Algonquin Round Table
Encyclopedia
The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City
writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke
, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel
from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley
.
In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.
. Toohey, annoyed at New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott
for refusing to plug one of Toohey's clients in his column, organized a luncheon supposedly to welcome Woollcott back from World War I
, where he had been a correspondent for Stars and Stripes
. Instead Toohey used the occasion to poke fun at Woollcott on a number of fronts. Woollcott's enjoyment of the joke and the success of the event prompted Toohey to suggest that the group in attendance meet at the Algonquin each day for lunch.
The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (now called The Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As they increased in number, Algonquin manager Frank Case
moved them to the Rose Room and a round table. Initially the group called itself "The Board" and the luncheons "Board meetings." After being assigned a waiter named Luigi, the group re-christened itself "Luigi Board
." Finally they became "The Vicious Circle" although "The Round Table" gained wide currency after cartoonist Edmund Duffy
of the Brooklyn Eagle
caricature
d the group sitting at a round table and wearing armor.
Charter members of the Round Table included:
Membership was not official or fixed so many others moved in and out of the Circle. Some of these included:
and poker
. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope
, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx
, and writer Ring Lardner
sometimes sitting in. The group also played charades (which they called simply "The Game") and the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
Members often visited Neshobe Island
, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"— but governed by Aleck Woollcott as a "benevolent tyrant," as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams
charitably put it— located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont
. There they would engage in their usual array of games including Wink murder
, which they called simply "Murder", plus croquet
.
A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait.
.
No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein
, which served as something of a salon
for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz
providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped," a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead
, Helen Hayes
, Ruth Gillmore
, Lenore Ulric
and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins
Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill
Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By - An A. A. Milne
Play."
The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report
. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin
hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week. In 1928, Report was later made into a short sound film
in the Fox Movietone
sound-on-film system by Fox Film Corporation. The film kicked off a second career for Benchley in Hollywood.
With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped to duplicate it with an "official" Vicious Circle production open to the public with material performed by professional actors. Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners. The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances.
? These things do not last forever." Some members of the group remained friends after its dissolution. Parker and Benchley in particular remained close up until his death in 1945, although her political leanings did strain their relationship. Others, as the group itself would come to understand when it gathered following Woollcott's death in 1943, simply realized that they had nothing to say to one another.
Not all of their contemporaries were fans of the group. Their critics accused them of logrolling
, or exchanging favorable plugs of one another's works, and of rehearsing their witticisms in advance. James Thurber
was a detractor of the group, accusing them of being too consumed by their elaborate practical jokes. H. L. Mencken
, who was much admired by many in the Circle, was also a critic, commenting to fellow writer Anita Loos
that "their ideals were those of a vaudeville
actor, one who is extremely 'in the know' and inordinately trashy."
The group showed up in the 1923 best-seller Black Oxen
by Gertrude Atherton
. She sarcastically described a group she called "the Sophisticates":
Groucho Marx
, brother of Round Table associate Harpo, was never comfortable amidst the viciousness of the Vicious Circle. "The price of admission is a serpent's tongue and a half-concealed stiletto
." Even some members of the Round Table disparaged it later in life. Dorothy Parker in particular criticized the group.
Despite Parker's bleak assessment, and while it is true that some members of the Round Table are perhaps now "famous for being famous
" instead of for their literary output, Round Table members and associates did contribute significantly and enduringly to the literary landscape, including Pulitzer Prize
-winning work by Circle members Kaufman, Connelly and Sherwood (who won four) and by associate Ferber, and the continuing legacy of Ross's New Yorker. Others made lasting contributions to the realms of stage and screen, not least of which are the films of Harpo and the Marx Brothers
and Benchley, and Parker herself has remained renowned for her short stories and literary reviews.
The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged there, helped earn the Algonquin Hotel its status as a New York City Historic Landmark. The hotel was so designated in 1987. In 1996 the hotel was designated a national literary landmark by the Friends of Libraries USA based on the contributions of "The Round Table Wits." The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel.
Although the Rose Room was removed from the Algonquin in a 1998 remodel, the hotel paid tribute to the group by commissioning and hanging the painting A Vicious Circle by Natalie Ascencios
, depicting the Round Table, and also created a replica of the original table. The hotel also occasionally stages an original musical production, The Talk of the Town, in the Oak Room. Its latest production started September 11, 2007, and ran through the end of the year.
