The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City New York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over global commerce, finance, media, culture, art, fashion, research, education, and entertainment. As host of the writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke A practical joke is a trick to purposely make someone feel foolish or victimized, usually for humor. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on, the joke rather than being fooled into handing over money or other valuables. Practical jokes or pranks are typically lighthearted and made to make people, members of "The Vicious Circle," as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel The Algonquin Hotel is a historic hotel located at 59 West 44th Street in Manhattan . The hotel has been designated as a New York City Historic Landmark from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.

Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him.

In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.

Origin

The group that would become the Round Table began meeting in June 1919 as the result of a practical joke carried out by theatrical press agent John Peter Toohey. Toohey, annoyed at New York Times The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. Although it remains both the largest local metropolitan newspaper in the United States as well as being third largest overall, behind The Wall Street Journal and USA Today, the weekday circulation of the paper has fallen precipitously drama critic Alexander Woollcott Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table for refusing to plug one of Toohey's clients in his column, organized a luncheon supposedly to welcome Woollcott back from World War I World War I was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were, where he had been a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. Instead Toohey used the occasion to poke fun at Woollcott on a number of fronts. Woollcott's enjoyment of the joke and the success of the event prompted Toohey to suggest that the group in attendance meet at the Algonquin each day for lunch.^[1]

The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (now called The Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As they increased in number, Algonquin manager Frank Case Frank Case was an American hotelier and author. He owned and managed the Algonquin Hotel during the heyday of the Algonquin Round Table and wrote a number of books about his experiences with the hotel and the Round Tablers moved them to the Rose Room and a round table.^[2] Initially the group called itself "The Board" and the luncheons "Board meetings." After being assigned a waiter named Luigi, the group re-christened itself "Luigi Board One of the first mentions of the automatic writing method used in the Ouija board is found in China around 1100 B.C., and it is first recorded in historical documents of the Song Dynasty. The method was known as fuji 扶乩 "planchette writing". The use of planchette writing as a means of ostensibly contacting the dead and the spirit-." Finally they became "The Vicious Circle" although "The Round Table" gained wide currency after cartoonist Edmund Duffy of the Brooklyn Eagle The Brooklyn Eagle, also called The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, was a daily newspaper published in Brooklyn, New York for 114 years, from 1841 to 1955, and is also a successor daily newspaper by the same name. It was the most popular afternoon paper in the United States at one point. Walt Whitman was its editor for two years. The original paper ceased caricatured A caricature can refer to a portrait that exaggerates or distorts the essence of a person or thing to create an easily identifiable visual likeness.[citation needed] In literature, a caricature is a description of a person using exaggeration of some characteristics and oversimplification of others the group sitting at a round table and wearing armor.^[3]

Membership

Charter members of the Round Table included:

• Franklin Pierce Adams Franklin Pierce Adams was an American columnist (under the pen name F.P.A.) and wit, best known for his newspaper column, "The Conning Tower", and his appearances as a regular panelist on radio's Information Please. He was a member of the Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s and 1930s, columnist
• Robert Benchley Robert Charles Benchley was an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him, humorist and actor
• Heywood Broun Heywood Campbell Broun was an American journalist. He worked as a sportswriter, newspaper columnist, and editor in New York City. He founded the American Newspaper Guild, now known as The Newspaper Guild. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he is best remembered for his writing on social issues and his championing of the underdog. He believed that, columnist and sportswriter (married to Ruth Hale)
• Marc Connelly, playwright
• George S. Kaufman George Simon Kaufman was an American playwright, theatre director and producer, humorist, and drama critic, playwright and director
• Dorothy Parker Dorothy Parker was an American poet and satirist, best known for her wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for 20th century urban foibles, critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter
• Harold Ross, The New Yorker The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry published by Condé Nast Publications. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published forty-seven times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans editor
• Robert E. Sherwood, author and playwright
• John Peter Toohey, publicist
• Alexander Woollcott Alexander Humphreys Woollcott was an American critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table, critic and journalist^[4]

Membership was not official or fixed so many others moved in and out of the Circle. Some of these included:

