Algonquin Round Table History,News I Found Frank Case

I Found Frank Case

Frank and Bertha 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.

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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.

Donald Ogden Stewart

Donald Ogden Stewart in Hot WaterDonald Ogden Stewart in Hot Water

On This Date October 19, 1942: The FBI file on Donald Ogden Stewart is more than 1,000 pages. I conducted a Freedom of Information request several years ago to get it all. The government kept tabs on him for 30 years. I have some of it in the new book. Of all the Algonquin Round Table members, Stewart paid the biggest price for his political beliefs and convictions.

FBI Page

FBI Page

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun on Being Fired in the Spring, Summer, and Winter (Summer is Best)Heywood Broun on Being Fired in the Spring, Summer, and Winter (Summer is Best)

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun

This is one of the very last columns that Heywood Broun ever published. Broun ran his own bi-weekly newspaper, Nutmeg (later called Broun’s Nutmeg) in Stamford, Connecticut, where he resided. It was in operation in the late 1930s, and was concurrent as he wrote a syndicated column “It Seems to Me” for Scripps-Howard and organized the Newspaper Guild. After his contract was allowed to lapse in late 1939, he moved to the New York Post. He only had one column appear in the paper, as he succumbed to pneumonia on December 18 at age 51. This column was written ten days before his death.

Old Newspaperman
By Heywood Broun
December 9, 1939

It happens suddenly. On a Tuesday, perhaps, you’re sitting around kidding back and forth in the City Room and maybe growing reminiscent about some story you covered quite a long time back. Yes, that’s the way it was. It gave an opening to a young squirt reporter and he said, “Uncle Heywood, how did you like Jenny Lind’s first concert?”

Now naturally I never saw Jenny Lind but I did ride in horse-driven buses on Fifth Avenue and I saw Admiral Dewey come parading across Washington Square and we all hollered because he had won the Battle of Manila and made America a world power.

Everybody got to calling me Uncle Heywood and at the drop of a hat I could be induced to talk about Matty and the old, old Giants. And when the mood gripped me I would even go back to the days of Dan McGann. You can always spot an old newspaperman by his tendency to talk and write of things in the past. Every one of us will insist that they don’t grow fighters like Fitzsimmons any more.

There isn’t any set time for becoming an old newspaperman but around fifty is the dangerous age and at fifty-one the line is definitely marked as the groove on the floor of the Alamo.

I’ve been fired in the Spring, the Summer and early Winter. I like it best in the Summer. Three times in thirty-one years isn’t so much to be fired. The first firing is often worse than the last. It’s very discouraging to get canned when you’re young. That’s the way it was with me. I was twenty-one and working on the Morning Telegraph. My stall in the old Eighth Avenue car barn was right next to Bide Dudley. He was getting $35 a week and my salary was $28. I wanted $30 but when I asked for it they fired me.

The next job was a long time coming. Fortunately I was a man of character and living at home and so I didn’t go into insurance or business but just borrowed money from my father and sat around for six months doing nothing. Eventually Burdick gave me a job on the Tribune.

He was a shy city editor and when he mentioned the salary he didn’t want to pronounce the fatal words. He gazed away off at a distant window and wrote on a piece of scratch paper $25. Newspaper work is like that. You can go perfectly straight down once you are over the top of the mountain but detours are necessary as you come up from the valley.

As a matter fact it was a mountain which made me. Burdick gave me the Tribune job on the strength of a recommendation from Fred Pitney, his star reporter. Pitney remembered that when I covered the E. H. Harriman death watch for the Evening Sun, I had crawled up through the woods at Arden and come right to the door of the big house. Getting there didn’t get me anything but a boot from the butler. Still after a year and a half Pitney remembered me as an energetic young man. I’ve seen that hill since and now I couldn’t walk it let alone make the grade on my belly.

Pretty nearly ten years went by before I got fired again. The World did it. I had gone onto the paper on my own volition and through the seductive influence of Mr. Swope.

The Sacco-Vanzetti case has something to do with it but only indirectly. First of all I went on a one-man strike because they said I wasn’t to write about the case anymore. They didn’t disagree with my opinions but they objected to violence of language. “Is Harvard to be known hereafter as Hangman’s House?” Was the sentence which made the trouble.

At the end of six or seven months the good shoemaker and the poor fish peddler were dead and things were patched up for me to go back to the paper. Getting fired was something of a surprise. Being bereft of topics I dashed off a little masterpiece for The Nation saying that I thought the editorial policy of The Morning World was a shade on the timid side. I believe I said, “The World on numerous occasions has been able to take two, three, or even four different stands with precisely the same material in hand. So constant were the shifts during the Sacco-Vanzetti case that the paper seemed like an old car going up a hill.”

Naturally I didn’t expect the editors to like it but after all The Nation isn’t so big and umbrage wasn’t in the scope of my vision. Blithely on the way home I bought a morning paper but I only looked at the sport page. Arriving home I was asked as I came in the door whether or not I had read The World. “Sure,” I replied, “Yankees win, Giants win, Dodgers lose.” Those were the old, old Giants.

“But have you seen your own page?” my wife persisted.

“I’m saving that up for later,” I told her.

“You needn’t,” she said, “you’re fired.”

And so I was. There in my old spot was a box explaining that Mr. Broun had been dropped on account of disloyalty. I did object to the word a little because the casual reader would hardly know whether I had robbed the till or sat on the editor’s hat.

Still it was Summer and I was full of energy and I went around opening my shirt to show my scars and having a fine time in general. And presently I got a job with Scripps-Howard which lasted eleven years. This ran out in the Winter.

Since Nutmeg is a publication which belongs to what the Parisians wittily call “Le Presse Confidentiale,” or French to that effect, I think I may reveal that the farewell conference with Roy W. Howard passed off in entire peace and amity.

He said, “I’ve talked it over with my associates and we’ve decided not to make you an offer. It would be just too much grief. The price of newsprint is going up and we think the place to cut expenses is among the high price specialists in order to protect the run of the mine reporter.”

“Roy,” I said (all Scripps Howard executives are known by the first name even to the humblest employee), “I can’t possibly make any squawk about that because I’ve made that same speech myself at dozens of Guild meetings.”

And so we shook hands and had a drink and everything was very pleasant. But I still think it is better to be fired in the Summer.

For more about Heywood Broun and his newspaper career, be sure to get a copy of The Algonquin Round Table New York, A Historical Guide (Globe Pequot Press).