researching my book The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (2015) I was on a mission to track down the final resting places of the Vicious Circle. I did locate almost all 30 of them, but there are a few that still escape me (where are you Jane Grant and Robert E. Sherwood?). But I found many inaccuracies and misinformation. I made a pass at looking for Case; one lead was he was buried in Woodlawn, which was wrong. Many obituaries list New Yorker’s would hold their memorials in Woodlawn, then the remains sent away to other towns for burial. What I suspect is after his death, which was just four months after his second wife, Bertha, his family brought Bertha and Frank to the receiving vaults of Woodlawn. Here they remained temporarily while the mausoleum was constructed in Sag Harbor. I guess if I had 10 hours of free time I could check the records of both cemeteries, so perhaps if someone reading this wants to hire me for a paid assignment I will do that.

I like finding this mausoleum and closing the circle on Frank Case, who was by all accounts beloved by friends and staff (but was anti-union). He was also, like me, a member of The Lambs (the clubhouse was 2 minutes away west on Forty-fourth Street, and many of the actors who were members also lived at the hotel, such as John Drew and nephew John Barrymore).

One story told in the obituary of Bertha Case is about Sag Harbor. Bertha was a housekeeper at the Algonquin, which is how she met Frank. During WWI she volunteered and went to France with the YMCA as a volunteer, and was friends with superstar Elsie Janis (also an Algonquin regular). She and Frank were married for 30 years. What Bertha did was use the flower gardens at the Sag Harbor house to provide floral arrangements for the hotel–which she oversaw. Sag Harbor is also where the Case family entertained friends, such as Robert Benchley.

If you are in Sag Harbor and the South Fork of Long Island, pay a visit to Frank and Bertha Case.

Dorothy Parker and the Earlier A. A. Milne Business

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