ALEXANDER WOOLLCOTT [1887-1943], literary and drama critic and essayist, was a self styled arbiter of taste and fashion, especially in literature and theater. His collected works were published under the titles Long Long Ago and While Rome Berns, He became active in drama not only as critic but as parttime actor (e.g., The Man Who Came to Dinner) duci playwright (e.g., The Dark Tower written with George Kaufman). Large, round, and bespectacled, Woollcott possessed a host of eccentricities and a temperamental nature. Called by Ben Hecht “a persnickety fellow with more fizz than brain” and named by Thurber “Old Vitriol and Violeis,” he was the butt of countless jokes at the Round Table. He alternated between joking back and turning harmless jests into serious quarrels. Though a bachelor, Woollcott was never a loner. In the words of his constant friend, Harpo Marx, “He loved the pure existence part of living, the yapping, scrapping, laughing, eating, romping, exploring the world part of it—but never, sad to say, the intimate, sexual part of it.” He had a cutting, sarcastic wit which, when controlled, could be extremely poignant and entertaining. From 1929 to 1940, he became well known as a radio commentator with his own show.
On a voyage to Shanghai, Alexander Woollcott, at his heftiest, was interviewed by ship-news reporters: “I wish emphatically to deny” said Aleck, pointing to his out-sized paunch, “that all rickshaw boys plan to go on strike when I arrive in China.”
Aleck Woollcott once joined Corey Ford at the Ritz Men’s Bar and informed him, “Ford, I plan to spend three days at your house in New Hampshire next week,” Not overly pleased at the prospect of hosting such a demanding guest, Ford uttered a meek “That will be swell.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Woollcott warned.
On the occasion of George and Beatrice Kaufman’s fifth wedding anniversary Woollcott wrote them, “I have been looking around for an appropriate wooden gift, and am pleased hereby to present you with Elsie Ferguson’s performance in her new play.”
After the first stage performance of Our Town, the producers reportedly found Woollcott—a true sentimentalist—sobbing openly on a fire escape in the theater alley. Pardon me, Mr. Woollcott,” one of them asked, “will you endorse the play?”
Rising, Aleck replied, “Certainly not! It doesn’t need it. I’d as soon think of endorsing the Twenty-third Psalm.”
One evening Woollcott met painter Neysa McMein at , a party where she was dressed in a shimmering gown hung with spangles. “Why, Neysa,” Aleck said, “you’re scrofulous with mica.”
Ever conscious of his weight problem, Woollcott installed a steam cabinet at his “Wit’s End” home on the East River. The cabinet had a large window in front, through which an outsider could easily see anyone sitting inside. One afternoon Peggy Pulitzer, while a guest at Woollcott’s, wandered by the cabinet and beheld Aleck’s stark-naked form. Later she advised him, “You should cover that window with an organdy curtain.” Woollcott corrected the lady’s phrasing, however: “Curtain de organ.”
“You,” Woollcott once said to a woman guest, in a roundabout insult, “are married to a cuckold.”
Not one for strenuous exercise or sports, Aleck once witnessed a professional ski meet at Sun Valley. Taking out his memo pad, he wrote; “Remind self never to go skiing.”
While residing at a Manhattan hotel, Mr. Woollcott received a call from the desk clerk, informing him that actress Ina Claire was downstairs.
“Send her up,” Woollcott said.
“I can’t, sir,” the clerk said. “She has a dog.”
“Either Miss Claire’s dog comes up or I’m coming down,” Woollcott warned, adding, “I’m in my pajamas.”
Miss Claire’s dog came up.
Aleck once said of his friend New Yorker editor Harold Ross: “He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln.”
Woollcott was known for keeping a coterie of “favored” intimates whose personal and public lives he did his best to run. Each year he made a point of sending out the following letter to twenty or so of such friends: “ANOTHER MILESTONE IN AMERICAN LITERATURE IS APPROACHING. January 19th is my birthday, in case a sudden flood of sentiment should seek expression in gifts of cash or certified checks.”
