Algonquin Round Table News Video Interview WRNN

Video Interview WRNN

Video interview on WRNN TV in New York. Andrew Whiteman interviews Kevin C. Fitzpatrick on the history of the Vicious Circle. Filmed at the Algonquin Hotel.

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Laurence Stallings

A Look at Laurence Stallings, WriterA Look at Laurence Stallings, Writer

Laurence Stallings

Laurence Stallings

Laurence Tucker Stallings is mentioned about three times a year by the pop culture world. Usually it has to do with his screenwriting hits The Big Parade or She Wore A Yellow Ribbon appearing on television. There has only been one book about him, a not very good academic tome (by Joan T. Brittain, Laurence Stallings, Twain, 1975). When I was working on the book, I did reach a person who was connected to his late children. The man was so unhelpful, and unpleasant, that I am still incredulous at his lack of wanting to perpetuate the life story of Stallings. Today is the anniversary of his birth, in 1894, which is a good reason to present some of my information about him.

I’ve always liked the Stallings story. He served as a U.S. Marine in World War I, and was grievously wounded. Stallings joined the staff of the New York World in 1922 to write book reviews and editorials. The war veteran was passionately liberal; when he referred to a black man as “Mr.” in print, he angered readers in his Georgia hometown.

Stallings and Maxwell Anderson were both working at the World when they decided to collaborate on a play. Stallings, who’d lost a leg in combat as a Marine, knew he wanted to write an antiwar drama. The pair co-wrote What Price Glory? for producer-director Arthur Hopkins, and it exploded at the Plymouth Theatre on September 5, 1924. It was the first play to use the profanity-laced speech of soldiers, and its grim view of war was riveting. The story of First Sergeant Quirt (William Boyd) and Captain Flagg (Louis Wolheim) in the trenches of France, the script used Stallings’ experiences in World War I. It ran for 433 performances and got the playwrights contracts in Hollywood.

Not much is ever written about him, and a lot is not accurate or focuses just on his movies. Here is a little more on an overlooked American writer.

The Algonquin Round Table considered Laurence Stallings a hero because of his sacrifices as a WWI combat veteran; many members had also served in the A.E.F. His combat experience would provide him the inspiration to write passionately about war in a bestselling book, a gritty Broadway drama, magazine stories and fiction, and a smash hit silent film.

Laurence Tucker Stallings, Jr., was born November 25, 1894, in Macon, Georgia. He graduated from Wake Forest with a B.A. in 1915. His first job was a reporter on the Atlanta Constitution in 1915.

In 1917 Stallings enlisted in the Marines and was sent to France, where he participated in some of the bloodiest campaigns of the war. He received a battlefield commission, and took over command of a Marine outfit. At the Battle of Belleau Wood near the Marne River, Stalling was wounded in June 1918. Awarded the Purple Heart and the Croix de Guerre, Stallings spent eight months recovering in France before being shipped home after the Armistice was signed.

Once home, he married his college sweetheart. Helen Poteat was the daughter of the Wake Forest president, William Louis Poteat. The wedding was on March 6, 1919, at the campus in Winston-Salem. After the wedding, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where Stallings joined The Washington Times as a reporter and earned his M.A. from Georgetown. His writing career was taking off, however, Stallings never fully recovered from his combat injuries, and in 1922 had to have his right leg amputated.

Laurence Stallings

Laurence Stallings

After recuperating Stallings and his wife moved to New York, where he joined the World. A tall, dark-haired, good-looking Southerner, Stallings sometimes came to the Algonquin Hotel wearing his artificial leg, other times he’d walk in on a crutch. His newspaper co-workers Heywood Broun and Deems Taylor introduced him to the Vicious Circle after it was an established institution.

