Brock Pemberton, From Kansas to the Great White Way

December 14, 2022| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 7:13 am

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Brock and Margaret Pemberton

Today is the anniversary of the birth of one of the most overlooked members of the Algonquin Round Table, namely, Brock Pemberton. His brother, Murdock Pemberton, gets barely more attention than his far more successful sibling. Let’s take a short dive into his life. All of the material is from The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide.

It sounds like the story in a Broadway musical: hick conquers metropolis. However, this story was Brock Pemberton’s, and it really did happen that way. He went from Kansas newspaperman to powerful Broadway producer, and was the father of the annual Tony Awards.

Ralph Brock Pemberton was born December 14, 1885, in Leavenworth, Kansas. He grew up about 100 miles southwest, in Emporia, where his father worked as a salesman. He and his younger brother, Murdock, went to Emporia High School. Brock graduated in 1902 and attended the local College of Emporia for three years, before transferring to the University of Kansas. He got his A.B. degree in 1908 and returned home. Pemberton had known the legendary editor William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette since he was a boy, and White hired him as a reporter. Pemberton was a dynamo on the tiny staff.

Pemberton thrived on the Emporia newspaper under White’s tutelage. White had earned a national reputation for his provocative editorials, and made frequent trips to the East Coast. In the age-old way of newspaper employment, he spoke to a New York City editor on Pemberton’s behalf. With that, the 24 year-old booked a one-way ticket for Manhattan in 1910. Arriving on Park Row after a 1,300-mile train trek, he learned that the position was not going to materialize. But as luck would have it, someone gave him a note to hand to Franklin P. Adams, who was at the New York Evening Mail at the time. Just as F.P.A. would later stick his neck out for Robert Benchley and George S. Kaufman, he went to bat for Pemberton. He landed a job as a reporter.

After a few months Pemberton was transferred from the city desk to the drama department at the Mail. On his first assignment, he was sent to attend a musical called “Everywoman” at the Herald Square Theatre. Pemberton innocently reviewed the show as if he was an audience member in Emporia, with hilarious results. The staff found his hayseed review backslapping funny, and the edition became a collector’s item, to Pemberton’s embarrassment. He had to learn to be more hard-edged.

In 1911 he moved to the New York World drama desk, where he got to know the bustling theater business intimately. A few years later he was offered the position of assistant drama editor at the New York Times, working under Alexander Woollcott, who was the paper’s chief drama critic. His contacts grew. Pemberton had spent six years in New York journalism when producer Arthur Hopkins offered him a job in 1917. Hopkins was one of the most successful producers in the city, and Pemberton was put to work in every capacity, from set construction to directing. It was his new career.
Pemberton stayed in the Hopkins organization for just three years, but he learned the skills a producer would need. When Hopkins passed on producing a three-act comedy called “Enter Madame” in 1920, Pemberton asked if he could produce it. He took the biggest gamble of his life, and it paid off. The show ran for two years at the Garrick; he also directed the show. He was a newly minted Broadway producer at age 35. Soon after, Pemberton tapped Zona Gale to adapt her bestseller “Miss Lulu Bett” into a play, and he opened it two days after Christmas 1920. It was a smash success at the Belmont, and won the Pulitzer Prize as the year’s best drama the following year.

On Dec. 30, 1915, Pemberton married Margaret McCoy in East Orange, New Jersey. He was 30 and she was 36. She sometimes would work as a costumer on her husband’s shows.

In 1919, when the Round Table began, he was living at 123 East 53rd Street, between Park and Lexington avenues. The building has since been demolished. In 1918 he lived at 123 E. 53rd Street. He lived at 115 East 53rd Street in 1920, 1927, and 1931. In 1948 he was living at 455 E. 51st Street.

In 1925, the offices of Pemberton Productions, Inc. and Brock Pemberton, Inc. were at 224 West 47th Street. That building was demolished and is today the Hotel Edison, which opened in 1931.

