Travel by the Book TV is Duane & Rachel Andersen who are reading and traveling. They love to visit spots that are associated with their favorite books and authors. This is about the Algonquin Round Table and features many of the names.
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117 Years Ago Today 1st Guests Arrived at the Algonquin Hotel117 Years Ago Today 1st Guests Arrived at the Algonquin Hotel
Today is the anniversary of the opening of the Algonquin Hotel in 1902. Guests 117 years ago checked into the newest hotel on the block, located at No. 59-63 West Forty-fourth Street. When the Vicious Circle launched a century ago in 1919, it was but just 17 years old.
For the 2015 book The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Globe Pequot), an entire chapter is devoted to the history of the hotel, its ownership era, and legends. A brief excerpt about the early days in 1902 begins:
“It isn’t the oldest hotel on the block. Both the Royalton at No. 44 and the Iroquois at No. 49 opened in 1900. In 1901-1902 the Thompson-Starrett Company built the Algonquin Hotel for the Puritan Realty Company. Puritan bought the plot, 72 x 100 feet, for $180,000 in November 1901. Construction of the one-hundred thirty-six foot tall building took just seven months. Puritan Realty put up the money, $500,000, and Thompson-Starrett acted as the architects and contractors. Twenty-eight year-old architect Goldwin Starrett worked on the hotel with his brothers Theodore, Ralph, and William.
It opened as the Hotel Algonquin, named for the Native Americans who were populous in New England during the pre-colonial era. “Algonquin” was chosen at the suggestion of first owner Ann Stetson Foster, because the Hotel Iroquois was already next-door. “It will make a veritable Indian settlement,” she said.
The first guests checked in on November 22, 1902. The twelve-story hotel had 192 rooms and suites. A room and bath en suite cost $2 a day, while a three-bedroom suite with private hall, sitting room, dining room, three bathrooms, and library would set you back $10. Following extensive renovations in 2012, the hotel now has 181 rooms; of those 25 are suites.”
The hotel is local and national literary landmark. We lift a glass to its continued history, success, and achievements. Here is a great podcast recorded inside the hotel by Greg and Tom, The Bowery Boys.
Dorothy Parker and the Earlier A. A. Milne BusinessDorothy Parker and the Earlier A. A. Milne Business
With A. A. Milne back in movie theaters today, it’s time to revisit the beef that Dorothy Parker had with the author. The feud was flamed by her mentor, Franklin P. Adams, always known as FPA.
It’s common knowledge about what she thought about Winnie the Pooh, from Mrs. Parker’s book review published in The New Yorker, about The House at Pooh Corner, from October 1928:
And it is that word “hummy,” my darlings, that marks the first place in “The House at Pooh Corner” at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.
However, this is a year after Mrs. Parker had found herself in a mess about Milne. Her publisher, Boni & Liveright, were marketing her debut poetry collection Enough Rope with advertising copy, “America’s A. A. Milne is a lady. She is Dorothy Parker.” Not very smart.
Mrs. Parker wrote a response for FPA called “When We Were Very Sore.” This was published on March 10, 1927 in the New York World. She likely wasn’t paid for this verse, which is written in the Milne style. FPA had a lot of fun with this one. He quipped, “What lady was America’s A. A. Milne? Answer: That was no lady, that was Dorothy Parker.”
When We Were Very Sore
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.
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.