A film about the members, The Ten-Year Lunch
(1987), won the Academy Award
for Best Documentary Feature.
The dramatic film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
(1994) recounted the Round Table from the perspective of Dorothy Parker.
In 2009, Robert Benchley's grandson, Nat Benchley
, and co-editor Kevin C. Fitzpatrick published The Lost Algonquin Round Table, a collection of the early writings of the group.
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...
, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel
Algonquin Hotel
The Algonquin Hotel is a historic hotel located at 59 West 44th Street in Manhattan . The hotel has been designated as a New York City Historic Landmark....
from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...
.
In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.
Origin
The group that would become the Round Table began meeting in June 1919 as the result of a practical joke carried out by theatrical press agent John Peter TooheyJohn Peter Toohey
John Peter Toohey was an American writer and publicist. He is best known as a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
. Toohey, annoyed at New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Woollcott
Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
for refusing to plug one of Toohey's clients in his column, organized a luncheon supposedly to welcome Woollcott back from World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, where he had been a correspondent for Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes (newspaper)
Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...
. Instead Toohey used the occasion to poke fun at Woollcott on a number of fronts. Woollcott's enjoyment of the joke and the success of the event prompted Toohey to suggest that the group in attendance meet at the Algonquin each day for lunch.
The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (now called The Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As they increased in number, Algonquin manager Frank Case
Frank Case
Frank Case was an American hotelier and author. He owned and managed the Algonquin Hotel during the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table and wrote a number of books about his experiences with the hotel and the Round Tablers....
moved them to the Rose Room and a round table. Initially the group called itself "The Board" and the luncheons "Board meetings." After being assigned a waiter named Luigi, the group re-christened itself "Luigi Board
Ouija Board
Ouija Board is a Thoroughbred mare racehorse owned by Edward Stanley, 19th Earl of Derby and trained by Ed Dunlop. In a career spanning four seasons, she won 10 of her 22 races, 7 of them Group 1s, including the Epsom Oaks in 2004 and the Hong Kong Vase in 2005...
." Finally they became "The Vicious Circle" although "The Round Table" gained wide currency after cartoonist Edmund Duffy
Edmund Duffy
Edmund Duffy was born March 1, 1899 in Jersey City, New Jersey to a middle class family. Duffy made his name as an editorial cartoonist for The Baltimore Sun. He joined the paper in 1924 and received high praise from H. L. Mencken. He was among the first white cartoonist to attack the Ku Klux Klan...
of the Brooklyn Eagle
Brooklyn Eagle
The Brooklyn Daily Bulletin began publishing when the original Eagle folded in 1955. In 1996 it merged with a newly revived Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and now publishes a morning paper five days a week under the Brooklyn Daily Eagle name...
caricature
Caricature
A caricature is a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness. In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others.Caricatures can be...
d the group sitting at a round table and wearing armor.
Membership
- Franklin Pierce AdamsFranklin Pierce AdamsFranklin Pierce Adams was an American columnist, well known by his initials F.P.A., and wit, best known for his newspaper column, "The Conning Tower", and his appearances as a regular panelist on radio's Information Please...
, columnist - Robert BenchleyRobert BenchleyRobert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor...
, humorist and actor - Heywood BrounHeywood BrounHeywood Campbell Broun, Jr. was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and...
, columnist and sportswriter (married to Ruth HaleRuth Hale (feminist)Ruth Hale was a freelance writer who worked for women's rights in New York City, USA, during the era before and after World War I...
) - Marc ConnellyMarc ConnellyMarcus Cook Connelly was an American playwright, director, producer, performer, and lyricist. He was a key member of the Algonquin Round Table, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1930.-Biography:...
, playwright - Ruth HaleRuth Hale (feminist)Ruth Hale was a freelance writer who worked for women's rights in New York City, USA, during the era before and after World War I...
, freelance writer who worked for women's rights - George S. KaufmanGeorge S. KaufmanGeorge Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
, playwright and director - Dorothy ParkerDorothy ParkerDorothy Parker was an American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th century urban foibles....
, critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter - Harold RossHarold RossHarold Wallace Ross was an American journalist and founder of The New Yorker magazine, which he edited from the magazine's inception in 1925 to his death....