In 1924 Stallings was writing book reviews three days a week for the World. He was tapped by executive editor Herbert Bayard Swope to be on the “Op. Ed” page with Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Broun, Frank Sullivan, and Alexander Woollcott. He shared an office with Maxwell Anderson, at the time a fellow editorial writer. They collaborated on their first play, What Price Glory? for the powerful Broadway producer Arthur Hopkins, who’d also staged Don Marquis’ hit play The Old Soak. With What Price Glory? Stallings was able to share his real-life experiences about the trauma and heartbreak of soldiers in combat. It was a hit at the Plymouth Theater, 236 West 45th Street, and ran for more than a year.

But he was not finished with the Great War. His novel, Plumes, was a contender for the 1925 Pulitzer Prize, but it was edged out by another Algonquin regular, Edna Ferber, for her novel So Big. Broun weighed in on the subject in his column:

“I have heard that Plumes, by Laurence Stallings, was the second choice of the committee, but this is not official, as the body does not announce any honorable mentions. At any rate, Plumes should be high up on the list. There are things in Plumes which seem to me better than any portion of So Big, but it is a less evenly developed book and is justly placed below Miss Ferber’s novel. If there were such a thing as a pentathlon, or all around prize, Laurence Stallings could not be shut out from victory, since he wrote a novel which proved a contender and collaborated with Maxwell Anderson on a play which ranked near the top.”

His novel was adapted for the silent movie epic The Big Parade that same year, and was among the first blockbusters in the pre-talking pictures era. Directed by maverick filmmaker King Vidor, The Big Parade played to sell-out crowds across the nation. A railroad car was used to transport the orchestra, lighting, and personnel from town to town. The film, made just seven years after the conflict, was the first to show the gritty side of the war on the big screen. The central character, played by John Gilbert, like Stallings, also loses a leg in battle.

Stallings and his wife had two children together during their rocky 17-year marriage. In December 1936 Stalling’s wife sued him for divorce in Reno, Nevada, charging him with cruelty. In a private trial a judge granted the divorce and the 17-year union was over. He walked away from his family and gracious estate in North Carolina, and never saw them again. Stalling was free to marry a girlfriend, Louisa St. Leger Vance, a 25-year-old writer. On March 18, 1937, the couple was married in Manhattan at her parents’ home, 410 East 57th Street. They had two children. Stallings moved to Hollywood, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In the 1930s Stallings had a tumultuous decade. He couldn’t choose between literature or motion pictures. He was close to Robert Benchley and could be spotted at “21” together; both men had the same issues of working for art or commerce. In 1934 Stallings became an editor of Fox Movietone News (offices 460 West 54th Street), and resided at 50 East 77th Street. In 1935 Fox sent him to Ethiopia for what turned out to be a two-year assignment. He was looking for the start of the next war with four cameramen and 50,000 feet of film as they waited for Mussolini to invade. Stallings filed stories for the New York Times on the conflict, and then returned home to America. He abandoned his first wife and two small daughters after his 1937 remarriage. When the U.S. entered World War II, Stallings went back on active duty with the Marines in 1942. He served as an intelligence officer in the Pentagon, and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel.

Laurence T. Stallings gravesite. Photo: Nigel Quinney.

Laurence T. Stallings gravesite. Photo: Nigel Quinney.

Stallings returned to California to write screenplays, magazine articles, and books. He lived in Pacific Palisades and his health deteriorated. Doctors had to remove his other leg in 1963, the same year he published a stirring account of World War I, The Doughboys. Stallings died on February 28, 1968, at his home. He received a military burial with a Marine Corps honor guard. Stallings is interred outside San Diego in Ft. Rosecrans National Cemetery.

Adapted from The Algonquin Round Table New York, A Historical Guide (Globe Pequot Press). Order the book here.

Heywood Broun on Babe Ruth in 1922Heywood Broun on Babe Ruth in 1922

With baseball season around the corner, let’s look at one of the many Algonquin Round Table links to the game. In the world of New York newspaper columnists in the Jazz Age, Heywood Broun stood out from the rest. His column “It Seems To Me” was beloved, and he could tackle any subject. Broun had gotten his start as a baseball writer, and continued his passion for ballpark trips even when he became a celebrity covering Broadway and news stories. Broun had seats in the press box to watch Babe Ruth in his amazing 1921 season with the New York Yankees. This column appeared in 1922.

