Algonquin Round Table History,News Ruth Hale the Iconoclast

Ruth Hale the Iconoclast

Ruth Hale, feminist

Ruth Hale

Ruth Hale, circa her post-college days.

There was no bigger iconoclast sitting at the Algonquin Round Table than Ruth Hale; None of the members had a gloomier end to their life than she did. She is one of the six female Algonquin regulars that are overlooked. Today Hale is completely forgotten by everyone except the most serious American women’s rights scholars, a name lost to history for a cause she deeply believed in. Hale devoted all of her time and energy to equal rights during the Jazz Age.

The writer-publicist was married to Heywood Broun—but nobody dared call her Mrs. Broun. Hale was the co-founder, with Jane Grant, of the Lucy Stone League, an organization whose motto was “My name is the symbol for my identity and must not be lost.” A biographer termed Hale “nearly fanatical” about women’s rights. She attacked “head-on and without humor, except for mordant satire.” Hale’s cause led her to fight for women to be able to preserve their maiden name—legally—after marriage. Hale sued the U.S. State Department and challenged in the courts any government edict that would not recognize a married woman by the name she chose to use.

Hale was Southern by birth, but she did not fit the stereotype of easygoing grace, charm, and humility. She was born in Rogersville, Tennessee, on July 5, 1886. Her father was an attorney and her mother a high school mathematics teacher. When she was ten her father died and three years later Hale was sent to boarding school at the Hollins Institute (today Hollins University) in Roanoke, Virginia. At sixteen she left to attend Drexel Academy of Fine Art (today Drexel University) in Philadelphia, where she studied painting and sculpture. But writing was her true calling.

When Hale was eighteen she became a journalist in Washington, D.C., writing for the Hearst syndicate. Hale was a sought-after young socialite, and attended parties at the White House when President Woodrow Wilson was in office. She worked at the Washington Post until she went back to Philadelphia to become drama critic for the Public Ledger. She also dabbled in sports writing, which was uncommon for women to do at the time. At an early age, Hale was working in a man’s world. One of her biggest accomplishments was to lose her Southern accent, which she took pride in achieving.

Hale moved to New York City about 1915 and was a feature writer for the Times, the Tribune, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. Hale also did a bit of acting, and posed for artistic nude portraits for fashion photographer Nickolas Muray. She became a sought-after theatrical publicist, and worked for the top producers on Broadway.

She was introduced to Broun at a New York Giants baseball game at the Polo Grounds. They were married on June 6, 1917. When Broun was sent to France to report on the war, she went along too, writing for the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. The couple left Paris before the war ended when Hale became pregnant. Returning to New York, the couple set up house on the Upper West Side at 333 West 85th Street. The unusual marriage had Hale on the first floor and Broun occupying the second floor.

In 1918 Hale gave birth the couple’s only child, Heywood “Woodie” Broun III (later as a sports broadcaster, Woodie added his mother’s name to his, and was professionally known as Heywood Hale Broun). The couple led completely separate lives. Broun even squired actresses and showgirls around town.
Early in 1921 she took a stand with the U.S. State Department, demanding that she be issued a passport as Ruth Hale, not as Mrs. Heywood Broun. The government refused; no woman had been given a passport up until that time with her maiden name. She was unable to cut through the red tape, and the government issued her passport reading “Ruth Hale, also known as Mrs. Heywood Broun.” She refused to accept the passport, and cancelled her trip to France. So did her husband.

In May 1921 she was believed to be the first married woman to be issued a New York City real estate deed in her own name, for an apartment house on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Not long afterward, she was chosen president of the Lucy Stone League. Broun was among the men present; other Lucy Stoners were Franklin P. Adams and his second wife, Esther Root, Janet Flanner, Jane Grant, Beatrice Kaufman, and John Barrymore’s playwright wife Michael Strange (Blanche Oelrichs). In August 1927 Hale took a leading role in protesting the executions of accused anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. She traveled to Boston as part of the defense committee, along with Dorothy Parker and John Dos Passos. The men were put to death despite international protests. The campaign had a galvanizing effect on her, leading her to fight against capital punishment.

Ruth Hale

Ruth Hale (illustration by Ralph Barton) from the collection Nonsenseorship (1922). Broun can be seen in the window, running a still.

During the 1920s Hale continued to write. She was among the earliest contributors to The New Yorker’s “Talk of the Town” in 1925. Hale worked as a theatrical press agent and reviewed books for the Brooklyn Eagle. She also ghost wrote many of Broun’s columns and reviews. As the decade closed, Hale spent considerable time on women’s rights causes and less time in journalism. Hale and Broun were quietly divorced in Nogales, Mexico, in November 1933.

The last years of her life were filled with sadness. At one time she was a lively and feisty presence on the metropolitan scene, writing for the best newspapers and magazines, married to the supreme raconteur, and hosting brilliant house parties on the Upper West Side. But as the Twenties drew to a close she withdrew from life and spent her days alone at Sabine Farm, in Stamford, Connecticut, living in a rural shack with almost no amenities, cutting herself off from her old friends and alienating Broun and their teen-age son, Woodie.

