From 1919 on, a circle of young exuberant wits, the twenty-somethings, regaled Dry-Era America from around a hotel table at the Algonquin. Nothing quite like them has been seen since…
Since 1914 Robert benchley had been contributing to Vanity Fair under his own name and later also as “Brighton Perry.” His pieces were lampoonish trifles, matured in expertness and successfully topsy-turvy. Indicative of what was to come was Benchley’s first article for which he was paid a lordly forty dollars. It was a moon-struck disquisition on the difficulties of writing a novel, the abrupt title of which was No matter From What Angle You Looked at It, Alice Brookhausen Was a Girl Whom You Would hesitate To Invite Into Your Own Home.
—Al Hirschfeld’s portrait of Robert, Nathaniel, Peter and Nat—-New York: July, 2009: In the 90th anniversary year of the founding of the legendary Algonquin Round Table, a new collection of little-known works by some of the group’s most famous members has come to light. Unearthed from private collections, public troves and dark recesses, the works of fiction, poetry, criticism, journalism, humor and silliness sprang from the prolific pens of Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood, Edna Ferber, Alexander Woollcott, Franklin P. Adams, Heywood Broun, Ruth Hale, Marc Connelly and several other members and visitors at the renowned literary gathering….click image for source…
Benchley was to become stout as his fame, and as the decade accumulated, the writer in him seemed to be swallowed up in the actor celebrated for his humorous movie shorts. When he came to Vanity Fair, he was the type, it was recalled who never had a drink and was given to biting his nails.
(see link at end)…Bob Benchley began moving in fast circles. Although an ardent prohibitionist when the Noble Experiment began, by the end of the ’20s he was an elegant boulevardier and flaneur,
in other words, a drunk. Some credit him with the immortal line, “let’s get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.”
While on one of his nightly forays, he exited a night club and spotted a beautifully uniformed gentleman at the door whom he commanded to summon a taxicab. The supposed doorman scornfully turned on Benchley, saying that he was Admiral So-And-So of the United States Navy. “All right, then,” said Benchley, “Get us a battleship.”
On another occasion at the same establishment, the help was lined up one by one to receive gratuities. As was his habit, Benchley tipped them generously, save for one fellow (who probably reminded him of that Admiral). “Have you forgotten me?” he asked with palm outstretched. Benchley grabbed it and shook it, saying as he hurried off, “No, I’ll write you every day.”
His writing reflected the same offbeat humor. As a critic he was loath to chastise too severely for fear of wounding a budding career, but he could be harsh when he felt the public was being insulted. In this vein, he maintained a running feud in Life with Abigail’s Irish Rose, but when it closed after 2,327 performances he had put in his usual space in the
magazine, a box with a heavy black border for the play along with the Gothic script words: “In Memorium.”
His regular columns focused on either ordinary situations in his own life or on bizarre, or just slightly strange, events he scanned in the morning papers. Read More:http://www.davidpietrusza.com/benchley.html
…Benchley was a humorous writer and wanted to be a serious one; one who would accuse himself of knowing little, when his knowledge was prodigious. The type who wrote uproariously and read seriously, dashing off “The Social Life of the Newt” by day while reading Nietzsche or Henry Adams by night, or at least late at night. He was also a crusader for human rights, an earnest volunteer for the Urban League, a Puck who was to march in the picket lines for Sacco and Vanzetti, a dedicated pacifist, and at first, an ardent prohibitionist, tone-deaf to
music of the cocktail shaker, though in time he became amply responsive to its rhythms.
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