The first public walking tours of 2018 will be in January and February. The walks are led by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, author of The Algonquin Round Table New York and A Journey into Dorothy Parker’s New York.
Algonquin Round Table Tour
Mondays, meet at the Algonquin Hotel 10:45, walks begin at 11:00.
29 January
5 February
12 February
26 February
Advance tickets required, click here to book.
Dorothy Parker’s Upper West Side
Wednesdays, meet at Riverside Drive and W. 72nd Street 10:45, walks begin at 11:00.
31 January
7 February
14 February
28 February
Advance tickets required, click here to book.
If the attendance is consistent more dates will be added in March and April. Keep watching the blog and Facebook page for announcements.
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!
Seventy-five years ago today, hard-working Robert Charles Benchley died in his hospital room. He was just 56 years old. Benchley, once the country’s premier humorist, had stayed active until the end. In 1933, he began his first radio show, broadcast on CBS. He also appeared in 46 movie shorts between 1928 and 1945. Columnist Sidney Carroll wrote in 1942, “The movies get a comedian and the literary muse seems destined to lose her most prodigal son for good. Literature lost out because so many people in Hollywood think Robert Benchley looks much funnier than he writes. And they keep him busy looking at the cameras instead of writing for them.” At the time, Benchley was on the Paramount lot making two forgettable films: Out of the Frying Pan and Take a Letter, Darling.
Throughout World War II Benchley kept up an extremely busy pace in Hollywood. He lived in a bungalow in the Garden of Allah and worked steadily in movies and radio. In his early fifties Benchley eventually suffered from health problems exaggerated by his heavy drinking. He was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and high blood pressure. In late 1945 he returned to New York for a break, but his health slid downhill. He collapsed in his room at the Royalton Hotel on West Forty-fourth Street. He died in the Harkness Pavilion at the Columbia University Medical center on Fort Washington Avenue, on November 21, 1945.
Following a private service his body was cremated and the ashes were given to his family. At the cemetery in Nantucket, however, the family discovered that the urn was empty. When the correct cremains were located, his ashes were interred properly. His headstone, chosen by his son, Nat, was carved with his New Yorker byline, an em dash before his name. His beloved wife, Gertrude, is buried next to him. She died in 1980.
Today, what is the legacy of Robert C. Benchley, 75 years after his death? Many of his humor columns were collected in best selling books. They are all long out of print. No major publisher is publishing his work; his words live on in digital archives maintained by his two most famous magazine affiliations, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. His words do reach new audiences decades after his death; earlier this month the humorist and television writer Merrill Markoe told New York magazine that Benchley was a major influence on her style.
If anyone new to Benchley–born in the last 25 years–they would probably first discover him on TCM. His movies appear often. You can press a button and stream him right now on Disney+ and watch The Reluctant Dragon. The Robert Benchley Society, founded by David and Mary Trumbull in 2003, is the only organization keeping his spirit alive. Like some of his peers from the Algonquin Round Table–Marc Connelly, Deems Taylor, Alexander Woollcott–Benchley is teetering on being lost to history, remembered only by those hardcore old comedy fans that keep talking about him in the way we reminisce about things we’ll never see, such as Vaudeville and the Ziegfeld Follies.
Benchley was a teetotaller until he fell in with the Vicious Circle in the Speakeasy Era in his thirties. Twenty years later, drink did him in. Is it appropriate to raise a glass to him? Since we cannot sit at his table at “21” today, I think it’s more than appropriate, the milestone of today demands it.
The trailer has been released for the new David Fincher-directed film Mank, about Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz. The movie will come out in theaters in November and on Netflix in December. Mank is only the second biographical film about a member of the Algonquin Round Table; Alan Rudolph’s Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) was the first.
Mankiewicz was one of the great screenwriters and producers of the Golden Age of Hollywood. He is one of the 30 members of the Vicious Circle whom I wrote about in my book The Algonquin Round Table New York: A Historical Guide. There are many facts about his incredible life (for example, he produced the three best Marx Brothers movies); and most probably will not make it into this film, sadly, but I’ll share them here.
1. He was born in New York City in 1897 but as a child grew up in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where his father was a teacher. As a boy his beloved bicycle was stolen. That was the inspiration for Rosebud in Citizen Kane.
2. He was incredibly gifted and entered Columbia when he was just 15, graduating three years later and then onto graduate school. He was a voracious reader, and it’s said that his book collection in Hollywood was among the greatest private libraries in the city.
3. Mankiewicz enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and served in World War I. Because he spoke fluent German, this helped him in post-war Germany, where he worked for the Red Cross and as a newspaper correspondent.
4. He did not join the Round Table until he moved to New York in 1922, brought there by George S. Kaufman. Mankiewicz worked at the World, where he met Franklin P. Adams and Heywood Broun. He then transferred to the Times. All of these newspaper experiences are in Citizen Kane.
5. Mank was hired by Harold Ross and Jane Grant as one of the first writers for The New Yorker. Alexander Woollcott called him “the funniest man in New York,” and Robert E. Sherwood said he was “the truest wit of all.”
He quit journalism and went to Hollywood in 1926, right when silents transitioned to talkies. He famously sent a telegram back to New York to Ben Hecht: “Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots. Don’t let this get around.”
For fans of the Algonquin Round Table, it looks like the cast has other characters with names familiar to the group and The New Yorker. There are roles in the film for George S. Kaufman, Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, and S.J. Perelman. The always-great Gary Oldman plays Mankiewicz.
The trailer and the photos from the film look amazing. Fincher of course is a meticulous auteur, and if the film is anything like his previous work such as The Social Network or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, this movie will do justice to the tragic life and brilliant career of Herman Mankiewicz.
