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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Listen to The Secret Life of Walter MittyListen to The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Today is the 74th anniversary of recording The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1944).
“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” with Robert Benchley. Recorded for CBS on Dec. 20, 1944. Based on the 1939 short story by James Thurber, this is the full radio dramatization. It comes from “This Is My Best” radio series. Thurber praised Benchley’s performance, and didn’t like the 1947 Danny Kaye musical comedy version. Mogul David Selznick approached Benchley in 1940 about making a short film based on the Mitty story that first appeared in The New Yorker, but it didn’t work out. Less than a year after this recording was made, Benchley died in New York. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is included in “Thurber Writings and Drawings” (Library of America series).
From The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide (Lyons Press, 2015), by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, with a foreword by Anthony Melchiorri.
Classic Woollcott Letter Turns 85 Years OldClassic Woollcott Letter Turns 85 Years Old
One of the greatest keepers of correspondence of the Algonquin Round Table was the man who the group formed around, Alexander Woollcott. Of all 30 members of the Vicious Circle, only he had his letters posthumously published. One of his greatest hits, from November 10, 1934, turns 85 years old today.
It was written to lyricist and friend Ira Gershwin, among the biggest names in Broadway from the last century. Woollcott was close to him and his brother, George Gershwin. For whatever reason–lost to history today–Ira decided to use the word “disinterested” in the presence of the public and Woollcott. The electric chair that Woollcott wanted to put the Broadway star onto just leaps off the page. Among the others in the letter are Ben Hecht, the newspaperman-turned-playwright who co-wrote The Front Page with Woollcott’s pal, Charles MacArthur, and producer Jed Harris.
The letter in all its glory is presented here.
At the time Woollcott was a radio star on CBS, writing for The New Yorker, and spending months at his vacation home in Vermont on Lake Bomoseen.
There are many, many other Woollcott letters out there. One of these is a form letter he sent on behalf of a liquor company. It was an early form of product placement, disguised as a letter. The letter is written about from time to time by spirits and Americana writers.
Do YOU own any letters written by members of the Algonquin Round Table? That are not forgeries? Contact me and I’ll gladly look them over.
Sergeant Woollcott’s 1919 Postcard from FranceSergeant Woollcott’s 1919 Postcard from France
The legends of the Algonquin Round Table trace their roots not to Manhattan but to places such as the Chateau De Pierrefonds. Never heard of it? The Round Table was born in World War I. Half of the 30 members were in France in uniform, or else as civilians working as volunteers or journalists. A postcard that was included in the Franklin P. Adams Archive from 1919 is one part of this legacy.
It is widely known that Capt. Adams, Pvt. Harold Ross, and Sgt. Alexander Woollcott were all members of The Stars and Stripes, the Army newspaper written and edited by Doughboys, for the Doughboys, at the behest of Gen. John J. Pershing. The trio formed a long friendship that would continue after the war.
When the Armistice was declared on Nov. 11, 1918, Adams was already back in New York. He served 196 days overseas and then returned home, arriving in New York on September 8, 1918, and honorably discharged December 3. But Ross and Woollcott remained behind, running the last issues of the newspaper and enjoying their time overseas. When the U.S. military was shipping home hundreds of thousands of men and women in uniform from France to go home, Ross and Woollcott were not on the packed troopships, jammed in with hordes of men who needed a bath. After wrapping up their Army careers, they took their discharges in France and took a civilian ocean liner home after a nice Spring vacation with a cruise around the Mediterranean. They didn’t get back to New York Harbor for several weeks.
Meanwhile, F.P.A. was back at work at the New York Tribune on Park Row. He continued to receive cards and letters from his friends stationed in France. Woollcott sent him a Christmas card of a fat Santa Aleck trying to get down a chimney. In March, a postcard arrived. Woollcott was touring battlefields with Pvt. C. LeRoy Baldridge, the staff illustrator on Stars and Stripes, who would later go on to publish a book of his Army art with Woollcott’s help.
The pair were doing what so many other Doughboys were doing, seeing the battlefields and no doubt collecting souvenirs. The soldiers found themselves at Chateau De Pierrefonds, in the Oise department in the Hauts-de-France region of Northern France. This was where fierce fighting had just occurred mere months before. Woollcott was right where today is the stunning and beautiful Oise-Aisne American Cemetery and Memorial which contains the graves of 6,013 American soldiers who died in battle.
A cheeky Woollcott sent this to F.P.A. on March 2, 1919:
Baldridge and I are out cruising around the battlefields and having a whale of a time. Pvt. Ross, our boss, says we must be back Tuesday but to hell with him. This little shack was infected with Americans all Summer.
A. Woollcott
[Underneath the Passed as Censored stamp is the name Stephen T. Early, who was an officer who worked in the office with the men, and went on to work for FDR.]
Shortly after this postcard was mailed, the men all lined up to be discharged. “The day after Sgt. Woollcott was demobilized he met General Pershing. “He’s a civilian now,” said Lieutenant Early, who introduced Woollcott to the C. in C. “He looks like a soldier to me,” said the General. “In Sgt. Woollcott’s twenty-two months in the Army, it was the first time anybody had said anything of the kind to him.”
Three months later, on a warm day in June, the Algonquin Round Table met for the first time in the Pergola Room on the Hotel Algonquin. Woollcott later presented a soldier’s portrait of himself–drawn by Baldridge–to Adams and Ross.
For more stories about the Algonquin Round Table, pick up a copy of The Algonquin Round Table New York, A Historical Guide</em> (Lyons Press), available wherever you buy books.