“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, April 30, 1922, 49th Street Theatre, 235 West 49th Street, New York City, New York

You’ve seen them in the speakeasies of Manhattan…

You’ve seen them lunching at the Algonquin…

Now see them on stage in…

No Sirree!

49^th Street Theatre

Now playing…For one night only!

Produced by Frank Case, manager of the Algonquin Hotel

49^th 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,

And the TCM Tribute to Robert Benchley 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.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”:  Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, January 25, 1920, New York City

Dorothy Parker, 26, is clearing out her desk on her last day as Vanity Fair’s drama critic.

She’d loved this job. She’d spent the past four years with Conde Nast publishing, first at Vogue. She was thrilled when she was moved up to Vanity Fair.

Vanity Fair, January 1920

Two weeks ago, the editor-in-chief, Frank Crowninshield, 47, had invited her for tea and scones at the Plaza Hotel. Dottie thought she was going to get that raise she had asked for.

Ha.

Crownie apologetically explained that the regular drama critic she had replaced, P. G. Wodehouse, 38, was returning, so she’d have to go, of course. He also just mentioned that Mr. Nast, 46, wasn’t happy that so many Broadway producers complained about her negative reviews of their plays. Saying that Billie Burke, 35, the actress-wife of impresario Flo Ziegfeld, 52, had “thick ankles” was hardly theatrical criticism. Ziegfeld was threatening to pull his advertising.

Well, critics are supposed to give bad reviews too. That’s why they are “critics,” she thought. As she ordered the most expensive dessert.

Dorothy Parker, nee Rothschild

Back at her apartment, her husband, Eddie, 26, still getting over the war, was no help. Parker had called her best friend, Vanity Fair managing editor Robert Benchley, 30, at his home in Scarsdale. He had come right down on the next train.

Adding her firing to that of their colleague, Robert Sherwood, 23, who was replaced by Nast’s children’s piano teacher, showed Parker and Benchley a pattern that they weren’t happy about.

In the office the next morning, Benchley had written his resignation. He had explained to Crownie—who hadn’t expected to lose a good managing editor—that the job wasn’t worth having without his two colleagues.

Robert Benchley

Parker was astounded. Benchley had a wife and two sons in the suburbs. Gertrude, 30, had said she would support her husband’s decision, but she sure wasn’t happy about it.

It was the greatest act of friendship I’d known,”

Parker said later.

So now, on her last day, taking everything she could with her from the office, leaving nothing but the scent of her favorite perfume, Coty’s Chypre, behind, Dottie was conjuring up all the free-lance ways she could keep writing and earning. Crownie had suggested working from home. But she didn’t even know how to change a typewriter ribbon.

Two of their New York newspaper friends, the Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott, just turned 33, and the city’s most-read columnist, FPA, 38, at the Tribune, with whom they lunch almost every day at the nearby Algonquin Hotel, have promised to promote them in their papers. That would get those New York publisher tongues wagging.

Because of his contract, Benchley had to stay on until the end of the month—he plans to go out with a piece, “The Social Life of the Newt.” He is being replaced by Princeton grad Edmund “Bunny” Wilson, 24. All Parker remembers about him is that he had hit on her during his job interview.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the book, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s, to be published by K. Donnelly Communications. For more information, email me at kaydee@gpysyteacher.com.

This spring I will be talking about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and others in both the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie-Mellon University’s Osher Lifelong Learning programs.

Manager as Muse, about Perkins and his writers, is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

If you want to walk with me through Bloomsbury, you can download my audio walking tour, “Such Friends”: Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group.

‘Such Friends’: American writers in 1919

France, May, 1919

In Paris, leaders of the allied countries from the Great War are meeting to carve up their defeated adversary, Germany.

Paris Peace Conference in the Palace of Versailles

On the Left Bank, near the Luxembourg Gardens, Gertrude Stein, 45, and her partner, Alice B. Toklas, just turned 42, are settling back in to their home at 27 rue de Fleurus. They hope to re-start the Saturday evening salons they held to display and discuss the latest artworks they have been buying from their artist friends such as Pablo Picasso, 37, and Henri Matisse, 49. But it’s a different Paris than the one they left. As their friend, English art critic Clive Bell, 37, remarked,

They say that an awful lot of people were killed in the war but it seems to me that an extraordinarily large number of grown men and women have suddenly been born.’

Stein and Toklas with their paintings at 27 rue de Fleurus

American vicar’s daughter Sylvia Beach, 32, is finishing up her field work with the Red Cross and writing to her Paris friend about starting a bookstore. Her mother will advance her the money. Beach wants to sell the latest American books, but can’t decide whether to open in New York or London.

Sylvia Beach

In another part of Paris, the US Army newspaper The Stars and Stripes, by American servicemen for American servicemen, is winding down. A big farewell banquet has been held, with Alexander Woollcott, 32, who will be going back to his job as New York Times drama critic, and Franklin Pierce Adams [FPA], 37, who will be returning to his must-read column, ‘The Conning Tower’ in the New York Tribune. Stars and Stripes editor Harold Ross, 26, is waiting in Marseilles to sail home to Manhattan, hoping to meet up again with the New York Times’ Jane Grant, just turning 27, whom he has been courting in Paris.

