Visiting novelist John Dos Passos, 27, is enjoying tagging along with his fellow American writer Donald Ogden Stewart, 28, walking around Paris, visiting some of the ex-pats Stewart knows.
Quai des Grands-Augustins
At this address Dos Passos is introduced to the Murphys—Gerald, about to turn 35, and Sara, 39. Stewart was a few years behind Gerald at Yale, and he has given the couple a big build-up, describing them as a prince and a princess. Dos Passos, a cynic from Harvard, figures he won’t succumb to their allure.
Dos Passos is impressed with Sara, one of the most charming women he’s ever met. Gerald seems a bit distracted. He’s getting ready for a big dinner party they’re throwing.
John Dos Passos
The Murphys are in the process of renovating this apartment, with its white walls, lacquered black floors, Mexican rugs, and floor to ceiling windows surrounded by red antique brocade drapes, a perfect frame for the fabulous view down the River Seine.
Gerald and Sara have become huge fans of the Kamerny Theatre from Moscow, and this party is to celebrate their successful run at the Theatre de Champs-Elysees. The Murphys have been to all 10 of the Kamerney’s performances..
Kamerny Theatre poster
The Murphys’ new Algerian chef is making couscous; dessert will be slightly obscene-shaped chocolate mousse with crème Chantilly; and there will, of course, be plenty of wine.
Because they are in the midst of the renovation, there are few pieces of furniture for guests to sit on. Gerald and Sara have improvised, placing mattresses and pillows all over and covering them with brocade fabric. Planks mounted on blocks will serve as tables. Plumbers’ lamps will do for lighting. And, supporters of the arts that they are, the Murphys have attached to the walls “found sculptures” made from bicycle wheels and other discarded junk by their new friend, Fernand Leger, 42.
Sara graciously invites their guests, Stewart and Dos Passos, to stay for the party. But Dos Passos declines. He never feels comfortable in situations like this and is embarrassed by his stammer.
Later this month I will be talking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
This wedding is fun. The Manhattan editors and writers who trade quips and insults almost every day at lunch at the Algonquin Hotel are here. The groom is Robert Sherwood, 26, editor of the humor magazine Life, towering over everyone at 6 feet 8 inches tall. The bride is actress Mary Brandon, 20, who appeared with Sherwood and the Algonquin gang in their one-off revue, No Sirree!, a few months ago.
The Little Church Around the Corner, aka The Church of the Transfiguration
The ushers include Sherwood’s co-editor at Life, Robert Benchley, 33, who just finished a gig with the Music Box Revue doing his shtick from No Sirree!, “The Treasurer’s Report,” seven days a week. And Alexander Woollcott, 35, who just went from reviewing plays for the New York Times to writing a column, “In the Wake of the Plays,” for the New York Herald after the owner, Frank Munsey, 68, offered him $15,000 a year. “For money and no other reason,” explains Woollcott.
And playwright Marc Connelly, 31, who just had a second Broadway hit, West of Pittsburgh, with his collaborator, George S Kaufman, 32.
And also Frank Case, 49, who is not known to be particularly witty, but as the manager of the Algonquin Hotel, he must have a good sense of humor.
Frank Case
Also attending are hit novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, 26, and his wife Zelda, 22, fresh off the successful publication of his second collection of short stories, Tales of the Jazz Age.
And America’s sweethearts, film stars Mary Pickford, 30, and her co-star and husband of two years, Douglas Fairbanks, 39.
All wish the Sherwoods well. But some predict this wedding will be the high point of their marriage.
Mary Brandon Sherwood
*****
Many of the wedding guests actually have more fun in the summer and into the fall partying out on Long Island.
The biggest bashes are at the rented home of New York World publisher Herbert Bayard Swope, 40, overlooking Manhasset Bay. People were not invited—they went there.
Herbert Bayard Swope’s house in Great Neck
From Great Neck then, came the Fitzgeralds, who have rented a house there and the Lardners from across the street. And a whole clan named Marx, including Arthur (“Harpo”), 33, and his brother Julius (“Groucho”), 32, who have made a name for themselves in musical theatre.
From nearby Sandy Point came magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 34, and mining engineer Jack Baragwanath, 35. Neysa was the first to suggest that their competitive croquet games on the lawn be played without rules. Swope loved the idea; he feels the game
makes you want to cheat and kill…The game gives release to all the evil in you.”