, The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
editor - Robert E. SherwoodRobert E. SherwoodRobert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
, author and playwright - John Peter TooheyJohn Peter TooheyJohn Peter Toohey was an American writer and publicist. He is best known as a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
, publicist
- Alexander WoollcottAlexander WoollcottAlexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table....
, critic and journalist
Membership was not official or fixed so many others moved in and out of the Circle. Some of these included:
- Tallulah BankheadTallulah BankheadTallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
, actress - Edna FerberEdna FerberEdna Ferber was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels were especially popular and included the Pulitzer Prize-winning So Big , Show Boat , and Giant .-Early years:Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan,...
, author and playwright - Margalo GillmoreMargalo GillmoreMargaret Lorraine "Margalo" Gillmore was an English American film, stage and television actress....
, actress - Jane GrantJane GrantJane Grant was a New York City journalist who co-founded The New Yorker with her first husband, Harold Ross.-Her life:...
, journalist and feminist (married to Ross) - Ruth HaleRuth Hale (feminist)Ruth Hale was a freelance writer who worked for women's rights in New York City, USA, during the era before and after World War I...
, journalist and feminist (married to Heywood Broun) - Beatrice Kaufman, editor and playwright (married to George S. KaufmanGeorge S. KaufmanGeorge Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic. In addition to comedies and political satire, he wrote several musicals, notably for the Marx Brothers...
) - Margaret LeechMargaret LeechMargaret Kernochan Leech also known as Margaret Pulitzer, was an American author and historian, who won two Pulitzer Prizes in history, for her books Reveille in Washington and In the Days of McKinley .She was born in Newburgh, New York, obtained a B.A...
, writer and historian - Neysa McMeinNeysa McMein-Life:Born Marjorie Moran in Quincy, Illinois, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1913 went to New York City. After a brief stint as an actress, she turned to commercial art...
, magazine illustrator - Alice Duer MillerAlice Duer MillerAlice Duer Miller was an American writer and poet.-Biography:Alice Duer was born in New York City on July 28, 1874 into a wealthy family. She was the daughter of James Gore King Duer and Elizabeth Wilson Meads. Elizabeth was the daughter of Orlando Meads of Albany, New York...
, writer - Donald Ogden StewartDonald Ogden StewartDonald Ogden Stewart was an American author and screenwriter.-Life:His hometown was Columbus, Ohio. He graduated from Yale University, where he became a brother to the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity , in 1916 and was in the Naval Reserves in World War I.After the war he started to write and found...
, playwright and screenwriter - Frank SullivanFrank Sullivan (writer)Frank Sullivan was an American humorist, best remembered for creating the character Mr. Arbuthnot the Cliche Expert....
, journalist and humorist - Deems TaylorDeems TaylorJoseph Deems Taylor was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music.-Career:Taylor initially planned to become an architect; however, despite minimal musical training he soon took to music composition. The result was a series of works for orchestra and/or voices...
, composer - Peggy WoodPeggy WoodPeggy Wood was an American actress of stage, film and television.-Early career:She was born Mary Margaret Wood in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Eugene Wood, a journalist, and Mary Gardner, a telegraph operator. She was a direct descendant of Daniel Boone...
, actress
Activities
In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. The group was devoted to games, including cribbageCribbage
Cribbage, or crib, is a card game traditionally for two players, but commonly played with three, four or more, that involves playing and grouping cards in combinations which gain points...
and poker
Poker
Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bet sizes, and how many rounds of betting are allowed.In most modern poker...
. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope
Herbert Bayard Swope
Herbert Bayard Swope was a U.S. editor, journalist and intimate of the Algonquin Round Table. Swope spent most of his career at the New York World newspaper. He was the first and three time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Reporting...
, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx
Harpo Marx
Adolph "Harpo" Marx was an American comedian and film star. He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances...
, and writer Ring Lardner
Ring Lardner
Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre.-Personal life:...
sometimes sitting in. The group also played charades (which they called simply "The Game") and the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."
Members often visited Neshobe Island
Neshobe Island
Neshobe Island is an island in Lake Bomoseen in the town of Castleton, U.S. state of Vermont. It is particularly known for its association during the 1920s and 1930s with the Algonquin Round Table, a group of literary figures....
, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"— but governed by Aleck Woollcott as a "benevolent tyrant," as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams
Samuel Hopkins Adams
Samuel Hopkins Adams was an American writer, best known for his investigative journalism.-Biography:Adams was born in Dunkirk, New York...
charitably put it— located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
. There they would engage in their usual array of games including Wink murder
Wink murder
Wink Murder, Murder Wink, Wink Death or Wink Wink Murder is a party game or parlour game. It is also variously known as Killer, Murder in the Dark and Lonely Ghost...
