Volume 16 Number 038 The Algonquin Roundtable - I

Lead: In the years following World War I, a group of future literary stars began to meet for lunch at the fabled Algonquin Hotel in New York.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: World War I helped transform society, culture, religion, manners and literary standards into what became the modern era. In America, New York was the center of this transforming spirit and for a decade in the 1920s driving this revolution in thought and energy was the Algonquin Roundtable or as one author has described them, “the vicious circle.” This informal lunch gathering got its start when writers John Peter Toohey and Dorothy Parker and columnist Franklin Pierce Adams organized a celebration and lampooning of the wartime service of their friend Alexander Woollcott, critic for the New York Times. He was so enthusiastic about his his service, that the duty of friendship required them to shut him up. The Algonquin, just off Broadway on Forty-fourth Street, was already a prestigious gathering place for actors and the literary set so it was a logical place for the event. When he found their friendly sarcasm hugely amusing, one of their number suggested that they meet daily for lunch and a historic tradition commenced.

All of the main participants were born in the 1880s or 1890s, yet their influence reached far into the twentieth century. Humorist Robert Benchley was the managing editor of Vanity Fair, Harold Ross cofounded with his wife Jane Grant The New Yorker. They were joined by Edna Ferber, author of Showboat and Giant, playwright George Kaufman and his socialite wife Beatrice. Journalist Heywood Broun and his wife, suffragist Ruth Hale, were joined by Peggy Wood, actress in musical comedies, whose last great accomplishment was when her 81 year old pipes blew out Climb Every Mountain, in the film version of The Sound of Music.

The group grew as did the size of the table and soon “The Board” as they called themselves became the center of attention in the hotel and the City. Next time: the Roundtable in full cry.

From Richmond, Virginia this is

Dan Roberts.

Resources

Grant, Jane C. Ross, The New Yorker, and Me. New York: Reynal, 1968.

Harriman, Margaret Case. The Vicious Circle: The Story of the Algonquin Round Table. New York: Rinehard and Company, 1951.

The New Yorker, Various issues.

Parker, Dorothy. The Collected Dorothy Parker. London: Duckworth Press, 1973.

Yates, Norris Wilson. Robert Benchley. New York: Twayne, 1968. www.algonquinroundtable.org

Copyright by Dan Roberts Enterprises, Inc.