Most of the time you know what I’m listening to by what I post. Well now you will know what I’m reading about. Today we are taking a different path. We have music, movies, and plays, but about the creators themselves. I first learned about them from the most unlikely member, Harpo Marx. We are still in pop culture, just in a different location and time.
I have been fascinated by the Algonquin Round Table for years. Writers, editors, artists, humorists, actors, critics, and reporters gathered for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. They traded jokes, discussed their work, insulted one another, and helped shape American popular culture during the 1920s.
They were not a rock band, but they behaved like one. Every member brought a different talent. They collaborated, competed, argued, became famous, and eventually drifted apart. The talent was enormous. So were some of the egos. That is why I think of them as the original supergroup.
The Round Table began in June 1919 with a practical joke. Theater publicist John Peter Toohey and press agent Murdock Pemberton organized a welcome-home luncheon for drama critic Alexander Woollcott, who had returned from working with Stars and Stripes during World War I. The real purpose was to roast him.
Woollcott apparently enjoyed it. The guests had such a good time that they returned for lunch the following day. One lunch led to another, and before long the gathering became a regular event at the Algonquin.
The group became known as the Round Table, although its members sometimes called themselves the Vicious Circle. That name may have been more accurate. It was not a place for anyone with thin skin. Groucho Marx was the king of insults, but even he never felt completely comfortable among them. He reportedly said, “The price of admission is a serpent’s tongue and a half-concealed stiletto.”
That tells you almost everything you need to know coming from one of the leading insult artists.
Edna Ferber called them “The Poison Squad.” She remembered them as merciless when they disliked something, but equally willing to praise work they admired. Their standards were high. They expected talent from one another, and they were not shy about saying when someone had fallen short. Just like a band, they pushed each other to greater heights at times.
For all the insults, this was more than a collection of clever people trying to outdo one another. They supported each other’s work and frequently collaborated. George S. Kaufman wrote Dulcy with Marc Connelly and The Royal Family with Edna Ferber. Harold Ross and Jane Grant founded The New Yorker, which soon published work by Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott, and other people connected with the group.
In that way, the Round Table worked much like a creative network. A joke told over lunch might appear in a newspaper column the following day. A conversation could lead to a play, a magazine article, or a job. They entertained each other, but they also helped one another build careers.
By the middle of the 1920s, the private lunch had become a public attraction. People came to the Algonquin hoping to see them. Newspapers repeated their jokes, and readers waited to hear what Dorothy Parker, Woollcott, Benchley, or Franklin P. Adams would say next.
That attention changed the gathering. What had begun naturally was now expected to produce entertainment. They were no longer simply eating lunch with friends. They were performing for the room. That is another reason they remind me of a rock band. Once an audience expects you to be clever every day, the fun can become work.
Politics also began to enter their lives more seriously. Dorothy Parker protested the convictions of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti and was arrested during a demonstration in 1927. The case did not single-handedly end the Round Table, but it represented a change in Parker. Humor was no longer enough for everything she saw happening around her. She later wrote that ridicule could serve as a shield, but not as a weapon.
The Round Table never held an official final meeting. It simply faded during the late 1920s. Members became busy with plays, books, magazines, radio, and movies. Some went to Hollywood. Friendships changed, arguments lingered, and the country entered the Great Depression. Like many groups, they did not necessarily decide to break up. One day they simply stopped meeting as they once had.
Years later, several of them gathered again following a memorial service for Alexander Woollcott, who died in 1943. They returned to the Algonquin for a drink, but the old magic was gone. People once famous for never being at a loss for words reportedly sat together in an uncomfortable silence.
Harpo Marx later called it their last and strangest gathering.
For roughly a decade, however, that table held an astonishing amount of talent. They wrote plays, founded magazines, made movies, published books, created artwork, and produced jokes that are still repeated today. Some were regular members. Others drifted in and out. Together, they captured something about New York during the 1920s that has never been completely recreated.
I would not have wanted to sit at that table. I would have been afraid to open my trap. But I would have loved to sit close enough to listen.
If you want to read about the individual members, I have them listed here with a short bio.