Cast of Characters

by Thomas Vinciguerra

  The discriminating fiction editor and writer William Maxwell also served briefly and reluctantly at Ross’s storied art conferences.

  William Shawn—quiet, hard working and elusive—would succeed Ross as editor and make The New Yorker a journalistic touchstone.

  Gibbs’s first marriage, to college student Helen Galpin, was so big a mistake that neither spoke of it.

  After cavorting at Vassar, Lois Long cavorted as the quintessential New Yorker tastemaker for nightlife and fashion.

  Gibbs fell in love with the elegant writer Nancy Hale. She broke his heart by not abandoning her husband for him.

  St. Clair McKelway, a consummate New Yorker reporter and editor, served with the fledgling air force in the Pacific. There his multiple personalities erupted.

  The unreservedly gay John Mosher was The New Yorker’s first movie critic. He also rejected unsolicited manuscripts with gusto.

  The talented and prodigious Russell Maloney, seen here with his wife, Miriam, unleashed his frustration at The New Yorker by tearing into Gibbs.

  The self-indulgence and literary excesses of Alexander Woollcott were legion. After giving Ross invaluable early assistance, he broke with him irrevocably.

  John O’Hara perfected the so-called New Yorker short story. He was a staple of the magazine—and a source of pride and vexation to Ross for years.

  The kindly Robert Benchley, shown in a publicity shot for his short subject Home Movies, was a master of light New Yorker nonsense.

  Charles Addams was synonymous with his namesake ghouls and black cartoon humor. In real life, he lived cheerfully and well.

  Art editor James Geraghty set The New Yorker’s smart standard for all manner of illustration and design.

  Peter Arno’s cartoons skewered “morons.” This rakish self-portrait conveys his devilish persona.

  No item was too obscure to run down for Freddie Packard, head of The New Yorker’s storied fact-checking department.

  “Burly, able, tumbledown” managing editor Ralph Ingersoll clashed with Ross on the job and later when Ingersoll joined Time Inc.

  Gustave Lobrano took tasteful charge of New Yorker fiction after his friends E. B. and Katharine White left for Maine. Their return caused tension.

  Elinor “Flip” Gibbs on Fire Island with son Tony and daughter Janet, ca. World War II.

  On Fire Island, drenched in sun and cut off from distractions, Gibbs was atypically at peace. “I guess I really like it here better than any other place in the world,” he wrote.

  POSTSCRIPT

  In June 2007 I visited Tony Gibbs’s ex-wife, Tish, now long married to Bill Collins, at her home in Norwalk, Connecticut. Over iced tea in her backyard, she chatted informatively and cheerfully about her father-in-law and his family, even when broaching the more disturbing aspects of their domestic life. At one point she said she had something to show me. Ducking into the house, she returned with an old blue Brooks Brothers box.

  In it was the Puck costume that Gibbs had worn in his Riverdale production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream nearly a hundred years before—the one he had written about in “Ring Out, Wild Bells,” the one whose “festive and horrible” noise had obscured all the dialogue. The harlequin colors were now muddy; one bootie was missing. Still, there it was.

  Gibbs’s director had told him to be “a little whirlwind,” and in his obituary White said that Gibbs remained one even beyond the end: “In these offices can still be heard the pure and irreplaceable sound of his wild bells.” In closing “Ring Out,” Gibbs had written that during the intermission, “the director cut off my bells with his penknife, and after that things quieted down and got dull.”

  But the bells of this motley coat were attached. I lifted the garment gently from the box and shook it slightly. It all still jingled.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book began life in 2005 as a straightforward biography of Wolcott Gibbs. Along the way, it took a couple of sharp turns. Although the final content of Cast of Characters may not directly reflect the specific contributions of everyone I have contacted over the past decade, all have informed my writing. I therefore tip my hat to them.

  From first to last, I owe an enduring debt to Tony Gibbs. When I first approached Tony, he knew nothing of me and could have easily demurred. But within a week of my sending him some pieces I had published in The New York Times, he told me he was happy to cooperate. Early on he explained that if he could not supply particular information, it was because he simply did not have it on call—a consequence of having distanced himself as a young adult from his parents’ frequently tumultuous lives. As it was, Tony subjected himself time and again to my inquiries. A fine and fair writer, he understood my probing and never hesitated to give me what he thought was the best version of the truth. This book would have been literally impossible without him. I cannot thank him enough.

