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:
- Dorothy Parker , critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter
- Robert Benchley, humorist and actor
- Harold Ross, The New Yorker editor
- Jane Grant, journalist and feminist (married to Ross)
- Edna Ferber, author and playwright
- Deems Taylor, composer
- Robert Sherwood, author and playwright
- George S. Kaufman, playwright and director
- Alexander Woollcott, critic and journalist
- Franklin Pierce Adams, columnist
- Heywood Broun, columnist and sportswriter (married to Hale)
- Ruth Hale, journalist and feminist
- Marc Connelly, playwright
- Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
- John Peter Toohey, publicist
- Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright and screenwriter
- Beatrice Kaufman, editor and playwright (married to George S. Kaufman)
- Harpo Marx, actor, comedian, and musician
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. It was also referenced in an episode of Friends, in which Joey was contemplating buying encyclopedias and was unaware of this phrase. It's also been referenced in Less Than Perfect and Stacked.
The Algonquin Round Table was referenced in an epsiode of the West Wing when Sam tells C.J., "That's a real Algonquin Round Table you grew up with C.J."