Pemberton carved out a 30-year career in the theater business. He took on risky shows and had many hits, and several flops. He brought out the first plays by Maxwell Anderson and Sidney Howard. Among the many actors whose careers he launched onstage were Walter Huston, Miriam Hopkins, Claudette Colbert and Frederic March. In 1928 he lost $40,000 on a show, but bounced back the next year with the light comedy “Strictly Dishonorable” that began a long association with the actress-director Antoinette Perry. The pair had a string of hits together; some said they also had a long-running romantic relationship. The pair was among those that helped form the American Theatre Wing in 1939; the group put on the Stage Door Canteen shows for troops during the war. After Perry’s death in 1946, Pemberton pushed for the creation of the American Theatre Wing’s Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre — the Tony Awards.

Pulitzer Landmarks Tied to the Algonquin Round TablePulitzer Landmarks Tied to the Algonquin Round Table

January 31, 2015| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 10:29 pm

This guest blog was written for Literary Manhattan.

I love literary landmarks. I seek them out whenever I possibly can. I’m the kind of person who can’t pass a plaque or historical marker and not stop for a look, and when the site is tied to an author or book, it’s even better. When I was writing my new book, The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide, I decided to make it a guidebook to everything related to the Vicious Circle in New York: their homes, offices, speakeasies, theaters, and related locations.

Several of the locations in my book have ties to the Pulitzer family that are shared here. If you have never been to Woodlawn Cemetery, take a trip to the beautiful landmark in the Bronx. The Pulitzer graves are incredibly touching to see placed there.

Here are two in Manhattan that you might want to visit if you get the opportunity. I enjoyed putting them in the book because they show that even though there is no longer a Pulitzer newspaper in the city, his literary landmarks are still around us.

The New Yorker has a long history of sticking its nose into matters of frivolity around New York City, and the magazine loves a good crusade. E. B. White complained vociferously about advertising in Grand Central Terminal, and editor Harold Ross, a commuter, testified at a city hearing against public address announcements in the terminal.

The magazine also took up the cause of the dirty bronze statue of Pomona, goddess of abundance, outside the Plaza Hotel in Grand Army Plaza. When New York World publisher Joseph Pulitzer died in 1912, he bequeathed $50,000 to build it. Carrere & Hastings designed the Italian Renaissance-style fountain, which was dedicated in 1916. But in The New Yorker of April 18, 1931, poet Arthur Guiterman complained that the fountain was a mess. The last stanza of “Letter to Mr. Pulitzer” reads:

One hates to speak this way about a lady,
But she is obviously much too shady;
Though still quite young, a good bit under thirty,
No nymph was ever quite so black and dirty
In all New York; so you, sir, as her guardian
(You see I’m Mid-Victorian, not Edwardian),
Should personally scrub her form and face in
The sudsy foam of her own fountain basin.

A few weeks later the magazine published a response by Pulitzer’s son, Ralph, publisher of the World:

For know! The lady’s guardians ad litem,
Aroused by her attempts to mock and spite ’em,
Have joined the city in a contribution
To give her an immaculate ablution;
To scrub her from her head, with all its wet locks,
Clear down her contours to her very fetlocks.

Ralph Pulitzer donated $30,000 to restore the statue. Doris Doscher, the model who posed for sculptor Karl Bitter as Pomona, wrote to the New York Times: “I want to take this opportunity to offer my thanks to Mr. Pulitzer for enabling me to again stand exalted—and scrubbed—above the grounds on Fifth Avenue, generously spurting precious, clear water—flush, in these times of dried-up prosperity.”

The saga of the statue and Pulitzer Fountain is a long-running city drama. It was renovated in 1971 but, due to faulty plumbing, went dry for six years in the 1980s. In 1989, $3.3 million was raised privately to restore it yet again.

The World stood at 63 Park Row, with editorial offices on the eleventh floor of a tower that Pulitzer erected in 1890. A golden dome topped the 309-foot tall building. Pulitzer died in 1911, and the paper ran along for twenty more years.

