Franklin Pierce Adams
Franklin Pierce Adams (actually Franklin Leopold Adams , born November 15, 1881 in Chicago , Illinois , † March 23, 1960 in New York , NY ) was an American journalist , translator and radio announcer . He was known by his pseudonym F.PA , with whom he signed his newspaper column "The Conning Tower".
Life
Adam's parents were Moses Adams and Clara Schlossberg. At the age of 13 he changed his middle name from Leopold to Pierce at a Jewish confirmation ceremony in homage to the 14th President Franklin Pierce . In 1899 he graduated from Armor Scientific Academy (now the Illinois Institute of Technology ), studied for a year at the University of Michigan and then worked for an insurance company for three years.
In 1904 Franklin Pierce Adams married Minna Schwartze, a Broadway showgirl, of German descent. The childless marriage was divorced in 1924. In 1925 he married Ester Root, a member of the New York Society. The marriage had four children, Anthony, Timothy, Persephone and Jonathan. The marriage ended in divorce in 1950.
In the 1920s and 1930s he was a member of the Algonquin Round Table , a famous group of critics , actors and writers . In 1946 he was accepted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters .
New York newspaper columnist
At the Chicago Journal he wrote a sports column from 1903 and then the humorous column "A Little about Everything". The following year he moved to the New York Evening Mail newspaper , where he stayed until 1913. There he wrote the column "Always in Good Humor", which used letters from the readers. During the time in the Evening Mail Adams wrote his famous novel "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," a tribute to the double play -combination " Tinker to Evers to Chance " of the Chicago Cubs . From 1911 he had a second column, a parody of Samuel Pepys ' diary . He continued this very successfully from 1913 under the title "The Conning Tower" in the New York Tribune newspaper .
During the First World War he fought together with Alexander Woollcott and Harold Ross in Europe at the front and in the military intelligence service. At the same time he wrote the column "The Listening Post". After the war, Adams returned to New York and the New York Tribune, known as the “ Park Row comma hunter” because of his language skills . In 1922 he moved to New York World , where his column appeared, until the newspaper merged with the inferior New York World Telegram in 1931 . Adams moved back with the column to the New York Tribune , which was now called the New York Herald Tribune . In 1937 he switched to the conservative daily and tabloid New York Post, where his column "The Conning Tower" appeared, until he discontinued it in September 1941.
radio
From 1931 to 1941 he was a panelist on the NBC radio show Information Please, the expert on poetry, old drinking songs and Gilbert and Sullivan , which he always called "Sullivan and Gilbert". One of the show's running gags was that Adams' standard answer when asked about quotes he didn't know where was that Shakespeare was the author.
Works
- In Cupid's Court (1902)
- Tobogganning on Parnassus (1911)
- In Other Words (1912)
- Answer This One (1927)
- The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys (1935)
- The Melancholy Lute (1936)
Web links
- Works by Franklin Pierce Adams in Project Gutenberg ( currently not usually available for users from Germany )
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Sally Ashley: FPA: The Life and Times of Franklin Pierce Adams . Beaufort Books, New York 1986, ISBN 978-0-8253-0256-5 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Adams, Franklin Pierce |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Franklin Leopold Adams, FPA |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American journalist and radio announcer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 15, 1881 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Chicago , Illinois |
| DATE OF DEATH | March 23, 1960 |
| Place of death | New York , NY |