Algonquin Round Table
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The Algonquin Round Table was a group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits that met from 1919 until about 1929, though its legacy endured long afterward.
They met for lunch every day at a round table at the Algonquin Hotel and traded quips; many of these sayings are still repeated today. The group began meeting in June 1919 when several of its members returned from World War I where they met on the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes.
There was no formal membership, so people came and went, but the primary members included:
- Critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter Dorothy Parker
- Humorist and actor Robert Benchley
- The New Yorker editor Harold Ross
- Journalist and feminist Jane Grant (married to Ross)
- Author and playwright Edna Ferber
- Composer Deems Taylor
- Author and playwright Robert Sherwood
- Playwright and director George S. Kaufman
- Critic and journalist Alexander Woollcott
- Columnist Franklin Pierce Adams
- Columnist and sportswriter Heywood Broun (married to Hale)
- Journalist and feminist Ruth Hale
- Playwright Marc Connelly
- Magazine illustrator Neysa McMein
- Publicist John Peter Toohey
- Playwright and screenwriter Donald Ogden Stewart
- Editor and playwright Beatrice Kaufman (married to George S. Kaufman)
- Actor, comedian, and musician Harpo Marx
Others from the theatre and publishing world visited. Since some of the members were popular newspaper columnists who repeated some of the conversations in their columns, the quips got wide circulation. Sometimes they were unkind. One story is that when Dorothy Parker was informed about the death of President Calvin Coolidge, she replied, "How can they tell?"
Members often visited Neshobe, a private island owned by Alexander Woollcott, located on eight acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. An offshoot of the Algonquin Round Table was a poker club called the Thanatopsis Pleasure and Inside Straight Club, which also met at the hotel.
The Algonquin Hotel leaves their table set with namecards of the famous people who sat there. There is also a painting depicting the Round Table, painted by Natalie Ascencios, that hangs in the hotel dining room.
A film about the members, The Ten-Year Lunch (1987), won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. A 1995 movie about the group was entitled Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. There is also a musical about it called "The Talk of the Town" that is performed in the Algonquin's Oak Room cabaret.
The Algonquin Round Table was also referenced in an episode of Seinfeld, where Jerry sarcastically compares his girlfriend's seemingly unintelligent friends to the Round Table.