  My thanks go as well to Tony’s immediate and extended family and their associates who helped me trace the elusive past of his father. They are Lynne Gibbs, Tish and Bill Collins, Eric Gibbs, Susan Ward Roncalli, Sarah Smith, Phoebe Frackman, and Virginia Canfield. John Speed, Keats Vincent Thackston, and Lawrence Crutcher clued me in to the later years of Angelica Singleton Duer. Linda Kramer and Ruth O’Hara fleshed out much of Gibbs’s domestic existence.

  There are few survivors from what I call the golden age of The New Yorker, but all those I reached were most gracious. Among them are Roger Angell, Lillian Ross, Mary D. Kierstead, William Walden, Jim Munves, Walter Bernstein, Don Mankiewicz, Gordon Cotler, Frank Modell, Dan Pinck, Charlotte Maurer, and Betsy Flagler.

  I received invaluable assistance, remembrances, and documentation from survivors and relations of many New Yorker personnel and associated individuals. They include Rosemary Thurber, Sara Sauers, Jonathan Meredith, David Behrman, Carola Vecchio, Susan Lardner, Mary Jane Lardner, Charles Price, Dorothy Lobrano Guth, Allen Shawn, Wallace Shawn, Martha White, Amelia Hard, Maeve Kinkead Streep, Duncan Kinkead, Christina Carver Pratt, Joan Bryan Gates, Roberta Bryan Bocock, Courty Bryan, Wylie O’Hara Doughty, Brookie Maxwell, Katharine Maxwell, Patsy Blake, Patricia Arno, Molly Rea, Meredith Brown, Preston Brown, Nat Benchley, Edith Iglauer Daly, Jeanne Steig, Susan Packard, Penelope Lord, Sarah Herndon, John Wunderlich, Robert Ballard, Liza Gard, Bill Wertenbaker, Alexander Waugh, Peter Waugh, William Edge, and Peter Powers.

  Obscure and fascinating information about the Long Island Rail Road of Gibbs’s day came from Sam Berliner III, Art Huneke, Frank Zahn, and John Teichmoeller. John Hammond of the Oyster Bay Historical Society made clear Gibbs’s efforts on behalf of the Boy Scouts and Mortimer Schiff. Gilbert Stancourt, Laurene Hofer, Pat Barry, Terry Hamilton Wollin, Helen Farrell, and Bill Carew gave me glimpses into the hidden history of Gibbs and Helen Galpin. Rufus Griscom kindly discussed his grandfather’s career as a newspaper publisher.

  It took a veritable battalion to help me assemble my documentation. That battalion comprises Albert Harris at the Riverdale Country Day School; Philip Moore and Ann Moriarty at the Cheshire Academy; Cathy Skitko, Denise Spatarella, Ryan Merriam, and Robert Cope at the Hill School; Mary Richter at the Brearley School; Ann Hamilton and Wilma Slaight at the registrar’s office at Wellesley College; Sandy Stelts at the Special Collections Library of Pennsylvania State University; Donald Glassman at the Barnard College Archives; Jocelyn Wilk at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Columbia University; Dean Rogers and Colton Johnson at the Archives and Special Collections Library and Historian’s Office, respectively, of Vassar College; Katherine Reagan, Hilary Dorsch Wong, Eisha Neely, Elaine Engst, and Ana Guimaraes at the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University; J. C. Johnson at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University; Peter Nelson at Amherst College Archives and Special Collections; Elizabeth Frank at the Louise Bogan Charitable Trust; Graham Sherriff, Karen Spicher, June Can, and Moira Ann Fitzgerald at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University; Marianne Hansen of S
pecial Collections at Bryn Mawr College; Maida Goodwin at the Sophia Smith Collection of Smith College; Jennie Rathbun at Houghton Library of Harvard University; Geri Solomon and Victoria Aspinwall at Special Collections of Hofstra University; Monica Mercado and Christine Colburn at the Special Collections Research Center of the University of Chicago; Jean Cannon and Arcadia Falcone at the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas; Rebecca Jewett at the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division of Ohio State University; Linda Hall at the Archives and Special Collections of Williams College; Mark Woodhouse and Lesia Fadale at Elmira College; Geoff Smith, Michael Rosen, and Susanne Jaffe at Thurber House; Michael Barry Bernard at Washington Group International; Jill Gage at the Newberry Library; Kevin Miserocchi at the Charles and Tee Addams Foundation; John Printz at the Newcomen Society of the United States; Elizabeth Botten at the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art; Tara Anderson at Trinity Church/Grace Church; Mark Young at the Conrad N. Hilton College of Restaurant Management at the University of Houston; and Mark Ricci at Hilton Worldwide. Tom Mathewson courteously withdrew certain important books from the Columbia University library system on my behalf. Barbara Hogenson and Lori Styler granted kind permission to reprint many Thurber-related materials.