 

America, June, 1919

In St. Paul, Minnesota, on Summit Avenue, recently discharged serviceman F. Scott Fitzgerald, 22, is back home. He’s quit his job at the New York advertising agency Barron Collier, determined to finish his first novel, now called The Education of a Personage. Fitzgerald has received excellent advice, in letters and in person, from Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins, 34, and really wants to be published before the end of the year. He feels that will help him win back his ex-fiancee, Zelda Sayre, 18, of Montgomery, Alabama.

Scott Fitzgerald in the Army

In a cabin near Ephraim, Wisconsin, Sherwood Anderson, 42, who has spent most of his life working in advertising, is camping with his wife Tennessee, 45. Anderson has been pleasantly surprised by the success of his third novel, Winesburg, Ohio, published last month. But the pressure of writing it, and now starting another, has been too much, and he feels he has to get away.

Sherwood Anderson

Farther south, in Oak Park, Illinois, another would-be writer home from the war, Ernest Hemingway, 19, has also been dumped by his fiancée, Agnes von Karowsky, 27. She was his nurse when he was injured as a Red Cross ambulance driver in Italy, and he was convinced they would marry back in the States. Von Karowsky has told him that she is now engaged to someone else, but he is writing to her again anyway, ever hopeful. Mostly he’s looking forward to going fishing for the first time in two years.

Ernest Hemingway as an ambulance driver

In New York’s Greenwich Village, Margaret Anderson, 32, and Jane Heap, 36, publishers of The Little Review, are ignoring the censors and continuing to publish excerpts from Ulysses, the latest work by Irish writer James Joyce, 37, living in Zurich. They feel it is important literature, and are confident that their attorney, John Quinn, 48, will win their case in court.

Initial announcement of Ulysses in The Little Review

In midtown, Vanity Fair’s publishers, Conde Nast, 46, and Frank Crowninshield, turning 47, on an extended fact-finding trip to Europe, have left new managing editor Robert Benchley, 29, in charge. He has been publishing parodies of regular Vanity Fair articles, and awarding bonuses to his colleagues, theatre critic Dorothy Parker, 25, and movie critic Robert Sherwood, 23.

Vanity Fair cover, June 1919

Parker has been invited to a luncheon at the nearby Algonquin Hotel. A press agent, to promote his client, new playwright Eugene O’Neill, 30, has asked the most important writers in Manhattan to lunch to welcome the Times drama critic, Woollcott, back from the war, and Parker has insisted that her new co-workers come along.

At lunch, Woollcott, who weighs only 195 for the last time in his life, has no interest in talking about anyone but himself and his exploits in the ‘theatre of war,’ of which he is inordinately proud.

To get back at him for monopolizing this meeting, and get more publicity, the PR flack invites other well-known critics from New York’s many publications to a big gathering at the Hotel. There are 12 dailies in Manhattan and five in Brooklyn. When 35 people show up, the hotel manager puts them at a big round table in the back of the dining room.

Tribune drama critic Heywood Broun, 30, and his wife, journalist Ruth Hale, 32, who had honeymooned by covering the war in France, are there. Tribune columnist FPA is invited as a personal friend of Woollcott.

In the next few weeks, their Stars and Stripes editor, Ross, joins the regular lunches. George S. Kaufman, 29, who works under Woollcott at the Times, comes and brings his playwriting partner Marc Connelly, 28.

When lunch is over, somebody says,

Why don’t we do this every day?’

And they do, for the next nine years.

The Algonquin Round Table by Al Hirschfeld

Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap.

At the offices of Vanity Fair magazine, mid-town Manhattan, June 25th, 1920…

…the theatre critic Dorothy Parker, 26, is packing up her desk. It’s her last day.

When the editor, Frank Crowninshield, just turned 48, had met her in the tea lounge of the Plaza Hotel a few weeks ago, he told her that their regular critic, PG Wodehouse, 38, was coming back. But she knew that wasn’t the reason she was being sacked. Parker had pissed off too many powerful Broadway producers with her nasty comments. She proceeded to order the most expensive desert on the menu. Crowninshield was paying.

That evening she had called her office mate, managing editor Robert Benchley, 30, and he immediately took the next train into the city from his family home in Scarsdale.

They had sat up that night drinking with her husband, going over all the crap that had been happening at the magazine over the past few weeks. One of the other writers, Robert Sherwood, 24, with whom they had begun to lunch regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel, had been let go as well.

The next day, Benchley had handed in his resignation, telling Crowninshield that the job wasn’t attractive enough without Parker and Sherwood.

Dorothy was stunned. Benchley had a wife and kids in the suburbs to support.

Now, as she was leaving her full-time, salaried writing job, heading out to the insecure world of free-lancing in New York City, all Parker could think about was Benchley. She later told her friends at lunch,

It was the greatest act of friendship I’d known…’

Vanity Fair, June 1920

Again this year, we’ll be telling stories about these groups of ‘such friends,’ during and after their times together.

Manager as Muse explores Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ work with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe and is available on Amazon in both print and Kindle versions.

To walk with me and the ‘Such Friends’ through Bloomsbury, download the Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group audio walking tour from VoiceMap. Look for our upcoming walking tour about the Paris ‘such friends.’