Ruth Vs. Roth
By Heywood Broun

We picked up “Who’s Who in America” yesterday to get some vital statistics about Babe Ruth, and found to our surprise that he was not in the book. Even as George Herman Ruth there is no mention of him. The nearest name we could find was: “Roth, Filibert, forestry expert; b. Württemberg, Germany, April 20, 1858; s. Paul Raphael and Amalie (Volz) R., early edn. in Württemberg—”

There is in our heart not an atom of malice against Prof. Roth (since September, 1903, he has been “prof. forestry, U. Mich.”), and yet we question the justice of his admission to a list of national celebrities while Ruth stands without. We know, of course, that Prof. Roth is the author of “Forest Conditions in Wisconsin” and of “The Uses of Wood,” but we wonder whether he has been able to describe in words uses of wood more sensational and vital than those which Ruth has shown in deeds. Hereby we challenge the editor of “Who’s Who in America” to debate the affirmative side of the question: Resolved, That Prof. Roth’s volume called “Timber Physics” has exerted a more profound influence in the life of America than Babe Ruth’s 1921 home-run record.

Heywood Broun

Heywood Broun

The question is, of course, merely a continuation of the ancient controversy as to the relative importance of the theorist and the practitioner: should history prefer in honor the man who first developed the hypothesis that the world was round or the other who went out and circumnavigated it? What do we owe to Ben Franklin and what to the lightning? Shall we celebrate Newton or the apple?

Personally, our sympathies go out to the performer rather than the fellow in the study or the laboratory. Many scientists staked their reputations on the fact that the world was round before Magellan set sail on the Vittoria. He did not lack written assurances that there was no truth in the old tale of a flat earth with dragons and monsters lurking just beyond the edges.

But suppose, in spite of all this, Magellan had gone on sailing, sailing until his ship did topple over into the void of dragons and big snakes. The professors would have been abashed. Undoubtedly they would try to laugh the misfortune off, and they might even have been good enough sports to say, “That’s a fine joke on us.” But at worst they could lose nothing but their reputations, which can be made over again. Magellan would not live to profit by his experience. Being one of those foreigners, he had no sense of humor, and if the dragons bit him as he fell, it is ten to one he could not even manage a smile.

By this time we have rather traveled away from Roth’s “Timber Physics” and Ruth’s home-run record, but we hope that you get what we mean. Without knowing the exact nature of “Timber Physics,” we assume that the professor discusses the most efficient manner in which to bring about the greatest possible impact between any wooden substance and a given object. But mind you, he merely discusses it. If the professor chances to be wrong, even if he is wrong three times, nobody in the classroom is likely to shout, “You’re out!”

The professor remains at bat during good behavior. He is not subject to any such vicissitudes as Ruth. Moreover, timber physics is to Mr. Roth a matter of cool and calm deliberation. No adversary seeks to fool him with speed or spitballs. “Hit it out” never rings in his ears. And after all, just what difference does it make if Mr. Roth errs in his timber physics? It merely means that a certain number of students leave Michigan knowing a little less than they should—and nobody expects anything else from students.

On the other hand, a miscalculation by Ruth in the uses of wood affects much more important matters. A strike-out on his part may bring about complete tragedy and the direst misfortune. There have been occasions, and we fear that there will still be occasions, when Ruth’s bat will be the only thing which stands between us and the loss of the American League pennant. In times like these who cares about “Forest Conditions in Wisconsin”?

Coming to the final summing up for our side of the question at debate, we shall try to lift the whole affair above any mere Ruth versus Roth issue. It will be our endeavor to show that not only has Babe Ruth been a profound interest and influence in America, but that on the whole he has been a power for progress. Ruth has helped to make life a little more gallant. He has set before us an example of a man who tries each minute for all or nothing. When he is not knocking home runs he is generally striking out, and isn’t there more glory in fanning in an effort to put the ball over the fence than in prolonging a little life by playing safe?