Heywood Broun, 33, a columnist on Swope’s own World, came to gamble, but sometimes brought his wife, free-lance writer Ruth Hale, 35.
Of theatrical people there were the Kaufmanns and Connelly and composer George Gershwin, 24. Also from New York were Woollcott, and New York Times journalist Jane Grant, 30. And the free-lance writer DorothyParker, 29, separated now, who has pieces in almost every issue of the Saturday Evening Post. She’s sometimes accompanied by her latest beau, would-be playwright Charles MacArthur, 27, but other times is seen sneaking across the road to the home of sportswriter Ring Lardner, 37, when his wife is away.
Ring Lardner
In addition to all these, satiric writer Donald Ogden Stewart, 27, came there at least once.
All these people came to Swope’s house in the summer.
Early next year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and about The Literary 1920s in Paris and New York City at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Produced by Frank Case, manager of the Algonquin Hotel
49th Street Theatre
Programme
Your host for the evening,
“The Spirit of American Drama,” played by Heywood Broun
Music provided throughout the evening offstage [and off-key] by Jascha Heifetz
“The Opening Chorus”
Performed by Franklin Pierce Adams, Robert Benchley, Marc Connelly,
George S Kaufman, John Peter Toohey, Alexander Woollcott,
[dressed only in their bathrobes]
“The Editor Regrets”
[in which poet Dante has his first writing rejected by Droll Tales magazine]
Performed by Mary Brandon, Marc Connelly, Donald Ogden Stewart and others
“The Filmless Movies”
Featuring Franklin Pierce Adams and, on piano, Baron Ireland
[composer of “If I Had of Knew What I’d Ought to Have Knew,
I’d Never Had Did What I Done”]
“The Greasy Hag: A Eugene O’Neill Play in One Act”
[setting to be determined by the audience]
Agitated Seamen played by Marc Connelly, George S Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott
The Murdered Woman played by Ruth Gilmore
[please be advised there will be strong language]
“He Who Gets Flapped”
Performed by Robert Sherwood
Featuring “The Everlasting Ingenue Blues,”
Music by Deems Taylor, lyrics by Dorothy Parker
Deems Taylor
Performed by the chorus,
Tallulah Bankhead, Mary Brandon, Ruth Gilmore, Helen Hayes,
Mary Kennedy and others
“Between the Acts”
The Manager and the Manager’s Brother played by Brock and Murdock Pemberton
“Big Casino Is Little Casino: The Revenge of One Who Has Suffered”
By George S Kaufman
[who advises the audience,
“The idea has been to get square with everybody in three two-minute acts.”]
“Mr. Whim Passes By—An A. A. Milne Play”
Performed by Helen Hayes and others
Helen Hayes
“Kaufman and Connelly from the West”
Performed by Marc Connelly and George S Kaufman
[“Oh, we are Kaufman and Connelly from Pittsburgh,
We’re Kaufman and Connelly from the West…”]
“Zowie or The Curse of an Aking Heart”
Featuring Dregs, a butler, played by Alexander Woollcott
And finally…
“The Treasurer’s Report”
By Robert Benchley
Featuring the last-minute substitute for the treasurer, played by Robert Benchley
Immediately following the programme, all cast and audience members are invited to
the nearby digs of Herbert Bayard and Maggie Swope
The Algonquin Round Table by Al Hirschfeld
Clockwise from Bottom Left: Robert Sherwood, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Franklin Pierce Adams, Edna Ferber, George S Kaufman
In the background: Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt, Frank Crowninshield, Frank Case
You can see a preview for the film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which includes a re-creation of No Sirree!,here,
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volumes I and II covering 1920 and 1921 are available as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, which is celebrating Independent Bookstore Day today. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
In June I will be talking about the Stein family salons in Paris just before and after The Great War at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute in Carnegie-Mellon University.
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1921 opened at Broadway’s Globe Theatre, with music once again by Victor Herbert, 62. The leads are Fanny Brice, 29, coming back to the Follies after ten years, singing “My Man” and “Second Hand Rose,” and comedian and juggler W. C. Fields, 41, his fifth time in the Follies.
Ziegfeld Follies of 1921
This was followed two weeks later by the premiere of George White’s Scandals at the Liberty Theatre, a few blocks away from the Globe. The music is by George Gershwin, 22, who hit it big two years ago when Broadway star Al Jolson, 36, heard Gershwin sing his tune “Swanee” at a party and used it in one of his shows.