• Tallulah Bankhead Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an American actress, talk-show host, and bon vivant, actress
• Edna Ferber Edna Ferber was an American novelist, author and playwright, author and playwright
• Margalo Gillmore, actress
• Jane Grant Jane Grant was a New York City journalist who co-founded The New Yorker with her first husband, Harold Ross, journalist and feminist (married to Ross)
• Ruth Hale, journalist and feminist
• Beatrice Kaufman, editor and playwright (married to George S. Kaufman)
• Margaret Leech, writer and historian
• Harpo Marx Arthur Adolph "Harpo" Marx was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers, and a performer whose comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances (he blew a horn or whistled to communicate). Marx frequently used props such as a walking stick with a built-in bulb, comedian and actor
• Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
• Alice Duer Miller, writer
• Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright and screenwriter
• Frank Sullivan, journalist and humorist
• Deems Taylor Deems Taylor (December 22, 1885 - July 3, 1966) was a U.S. composer, music critic, and promoter of classical music, composer
• Peggy Wood, actress^[5]

Activities

In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. The group was devoted to games, including cribbage Cribbage, or crib, is a card game traditionally for two players, but commonly played with three, four or more, that involves playing and grouping cards in combinations which gain points. Cribbage has several distinctive features: the cribbage board used for scorekeeping, the eponymous crib or box , two distinct scoring stages (the play and the and poker Poker is a family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown (in some games, the pot is split between the high and low hands), limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed. In most. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope Herbert Bayard Swope was a U.S. editor and journalist. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he was the younger brother of businessman Gerard Swope, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, and writer Ring Lardner Ringgold Wilmer Lardner was an American sports columnist and short story writer best known for his satirical takes on the sports world, marriage, and the theatre sometimes sitting in.^[6] The group also played charades (which they called simply "The Game") and the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."^[7]

Members often visited Neshobe Island, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"—but governed by Aleck Woollcott as a "benevolent tyrant," as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams From 1891 to 1929, he was a reporter for the New York Sun and then joined McClure's Magazine, where he gained a reputation as a muckraker for his articles on the conditions of public health in the United States charitably put it^[8]—located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont Originally inhabited by Native American tribes , much of the territory that is now Vermont was claimed by France but became a British possession after France's defeat in the French and Indian War. For many years, the surrounding colonies disputed control of the area (referred to at the time as the New Hampshire Grants) especially New Hampshire and.^[9] There they would engage in their usual array of games plus croquet Croquet is a lawn game, played both as a recreational pastime and as a competitive sport. It involves hitting wooden or plastic balls with a mallet through hoops embedded into the grass playing court.

A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait.^[10]

No Sirree!

Given the literary and theatrical activities of the Round Table members, it was perhaps inevitable that they would write and stage their own revue. No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, was a take-off of a then-popular European touring revue called Le Chauve-Souris.^[11]

No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein, which served as something of a salon A salon is a gathering of intellectual, social, political, and cultural elites under the roof of an inspiring hostess or host, partly to amuse one another and partly to refine their taste and increase their knowledge through conversation. These gatherings often consciously following Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to please for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz Jascha Heifetz was a violin virtuoso born in Vilnius (then Russian Empire, now Lithuania) (February 2 [O.S. January 20] 1901 – December 10, 1987). He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, and was called "The Violinist of the Century" by RCA Victor, the company for whom he recorded providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped," a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was an American actress, talk-show host, and bon vivant, Helen Hayes Helen Hayes was an American actress whose career spanned almost 70 years. She eventually garnered the nickname "First Lady of the American Theatre" and was one of twelve people who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony Award. Hayes has also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, from, Ruth Gillmore, Lenore Ulric and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins Zoë Akins was an American playwright, poet, and author Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Eugene Gladstone O'Neill was an American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature. His plays are among the first to introduce into American drama the techniques of realism, associated with Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Swedish playwright August Strindberg. His plays were among the first to include Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By - An A. A. Milne Alan Alexander Milne (18 January 1882 –31 January 1956) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems. Milne was a noted writer, primarily as a playwright, before the huge success of Pooh overshadowed all his previous work Play."^[12]

The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in history hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week.^[13] The Report was later filmed in 1928^[14] and kicked off a second career for Benchley in Hollywood.^[15]

With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped to duplicate it with an "official" Vicious Circle production open to the public with material performed by professional actors. Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners.^[16] The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances.^[17]

Decline of the Round Table

As members of the Round Table moved into ventures outside New York City, inevitably the group drifted apart. By the early 1930s the Vicious Circle was broken. Edna Ferber said she realized it when she arrived at the Rose Room for lunch one day in 1932 and found the group's table occupied by a family from Kansas. Frank Case was asked what happened to the group. He shrugged and replied, "What became of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street? These things do not last forever."^[18] Some members of the group remained friends after its dissolution. Parker and Benchley in particular remained close up until his death in 1945, although her political leanings did strain their relationship.^[19] Others, as the group itself would come to understand when it gathered following Woollcott's death in 1943, simply realized that they had nothing to say to one another.^[20]

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