Algonquin Round Table History,News Franklin P. Adams Day

Franklin P. Adams Day

FPA

Today is the natal day of Franklin P. Adams, born on this day in 1881 in Chicago. During his days in New York City, he famously had joint birthday parties with his pal and poker-playing friend, George S. Kaufman (Nov. 16). There are many, many stories about FPA online and in The Lost Algonquin Round Table and The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. But there is news today, on his birthday.

FPA

Franklin P. Adams and his second wife, Esther Root, on their honeymoon, 1925.

Recently I was given the huge honor by the descendants of FPA to safeguard his papers and archives. Tony Adams, last surviving son of FPA and his second wife, Esther Root Adams, gave to me FPA documents, letters, photographs, and ephemera. I will be using some of that material for my next book, The Lost Algonquin Round Table 2, due out late next year. One thing about FPA, he saved everything. So on this birthday, raise a cocktail to FPA. He deserves to be remembered today and every day. Look for his books on eBay and in used book stores. He has been out of print since the 1960s, which is pretty sad to me. If you are a fan of FPA, drop me a line.

Also, be sure not to miss the post today from Trav SD about FPA.

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Heywood Broun

1939 Radio Broadcast with Broun, Perelman, Powell, Thurber1939 Radio Broadcast with Broun, Perelman, Powell, Thurber

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun


Listen to the voices of some of the most popular New York authors of the 1930s, all with a tie to The New Yorker. The all-star radio cast includes Heywood Broun, S.J. Perelman, Dawn Powell, and James Thurber. The occasion was the radio game show Author! Author! which was broadcast in October 1939. In it, audience members sent in scenarios for stories. A radio acting team performed the pieces. Then the authors filled in the blanks for the ending of the story.

Listen here (free streaming, 29 minutes)

The show was broadcast on the Mutual Network and carried on WOR.

S.J. Perelman is the master of ceremonies for the episode. He ribs Heywood Broun, who at the time was working tirelessly for the Newspaper Guild. Also on the broadcast is John Chapman, drama critic for the New York Daily News from the 1930s-1950s. He was nicknamed “Old Frost Face” because he was so hard to read.

Powell is introduced as the author of The Happy Island (1938), and as a playwright. “She’s wearing the famous Powell Rubies at her throat,” Perelman says. “Isn’t there some famous legend attached to those gems, Miss Powell?” he asks. “The only thing attached to them right now, Mr. Perelman,” comes her quick reply, “Is a child mortgage put there by the Greenwich Savings Bank.”

James Thurber was about to publish Fables For Our Times of his New Yorker pieces, and had just returned from Los Angeles. “Well I think that Hollywood is the only place in the world.” Thurber says drily. “The only place in the world where you can make $5,000 a week and then borrow money to get back to New York on. The only other memorable thing is fact the air out there comes in cans from the Mojave Desert. In two grades, breathed and unbreathed.”

The show wraps up as the authors act out a scene in a college dean’s office with Broun playing a football coach, Thurber as the dean, and Powell as the head of the girls’ athletic squad.

It is bittersweet to listen to the broadcast, as Broun died just two months later.

Al Hirschfeld Illustration

Al Hirschfeld Podcast Celebrates Round Table CenturyAl Hirschfeld Podcast Celebrates Round Table Century

Kudos to David Leopold and Katherine Marshall-Eastman, co-hosts of the excellent Al Hirschfeld Century Podcast. The new episode celebrates the centennial of the Algonquin Round Table, which began in June 1919. There is currently the third annual Hirschfeld gallery of art on display in the Algonquin Hotel lobby. David and Katherine, who run the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, review most of the names in the famous drawing of the Vicious Circle from 1962. David has an encyclopedic knowledge of old shows and stars, and ticks off the history of all the members. Katherine displays an excellent knowledge of people who have been dead for 75 years, and gamely plays along while David schools her in Algonquin trivia. It’s a fantastic podcast. Be sure to visit the hotel while you can to see the artwork on display.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun on Actors and VaudevilleHeywood Broun on Actors and Vaudeville

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun


On this day in 1938 Heywood Broun died. Here is a sample of one of his columns. From “It Seems To Me.” He loved vaudeville and the stage.

On Actors

Nothing in the world dies quite as completely as an actor and the greater the actor the more terrifying becomes the sudden transition from radiance to darkness. One day he is there with all his moods and complexities and curious glints of this and that, and the next day there is nothing left but a few wigs and costumes; perhaps a volume of memoirs, and a scrapbook of clippings in which we learn that the dead player was “majestic in presence” that “the poise of his head was stag-like” that he had “a great voice which boomed like a bell,” that he was “regal, subtle, pathetic,” and that “every one who was ever associated with him loved and respected him.”

Ask some veteran theatergoer “What was Booth like as Hamlet?” and he will say “Oh, he was wonderful.” Perhaps the face of the old theatergoer will grow animated and Booth may live again for a moment in his mind, but we who have never seen Booth will never know anything about him. Nobody can recreate and explain the art of a dead actor to the next generation. Even men who do tricks and true magic with words are not adept enough to set down any lasting portrait of an actor on the wing.