, which they called simply "Murder", plus croquet
Croquet
Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting plastic or wooden balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.-History:...
.
A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait.
No Sirree!
Given the literary and theatrical activities of the Round Table members, it was perhaps inevitable that they would write and stage their own revue. No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, was a take-off of a then-popular European touring revue called La Chauve-Souris, directed by Nikita BalieffNikita Balieff
Nikita Balieff , was an Armenian vaudevillian, stage performer, writer, impresario, and director best known as the master of ceremonies and creator of La Chauve-Souris theater group.-Theatrical career begins in Moscow:...
.
No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein
Neysa McMein
-Life:Born Marjorie Moran in Quincy, Illinois, she attended the Art Institute of Chicago and in 1913 went to New York City. After a brief stint as an actress, she turned to commercial art...
, which served as something of a salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...
providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped," a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Bankhead
Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an award-winning American actress of the stage and screen, talk-show host, and bonne vivante...
, Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes
Helen Hayes Brown was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award...
, Ruth Gillmore
Ruth Gillmore
Ruth Emily Gillmore was an English American stage actress.Gillmore was the daughter of Frank Gillmore, former president of Actors' Equity, and the actress Laura MacGillivray, and the sister of actress Margalo Gillmore...
, Lenore Ulric
Lenore Ulric
Lenore Ulric was a star of the Broadway stage and Hollywood films of the silent-film and early sound era. Her father, Franz Xavier Ulrich, was a United States Army hospital steward...
and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins
Zoe Akins
Zoë Akins was an American playwright, poet, and author.- Early years :Born in Humansville, Missouri, Akins was educated in Illinois and later in St. Louis, where she began her writing career...
Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill
Eugene O'Neill
Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright and Nobel laureate in Literature. His poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish...
Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By - An A. A. Milne
A. A. Milne
Alan Alexander Milne was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work.-Biography:A. A...
Play."
The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report
The Treasurer's Report
The Treasurer's Report is a comedy sketch, made into a short film, written and performed by Robert Benchley. The film, made in the then-new Fox Movietone, documents an assistant treasurer of an organization struggling to present its yearly report...
. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week. In 1928, Report was later made into a short sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
in the Fox Movietone
Movietone sound system
The Movietone sound system is a sound-on-film method of recording sound for motion pictures that guarantees synchronization between sound and picture. It achieves this by recording the sound as a variable-density optical track on the same strip of film that records the pictures...
sound-on-film system by Fox Film Corporation. The film kicked off a second career for Benchley in Hollywood.
With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped to duplicate it with an "official" Vicious Circle production open to the public with material performed by professional actors. Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners. The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances.
Decline of the Round Table
As members of the Round Table moved into ventures outside New York City, inevitably the group drifted apart. By the early 1930s the Vicious Circle was broken. Edna Ferber said she realized it when she arrived at the Rose Room for lunch one day in 1932 and found the group's table occupied by a family from Kansas. Frank Case was asked what happened to the group. He shrugged and replied, "What became of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second StreetCroton Distributing Reservoir
The Croton Distributing Reservoir, also known as the Murray Hill Reservoir, was an above-ground reservoir at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It supplied the city with drinking water during the 19th century. The reservoir was a man-made lake in area,...
? These things do not last forever." Some members of the group remained friends after its dissolution. Parker and Benchley in particular remained close up until his death in 1945, although her political leanings did strain their relationship. Others, as the group itself would come to understand when it gathered following Woollcott's death in 1943, simply realized that they had nothing to say to one another.
Public response and legacy
Because a number of the members of the Round Table had regular newspaper columns, the activities and quips of various Round Table members were reported in the national press. This brought Round Tablers widely into the public consciousness as renowned wits.Not all of their contemporaries were fans of the group. Their critics accused them of logrolling
Logrolling
Logrolling is the trading of favors, or quid pro quo, such as vote trading by legislative members to obtain passage of actions of interest to each legislative member...
