Algonquin Round Table History,News Heywood Broun on Babe Ruth in 1922

Heywood Broun on Babe Ruth in 1922

With baseball season around the corner, let’s look at one of the many Algonquin Round Table links to the game. In the world of New York newspaper columnists in the Jazz Age, Heywood Broun stood out from the rest. His column “It Seems To Me” was beloved, and he could tackle any subject. Broun had gotten his start as a baseball writer, and continued his passion for ballpark trips even when he became a celebrity covering Broadway and news stories. Broun had seats in the press box to watch Babe Ruth in his amazing 1921 season with the New York Yankees. This column appeared in 1922.

Ruth Vs. Roth
By Heywood Broun

We picked up “Who’s Who in America” yesterday to get some vital statistics about Babe Ruth, and found to our surprise that he was not in the book. Even as George Herman Ruth there is no mention of him. The nearest name we could find was: “Roth, Filibert, forestry expert; b. Württemberg, Germany, April 20, 1858; s. Paul Raphael and Amalie (Volz) R., early edn. in Württemberg—”

There is in our heart not an atom of malice against Prof. Roth (since September, 1903, he has been “prof. forestry, U. Mich.”), and yet we question the justice of his admission to a list of national celebrities while Ruth stands without. We know, of course, that Prof. Roth is the author of “Forest Conditions in Wisconsin” and of “The Uses of Wood,” but we wonder whether he has been able to describe in words uses of wood more sensational and vital than those which Ruth has shown in deeds. Hereby we challenge the editor of “Who’s Who in America” to debate the affirmative side of the question: Resolved, That Prof. Roth’s volume called “Timber Physics” has exerted a more profound influence in the life of America than Babe Ruth’s 1921 home-run record.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun

The question is, of course, merely a continuation of the ancient controversy as to the relative importance of the theorist and the practitioner: should history prefer in honor the man who first developed the hypothesis that the world was round or the other who went out and circumnavigated it? What do we owe to Ben Franklin and what to the lightning? Shall we celebrate Newton or the apple?

Personally, our sympathies go out to the performer rather than the fellow in the study or the laboratory. Many scientists staked their reputations on the fact that the world was round before Magellan set sail on the Vittoria. He did not lack written assurances that there was no truth in the old tale of a flat earth with dragons and monsters lurking just beyond the edges.

But suppose, in spite of all this, Magellan had gone on sailing, sailing until his ship did topple over into the void of dragons and big snakes. The professors would have been abashed. Undoubtedly they would try to laugh the misfortune off, and they might even have been good enough sports to say, “That’s a fine joke on us.” But at worst they could lose nothing but their reputations, which can be made over again. Magellan would not live to profit by his experience. Being one of those foreigners, he had no sense of humor, and if the dragons bit him as he fell, it is ten to one he could not even manage a smile.

By this time we have rather traveled away from Roth’s “Timber Physics” and Ruth’s home-run record, but we hope that you get what we mean. Without knowing the exact nature of “Timber Physics,” we assume that the professor discusses the most efficient manner in which to bring about the greatest possible impact between any wooden substance and a given object. But mind you, he merely discusses it. If the professor chances to be wrong, even if he is wrong three times, nobody in the classroom is likely to shout, “You’re out!”

The professor remains at bat during good behavior. He is not subject to any such vicissitudes as Ruth. Moreover, timber physics is to Mr. Roth a matter of cool and calm deliberation. No adversary seeks to fool him with speed or spitballs. “Hit it out” never rings in his ears. And after all, just what difference does it make if Mr. Roth errs in his timber physics? It merely means that a certain number of students leave Michigan knowing a little less than they should—and nobody expects anything else from students.

On the other hand, a miscalculation by Ruth in the uses of wood affects much more important matters. A strike-out on his part may bring about complete tragedy and the direst misfortune. There have been occasions, and we fear that there will still be occasions, when Ruth’s bat will be the only thing which stands between us and the loss of the American League pennant. In times like these who cares about “Forest Conditions in Wisconsin”?