***

Adapted from The Lost Algonquin Round Table: Humor, Fiction, Journalism, Criticism and Poetry From America’s Most Famous Literary Circle (Donald Books/iUniverse). Edited by Nat Benchley and Kevin C. Fitzpatrick. Available Here.

Marxfest

Marx Brothers Festival Returns in May 2024Marx Brothers Festival Returns in May 2024

It is exciting to announce that the Marx Brothers Festival is returning in May 2024 exactly ten years after the first successful Marxfest in New York. This week, the Marxfest committee announced the festival dates (May 17-19 and May 24-26), and revealed the names of just three of the many great events being planned:

ROBERT KLEIN REMEMBERS: The comedy legend on the Marx Brothers and their influence, in conversation with Jason Zinoman of The New York Times.

UNHEARD MARX BROTHERS: Audio Rarities with collector extraordinaire John Tefteller.

THE THRILL OF I’LL SAY SHE IS: The ultimate centennial experience.

MarxfestThere will be two weekends of Marx entertainment, May 17-19 in Manhattan and May 24-26 in Coney Island. The full calendar of events and ticket sales have not been announced yet. Currently a crowdfunding campaign is underway, and this supports the festival operations and expenses.

Noah Diamond of the committee wrote, “Donate to our crowdfunding campaign. Of course, this is another dreamy, fan-driven project with limitless reserves of nerve, moxie, pluck, vim, and vigor, but other resources are in shorter supply. We’re reliant on donations from fellow Marx Brothers fanatics to help defray expenses like space rentals, printing, equipment, and administration. You will not be surprised to hear that there are fabulous donor rewards described on our crowdfunding page — or that through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law!”

Noah sent us a fantastic tie of the Marx Brothers to the Algonquin Round Table. Harpo Marx was a member, and he was close friends with Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott. Noah dug up the 1924 Robert Benchley review from Life, following the Broadway debut of the Marx Brothers:

We are happy to announce that the laughing apparatus of this department, long suspected of being out-of-date and useless, is in perfect running order, and can be heard any evening at the Casino Theatre during those magnificent moments when the Marx Brothers are participating in “I’ll Say She Is.” Not since sin laid it’s heavy hand on our spirit have we laughed so loud and so offensively. And as we picked ourself out of the aisle following each convulsion, there rang through our soul the joyful paean: “Grandpa can laugh again! Grandpa can laugh again!”

“I’ll Say She Is” is probably one of the worst revues ever staged, from the point of view of artistic merit and general deportment. And yet when the Marx Brothers appear, it becomes one of the best. Certainly we have never enjoyed one so thoroughly since the lamented Cohan Revues, and we will go before any court and swear that two of the four Marxes are two of the funniest men in the world.

We may be doing them a disservice by boiling over about them like this, but we can’t help it if we feel it, can we? Certainly the nifties of Mr. Julius Marx will bear the most captious examination, and even if one in ten is found to be phony, the other nine are worth the slight wince involved at the bad one. It is certainly worth hearing him, as Napoleon, refer ti the “Marseillaise” as the “mayonnaise,” if the next second, he will tell Josephine that she is as true as a three dollar cornet. The cornet line is one of the more rational of the assortment. Many of them are quite mad, and consequently much funnier to hear but impossible to retell.

There is no winching possible at the pantomime of Mr., Arthur Marx. It is 110 proof artistry. To watch him during the deluge of knives and forks from his coat-sleeve, or in the poker game (where he wets one thumb and picks the card off with the other), or—oh, well, at any moment during the show is to feel a glow at being alive in the same generation. We hate to be like this, for it is inevitable that we are prejudicing readers against the Marx boys by our enthusiasm, but there must be thousands of you who have seen them in vaudeville (where almost everything that is funny on our legitimate stage seems originate) and who know that we are right.

Do not miss this absolutely fun program of events around New York, all times to the centennial of “I’ll Say She Is.”