Algonquin Round Table News Walk in the Footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table in New Guide Book to Jazz Age Writers & Wits

Walk in the Footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table in New Guide Book to Jazz Age Writers & Wits

Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press)

Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press)

New York—Retrace the steps of the legendary wits that convened at the Algonquin Hotel in 1919 who called themselves the Vicious Circle. THE ALGONQUIN ROUND TABLE NEW YORK: A HISTORICAL GUIDE is the first book to fully explore the whole group and their world. It’s packed with photos and maps.

“That is the thing about New York,” wrote Dorothy Parker in 1928. “It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day.”

Now you can journey back there, in time, to a grand city teeming with hidden speakeasies, luxurious Broadway playhouses, and dazzling skyscrapers. In these places, Parker and her cohorts in the Vicious Circle sharpened their wit, polished their writing, and captured the energy and elegance of the time. Robert Benchley, Parker’s best friend, became the first managing editor of Vanity Fair before Irving Berlin spotted him onstage in a Vicious Circle revue and helped launch his acting career. Edna Ferber, creator of bestselling melodramas, wrote the Pulitzer-winning So Big as well as Show Boat and Giant. Jane Grant pressed her first husband, Harold Ross, into starting The New Yorker. Herman Mankiewicz was a Times wage slave who soaked up the atmosphere, later pouring it into his screenplay for Citizen Kane. Parker wrote for Vanity Fair and Vogue before ascending the throne as queen of the Round Table, earning everlasting fame (but rather less fortune) for her award-winning short stories and unforgettable poems. These are a few of the thirty figures from backstage Broadway to newspaper city rooms in the book.

Explore their favorite salons and saloons, their homes and offices (most still standing), while learning about their colorful careers and private lives. Packed with archival photos, drawings, and other images—including never-before-published material—this illustrated historical guide includes current information on all locations. Use it to retrace the footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table, and you’ll discover that the golden age of Gotham still surrounds us.

About the Author
Kevin C. Fitzpatrick (author), president of the Dorothy Parker Society, is the author of Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide (Lyons Press). He has been leading walking tours from the Algonquin Hotel for 15 years. Visit him at fitzpatrickauthor.com.

Anthony Melchiorri (foreword) is the creator and host of Hotel Impossible on the Travel Channel. A former general manager of the Algonquin Hotel, he has twenty years experience at the top hotels in the industry.

To Pre-Order: The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide, by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, (Lyons Press January 2014; ISBN: 978-1-4930-0757-8)

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FPA

Radio Pioneers of the Algonquin Round TableRadio Pioneers of the Algonquin Round Table

CBS

Deems Taylor, composer Sigmund Romberg, and Alexander Woollcott in the studio, circa 1935.

When I was compiling the material for my book, The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide, I was struck by the group’s versatility. I’d originally believed the group, which met from 1919 to about 1927, was the realm of newspaper and magazine writers. However, by researching the biographies of all thirty members, it became clear the group had their fingers in every form of mass entertainment and media.

It turns out that there were members with careers that stretched from silent pictures to live television, such as actresses Margalo Gillmore and Peggy Wood. Robert Benchley made the first all-talking short, The Treasurer’s Report, released in March 1928 by Fox. Marc Connelly and Dorothy Parker both wrote captions and scenarios for the silents, then later jumped into writing plays and talkies.

But if there is one format that most of the members drew paychecks from after the Round Table ended, that’s radio. Many members of the group appeared as guests, commentators, writers, or actors. Benchley and Parker had their short stories adapted for dramatizations. Harpo Marx whistled his answers on-air. Others made the transition from newspapers to microphones, trading on their popularity as writers.

The book has more than 100 locations around the New York area tied to the lives of the “Vicious Circle” that met at the Algonquin Hotel on West Forty-fourth Street. Here are three spots from their radio days, all within walking distance of the Round Table.

FPA

New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Franklin P. Adams on Information Please.


NBC, 30 Rockefeller Plaza

Franklin P. Adams was a veteran newspaper columnist with 35 years’ experience when his services were no longer needed. Radio saved him, and a quiz show was the last hurrah of his brilliant career. In 1937, the Herald Tribune didn’t renew his contract. With an encyclopedic knowledge of literature and trivia and a family of five to support during the height of the Great Depression, the offer to be a regular panelist on a radio quiz show came as a blessing.

The format of Information Please was simple but brilliant. Listeners mailed in questions. If the question stumped a panel of experts, the listener won a small cash prize. The show was unrehearsed and conducted before a live studio audience. The 30-minute program moved like lightning, and experts and guests had to answer quickly. On May 17, 1938, Information Please debuted on the NBC Blue Network (later ABC). Clifton Fadiman, a literary critic who wrote for The New Yorker, was master of ceremonies. The show was an overnight success, and more than 25,000 questions poured into the studios.

One question put to F.P.A. in 1938 was to finish the Joe Miller gag, “Who was that lady I saw you with last night?” To which he replied, “There are two answers: That was no lady, that was my wife. And the other is that was no lady that was your wife.” The show continued for ten years, mostly on NBC. Over time, just about every Round Table member appeared as a guest.

NBC has always been associated with Rockefeller Center. John D. Rockefeller Jr., son of the founder of Standard Oil, owned the land and helped create the landmark. The area bounded by Fifth and Sixth avenues from 48th to 51st streets contained numerous speakeasies before demolition in 1930. NBC has called 30 Rockefeller Plaza home since the building was completed in 1933, spanning corporate ownership from General Electric to Comcast. More than a dozen buildings form the complex today, with “30 Rock” as centerpiece. Radio studios were the original tenants (hence Radio City) and now television studios. The Art Deco buildings are landmarks inside and out.