Coming to the final summing up for our side of the question at debate, we shall try to lift the whole affair above any mere Ruth versus Roth issue. It will be our endeavor to show that not only has Babe Ruth been a profound interest and influence in America, but that on the whole he has been a power for progress. Ruth has helped to make life a little more gallant. He has set before us an example of a man who tries each minute for all or nothing. When he is not knocking home runs he is generally striking out, and isn’t there more glory in fanning in an effort to put the ball over the fence than in prolonging a little life by playing safe?

***

Adapted from The Lost Algonquin Round Table: Humor, Fiction, Journalism, Criticism and Poetry From America’s Most Famous Literary Circle (Donald Books/iUniverse). Edited by Nat Benchley and Kevin C. Fitzpatrick. Available Here.

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Frank and Bertha Case

I Found Frank CaseI Found Frank Case

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

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.

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

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.

Marxfest 4

Lineup for Marx Brothers Festival AnnouncedLineup for Marx Brothers Festival Announced

The Marx Brothers Festival Marxfest returns in May in time to celebrate the centennial of their first Broadway hit, I’ll Say She Is. There will be activities over May 17-19 in Manhattan and May 24-26 in Coney Island. Tickets go on sale April 2.

The lineup of events was revealed this week for what is the nation’s biggest and most complete celebration of the Marx Brothers. It follows ten years after the 2014 Marxfest by the same organizers.

Participants include Tony and Emmy nominee Robert Klein, The New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik, Marx Brothers biographer Robert S. Bader, New York Times comedy columnist Jason Zinoman, performer and director Frank Ferrante, revivalist Noah Diamond, author of “The Marx Brothers Miscellany” Trav S.D., and Groucho’s grandson, Andy Marx.

“This edition of Marxfest features more than twenty events, headlined by Marx Brothers experts, celebrated authors and journalists, and showbiz legends,” Diamond said. “It’s been a hundred years since the Brothers made their Broadway debut, but their influence on the culture of New York City goes on and on.”

Trav S.D. opined, “The greatest convocation of dyed-in-the-wool Marx Brothers lovers since the Jazz Age — and with more bearded professors than Horse Feathers!”

Marxfest 1
Programming for May 17 includes “Out of Line: Al Hirschfeld Draws the Marxes & Friends” presented by Katherine Eastman the Al Hirschfeld Foundation archives manager, Adam Gopnik on the relationship between Groucho and S.J. Perelman, and “Unheard Marx Brothers” audio rarities by archivist John Tefteller. The Party of the First Part, which features music by Josh Max, will close out the opening day celebrations.

Marxfest 2On May 18, events will include “Saturday Morning Cartoons,” an animated look at the Marxes; Trav S.D.’s salon “The Marx Bros: Vaudeville, Silent Film & Broadway;” “You Brett Your Life, a Marx trivia hour hosted by Brett Leveridge;” The Marx Brothers on Broadway Walking Tour with Noah Diamond; and “The Herring Barrel Revue” cabaret.

Marxfest 3May 19 programming includes Robert Bader’s overview of the Marx Brother’s 1914-15 tour in “Home Again;” a conversation between Jason Zinoman and Robert Klein; a look at I’ll Say She Is with Noah Diamond; and a screening of the 1933 film Duck Soup followed by a talk with Adam Gopnik and Noah Diamond at the landmark United Palace Theatre in Washington Heights.

On May 20, Vince Giordano & The Nighthawks will present “A Night of Marx Brothers Era Music” at Birdland.

Marxfest 4From May 24-26, the festival will continue programming on Coney Island. Events will include “An Evening with Marx & Ferrante” (Andy Marx and Frank Ferrante); a burlesque tribute to the Marx Brothers by Jonny Porkpie titled “A Day on the Boardwalk, A Night at the Stripshow;” Robert Farr’s “The Wisecracks Around Here Were Not Appreciated” at the Coney Island Museum; astrologer Kathy Biehl’s “Marxes in the Stars: The Astrology of The Brothers & Their Mother;” Trav S.D.’s “The Marx Brothers, Coney Island, and Sideshow;” a celebration of Harpo Marx’s artistry, and more.

Visit Marxfest.org for more information or to purchase tickets, which go on sale April 2.