Born On This Day- August 22nd... Dorothy Parker

"3 highballs & I'm St. Francis of Assisi."

As a screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1930s, she irritated Samuel Goldwyn with her stream of caustic remarks.

Goldwyn complained: "Wisecracks, I told you there's no money in wisecracks. People want a happy ending."

Parker: "I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions & billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending." 

"One more drink & I'd have been under the host."

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I played a wonderful character named- Banjo, inspired by Harpo Marx, in a play – The Man Who Came To Dinner, that was based on a real life incident in the life of Algonquin Round Table regular- Alexander Woollcott.

I usually over-research my character work as an actor & I was sent into an Algonquin Round Table jag that lasted for decades. I read everything I could by & about these interesting, talented & witty friends & colleagues during one of NYC’s richest periods. I have books about & by Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Robert Benchley, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kauffman, Herbert Ross & S.J. Perelman, but Dorothy Parker was the personality that engaged me the most. I believe I had read everything by her by the time I was 21.

"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks."

When I lived in NYC in the 1970s, my handsome, sexy, neurotic, born in NYC boyfriend- Stephen (he looked like the young Frank Langella. I wonder if he now looks like present day Langella?) took me on a Dorothy Parker's Manhattan tour one autumn day, with stops at her girlhood home on the Upper West Side, the Algonquin Hotel, Woollcott’s home- Wits End, the Waldorf-Astoria, the old offices of the New Yorker, & the restaurant- 21.

She led an interesting & difficult life, with a troubled childhood, 3 marriages ( 2 to the same man & 1 to a homosexual), & several suicide attempts, but her her caustic wit, talent, wisecracks & sharp eye for urban sophisticates & their foibles endure.

She has been portrayed on film & TV by Dolores Sutto in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash & Lilly (1999) & most interestingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker & The Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance & Leigh received a number of awards & nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination.

Parker was an early defender of human & civil rights. She left here estate to the NAACP. Parker's ashes are buried at that organization’s Baltimore Headquarters. She had suggested that her epitaph read- “Excuse my dust”

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

Born On This Day- August 15th... Edna Ferber

"A closed mind is a dying mind."
Edna Ferber

I have always been crazy for The Algonquin Round Table, a celebrated group of NYC writers, critics, actors & wits. Members of "The Vicious Circle," as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 through 1929. The group would engage in wisecracks, wordplay & witticisms that, & then in the newspaper columns of Round Table members,they would be celebrated by the public. Later in life some of its members disparaged the group, yet its reputation has endured. I have always been fascinated by them & I have books about the group & many of the individuals including:



Franklin Pierce Adams, columnist
Robert Benchley, humorist & actor
Heywood Broun, columnist & sportswriter
Marc Connelly, playwright
George S. Kaufman, playwright & director
Dorothy Parker, critic, poet, short-story writer, & screenwriter
Harold Ross, The New Yorker editor
Robert E. Sherwood, author & playwright
Alexander Woollcott, critic & journalist
Tallulah Bankhead, actress
Harpo Marx, comedian & actor
Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
Alice Duer Miller, writer
Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright & screenwriter
Frank Sullivan, journalist & humorist
Deems Taylor, composer
Peggy Wood, actress
& Birthday Girl- author & playwright- Edna Ferber. 

Ferber's novels featured strong female protagonists. She usually highlighted at least one strong secondary character who faced discrimination ethnically or for other reasons. Ferber held a firm belief that all people are equal & possibly that the least attractive may have the best character.


Many theatrical & film productions have been made based on her work: Show Boat, Giant, Ice Palace, Saratoga Trunk, Cimarron (which won an Oscar) . 3 of these works - Show Boat, Saratoga Trunk & Giant - have been made into musicals. When composer Jerome Kern proposed turning the very serious Show Boat into a musical, Ferber was shocked, thinking it would be transformed into a light musical entertainment typical of the 1920s. It was not until Kern explained that he & Oscar Hammerstein II wanted to create a different type of musical that Ferber granted him the rights. In 1925, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel- So Big, which by coincidence, is the title of a chapter in my own memoir- Jockstraps & Vicodin (a possible Pulitzer for me?).

There was a silent film made of So Big, & an early talkie movie remake in 1932, starring Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, & Bette Davis in a supporting role. A 1953 remake of So Big starred Jane Wyman in the Stanwyck role, it is the version most often seen today.

Edna Ferber was a big ol' golf playing, softball team member, dating her former therapist, Indigo Girls loving lesbian. One of her "Old Maid" characters says: "Being an old maid was a great deal like death by drowning ...a really delightful sensation when you ceased struggling." She wrote the gay favorites: Stage Door, Dinner at Eight, & The Royal Family. Ferber was portrayed by the actress Lili Taylor in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker & the Vicious Circle.

