Welles and The Algonquin Round Table

[Black Irish]

ART:
http://www.algonquinroundtable.org

Vicious Circle, who's who:
http://www.biography.com/news/algonquin ... le-members

ART and The New Yorker:
http://www.algonquinhotel.com/round-table

The Algonquin Round Table – a group of 20-somethings who favored the hotel as a daily meeting spot – set the standard for literary style and wit beyond its ten-year duration.

After World War I, Vanity Fair writers and Algonquin regulars Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood began lunching at The Algonquin. In 1919, they gathered in the Rose Room with some literary friends to welcome back acerbic critic Alexander Woollcott from his service as a war correspondent. It proved so enjoyable that someone suggested it become a daily event. This led to a daily exchange of ideas, opinions, and often-savage wit that has enriched the world's literary life. George S. Kaufman, Heywood Broun, and Edna Ferber were also in this August assembly, which strongly influenced writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Perhaps their greatest contribution was the founding of The New Yorker magazine, which today is free to guests of the hotel.

Owner, Frank Case, treated the talented, but low paid, young writers to free celery and popovers and provided them their own table and waiter, thereby guaranteeing daily return luncheon visits. The group expanded to a core membership that included Edna Ferber, Franklin P. Adams, George S. Kaufman, Heywood Broun, and Marc Connelly.

Though society columns referred to them as The Algonquin Round Table, they called themselves the Vicious Circle. "By force of character," observed drama critic Brooks Atkinson, "they changed the nature of American comedy and established the tastes of a new period in the arts and theatre."

Most of The Round Table members were critics, and as they lunched they would exchange ideas and gossip, which found their way into Adams’ “conning Tower” column in the Tribune the next day. From one glorious beginning in June of 1919, members’ opinions and writing strongly influenced young writers like Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Harold Ross, legendary editor and friend of The Round Table, created The New Yorker and secured funding for it at the hotel. The magazine made its debut February 21, 1925. Today, each Algonquin guest receives a complimentary copy of the magazine.

[Black Irish]

Hirschfeld and ART:
http://www.melgilden.com/Essays/Musings ... onquin.jpg

Q's:
http://www.algonquinroundtable.org/faq.html

HL Mencken:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken

For Mencken, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the finest work of American literature. Much of that book relates how gullible and ignorant country "boobs" (as Mencken referred to them) are swindled by con men like the (deliberately) pathetic "Duke" and "Dauphin" roustabouts with whom Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi River. These scam-artists swindle by posing as enlightened speakers on temperance (to obtain the funds to get roaring drunk), as pious "saved" men seeking funds for far off evangelistic missions (to pirates on the high seas, no less), and as learned doctors of phrenology (who can barely spell). Mencken read the novel as a story of America's hilarious dark side, a place where democracy, as defined by Mencken, is "the worship of jackals by jackasses".

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, or exchanging favorable plugs of one another's works, and of rehearsing their witticisms in advance.[22] 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"

NYT on Mencken:
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/04/books ... 10290.html

For ten years, thanks to the hard and intelligent work of both Germans and Americans, the American attitude toward Germany has improved steadily, and there was a growing disposition to take the German view of the 'reparation' obscenity, and the whole treaty of Versailles. But now, by talking and acting in a completely lunatic manner, Hitler and his associates have thrown away the German case and given the enemies of their country enough ammunition to last for ten years.''

Any defense of Germany was impossible, he concluded, ''so long as the chief officer of the German state continues to make speeches worthy of an Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and his followers imitate, plainly with his connivance, the monkey-shines of the American Legion at its worst.''

[Wellesnet]

I lost My Girlish Laughter

On 27 January 1939, Orson Welles's production of "I Lost My Girlish Laughter" was broadcast on "The Campbell Playhouse," CBS-Radio. One of their funniest shows, and somewhat prophetic too, in light of what eventually happened to Ambersons. Playwrite George S. Kauffmann made his acting debut here.

Good review of the Jane Allen novel:
http://readingcalifornia.typepad.com/re ... rli-1.html

Based on the author's (real name Silvia Schulman) working & reluctantly personal relationship with her boss, David O. Selznick.

Through the use of personal correspondence, interoffice memoranda, and the occasional newspaper gossip item, Madge Lawrence recounts her adventures in Hollywood. She stays at the Girls Community Club, and through a director named Max Sellers she obtains the position of secretary to Hollywood producer Sidney Brand. The work is hectic, as Brand is immersed in production of Sinners in Asylum, featuring his new star, a European import named Sarya Tarn. Brand wants to borrow Clark Gable from MGM to star opposite Tarn, but when the actor becomes unavailable, he signs a contract with a handsome New York stage performer named Bruce Anders. Suddenly Gable becomes available again, and Brand tries to negate the contract with Anders, but Madge, who has become fond of the actor, alerts him in time for his agent to best Brand.

[Black Irish]

test