George White’s Scandals
And just two days after that a new musical, Dulcy, by two young playwrights, both from western Pennsylvania, Marc Connelly, 30, and George S Kaufman, 31, opened just down 42nd Street at the Frazee Theatre. For their first collaboration, Connelly and Kaufman based the lead on a character created by one of their friends they lunch with regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel, New York Tribune columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, 39, known to all of New York as FPA.
The duo has already started in on their next musical project, To the Ladies!, set to premiere next year.
*****
One of their other lunch buddies, Robert Benchley, 31, an editor at the humor magazine Life, had finally gotten around to having his first drink while listening to the live broadcast of the Dempsey-Carpentier fight at the midtown speakeasy Tony Soma’s. Soon after, Benchley tried some rye whiskey and realized it smelled just like his Uncle Albert did at family picnics back in Massachusetts.
*****
Benchley’s best friend, and now best drinking buddy, free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, just turned 28, has had another short story in the Saturday Evening Post, “An Apartment House Trilogy,” based mostly on the characters around the flat she and her husband moved to just about a year ago, at 57 West 57th Street. When she sent the piece to the editor, she had warned him that it was “rotten…poisonous.” He didn’t think it was too rotten, but not quite her best. He really wants more of the shorter fluffy things she’s been selling to Benchley over at Life.
Saturday Evening Post, August 20, 1921
Bob has introduced Dottie to one of his other friends, Donald Ogden Stewart, 26, who has had some pieces in Vanity Fair and Smart Set. He’s been hanging out at Parker’s place but doesn’t like joining the others at their Algonquin lunches. They’re vicious. Stewart feels he has to fortify himself with a few drinks before he even gets to the hotel.
*****
Edna Ferber, just turned 36 [but only admits to 34], would love to be invited to one of the Algonquin lunches. Her second novel, The Girls, has just come out and it wasn’t easy to get a national magazine to serialize it. Her story of unmarried Chicago women was too scandalous for most, but finally Women’s Home Companion bought it without any major changes. Not only did FPA praise the way she described his hometown of Chicago, even her own mother conceded that it’s not too bad.
*****
Ferber has asked her friend Alexander Woollcott, 34, the New York Times drama critic, if she could lunch with him at the Algonquin maybe just once?
Alex took a leave of absence from his Times job this summer to go back to his alma mater, Hamilton College in New York state, to finish a book he’s been working on, Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play. He’s written a few chapters about Charles Dickens’ love of theatre and will fill out the rest with sections from Dickens’ novels and essays.
*****
But the biggest news in New York publishing this summer is how the new editor of the New York World, Herbert Bayard Swope, 39, has been poaching columnists from his competitors.
Herbert Bayard Swope
Swope became executive editor of the paper last year and has been making big changes. He thought the page opposite the editorials was a mess, so he cleared out the book reviews and obituaries and now devotes the page to opinion pieces, christening it the “op-ed” page. Swope believes
Nothing is more interesting than opinion when opinion is interesting.”
Those pesky facts can stay where they belong in the rest of the paper.
Swope also stole one of the top columnists at the Tribune, Heywood Broun, 32, another regular Algonquin luncher. Broun was eager to jump. Swope makes clear to him and all his columnists, that they can write whatever they want—within the limits of libel law and good taste. In return, they have to write new copy for each instalment, three times a week. No hoarding a bank of evergreen filler, ready to print any time. Swope wants it all to be fresh.
Heywood Broun
For $25,000 a year, in his column “It Seems to Me” on the op-ed page, Broun can write what he likes—theatre reviews, reports of the most recent football game of his alma mater, Harvard, or campaigns about social issues such as censorship, racial discrimination or academic freedom.
Poaching Broun is a coup. But Swope astounds New York’s literati again by luring the Tribune’s number one columnist, FPA himself, over to the World. Unlike the other writers, FPA is given his own private office to work on his “Conning Tower” columns. One of the first at his new home is about the return to New York of his fellow Algonquin-ite, Alex Woollcott.
Maybe Woollcott will be the next star to jump ship and land on Swope’s World?
“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago… is the basis for the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Volume I covering 1920 is available in print and e-book format on Amazon. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
This fall I will be talking about Writers’ Salons in Dublin and London Before the Great War in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is available on Amazon in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 