Algonquin Round Table Activities What activities did the Round Table do The group was devoted to games, including cribbage and poker. Did they play a lot of games? The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, What else did they do? In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. Did they work in writing I don't know. What did they do for work silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx, and writer Ring Lardner What else did the club do A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. Did they pull any good pranks Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. what was the prank They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out What happened when he noticed and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait. Did they do any other good pranks I don't know.
What else did they do that is interesting to know
Besides their pranks, what else did the Algonquin Round Tablers do that is interesting to know?
In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. The group was devoted to games, including cribbage and poker. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx, and writer Ring Lardner sometimes sitting in. The group also played charades (which they called simply "The Game") and the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."  Members often visited Neshobe Island, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"--but governed by Woollcott as a "benevolent tyrant", as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams charitably put it--located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. There they would engage in their usual array of games including Wink murder, which they called simply "Murder", plus croquet.  A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait. CANNOTANSWER
Members often visited Neshobe Island, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"--
The Algonquin Round Table was a 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.

Origin
The group that would become the Round Table began meeting in June 1919 as the result of a practical joke carried out by theatrical press agent John Peter Toohey. Toohey, annoyed at The New York Times drama critic Alexander Woollcott for refusing to plug one of Toohey's clients (Eugene O'Neill) in his column, organized a luncheon supposedly to welcome Woollcott back from World War I, where he had been a correspondent for Stars and Stripes. Instead, Toohey used the occasion to poke fun at Woollcott on a number of fronts. Woollcott's enjoyment of the joke and the success of the event prompted Toohey to suggest that the group in attendance meet at the Algonquin each day for lunch.

The group first gathered in the Algonquin's Pergola Room (later called the Oak Room) at a long rectangular table. As they increased in number, Algonquin manager Frank Case moved them to the Rose Room and a round table. Initially the group called itself "The Board" and the luncheons "Board meetings". After being assigned a waiter named Luigi, the group re-christened itself "Luigi Board". Finally, they became "The Vicious Circle" although "The Round Table" gained wide currency after a caricature by cartoonist Edmund Duffy of the Brooklyn Eagle portrayed the group sitting at a round table and wearing armor.

Membership

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
 Ruth Hale, freelance writer who worked for women's rights
 George S. Kaufman, playwright and director
 Dorothy Parker, critic, poet, short-story writer, and screenwriter
 Brock Pemberton, Broadway producer
 Murdock Pemberton, Broadway publicist, writer
 Harold Ross, The New Yorker editor
 Robert E. Sherwood, author and playwright
 John Peter Toohey, Broadway publicist

 Alexander Woollcott, critic and journalist

Membership was not official or fixed for so many others who moved in and out of the Circle. Some of these included:

 Tallulah Bankhead, actress
 Norman Bel Geddes, stage and industrial designer
 Noël Coward, playwright
 Blyth Daly, actress
 Edna Ferber, author and playwright
 Eva Le Gallienne, actress
 Margalo Gillmore, actress
 Jane Grant, journalist and feminist (married to Harold Ross)
 Beatrice Kaufman, editor and playwright (married to George S. Kaufman)
 Margaret Leech, writer and historian
 Herman J. Mankiewicz, screenwriter 
 Harpo Marx, comedian and film star
 Neysa McMein, magazine illustrator
 Alice Duer Miller, writer
 Donald Ogden Stewart, playwright and screenwriter
 Frank Sullivan, journalist and humorist
 Deems Taylor, composer
 Estelle Winwood, actress and comedian
 Peggy Wood, actress

Activities
In addition to the daily luncheons, members of the Round Table worked and associated with each other almost constantly. The group was devoted to games, including cribbage and poker. The group had its own poker club, the Thanatopsis Literary and Inside Straight Club, which met at the hotel on Saturday nights. Regulars at the game included Kaufman, Adams, Broun, Ross and Woollcott, with non-Round Tablers Herbert Bayard Swope, silk merchant Paul Hyde Bonner, baking heir Raoul Fleischmann, actor Harpo Marx, and writer Ring Lardner sometimes sitting in. The group also played charades (which they called simply "The Game") and the "I can give you a sentence" game, which spawned Dorothy Parker's memorable sentence using the word horticulture: "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think."

