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Algonquin Round Table
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle," as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
Daily association with each other, both at the luncheons and outside of them, inspired members of the Circle to collaborate creatively. The entire group worked together successfully only once, however, to create a revue called No Sirree! which helped launch a Hollywood career for Round Tabler Robert Benchley.
In its ten years of association, the Round Table and a number of its members acquired national reputations both for their contributions to literature and for their sparkling wit. Although some of their contemporaries, and later in life even some of its members, disparaged the group, its reputation has endured long after its dissolution.
Membership
(Also as listed in Wikipedia.)
Charter members of the Round Table included:
* Franklin Pierce Adams, columnist
* Robert Benchley, humorist and actor
* Heywood Broun, columnist and sportswriter (married to Ruth Hale)
* Marc Connelly, playwright
* George S. Kaufman, playwright and director
* Dorothy Parker, critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter
* Harold Ross, The New Yorker editor
* Robert E. Sherwood, author and playwright
* John Peter Toohey, publicist
* Alexander Woollcott, critic and journalist
Membership was not official or fixed so many others moved in and out of the Circle. Some of these included:
* Tallulah Bankhead, actress
* Edna Ferber, author and playwright
* Raymond Austin, author and playwright and screenwriter
* Margalo Gillmore, actress
* Jane Grant, journalist and feminist (married to Ross)
* Ruth Hale, journalist and feminist
* Beatrice Kaufman, editor and playwright (married to George S. Kaufman)
* Margaret Leech, writer and historian
* Harpo Marx, comedian and actor
* Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
* Alice Duer Miller, writer
* Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright and screenwriter
* Frank Sullivan, journalist and humorist
* Deems Taylor, composer
* Peggy Wood, actress