Algonquin Round Table

Members of the Algonquin Round Table : (standing :) Art Samuels, Harpo Marx; (seated :) Charlie MacArthur, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott, around 1919

The Algonquin Round Table was a legendary literary circle of a loose group of journalists , writers and actors who regularly gathered at the famous Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan , New York City .

In June 1919, the theater critic Dorothy Parker- Rothschild (1893-1967), the playwright Robert E. Sherwood (1896-1955) and the humorist Robert Benchley (1889-1945) met for lunch at the Hotel Algonquin on the Upper West Side . They formed a literary trio that was later called the Algonquin Round Table . During the daily meetings, the participants fought heated arguments in which sarcasm and alcohol were the order of the day.

membership

Regular participants

Franklin Pierce Adams , columnist Robert Benchley , humorist and actor Heywood Broun , columnist and sports journalist Marc Connelly , playwright George S. Kaufman , playwright and director

Dorothy Parker , theater critic, writer and screenwriter Harold Ross , journalist and editor of The New Yorker Robert E. Sherwood , author and playwright John Peter Toohey , publicist Alexander Woollcott , critic and journalist

Irregular participants

Tallulah Bankhead , actress Jane Grant , journalist and feminist Ruth Hale , journalist and feminist Beatrice Kaufman , editor and playwright Harpo Marx , comedian and actor Neysa McMein , illustrator

Donald Ogden Stewart , playwright and screenwriter Deems Taylor , composer Edna Ferber , writer Ina Claire , actress Douglas Fairbanks Sr. , actor and producer

Trivia

• The regular meetings and its prominent participants are the reason that the hotel is now part of the cultural heritage of the city of New York.
• The hotel now has a plaque with a quote from theater critic Brooks Atkinson :

"The personalities who came together here fundamentally changed the American understanding of what constitutes a comedy through their creations and broke the ground for a new stage in the arts and in theater."

Filmography

• 1987: The Ten-Year Lunch (documentary)
• 1994: Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle ( Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle , Drama)

Web links

•  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) (English)
• Algonquin Hotel ( Memento of August 24, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
• History of the Round Table (English)
• Algonquin Round Table (English)
• Algonquin Hotel (English)

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Algonquin Hotel