Algonquin Round Table News The Vermont Alexander Woollcott Painting

The Vermont Alexander Woollcott Painting

Woollcott

The Vermont Painting.

Now that my book is out, I am looking at what went right and what went wrong with The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. Today I was in a file of letters, and I came across one that I never got a response to.

In 2010, I wrote to the director of the Castleton Free Library, in Castleton, Vermont. This is not far from where Alexander Woollcott and his friends had a vacation house on an island in nearby Lake Bomoseen. From what I learned, Woollcott, the egomaniac that he was, gifted to the little library a large oil painting of himself. It is the work of John Decker, a close Hollywood friend of John Barrymore and W. C. Fields. It’s based on a photo of Woollcott wearing his favorite vest, embroidered by Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt II.

At the time of the letter I was working like crazy to collect as many photos, rare and unseen, as possible. I loved this lost little piece of art, and wanted a photo of it for the book. At the most, someone just needed to get on a ladder and snap a photo for me. (The one in this blog post is from this site).

Here is my letter from Nov. 3, 2010:

I’m an author currently completing a book about New York City authors in the 1920s and one of my subjects is Alexander Woollcott. I was delighted to learn that there is a fantastic painting of Mr. Woollcott hanging in the Castleton Free Library.

I’m writing to humbly request if you could ask someone to send me a photo of the painting as it hangs in the library. Because of Mr. Woollcott’s lifelong association with literature, I’d like to include a photo of your library and the painting in my book.

If you would be so kind as to let me know if you can assist me, I’d appreciate it very much. I have until the end of the year to track down photographs, and having this addition would be a real asset to the book.

Sincerely,

Kevin C. Fitzpatrick

And… I never got a reply. One day I hope to go to Vermont and visit the lake house and I’m going to the library to see the painting.

Related Post

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.

NYPL

Algonquin Round Table Conversation, January 31 at New York Public LibraryAlgonquin Round Table Conversation, January 31 at New York Public Library

The New York Public Library has launched the Community Conversations initiative. On Wednesday, January 31, 6:30 p.m., the Mid-Manhattan branch will host a lecture and conversation “Literary Life in New York: Then and Now” to focus on the Algonquin Round Table history. It will feature Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide.

The event is free and open to the public. It will be held in the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 42nd and Fifth Avenue (476 Fifth Avenue). Enter on the 42nd Street side entrance. Currently the Mid-Manhattan branch is closed for renovations and it is temporarily located in the flagship building of the NYPL.

About the evening: Mid-Manhattan Library is organizing a series of lectures and conversations around the life of the mind for the average New Yorker. Following each public lecture, librarians will facilitate a dialogue with the goal of connecting neighbors and building new relationships through meaningful dialogue about local issues.

The second talk in the series, “Literary Life in New York: Then and Now,” with Kevin Fitzpatrick, focuses on the Algonquin Round Table. In 1919—a century ago next year—The Algonquin Round Table first started having their famous luncheons at the Hotel Algonquin. Since that time a direct line can be drawn through New York from those 30 members of the Vicious Circle. Their impact on books, magazines, theater, film, and music is still around us today. In this talk, Kevin will give an overview of the history of the Algonquin Round Table, and lead us from the New York era of the Jazz Age and speakeasies to the modern era of streaming music and Twitter.

Following the talk, join us for a community conversation on creative life in New York. How has literary life changed in the digital age? Share your insights and join the dialogue. The brand new Community Conversations initiative at The New York Public Library introduces a space for discussion on local topics that matter most to you. Local librarians at select branches will co-facilitate these dialogues with community organizations, inviting anyone and everyone to the table to share and listen. Let’s create a truly democratic space where we can connect together through meaningful dialogue.

Space is limited, reserve free tickets here.

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.