By late 1933 she had been a recluse for almost five years. She went to Mexico, and obtained a quiet divorce, on the grounds she and Broun lived apart for more than five years. It did not come out in the papers until three months later. By then she was telling friends, “ ‘Ruth Hale, spinster,’ I like it quite well. I can go back to my friends as Ruth Hale. At least I won’t have that god-awful tag, ‘Mrs. Heywood Broun.’ ”

However, the divorce did little to calm her soul. She was forty-seven and not well. “After forty a woman is through,” she told a friend. “I’m going to will myself to die.” Her health deteriorated rapidly. She lost the use of her legs. Hale became weak and stopped eating and refused medical care. On September 18, 1934, she lapsed into unconsciousness at Sabine Farm. Broun rushed her to Doctors Hospital, 170 East End Avenue, but it was too late. Her son said later, “At her own wish she was cremated, and because she had not wanted one, there was no sort of memorial service. One day she was there and the next day she was gone…”

Hale’s mother took her ashes back to her Tennessee hometown without telling Broun or their son. She secretly buried her daughter’s remains in the family plot in the Old Rogersville Presbyterian Cemetery, under a headstone that completely ignored any of her accomplishments. It omits her lifetime’s passion for independence and feminism:

Ruth Hale
Daughter of Annie Riley and J. Richards Hale
And For 17 Years the Wife of Heywood Broun

Adapted from The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Globe Pequot Press). Book information here.

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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.

Divided By Three

The Flop of 1934, Divided By Three Fails to Find an AudienceThe Flop of 1934, Divided By Three Fails to Find an Audience

Eighty-five years ago the Algonquin Round Table members Peggy Leech and Bea Kaufman were licking their wounds after their debut collaboration flopped on Broadway. The two friends worked for about a year on a drama that failed to succeed. Divided by Three was the first play to open the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. It had a popular cast, led by megastar Judith Anderson, with a young Jimmy Stewart in a supporting role.

Divided By Three has not been published and is not available. It ran for just 32 performances in October 1934. Among the tepid reviews were this one from Time, 10/15/1934:

Divided by Three (by Margaret Leech Pulitzer and Beatrice Kaufman; Guthrie McClintic, producer) was written to make room for the superb abilities of smoldering Judith Anderson. It borrows the plot of Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude and puts Miss Anderson back in the role she enormously enjoyed for a year. In Divided by Three again she is divided by: 1) her aggressive middle-aged lover (James Rennie); 2) her incredibly unsuspecting putterer of a husband; 3) her son (James Stewart). She finds it desirable and, until the second act curtain, possible to accept all three simultaneously.

It is her son who learns of her adultery, through the kindly offices of his priggish fiancée. As priggish as she, he calls his mother a whore and withdraws his love from both mother and fiancée. The last act allows everyone (still except the husband) to become readjusted to the situation. The son still feels that adultery is wrong; his mother is still determined to have what she wants. But just as she decides to come clean and divorce her husband, he comes home with the news that he has been wiped out in the stock market. Like the noble character she is, she drops the divorce plans. Her lover, after a minute’s anguish, decides after all to stay for dinner.

Only Judith Anderson makes this implausible story a moving and challenging affair. She bats her heavy-lidded eyes, settles her welterweight shoulders and makes her audience feel that something important is happening. Noteworthy are Donald Oenslager’s handsome settings.

Divided By Three

Judith Anderson rehearsing with director Guthrie McClintic for “Divided by Three” in his garden. ©The New York Public Library.


More newsworthy than their first play are Divided by Three’s authors.

Margaret Leech Pulitzer is the second wife of that studious, shy Ralph Pulitzer whom newspapermen have never forgiven for letting his late great father’s New York World be sold, and whom they howled out of accepting the post of administrator of the NRA newspaper code.

Beatrice Bakrow Kaufman is the wife of playwright George S. Kaufman (Of Thee I Sing, Once in a Lifetime, Dinner at Eight, Merrily We Roll Along), who lives on meat and chocolate peppermints, talks to himself on the street and is on the administration committee of the NRA theatre code.

Both Mrs. Pulitzer and Mrs. Kaufman are ringleaders of Manhattan’s first-nighting, croquet-playing, waggish literary-theatrical-social set. Mrs. Pulitzer has a two-year-old daughter; Mrs. Kaufman has a nine-year-old daughter. Mrs. Pulitzer graduated from Vassar, has written three competent novels, hates bridge, likes travel. Mrs. Kaufman quit Wellesley after a year; quit the University of Rochester to marry Mr. Kaufman. She is convinced she is No. 1 woman croquet player of the U. S.

Last week Manhattan critics tried to like their friends’ first play but only half of them succeeded.

Book Launch Party at the AlgonquinBook Launch Party at the Algonquin

The Algonquin Round Table New York (Globe Pequot Press) was published today. I hope you can find a copy in your local bookstore. Here you can enter your ZIP code and it will tell you the closest bookstore to shop local.

We had a fantastic book launch party at the Algonquin Hotel. What was wonderful was the descendants of the Vicious Circle that attended, I thank them so much!