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall.


CBS, Carnegie Hall, 881 Seventh Avenue

When radio networks became national broadcasters in the late 1920s, some of the live programming was classical music. Symphonies and orchestras dominated as networks tried to reach upper class listeners. William S. Paley signed the New York Philharmonic to CBS in a major coup and gave the network enormous prestige.

Beginning in 1936, Deems Taylor served as commentator during intermissions. Already a star composer and conductor, he had been a newspaper music critic but never a broadcaster. His role at CBS was an enormous success, and Taylor found himself giving weekly music lecturers to a huge audience during Sunday afternoon concerts in Carnegie Hall. He helped listeners understand what they were hearing and helped a generation appreciate classical music. Taylor also introduced listener questions, interviewed orchestra members during intermissions, and brought the whole experience of classical music into the nation’s living rooms. A broadcaster for more than ten years, Taylor became the country’s best-known authority on music.

The building was saved from a wrecking ball in 1960 and underwent multi-million dollar renovations in recent years. Today the Isaac Stern auditorium, the main performance hall, seats 2,800.

CBS, 485 Madison Avenue

Alexander Woollcott loved to pontificate. He was a ham, a showman, and a natural as a radio broadcaster. He also notoriously recycled magazine articles and sold them to two and even three publications. Getting a radio show allowed him to retell those same stories to another audience and saved his career. From 1930 to 1943, Woollcott worked on the top floor in Studio One of the CBS Building. He was “The Town Crier” on panel discussion radio program, with national sponsorships. It was an early form of talk radio, with notable guests brought in and Woollcott acting as a moderator.

On January 23, 1943, a few days after he turned 56, Woollcott suffered a stroke during a live panel discussion. He was carried out of the CBS studios in his chair and brought to Roosevelt Hospital, but it was too late. A week later, a memorial service was held at Columbia University’s McMillan Academy Theatre.

In 1930, the 24-story Columbia Broadcasting Building was completed for the two-year-old CBS radio network at 485 Madison Avenue to designs by J. E. R. Carpenter. This was CBS’s home until 1965, when the company moved to the 38-story CBS Building designed by Eero Saarinen on Sixth Avenue and 52nd Street, nicknamed “Black Rock.”

***

Originally written for Cladrite Radio.

citizen kane

Round Table Movies in the Library of CongressRound Table Movies in the Library of Congress

GIANT

Edna Ferber and James Dean on the set of Giant.

The Algonquin Round Table has many ties to film history. With so many writers and actors, it’s no wonder there are links to many classic Hollywood productions. Most of these names are in The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. Lucky for us, the Library of Congress National Film Registry is around.

Motions pictures that members of the Round Table contributed to, and that the Library of Congress has added to the National Film Registry. These films are to be preserved in the national archives for perpetuity:

A Night at the Opera (Harpo Marx, star; George S. Kaufman, screenplay)

Citizen Kane (Herman J. Mankiewicz, writer)

Duck Soup (Harpo Marx, star)

Giant (Edna Ferber, writer)

Showboat (Edna Ferber, writer)

It’s A Wonderful Life (Dorothy Parker, un-credited script doctor)

The Big Parade (Laurence Stallings, writer)

The Philadelphia Story (Donald Ogden Stewart, adapted screenplay)

The Sex Life of the Polyp (Robert Benchley, writer & star)

The Sound of Music (Peggy Wood, co-star)

How many have you seen? Do you think any were overlooked?

Mank

5 Things You Don’t Know About Herman J. Mankiewicz5 Things You Don’t Know About Herman J. Mankiewicz

The trailer has been released for the new David Fincher-directed film Mank, about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. The movie will come out in theaters in November and on Netflix in December. Mank is only the second biographical film about a member of the Algonquin Round Table; Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) was the first.

Mankiewicz was one of the great screenwriters and producers of the Golden Age of Hollywood. He is one of the 30 members of the Vicious Circle whom I wrote about in my book The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. There are many facts about his incredible life (for example, he produced the three best Marx Brothers movies); and most probably will not make it into this film, sadly, but I’ll share them here.

1. He was born in New York City in 1897 but as a child grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where his father was a teacher. As a boy his beloved bicycle was stolen. That was the inspiration for Rosebud in Citizen Kane.

2. He was incredibly gifted and entered Columbia when he was just 15, graduating three years later and then onto graduate school. He was a voracious reader, and it’s said that his book collection in Hollywood was among the greatest private libraries in the city.

3. Mankiewicz enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in World War I. Because he spoke fluent German, this helped him in post-war Germany, where he worked for the Red Cross and as a newspaper correspondent.

4. He did not join the Round Table until he moved to New York in 1922, brought there by George S. Kaufman. Mankiewicz worked at the World, where he met Franklin P. Adams and Heywood Broun. He then transferred to the Times. All of these newspaper experiences are in Citizen Kane.

5. Mank was hired by Harold Ross and Jane Grant as one of the first writers for The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott called him “the funniest man in New York,” and Robert E. Sherwood said he was “the truest wit of all.”

He quit journalism and went to Hollywood in 1926, right when silents transitioned to talkies. He famously sent a telegram back to New York to Ben Hecht: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.”

For fans of the Algonquin Round Table, it looks like the cast has other characters with names familiar to the group and The New Yorker. There are roles in the film for George S. Kaufman, Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and S.J. Perelman. The always-great Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz.

The trailer and the photos from the film look amazing. Fincher of course is a meticulous auteur, and if the film is anything like his previous work such as The Social Network or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this movie will do justice to the tragic life and brilliant career of Herman Mankiewicz.