“Such Friends”: 100 Years Ago, June, 1923, New York City, New York

Although the New York Times review of his new play reads:

MILL GIRL HEROINE IN NEW DANCE SHOW;

Helen of Troy, New York Gets a Whirlwind Start at the Selwyn Theatre,”

at least one of the authors, George S Kaufman, 33, knows that the show is in trouble.

He and his co-author Marc Connelly, 32, had been approached this spring by a Broadway producer after their previous hit, Merton of the Movies, transferred well to London.

They came up with this satirical musical about Troy, the “Collar City,” and its main employer, Cluett and Peabody Shirt and Collar Co., famous for having invented the advertising icon, “The Arrow Collar Man.”

“The Arrow Collar Man”

Even with pros like producer George Jessel, 25, involved, and music and lyrics by Bert Kalmar, 39, and Harry Ruby, 28, during tryouts in Fairmount, West Virginia, Kaufman felt the whole thing was just sort of patched together.

And to top it off, the playwrights are being sued by a woman who claims they stole the title from her.

Kaufman would usually drown his sorrows at the Algonquin Hotel by lunching with his fellow Manhattanites. But this month a bunch of them are off on a group vacation. Well, honeymoon actually.

Magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 35, who hosts lots of after-hours parties at her studio on 57^th Street, has quietly married a mining engineer named Jack Baragwanath, 36.

Jack Baragwanath

Neysa had commented to her good friend, theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, also 36, that she and Jack had planned an extensive tour of Europe for a honeymoon, but, as enamored as he is of his beautiful new wife, Jack can’t go because of work commitments.

Not a problem!, declares Woollcott. I’ll go! And he’ll bring along Connelly and their favorite violinist, Russian-born Jascha Heifetz, 22. They all sailed to France on the Olympic together.

Jascha Heifetz

The New York gossip columns report that well-known artist Neysa McMein is honeymooning in Europe with three men. None of whom is her husband.

“Such Friends”:  100 Years Ago… is the basis for the paperback series, “Such Friends”:  The Literary 1920s. Volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923 are available at Thoor Ballylee in Co. Galway, and as signed copies at Riverstone Books in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, PA. They are also on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in print and e-book formats. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

In the fall I will be talking about the women of Bloomsbury and the Left Bank at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute 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.

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, September, 1922, Café de Flore, corner of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue Saint-Benoit, Paris

Three American women are seated at the little marble-topped tables in front of the café. Each is wearing a black tailored suit, a white satin scarf, and white gloves. One wears a black cloak.

Each has a martini on the table in front of her. All three are writers.

Djuna Barnes, 30, from Croton-on-Hudson, New York, wearing her signature cloak, has been living in Paris since last year. Her lengthy profile of Irish writer James Joyce, 40, caused quite a stir when it was published in Vanity Fair a few months ago.

Solita Solano, 33, born Sarah Wilkinson in Troy, New York, also an established writer, has just moved to the city with her lover, Janet Flanner, 30, from Indianapolis, Indiana, so they both can work on their novels.

Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes 

When they first arrived earlier this month, Solano and Flanner took rooms in a small pension on rue de Quatrefages. But the constant noise was annoying. Drowning out the dedicated piano student practicing down the hall was the construction crew renovating a mosque down the street.

Janet Flanner

They have now moved to two small fifth-floor rooms, Nos. 15 and 16, in the Hotel Napoleon Bonaparte, 36 rue Bonaparte, each paying one dollar a day for the relative quiet. They are near the cafés and L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

In addition to the Flore, one of their other regular haunts is a neighborhood restaurant, La Quatrieme Republique, named in anticipation of a fourth French Republic following the current one. A few doors from their hotel, the restaurant’s food is interesting and affordable. However, they have nicknamed their usual waitress “Yvonne the Terrible” for her shrewish demeanor, despite their generous tips.

Solano and Flanner met after the Great War back in New York City. Flanner and her husband discovered after they had moved there that they had nothing in common, so they separated. He was happy with his boring bank; Janet hung out in Greenwich Village with bohemians, in Harlem with jazz musicians, and in midtown with writers and artists. At parties in the studio owned by illustrator Neysa McMein, 34, Flanner became friends with a young couple, magazine editor Harold Ross, 29, and his wife New York Times reporter Jane Grant, 30.

And she also met Solita.

They fell in love and when Solano, the drama critic for the New York Tribune, was offered a commission from National Geographic to tour the Mediterranean and Middle East, sending back stories, she brought Janet along.

After a year of travel, they have now decided to settle here in Paris, living off their writings and a bit of money Flanner’s father left her, and begin serious work on their novels.

Janet sends letters from Paris back to Grant in New York, chronicling the daily life of the ex-pats in the City of Light.

“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, and also in print and e-book formats on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. For more information, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.

Later in the year I will be talking about the centenary of the publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institutes at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

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.

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