
Alexander Woollcott was born 136 years ago today.
A critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine and a member of the Algonquin Round Table, Woollcott was the inspiration for Sheridan Whiteside, the main character in the play, The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939), by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, and for the far less likable character, Waldo Lydecker, in the film, Laura (1944).
Woollcott was convinced he was the inspiration for Rex Stout's brilliant detective, Nero Wolfe, but Stout, although he was friendly to Woollcott, said there was nothing to that idea.
Born in an 85-room house, a vast ramshackle building in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey known as "the North American Phalanx," Woollcott’s birthplace had once been a commune where many social experiments were carried on in the mid-19th century — some more successful than others.
When the Phalanx fell apart after a fire in 1854, it was taken over by the Bucklin family, Woollcott's maternal grandparents. Woollcott spent large portions of his childhood there among his extended family. His father was a ne'er-do-well Cockney who drifted through various jobs, sometimes spending long periods away from his wife and children. Poverty was always close at hand.
Woollcott joined the staff of The New York Times as a cub reporter in 1909. In 1914, he was named drama critic and held the post until 1922, with a break for service during World War I. In April, 1917, the day after war was declared, Woollcott volunteered as a private in the medical corps.
Posted overseas, Woollcott was a sergeant when the intelligence section of the American Expeditionary Forces selected him and a half-dozen other newspaper men to create the Stars and Stripes, an official newspaper to bolster troop morale.
As chief reporter for the Stars and Stripes, Woollcott was a member of the amazingly talented team that formed its editorial board. These included Harold Ross, founding genius of The New Yorker Magazine, Cyrus Baldridge, multifaceted illustrator, author and writer, and the future columnist and radio personality, Franklin P. Adams.
Going beyond simple propaganda, Woollcott and his colleagues reported the horrors of the Great War from the point of view of the common soldier. After the war, he returned to The New York Times. He then transferred to the New York Herald in 1922 and to The World in 1923. He remained there until 1928.
One of New York's most prolific drama critics, he was banned for a time from reviewing certain Broadway theater shows due to his florid and often vitriolic prose. He sued the Shubert theater organization for violation of the New York Civil Rights Act, but lost in the state's highest court in 1916 on the grounds that only discrimination on the basis of race, creed or color was unlawful.
From 1929 to 1934, he wrote a column called "Shouts and Murmurs" for The New Yorker. His book, While Rome Burns, published by Grosset & Dunlap in 1934, was named twenty years later by critic Vincent Starrett as one of the 52 "Best Loved Books of the Twentieth Century."
Woollcott's review of the Marx Brothers' Broadway debut, I'll Say She Is, helped the group's career from mere success to superstardom and started a life-long friendship with Harpo Marx. Harpo's two adopted sons, Alexander Marx and William (Bill) Woollcott Marx, were named after Woollcott and his brother, Billy Woollcott.
Billed as The Early Bookworm, Woollcott was first heard on CBS Radio in October 1929, reviewing books in various timeslots until 1933. His CBS show, The Town Crier, which began July 21, 1933, opened with the ringing of a bell and the cry, "Hear ye, hear ye!," followed by Woollcott's literary observations punctuated with acidic anecdotes.
Woollcott was one of the most quoted men of his generation. Among Woollcott's classics is his description of the Los Angeles area as "Seven suburbs in search of a city" – a quip often attributed to his friend, Dorothy Parker.
Describing The New Yorker editor, Harold Ross, he said: "He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln." He claimed the Brandy Alexander cocktail was named for him.
Woollcott was renowned for his savage tongue. He dismissed the notable wit and pianist, Oscar Levant. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix." He greeted friends: "Hello, Repulsive." When a waiter asked him to repeat his order, he demanded, "muffins filled with pus."
His judgments were frequently eccentric. Dorothy Parker once said: "I remember hearing Woollcott say reading Proust is like lying in someone else's dirty bath water. And then he'd go into ecstasy about something called, Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, and I knew I had enough of the Round Table."
After being kicked out of the apartment he shared with The New Yorker founders, Harold Ross and his wife, Jane Grant, Woollcott moved first into the Hotel des Artistes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He then moved to an apartment at the far end of East 52nd Street.
The members of the Algonquin Round Table had a debate as to what to call his new home. Franklin P. Adams suggested that he name it after the Indian word "Ocowoica," meaning "The-Little-Apartment-On-The-East-River-That-It-Is-Difficult-To-Find-A-Taxicab-Near." But Dorothy Parker came up with the definitive name, Wit's End.
Woollcott’s last broadcast was on January 23, 1943 as a participant in a Writers' War Board panel discussion on the CBS Radio program, The People's Platform. Marking the tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the topic was "Is Germany Incurable?" Panelists included Woollcott, Hunter College president, George Shuster, Brooklyn College president, Henry Gideonse, and novelists Rex Stout and Marcia Davenport.
The program's format began as a dinner party in the studio's private dining room, with the microphones in place. Table talk would lead into a live network radio broadcast, and each panelist would begin with a provocative response to the topic. "The German people are just as responsible for Hitler as the people of Chicago are for the Chicago Tribune," Woollcott stated emphatically, and the panelists noted Woollcott's physical distress.
Ten minutes into the broadcast, Woollcott commented that he was feeling ill, but continued his remarks. "It's a fallacy to think that Hitler was the cause of the world's present woes," he said. Woollcott continued, adding "Germany was the cause of Hitler." He said nothing further.
The radio audience was unaware that Woollcott had suffered a heart attack. He died at New York's Roosevelt Hospital a few hours later at age 56 of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Algonquin Round Table surrounded by Dorothy Parker (lower left), Robert Benchley, Alfred Lunt and Lyn Fontanne, Frank Crowninshield, Alexander Woolcott, Heywood Broun, Marc Connelly, Frank Case, Franklin P. Adams, Edna Ferber, George S. Kaufman and Robert E. Sherwood.
Drawing by Al Hirschfield