  The New York Public Library, which houses the New Yorker Records, offers a most generous and enlightened fellowship at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. I regret that this program saw fit to turn down my four separate applications. So I am indebted to the excellent and efficient staff of the library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division who facilitated my persistent researches into its trove of New Yorker memos, drafts, and other ephemera. They are Tal Nadan, Susan Malsbury, Philip Heslip, Weatherly Stephan, Lea Jordan, Thomas Lannon, John Cordovez, Nasima Hasnat, and Kit Messick. They navigated me through the S. N. Behrman Papers, the Joel Sayre Papers, the James M. Geraghty Papers, the Harriet Walden New Yorker Papers, and the Yaddo Records as well.

  For retrieving certain articles about The New Yorker and related subjects, I commend Rachel Vincent, Tatianna Hunter, and Lisa Luna at Harper’s Bazaar, Alex Hoyt and Sarah Yager at The Atlantic Monthly, Anna Peele at Esquire, Victoria Kirk and Ann Wright at Cosmopolitan, and Jeremiah Manion at The Boston Globe. No question about The New Yorker was too trivial for its archivist supreme, Jon Michaud, or his colleague Erin Overbey. I delighted in revelations from the New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin, who is writing what will be a fine biography of Peter Arno. Others who worked for The New Yorker, like Dana Fradon and Charles McGrath, were most solicitous. Lew Powell furnished a nice reflection about St. Clair McKelway.

  Jamie Katz, Edie Lieber, Janice Birmingham Webb, Rushelle Wechsler, Toni Wechsler, Richard Wechsler, Tony Stern, Susan Cookson, Sarah Morgan, Nicole Pressley Wolf, Jay Trien, Herman Wouk, Bel Kaufman, Linda Hall, Constantine Karvonides, and Arthur Gelb enriched my appreciation of Fire Island. Betty Rollin, Joanna Simon, and Isabel Konecky shared wonderful reminiscences of Valentine Sherry. Season in the Sun came to life thanks to George Ives, Jada Rowland, Gregor Rowland, Leonard McCombe, and Courtney Burr III.

  For crucial information about Foord’s sanitarium, I salute Carol Hazlehurst and Roma Lisovich. Regarding Gibbs’s theater days, I pay tribute to Judy Rascoe, Dorianne Guernsey, Irvin Ungar, Susan McCarthy Todd, Eric Bentley, Alexandra Bracie, Bernard Gittelman, and Jane Hewes. Joan Castle Sitwell and Jonathan Schwartz offered wonderful anecdotes. Miscellaneous help in other areas came from Park Dougherty and Alan Brinkley.

  Many books have been written about The New Yorker and some of its outstanding figures. I am especially thankful for the encouragement and support of the authors of some of these more recent and excellent volumes, among them Thomas Kunkel, Ben Yagoda, Harrison Kinney, and Linda H. Davis. Regarding William Maxwell, I thank Chris Carduff, Michael Steinman, and Barbara Burkhardt. I had some most pleasant exchanges with Gilbert Leigh Bloom and Howard Fishlove, who wrote informative and analytical doctoral and master’s theses, respectively, about Gibbs’s theatre criticism. I consulted, too, with Ari Hogenboom and Mary Kalfatovic about their noteworthy Gibbs encyclopedia entries. Chuck Fountain generously forwarded a copy of George Frazier’s unpublished book about Time, Inc.

  I respectfully tweak my fellow Philolexian Society alumnus Jason Epstein, who informed me that the last thing the world needed was another book about The New Yorker. I shake the hand of another Columbia friend, Adam Van Doren, for his continuing interest, informed as it was by his knowledge of the Algonquin crowd. Kevin Fitzpatrick of the Dorothy Parker Society was also most supportive.

