Round Table Regulars, Tungee's Gold and Katharine Hepburn

This Week
Algonquin Round Table West
Tungee's Gold: Review
Writers Notebook: Katharine Hepburn

Algonquin Hotel 59 West 44th Street
Banter at the Round Table
What started, as a two-hour roast became a gathering place for talented writers, journalists and actors to banter, boast and brag with an air of lighthearted conviviality.
Through the twenties there were dozens of Algonquin Round Table participants, but to keep the numbers reasonable I'll use the characters pictured in Al Hirschfeld's famous cartoon drawing of the affair and call them the regulars: Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Robert E. Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Franklin P. Adams, Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman.
Most of the Round Table regulars found their way to Hollywood at one time or another during their career.
This might be like mixing metaphors, but here goes. It's too bad that Oscar winning writer Frances Marion didn't spend more time in New York and take a chair as a Round Table regular. Her humor would have fit right in with the others. In Marion's biography 'Off With Their Heads' she tells about a market strategy session at MGM, which included title ideas. They were discussing a sophisticated film starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert directed by Edmund Goulding. When the title came up for discussion several ideas were tossed around and considered, but finally somebody said, 'I've got it. I've got a wow that'll bring 'em into the theater in droves!'
Frances said they all leaned in eagerly waiting for the word to come out. 'It's 'Heat.' It'll be great. Never been used before. What do you think, Frances?'
'I think it would be a good ad for Dante's Inferno, but I'd hate to see on the billboards – 'Greta Garbo in Heat.'
Edmund Goulding doubled over with laughter. The meeting finally settled down and came up with a more sensible title, 'Love.'
But whether it came out of New York or Hollywood wit and humor were infectious during the days of the flappers, speakeasies and bath tub gin.
A snippet or two on some of the regulars:
Alexander Woollcott; NY Times drama critic, “The most interesting things in life are either immoral, illegal or fattening.”
Franklin P. Adams; a well known NY newspaper columnist, who could be counted on by his friends, to keep their careers alive by frequent mentions in his around town column called “The Conning Tower.”
Dorothy Parker; a versatile writer and the sharpest wit at the table, “That woman speaks eighteen languages, and can't say no in any of them.”
Robert Benchley; humorist raconteur and the most easy going person at any lunch, if he ever made a cutting remark it was usually about himself, like this one, “It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”
Robert Sherwood wrote Abe Lincoln of Illinois, Idiot's Delight and The Petrified Forest among others.
George. S. Kaufman once said, “Satire is the play that closes on Saturday night.”
Edna Ferber; this little lady painted her words with a wide brush and turned out works that matched her strokes, Showboat, Cimarron and Giant.
The group as a whole has been called intellectual lightweights and while this may be true, they turned out a lot of good work with more than a dozen Pulitzer prizes among them. Best pals in the group were Parker, Benchley and Sherwood. At one time they all worked for Vanity Fair magazine. Dorothy was doing a critic's column and blasted producer Flo Ziegfeld’s wife Billie Burke who was playing the title role in “Caesar’s Wife,” on Broadway. Ziegfeld had enough clout, with all his advertising, at the magazine to have Parker fired. Benchley and Sherwood showed their loyalty by following Dotty out the door.
Parker and Benchley rented a small office to work out of; Cable code PARKBENCH. They poked a lot of fun at themselves about the smallness of their office. Describing the size of their workspace, Benchley once said, “One cubic foot less and it would be called adultery.”
Once when Benchley and his wife were on vacation, Dotty wrote him and said it's so dull I'm thinking of putting three letters on the door, to liven the place up a bit, M E N.
Dorothy Parker and her second husband Alan Campbell came to Hollywood about the middle of the great depression. And they followed the pattern of many writers in from the east and rented a cottage at The Garden of Allah. It was a good central location and they could be assured of companionship because many writers in from the east stayed there. Dotty's old pal Robert Benchley was a resident there and many others took up short residences including William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elmer Rice and Thornton Wilder.
The Garden was a piece of antiquity and history of early Hollywood, a stones throw from Schwabs Drug Store where Lana Turner was supposed to have been discovered.
Dorothy and Alan both signed short term contracts with Paramount Pictures. But their main Hollywood work came from freelance writing, and they did a lot of that, a few scenes on this picture a batch of dialogue on another.
Their largest pay check came when they signed a contract with David Selznick to collaborate with Robert Carson and write the screenplay for 'A Star if Born.'
The film was nominated for seven academy awards and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay.
Dorothy was a friend of Lillian Hellman writer of Little Foxes, which probably lead to her work writing additional dialogue for the Little Foxes film.
Another Academy nomination came to Dorothy Parker when she worked with Frank Cavett on a film called Smash Up, The Story of a Woman starring Susan Hayward.
Dorothy Parker's most lasting works came out of a collaboration with an old Round Table regular Alexander Woollcott to produce an anthology of her work as part of a series published by Viking Press for servicemen stationed overseas. Somerset Maugham wrote the introduction. The volume was made up of Parker short stories along with selected poems such as Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, Death and Taxes.
The book was released in 1944 with the title The Portable Dorothy Parker and it was only one of three of the portable series along with The Bible and William Shakespeare to remain in continuous print.
Dorothy Parker quotes have great longevity, the best known being 'Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.' One with a little more substance is 'The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.'
That is no doubt the kind of thinking that made Dorothy Parker an icon .
(To be continued)

Tungee's Gold Review
Tungee's Gold, The Legend of Ebo Landing is an exciting story with a twist for an ending. As I read it I began to wonder if the story was true so I "Googled" the words "legend of Ebo landing" and several sites came up, including Glynn County, Georgia where Ebo Landing is located. The thought that the story may have really happened makes it all that much more compelling.
Tom Barnes does a great job of using description to set up his story lines. His smooth conversations lend to a more believable text. Just as his first book, Doc Holliday's Road To Tombstone was a novel based on real facts, Tungee's Gold is a historically accurate novel.
Barnes' stories are timeless but teach us about certain periods in history. I really enjoyed this book. It gives you the other side of slavery. The dialog with the slave king gives the reader an understanding of what it was like to be one of the African slaves being brought to America on a slave boat.
I highly recommend the book.
Sally Rains author of The Making of a Masterpiece

Writers Notebook:
Several years ago Paula Zahn was interviewing Katharine Hepburn on the CBS morning show. Paula asked about the main difference in films today versus earlier motion pictures. Miss Hepburn’s answer was, “Writers, Writers, Writers. Wit… Humor… You see when I started out there was great wit and humor, there isn’t now.”
Miss Hepburn’s words are as true today as they were when she said them. Lighten up writers and laugh at yourself once in a while.
Robert Benchley once said, “It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.”

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter.
Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels Tungee's Gold, The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday’s Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
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