Dorothy Parker’s second husband, Alan Campbell, once gave Aleck’s name as a reference when opening a charge account at Wanamaker’s. Woollcott obliged:
Gentlemen:
Mr. Alan Campbell, the present husband of Dorothy Parker, has given my name as a reference in his attempt to open an account at your store. I hope that you will extend this credit to him. Surely Dorothy Parker’s position in American letters is such as to make shameful the petty refusals which she and Alan have encountered at many hotels, restaurants and department stores. What if you never get paid? Why shouldn’t you stand your share of the expense?”
On the stock market: “A broker is a man who runs your fortune into a shoestring.”
At a Hamilton college class reunion Aleck was approached by a man who said to him: “Hello, Alex! You remember me, don’t you?”
“I can’t remember your name,” said Woollcott, “but don’t tell me.”
Woollcott, in his own backhanded way, once came to the defense of his friend Michael Arien: “Arlen, for all his reputation, is not a bounder. He is every other inch a gentleman.”
Reviewing a small, decidedly inferior volume of poetry written by a woman and entitled And I Shall Make Music, Woollcott wrote for The New Yorker, “Not on my carpet lady!”
Because of his uncompromising, often caustic drama criticisms Woollcott was barred from Shubert theaters, an event that threatened his career as a professional critic. Through the support of The New York Times, for which he wrote his reviews, Woollcott won his battle against the Shuberts, and at the same time received extensive personal publicity. In the aftermath of the incident, Aleck confided to a friend, “They threw me out, and now I’m basking in the fierce white light that beats upon the thrown.”
A friend who had been out of town during Aleck’s battle with the Shuberts asked, upon returning, “How did that scrap with the Shuberts come out?”
“Oh,” said Woollcott, “that all went up in smoke.”
“How do you mean, smoke?”
Woolcott gloated: “Jake Shubert sent me a box of cigars for Christmas.”
Woollcott enjoyed a close friendship with Eleanor and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and occasionally visited them at the White House. In a letter to Mrs. Roosevelt, the purpose of which was to solicit the First Lady’s hospitality for an approaching vacation, he wrote: “I would like to come for a week or so. If you haven’t room for me, there are plenty of other places for me to go. I prefer yours.”
While in Washington during the run of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Aleck resided at the White House. He later advised Ethel Barrymore to seek similar accommodations when in that city, assuring her, “Mrs. Roosevelt runs the best theatrical boardinghouse in Washington.”
One snowy winter morning Harpo Marx telephoned Aleck to say he would come by to take him for a sleigh-ride. After expressing annoyance at being awakened, Woollcott warmed slightly to the idea and said: “A splendiferous thought! I shall be waiting for you in front of the Gotham to come jingling up in your troika. You’ll know me by my white beard and the white fur trimming on my red suit. I’m fat and jolly and tend to go around saying ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ to little children. Meanwhile, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to beddy-bye. God bless you and keep you safe from anything as dangerous as knowl-edge.”1
The Round Table crowd was often accused of .professional log-rolling and back-scratching, although the members themseves felt such accusations were unjust. On the occasion of F.P.A/s harsh review of a Heywood Broun novel, Woollcott remarked, “You can see Frank’s scratches on Hey wood’s back yet.”
While writing for The New Yorker, Aleck often created difficulties for the editors because of his fondness for off-color anecdotes and phrases. When one of his pieces was rejected for being “too graphic,” Woollcott sent a note to the responsi
ble editor: “I want to take this up with the proper person and I’ve always considered you the properest person I know.”
After one of his frequent misunderstandings with New Yorker editor Harold Ross, Aleck sent Ross a letter, which included this message: “I think your slogan ‘Liberty or Death’ is splendid and whichever one you decide on will be all right with me.”
Ross once made a direct appeal to Woollcott to delete a line of copy in order to save The New Yorker’s editorial face. Aleck wired Ross: “SORRY I CAN’T SAVE YOUR FACE IF ONLY FOR SOME MUSEUM.”