, or exchanging favorable plugs of one another's works, and of rehearsing their witticisms in advance. James Thurber
James Thurber
James Grover Thurber was an American author, cartoonist and celebrated wit. Thurber was best known for his cartoons and short stories published in The New Yorker magazine.-Life:...
was a detractor of the group, accusing them of being too consumed by their elaborate practical jokes. H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken
Henry Louis "H. L." Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, magazine editor, satirist, acerbic critic of American life and culture, and a scholar of American English. Known as the "Sage of Baltimore", he is regarded as one of the most influential American writers and prose stylists of the...
, who was much admired by many in the Circle, was also a critic, commenting to fellow writer Anita Loos
Anita Loos
Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author.-Early life:Born Corinne Anita Loos in Sisson, California , where her father, R. Beers Loos, had opened a tabloid newspaper for which her mother, Minerva "Minnie" Smith did most of the work of a newspaper publisher...
that "their ideals were those of a vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
actor, one who is extremely 'in the know' and inordinately trashy."
The group showed up in the 1923 best-seller Black Oxen
Black Oxen
Black Oxen is an American silent film released in December 1923, starring Corinne Griffith, Conway Tearle and Clara Bow and based on the novel by Gertrude Atherton...
by Gertrude Atherton
Gertrude Atherton
Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton was an American writer.-Early Childhood:Gertrude Franklin Horn was born on October 30, 1857 in San Francisco to Thomas Ludovich Horn and his wife, the former Gertrude Franklin...
. She sarcastically described a group she called "the Sophisticates":
Groucho Marx
Groucho Marx
Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...
, brother of Round Table associate Harpo, was never comfortable amidst the viciousness of the Vicious Circle. "The price of admission is a serpent's tongue and a half-concealed stiletto
Stiletto
A stiletto is a knife or dagger with a long slender blade and needle-like point, intended primarily as a stabbing weapon. The stiletto blade's narrow cross-section and acuminated tip reduces friction upon entry, allowing the blade to penetrate deeply...
." Even some members of the Round Table disparaged it later in life. Dorothy Parker in particular criticized the group.
Despite Parker's bleak assessment, and while it is true that some members of the Round Table are perhaps now "famous for being famous
Famous for being famous
Famous for being famous, in popular culture terminology, refers to someone who attains celebrity status for no particular identifiable reason, or who achieves fame through association with a celebrity. The term is a pejorative, suggesting that the individual has no particular talents or abilities...
" instead of for their literary output, Round Table members and associates did contribute significantly and enduringly to the literary landscape, including Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning work by Circle members Kaufman, Connelly and Sherwood (who won four) and by associate Ferber, and the continuing legacy of Ross's New Yorker. Others made lasting contributions to the realms of stage and screen, not least of which are the films of Harpo and the Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
and Benchley, and Parker herself has remained renowned for her short stories and literary reviews.
The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged there, helped earn the Algonquin Hotel its status as a New York City Historic Landmark. The hotel was so designated in 1987. In 1996 the hotel was designated a national literary landmark by the Friends of Libraries USA based on the contributions of "The Round Table Wits." The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel.
Although the Rose Room was removed from the Algonquin in a 1998 remodel, the hotel paid tribute to the group by commissioning and hanging the painting A Vicious Circle by Natalie Ascencios
Natalie Ascencios
Natalie Ascencios is a painter, sculptor and marionette maker.She received her BA and BFA at the New School for Social Research at Eugene Lang College and Parsons The New School for Design....
, depicting the Round Table, and also created a replica of the original table. The hotel also occasionally stages an original musical production, The Talk of the Town, in the Oak Room. Its latest production started September 11, 2007, and ran through the end of the year.
A film about the members, The Ten-Year Lunch
The Ten-Year Lunch
The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table is a 1987 American documentary film about the Algonquin Round Table, a floating group of writers and actors in the "Roaring Twenties" in New York City, which included great names such as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S....
(1987), won the Academy Award
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...
for Best Documentary Feature.
The dramatic film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle is a 1994 film scripted by writer/director Alan Rudolph and former Washington Star reporter Randy Sue Coburn...
(1994) recounted the Round Table from the perspective of Dorothy Parker.
In 2009, Robert Benchley's grandson, Nat Benchley
Nat Benchley
Nathaniel Robert "Nat" Benchley is a writer and actor who has performed on stage, television, and film. He is the grandson of humorist Robert Benchley, the son of author Nathaniel G...
, and co-editor Kevin C. Fitzpatrick published The Lost Algonquin Round Table, a collection of the early writings of the group.