The Oak Room Closes

WCK3 texted me: "I can't believe you have not posted about the Oak Room closing". I must admit, up to the minute as I attempt to be, I can't be on the Internet or watching TV 24 hours of the day. This scoop slipped past me. I immediately searched for an account of this announcement.

Oak Room at The Plaza

WCK3 most likely felt a special sentiment for this NYC spot. On December 24, 1976, we had attended the theatre & after a rousing good time seeing The Royal Family (Rosemary Harris, George Grizzard & Eva Le Gallienne), as we came out of the theatre we treated to big fat, perfect, magic, stage worthy snowflakes that had been falling as we had witnessed theatre magic. It was like stepping on to a stage set of NYC at Christmas. The streets were mostly empty & the city grinned at us like it had been lit by a baby pink spotlight.

Some guy I picked up at The Oak Room at The Plaza

We decided to walk home to the Upper West Side & as we crossed Central Park South, I suggested ducking into The Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel. We prolonged the evening with cocktails & nibbles at the famed dining room.

A warm glow has fallen over you readers... but, WCK3 was a bit confused. The Oak Room at the Plaza (now condos) still exists. The Oak Room that is being shuttered is the bar & cabaret space at my beloved Algonquin Hotel. Part of the room’s history includes a link to the famed Round Table whose acerbic members included Dorothy Parker & Robert Benchley. The literary salon first met there is 1919.

Andrea Marcovicci at the Oak Room at The Algonquin... known to steal my material

The ghost of Dorothy Parker is still sipping her martini, but the space that has been the toast of the Cabaret world for 35 years, with regular gigs by: Harry Connick Jr., Diana Krall, KT Sullivan, & Karen Akers, is finished. Andrea Marcovicci sang her last sad song on the tiny stage. This only leaves The Carlyle as a top notch, A list cabaret in NYC. Is this style of music, great singers swinging the Great Standards, ready to be boarded up also?

I have a special place in my heart for the room that goes beyond the Algonquin Round Table Gang. I had planned on shocking the show biz world with the resurrection of my act: Steve Sings Sad Songs for the Soused
Sweethearts. Here was my abandoned Set List for the much anticipated return of my Supper Club Show:
1. Whip My Hair
2. Sister Morphine
3. The Crane's Wife (Decemberists cover)
4. Back In Baby's Arms
5. As Tears Go By
6. A Wonderful Guy
7.Straight To The Top
8. Do Do Do
9. I Enjoy Being A Girl
10. Mean To Me
11. Prisoner Of Love (Kitty Wells cover)
12. Alone When It Rains
13. A Small Day Tomorrow
Encore Medley:
Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses?
Wild Horses
Horse With No Name
One Trick Pony
Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
Bring On The Dancing Horses
(featuring the cast of War Horse)
Final Encore:
Let's Stay Together in a duet with surprise special star: Barack Obama

The Encore for Steve Sings Sad Songs For The Soused Sweethearts

Born On This Day- January 18th... Alexander Woollcott

I have had 40+ year obsession with the Algonquin Round Table Group. As always, I had over researched a stage role I was preparing. I had been cast in The Man Who Came To Dinner, a near perfect piece of theatre comedy confection by George Kauffman & Moss Hart. I played the role of Banjo, a thinly disguised caricature of Harpo Marx. In a crazy coincidence, I would play Harpo Marx a year later in a rather good musical, ready to be revived- Minnie’s Boys. The Man Who Came To Dinner is based on a real incident at writer & closeted gay- Moss Hart’s home involving the well-known radio & press celebrity of the 1930s & 1940s- Alexander Woollcott, who was gay.

Woollcott inspired at least 3 different characters in first-rate famous films with his articulate quips. He was a pillar of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors & personalities who gathered regularly to match wits over a great deal of alcohol. He was a critic & commentator for The New Yorker (he devised the Shouts & Murmurs column still used today), & had his own CBS radio show.

He had famously intense & possessive relationships with many powerful, talented women, including lesbian actress Katherine Cornell & fellow Algonguin Round Table member Dorothy Parker.

Starting in 1929, his “This is Woollcott speaking” became his unmistakable catch phrase on the radio. Woollcott was the first on-air book reviewer, responsible for successes like James Hilton’s Lost Horizon, a power untapped until Oprah. He appeared in advertisements endorsing products & in movie trailers. He was a frequent White House guest, & had his favorite cocktail, the Brandy Alexander, named after him. He was loved & loathed, feared & fawned over.