Referring to the ill fate of The Dark Tower, a play he had written in collaboration with George Kaufman, Woollcott stressed that “it was a tremendous success except for the minor detail that people wouldn’t come to see it”
Woollcott’s acting debut was an amateur performance in which he played a scene from Henry VIII with Madge Kennedy before an audience which included Irving Berlin, Helen Hayes, Mrs. Fiske, Alfred Lunt, and Lynn Fontanne. When the curtain opened, revealing Aleck as Henry VIII the audience began a hissing that lasted a full five minutes. As he made his exit Woollcott was heard muttering, “How unpopular Madge Kennedy must be.”
Referring to his poodle Duchess, to which he had a strong attachment, Woollcott said: “Considered as a one-man dog, she’s a flop. In her fidelity to me, she’s a little too much like that girl in France who was true to the 26th Infantry.”
Woollcott’s letters, like his conversation, varied in tone from the formal and literary to the jocular and sarcastic. In this portion of a letter to his young protege, Charles Lederer, Aleck seems to have controlled his wit to achieve what reads like a parody of a Browning monologue:
I have seen so many earls and countesses lately that a glimpse of one so ignobly born as yourself would be refreshing. Have seen nothing of dear Lady Cavendish, who once sat on this old knee. But that was when she was Adele Astaire. I understand she gets along famously with her mother-in-law, the Duchess of Devon-shire. Has the Duchess saying “Oke” already. Then I suppose I should tell you about Lord Redding’s recent marriage to a woman some forty years younger than himself. The London Times account of the wedding ended, unfortunately, with this sentence: “The bridegroom’s gift to the bride was an antique pendant.”2
While traveling in the Orient, Woollcott kept up an occasional correspondence with Beatrice Kaufman (G.S.K/s wife), with whom he had a warm friendship. The closing of one letter read:
I’m off to Osaka now to see the marionettes and a few good temples. Yesterday I saw a fervent Japanese gentleman standing in the frosty twilight under a sacred waterfall. He wore a suit of tasteful underwear and prayed aloud with chattering teeth for the good of his immortal soul.
Hoping you will soon take similar measures, I remain
Yours respectfully,
A. WOOLLCOTT3
Aleck’s achievement as a loquacious, one-way conversationalist was matched by none, however glib and outgoing his Round Table colleagues might be. He once confessed to a friend, “One day I shall probably talk myself to death,” adding philosophically, “Those who live by the word shall perish by the word.”
One of Woollcott’s closest male-female relationships was with painter Neysa McMein, an affair that spanned several years but never developed beyond warm affection. Aleck once informed Neysa: “I’m thinking of writing the story of our life together. The title is already settled.”
“What is it?” the lady asked.
“Under Separate Cover”
Woollcott once tried to persuade Moss Hart to drive him to Newark, where he was to deliver a lecture. Hart said Yes, on condition that Woollcott let him sit next to him on the speakers’ platform. (Moss explained that he had once clerked in a Newark bookstore, and now wanted to show them he was a big shot. ) At the end of his lecture, Woollcott stated: “I usually have a question period at this time but tonight we’ll dispense with it. I’m sure you’d all want to know the same thing: Who is this foolish-looking young man seated here on the platform with me?” Woollcott then marched abruptly from the stage, leaving Moss to find his own way off.
On his first visit to Moss Hart’s Bucks County estate, Woollcott wrote in the guest book: ‘This is to certify that on my first visit to Moss Hart’s house 1 had one of the most unpleasant times 1 ever spent.”
In a letter to humorist Frank Sullivan, Woollcott related the following: “I thought you would like to hear about the telegram just sent by the printers on a small-town Connecticut newspaper to the foreman of the composing room on the occasion of his marriage. It consisted of one word—’Stet!’ “4
In a note to Alfred Lunt, in 1931, Woollcott wrote: “When your grandchildren (on whom you have not yet made a really effective start) gather at your rheumatic knees and ask you what you did during the great depression, you can tell them that you played Reunion in Vienna to crowded houses, and enjoyed the whole depression enormously.”5
Aleck was once toastmaster at a Theatre Guild dinner, the occasion being to raise money for new Gobelin tapestries for its playhouse. Woollcott began his remarks with, ‘Those Gobelins are going to get you if you don’t watch out.”