  Some groundwork for this book was laid in 2008, when I published an essay in The Weekly Standard tied to the fiftieth anniversary of Gibbs’s death. My Standard friends include the Old Lion Matthew Continetti, the indulgent Terry Eastland, the constantly encouraging Joseph Epstein, and the all-wise Phil Terzian. Matters accelerated in 2011 when I published the anthology Backward Ran Sentences: The Best of Wolcott Gibbs From The New Yorker. My editors, production personnel, and marketing crew at the Bloomsbury Press—Rachel Mannheimer, Nate Knaebel, Carrie Majer, Anthony LaSasso, Michelle Blankenship, Peter Miller, Jeremy Wang-Iverson, and of course, Kathy Belden—were consummate professionals. P. J. O’Rourke supplied—no surprise—a hilarious foreword.

  My handlers at W. W. Norton were superb. First among them is editor-in-chief and vice president John Glusman, my old Columbia College Today compatriot. With his customary editorial acumen, he helped me define this book’s scope and focus and guide it toward its conclusion. Alexa Pugh did fine administrative work; she and Jillian Brall steered me through the permissions process, as did Leigh Montville at Condé Nast. Janet Biehl’s copy editing was masterful. My diligent agent, Glen Hartley, took me on with maximum conscientiousness.

  Over the last few years I was fortunate to have delivered several talks and discussions about my subject at the Yale Club, the Coffee House, the Dutch Treat Club, and the Port Washington Pubic Library; I thank the personnel who coordinated these events. At a Gibbs discussion I moderated at the New School upon the publication of Backward Ran Sentences, my fellow panelists Kurt Andersen and Mark Singer quite outclassed me. Although James Wolcott could not participate in that forum, he has long inspired this book. So have Tim Page, David Lehman, Robert Boynton, Whit Stillman, Craig Lambert, Jack Heidenry, and Harlan Ellison.

  Some final and personal embraces:

  To Sam Roe, Michael Bologna, Theresa Braine, Michael Cannell, Darryl McGrath, Pamela LiCalzi O’Connell, John Jeter, Glen Craney, and other cherished classmates from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism;

  To Mary Reilly;

  To my brothers, Raymond and Billy;

  To my mother, Aurora;

  And to the memory of my father, William.

  NOTES

  Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.

  ABBREVIATIONS:

  EBW: E. B. White

  HWR: Harold Wallace Ross

  JOH: John O’Hara

  JT: James Thurber

  KSW: Katharine Sergeant White

  NYPL: New York Public Library

  StCM: St. Clair McKelway

  TNY: The New Yorker

  WG: Wolcott Gibbs

  WS: William Shawn

  INTRODUCTION: “EITHER COMPETENT OR HORRIBLE”

  2 “I guess I really like it here”: WG, “Dark Cloud in the Sky,” TNY, June 22, 1946.

  3 “It is the kind of play”: WG, “More in Sorrow,” TNY, September 19, 1942.

  4 “If you don’t know anything”: WG, “Death in the Rumble Seat,” TNY, October 8, 1942.

  4 “His face, on the whole,” etc.: WG, “St. George and the Dragnet,” TNY, May 25, 1940.

  4 “Timen have come to bulge,” etc.: WG, “Time . . . Fortune . . . Life . . . Luce,” TNY, November 28, 1936.

  4 That Luce issue had set: HWR to WG, memo, March 1, 1937.
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  5 “Everyone who read this parody”: Bernard DeVoto, “The Easy Chair: Distempers of the Press,” Harper’s, March 1937.

  5 He had recently sworn off: Constantine Karvonides, interview by author, September 29, 2013.

  5 “a competently executed trick”: WG, “Notes and Comment,” TNY, February 12, 1949.

  5 “no references to juvenile”: WG, More in Sorrow, p. viii.

  6 “It occurs to me that writers”: Ibid., p. vii.

  6 “He took up so much room”: WG, “Robert Benchley: In Memoriam,” New York Times, December 16, 1945.

  7 “I wish to Christ”: Kinney, Thurber Life and Times, p. 914.

  7 “semblance of unbaked cookies”: Dorothy Parker, introduction to The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments, quoted in Holmes, ed., Thurber Critical Essays, p. 57.

  7 “cretonnes for the soup”: JT, “What Do You Mean It Was Brillig?,” TNY, January 7, 1939.

  8 “It would not be unfair to say”: Ralph McAllister Ingersoll, “The New Yorker,” Fortune, July 1934.

  8 “some of the most moral”: Herbert Mitgang, “E. B. White, Essayist and Stylist, Dies,” New York Times, October 2, 1985.

  8 “I think of White”: KSW to S. N. Behrman, October 12, 1965.