Alexander Woollcott
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Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was a critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, and a member of the Algonquin Round Table.
He was the inspiration for Sheridan Whiteside, the main character in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart,[1] and for the far less likable character Waldo Lydecker in the classic film Laura. He claimed to be the inspiration for Rex Stout's brilliant detective Nero Wolfe, but Stout discounted this.
Woollcott's review of the Marx Brothers' Broadway debut, I'll Say She Is, helped highlight the renaissance of the group's career and started a life-long friendship with Harpo Marx. One of Harpo's adopted sons is named Alexander after him.
[edit] Biography
Nicknamed Aleck, Woollcott was born in Phalanx, New Jersey, near Red Bank, New Jersey and graduated from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. In his early twenties he contracted the mumps, which left him, apparently, mostly, if not completely, impotent. He never married or had children, although he had a large number of female friends, most notable of whom were Dorothy Parker and Neysa McMein, to whom he actually proposed the day after she had just wed her new husband, Jack Baragwanath.
Woollcott was born in an 85-room house, a vast ramshackle building that had once been a commune. It was called The North American Phalanx, and was in Phalanx, New Jersey. There were many social experiments in the mid-1800s, some more successful than others. When The Phalanx fell apart after a fire there in 1854, it was taken over by the Bucklin family, Woollcott's maternal grandparents. There, amid his extended family, Woollcott spent large portions of his childhood. His father was a ne'er-do-well Cockney who drifted through various jobs, sometimes spending long periods away from his wife and children. Poverty was always close at hand.
The Bucklins and Woollcotts were avid readers, giving young Aleck a lifelong love of literature, especially the works of Charles Dickens.
Through a family friend, Dr. Alexander Humphreys (after whom he was named), Woollcott made his way through college, graduating from Hamilton College, in upstate New York, in 1909. There, despite a rather poor reputation (his nickname was "Putrid") he founded a drama group, edited the student literary magazine, and was accepted by a fraternity.
He was one of the most prolific drama critics at The New York Times, and was an owlish character whose caustic wit either joyously attracted or vehemently repelled the artistic communities of 1920's Manhattan. He was actually banned for a time from reviewing certain Broadway theater shows.[2] As a result he sued the Shubert theater organization for violation of the New York Civil Rights Act, but lost in the state's highest court in 1916 on the grounds that only discrimination on the basis of race, creed, or color was unlawful.[3] From 1929 to 1934 Woollcott wrote a column called Shouts and Murmurs for The New Yorker. He was, however, frequently criticized for his ornate, florid style of writing and, in contrast to his contemporaries James Thurber and S. J. Perelman, he is little read today, although his book, While Rome Burns, published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1934 was in 1954 named by critic Vincent Starrett as one of the 52 "Best Loved Books of the Twentieth Century".
Wolcott Gibbs, who often edited Woollcott's work at The New Yorker, was quoted in James Thurber's book The Years with Ross as saying: "'Shouts and Murmurs' was about the strangest copy I ever edited. You could take every other sentence out without changing the sense a particle. The whole department, in fact, often had no more substance than a Talk [of the Town] anecdote. I guess he was one of the most dreadful writers who ever existed."
After being kicked out of the apartment he shared with The New Yorker founders Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, Woollcott moved first into the Hotel des Artistes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, then to an apartment at the far end of East 52nd Street. The members of the Algonquin Round Table had a debate as to what to call his new home. Franklin P. Adams suggested that he name it after the Indian word "Ocowoica", meaning "The-Little-Apartment-On-The-East-River-That-It-Is-Difficult-To-Find-A-Taxicab-Near". But Dorothy Parker came up with the definitive name: Wit's End.
Woollcott yearned to be as creative as the people with whom he surrounded himself. Among many other endeavours, he tried his hand at acting and co-wrote two Broadway shows with playwright George S. Kaufman, while appearing in two others. He also starred as Sheridan Whiteside, for whom he was the inspiration, in the traveling production of "The Man Who Came To Dinner" in 1940.[1] He also appeared in several cameos in films in the late 1930s and 1940s.
Politically, Woollcott called for normalization of U.S.-Soviet relations. He was a friend of reporter Walter Duranty and Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov, and traveled to the USSR in the 1930s, as well as sending his friend Harpo Marx to Moscow on a comedy tour in 1934.
Towards the end of Woollcott's life he semi-retired to an island he had purchased on Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. He collapsed in New York City while leading a panel discussion of the war in Europe on the 1943 CBS radio program People's Platform; he died a few hours later, aged 56.
Woollcott is buried at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York.
[edit] Personality
He was one of the most-quoted men of his generation. Among Woollcott's classics is his description of the Los Angeles area as "Seven suburbs in search of a city" — a quip often attributed to his friend Dorothy Parker. Describing The New Yorker editor Harold Ross, he said: "He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln."
He was also known for his occasionally savage wit. He once said about another contemporary wit and piano player: "There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix." He also was known to greet friends with, "Hello, Repulsive." Famously, he published the shortest theatrical review in history by submitting to his editor simply: "Ouch."
His judgments were frequently eccentric. Dorothy Parker once said: "I remember hearing Woollcott say reading Proust is like lying in someone else's dirty bath water. And then he'd go into ecstasy about something called, 'Valiant Is the Word for Carrie', and I knew I had enough of the Round Table. [4]