Woollcott could be bitingly brutal & sourly sappy in his radio broadcasts. The 3 characters based on Woollcott were: Sheridan Whiteside, the sophisticated tyrant tethered to a wheelchair in The Man Who Came to Dinner; Waldo Leydecker, the writer & radio commentator who develops an obsession with his young protégé in Laura; & Addison Dewitt, the contemptuous critic, played by George Sanders, in All About Eve. The gay stereotype of an effeminate, snobby, cultured controller of young ladies isn’t around much in the 21st century.

He was so smart that he toured, rather successfully, in the very play with the wicked caricature of him.

My experience in The Man Who Came To Dinner was 40 years ago, but there in my bookshelf sits The Woollcott Reader & The Letters Of Alexander Woollcott.

Born On This Day- August 22nd... American Wit- Dorothy Parker

"3 highballs & I'm St. Francis of Assisi."

As a screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1930s, she irritated Samuel Goldwyn with her stream of caustic remarks.

Goldwyn complained: "Wisecracks, I told you there's no money in wisecracks. People want a happy ending."

Parker: "I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions & billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending." 

"One more drink & I'd have been under the host."

Long ago, in a galaxy far away, I played a wonderful character named- Banjo, inspired by Harpo Marx, in a play – The Man Who Came To Dinner, that was based on a real life incident in the life of Algonquin Round Table regular- Alexander Woollcott.

I usually over-research my character work as an actor, I was sent into an Algonquin Round Table jag that lasted for decades. I read everything I could by & about these interesting, talented & witty friends & colleagues during one of NYC’s richest periods. I have books about & by Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Robert Benchley, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kauffman, Herbert Ross & S.J. Perelman, but Dorothy Parker was the personality that engaged me the most. I believe I read everything by her by the time I was 21.

"You can't teach an old dogma new tricks."

When I lived in NYC in the 1970s, my handsome, sexy, neurotic, born in NYC boyfriend- Stephen (he looked like young Frank Langella. I wonder if he now looks like present day Langella?) Stephen took me on a Dorothy Parker NYC tour one autumn day, with stops at her girlhood home on the Upper West Side, the Algonquin Hotel, Woollcott’s home- Wits End, the Waldorf- Astoria, the old offices of the New Yorker, & the restaurant- 21.

She led an interesting & difficult life with a troubled childhood, 3 marriages ( 2 to the same man & one to a homosexual), & several suicide attempts, but her her caustic wit, talent, wisecracks & sharp eye for urban sophisticates & their foibles endure. She has been portrayed on film and television by Dolores Sutton in F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash & Lilly (1999) & most interestingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker & the Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance & Leigh received a number of awards & nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination.

Parker was an early defender of human & civil rights. She left here estate to the NAACP. Parker's ashes are buried at that organization’s Baltimore Headquarters. She had suggested that her epitaph read- “Excuse my dust”

"You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."

Born On This Day- August 22nd... American Wit- Dorothy Parker

"One more drink and I'd have been under the host."
Long ago, in a galaxy far away (Spokane), I played a wonderful character named- Banjo (based on Harpo Marx) in a play – The Man Who Came To Dinner, that was based on a real life incident in the life of Algonquin Round Table regular- Alexander Woollcott. As I tended to over research my character work as an actor, I was sent into an Algonquin Round table jag that lasted for decades. I read everything I could by & about these interesting, talented & witty friends & colleagues during one of NYC’s richest periods. I have books about & by Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Robert Benchley, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kauffman, Herbert Ross & S.J. Perelman, but Dorothy Parker was the personality that engaged me the most. I believe I read everything by her by the time I was 21."You can't teach an old dogma new tricks."

When I lived in NYC in the 1970s, my handsome, sexy, neurotic, born in NYC boyfriend- Stephen Rosenblatt (he looked like young Frank Langellla. I wonder if he now looks like present day Langella?) took me on a Dorothy Parker NYC tour one autumn day, with stops at her girlhood home on the Upper West Side, the Algonquin Hotel (of course), Woollcott’s home- Wits End, the Waldorf- Astoria, the old offices of the New Yorker, & “21”. She led an interesting & difficult life with a troubled childhood, 3 marriages ( 2 to the same man & one to a homosexual), & several suicide attempts, but her her caustic wit, talent, wisecracks & sharp eye for urban sophisticates & their foibles endure. She has been portrayed on film and television by Dolores Sutton in F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash and Lilly (1999) & most interstingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance & Leigh received a number of awards & nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination. Parker was an early defender of human & civil rights. She left here estate to the NAACP, where her ashes are buried at that organization’s Baltimore Headquarters. She had suggested that her epitaph read- “Excuse my dust”."You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."