Members often visited Neshobe Island, a private island co-owned by several "Algonks"—but governed by Woollcott as a "benevolent tyrant", as his biographer Samuel Hopkins Adams charitably put it—located on several acres in the middle of Lake Bomoseen in Vermont. There they would engage in their usual array of games including Wink murder, which they called simply "Murder", plus croquet.

A number of Round Tablers were inveterate practical jokers, constantly pulling pranks on one another. As time went on the jokes became ever more elaborate. Harold Ross and Jane Grant once spent weeks playing a particularly memorable joke on Woollcott involving a prized portrait of himself. They had several copies made, each slightly more askew than the last, and would periodically secretly swap them out and then later comment to Woollcott "What on earth is wrong with your portrait?" until Woollcott was beside himself. Eventually they returned the original portrait.

No Sirree!
Given the literary and theatrical activities of the Round Table members, it was perhaps inevitable that they would write and stage their own revue. No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, was a take-off of a then-popular European touring revue called La Chauve-Souris, directed by Nikita Balieff.

No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio of Neysa McMein, which served as something of a salon for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman, Connelly, Adams and Benchley with violinist Jascha Heifetz providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped", a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed by Robert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" including Tallulah Bankhead, Helen Hayes, Ruth Gillmore, Lenore Ulric and Mary Brandon; "Zowie, or the Curse of an Akins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, an O'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By—An A. A. Milne Play."

The only item of note to emerge from No Sirree! was Robert Benchley's contribution, The Treasurer's Report. Benchley's disjointed parody so delighted those in attendance that Irving Berlin hired Benchley in 1923 to deliver the Report as part of Berlin's Music Box Revue for $500 a week. In 1928, Report was later made into a short sound film in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system by Fox Film Corporation. The film marked the beginning of a second career for Benchley in Hollywood.

With the success of No Sirree! the Round Tablers hoped to duplicate it with an "official" Vicious Circle production open to the public with material performed by professional actors. Kaufman and Connelly funded the revue, named The Forty-niners. The revue opened in November 1922 and was a failure, running for just 15 performances.

Decline
As members of the Round Table moved into ventures outside New York City, inevitably the group drifted apart. By the early 1930s the Vicious Circle was broken. Edna Ferber said she realized it when she arrived at the Rose Room for lunch one day in 1932 and found the group's table occupied by a family from Kansas. Frank Case was asked what happened to the group. He shrugged and replied, "What became of the reservoir at Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street? These things do not last forever." Some members of the group remained friends after its dissolution. Parker and Benchley in particular remained close up until his death in 1945, although her political leanings did strain their relationship. Others, as the group itself would come to understand when it gathered following Woollcott's death in 1943, simply realized that they had nothing to say to one another.

Public response and legacy
Because a number of the members of the Round Table had regular newspaper columns, the activities and quips of various Round Table members were reported in the national press. This brought Round Tablers widely into the public consciousness as renowned wits.

Not all of their contemporaries were fans of the group. Their critics accused them of logrolling, or exchanging favorable plugs of one another's works, and of rehearsing their witticisms in advance. James Thurber (who lived in the hotel) was a detractor of the group, accusing them of being too consumed by their elaborate practical jokes. H. L. Mencken, who was much admired by many in the Circle, was also a critic, commenting to fellow writer Anita Loos that "their ideals were those of a vaudeville actor, one who is extremely 'in the know' and inordinately trashy".

The group showed up in the 1923 best-seller Black Oxen by Gertrude Atherton. She sarcastically described a group she called "the Sophisticates":

Groucho Marx, brother of Round Table associate Harpo, was never comfortable amidst the viciousness of the Vicious Circle. Therein he remarked "The price of admission is a serpent's tongue and a half-concealed stiletto." Even some members of the Round Table disparaged it later in life. Dorothy Parker in particular criticized the group.