Harpo Marx once arrived at Woollcott’s Lake Bomoseen home in a broken-down Model-T Ford. “What do you call that?” Woollcott exclaimed as he regarded the automobile.
“This is my town car,” Harpo explained.
“What was the town?” asked Woollcott. “Pompeii?”
Struggling to pacify the “head of protocol” at a Paris casino, after his companion Harpo Marx had distressed the gentleman with a few good-natured antics, Aleck turned to Harpo and asked, “How can I explain you? . . . There’s no French word for ‘boob.’”
Actress Margalo Gilmore once brought a young actor friend to the Round Table for the express purpose of meeting Aleck Woollcott, whom the young man greatly admired. Somehow sensing Miss Gilmore’s intentions, Aleck took a seat at the opposite end of the table. When Miss Gilmore finally got an opportunity to introduce them, she told Aleck that the lad was a fan of everything he had written. “Oh,” said Woollcott, not bothering to look up, “can he read?”
In an attempt to capture Dorothy Parker’s unique personality, which somehow balanced a childlike innocence with a jaded sophistication, Woollcott called her “a combination of Little Nell and Lady Macbeth.”
Shortly before his death, Aleck said to actress Dorothy Gish: “Doctors want to keep you alive. I want to live.”
“The people of Germany are just as responsible for Hitler as the people of Chicago are for the Chicago Tribune!’
REGARDING SCHOOL: “Personally, I was the teacher’s-pet type, and couldn’t pass a school without pausing to matriculate.”
“I went to one academy or another for 17 mortal years. And never late once. One day last summer I rather boasted of the record. There were three of us swimming slowly across the lake and I just happened to mention that in seventeen years I was never once late at school I shall always remember how this simple statement of fact affected my companions. They tried to drown me.”
Woollcott was an old Hamilton College classmate and lifelong friend of Harry Kean Yuan, son of Yuan Shih-Kai, president of China from 1912 to 1916. Harry was expelled from Hamilton for throwing rocks through his classroom windows. He subsequently enrolled at Colgate University, which Aleck later described gloatingly as “an institution maintained for benefit of persons expelled from Hamilton.”
Kaufman and Hart collaborated in the writing of The Man Who Came to Dinner, a Broadway hit in which the leading character, Sheridan Whiteside, was based on the more poisonous characteristics of the Woollcott personality. In a curtain speech, after playing the Whiteside role himself, Woollcott commented, “It’s not true that the role of the obnoxious Sheridan Whiteside was patterned after me. Whiteside is merely a composite of the better qualities of the play’s two authors.”
Reviewing a show in which both the plot and the two starring performers seemed to him soapy and weak, Woollcott wrote
two lines: “In the first act she becomes a lady. In the second act he becomes a lady.”
In 1931, Woollcott disclosed, ‘This year I’ve done two things I wanted to do—go to Peking, and act in a play. Next year I want to go to Russia and try umbrella mend-ing.”
In a review of an ill-fated Broadway opening, Woollcott suggested that the leading man “should have been gently but firmly shot at sunrise.”
“All the things I really like to do are either immoral, illegal, or fattening.”
One of Woollcott’s favorite “mystifying” anecdotes: “Three men sit down to a bottle of brandy and divide it equally between them. When they have finished the bottle one of them leaves the room, and the other two try to guess who left.”
ON GAMBLING: “My doctor forbids me to play unless I win.”
Rüssel Grouse once showed up at a “Wit’s End” party looking rather flamboyant in a bright, multicolored sports shirt. Aleck greeted him, announcing to the guests already present, “What I admire most about Grouse is his loyalty. Here he is, a busy author and columnist and playwright, and still he takes time to go all the way back to that little Army and Navy store in Skaneatles, New York, to buy his shirts.”
“My friends will tell you that Woollcott is a nasty old snipe. Don’t believe them. Woollcott’s friends are a pack of simps who move their lips when they read.”
Bon Mots, Wisecracks, and Gags Page 7