Star reporter Herbert Bayard Swope became executive editor in 1921 and brought in the best talent, increasing high-quality reporting and also hiring New York’s first black reporter. By the time the Round Table came to it, the highly respected World was the “newspaperman’s newspaper.” Swope receives credit for creating the page opposite the editorial page—the “Op. Ed.”—a phrase he coined. Onto this page he brought a lively mix of writers, most from the Vicious Circle. Among the first of them to write for the World was Robert Benchley a month after he quit Vanity Fair in 1920. Benchley’s book reviews often had nothing to do with the books themselves and could easily contain ruminations on train schedules.

Swope stole both Heywood Broun and Franklin P. Adams (known as F.P.A.) from the Tribune in 1921. The 33-year-old Broun could write anything, from a play review to a recap of the Harvard-Yale football game. He had free rein in his column “It Seems to Me,” which ran for six years, to discuss books, sports, movies, or politics. The last of these landed him in hot water. When F.P.A. brought his famous “Conning Tower” to the Op. Ed. Page, it caused a sensation. Ralph Pulitzer and his brothers broke the family trust by court order in 1931 and sold the newspaper. It put more than 3,000 people out of work.

Today no plaque or monument marks the former Pulitzer Building and its wonderful gold dome. Before it was razed in 1955, Swope and F.P.A. toured the deserted newsroom one last time. It is now a highway approach to the Brooklyn Bridge. The stained glass windows from the city room were moved to Columbia University’s Journalism School building, 2950 North Broadway, where, each year in the World Room, the Pulitzer Prize winners are announced.

Marie Carroll, Robert Williams, Harry Bradley, Alfred White, John Cope and Howard Lang in scene from Abie's Irish Rose. Credit: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.

Centennial of Abie’s Irish RoseCentennial of Abie’s Irish Rose

May 12, 2022| Kevin Fitzpatrick| 0 Comment | 2:23 pm

Marie Carroll, Robert Williams, Harry Bradley, Alfred White, John Cope and Howard Lang in scene from Abie’s Irish Rose. Credit: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library.

Today the New York Times published a very thorough and detailed account of the centennial of Abie’s Irish Rose, a hit show 100 years ago that the Algonquin Round Table by turns roasted and scorned. The article quotes Robert Benchley and Alexander Woollcott, with a passing reference to another Vicious Circle member, Harpo Marx.

Opening a few days after St. Patrick’s Day 1922, Abie’s Irish Rose was the miracle show of the decade. Despite withering reviews and serving as the butt of jokes all over town, it ran for 2,327 performances—five years and five months. Anne Nichols wrote the unpretentious comedy allegedly based on a real-life story of a mixed-marriage she heard about. In her story, young Abraham Levy brings home from the war his blushing bride, Rosemary Murphy, a girl he met in France while she was entertaining the doughboys. But knowing how his family would take the news, he introduced her to his parents as Rosie Murpheyski. In the next act the Murphy clan comes over for a visit, and hilarity ensues.

The show appealed to audiences everywhere; at one time six road companies were touring the United States and others were in England and Australia. The playwright raked in more than $6 million and eventually had to cut down on the road companies because the income taxes were crushing her. All the major critics blasted the show, with the exception of Alexander Woollcott. One standout, and long-suffering, reviewer was Robert Benchley. He had to compose a few lines each week for a capsule review in Life. Among his finest gems were, “People laugh at this every night, which explains why democracy can never be a success,” and “Where do the people come from who keep this one going? You don’t see them on the streets in the daytime.”

Dorothy Parker, who is not included in the article, was working for Ainslee’s at the time. She lumped it in with another play of a similar type. In September 1922, she wrote, “And then there came, in quick succession, The Rotters and Abie’s Irish Rose. Despite its having one night’s start on its opponent, The Rotters was defeated by Abie’s Irish Rose for the distinction of being the season’s worst play.”

As the Times points out, no modern theater company is currently interested in a revival of Abie’s Irish Rose. Which may be a good thing.

The Dorothy Parker reviews from the era are collected in Dorothy Parker Complete Broadway, 1918-1923.

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).

Brock Pemberton, From Kansas to the Great White Way

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