Despite Parker's bleak assessment and while it is true that some members of the Round Table are perhaps now "famous for being famous" instead of for their literary output, Round Table members and associates contributed to the literary landscape, including Pulitzer Prize-winning work by Circle members Kaufman, Connelly and Sherwood (who won four) and by associate Ferber and the legacy of Ross's New Yorker. Others made lasting contributions to the realms of stage and screen — Tallulah Bankhead and Eva Le Gallienne became Broadway greats and the films of Harpo and Benchley remain popular; and Parker has remained renowned for her short stories and literary reviews.

The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged there, helped earn the Algonquin Hotel its status as a New York City Historic Landmark. The hotel was so designated in 1987. In 1996 the hotel was designated a national literary landmark by the Friends of Libraries USA based on the contributions of "The Round Table Wits". The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel.
Although the Rose Room was removed from the Algonquin in a 1998 remodel, the hotel paid tribute to the group by commissioning and hanging the painting A Vicious Circle by Natalie Ascencios, depicting the Round Table and also created a replica of the original table. The hotel occasionally stages an original musical production, The Talk of the Town, in the Oak Room. Its latest production started September 11, 2007 and ran through the end of the year.

A film about the members, The Ten-Year Lunch (1987), won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The dramatic film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994) recounts the Round Table from the perspective of Dorothy Parker.

In popular culture
Portions of the 1981 film Rich and Famous were set in the Algonquin and one of the film's characters, Liz Hamilton (played by Jacqueline Bisset), refers to the Round Table during the film.

The Algonquin Round Table was featured in "The Young Indiana Jones and the Scandal of 1920", a 1993 episode of the TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, in which the title character meets the group and attends at least two lunches. Wonderful Nonsense - The Algonquin Round Table is a documentary produced for the DVD release of that film in 2008.

In season 2, episode 4 of Seinfeld entitled “The Phone Message” (1991), Jerry tells Donna, the woman he is seeing at the time: "Boy, I bet you got a regular Algonquin round table there", after Donna says she discussed a Dockers commercial with friends.

The 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle concerns Dorothy Parker and her relationship with Robert Benchley and the larger group.

In 2009, Robert Benchley's grandson, Nat Benchley, and co-editor Kevin C. Fitzpatrick published The Lost Algonquin Round Table, a collection of the early writings of the group. Benchley's grandson Peter Benchley wrote the famous shark novel Jaws upon which the Steven Spielberg film is based.

See also

References

External links 
 Algonquin Round Table historical site History notes and news since 1999
 Algonquin Round Table at PBS's American Masters
 

American literary movements
American humorists
Culture of Manhattan
Literary circles
20th-century American literature
Do You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday? is a 1963 children's book published by Beginner Books and written by Helen Palmer Geisel, the first wife of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss). Unlike most of the Beginner Books, Do You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday? did not follow the format of text with inline drawings, being illustrated with black-and-white photographs by Lynn Fayman, featuring a boy named Rawli Davis. It is sometimes misattributed to Dr. Seuss himself. The book's cover features a photograph of a young boy sitting at a breakfast table with a huge pile of pancakes.

Activities mentioned in the book include bowling, water skiing, marching, boxing, and shooting guns with the United States Marines, and eating more spaghetti "than anyone else has eaten before.

Helen Palmer's photograph-based children's books did not prove to be as popular as the more traditional text-and-illustrations format; however, Do You Know What I'm Going To Do Next Saturday received positive reviews and was listed by The New York Times as one of the best children's books of 1963. The book is currently out of print.

References

1963 children's books
American picture books 

Track listing
 Opening Overture
 "I Get a Kick Out of You" (Cole Porter)
 "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" (Stevie Wonder)
 "You Will Be My Music" (Joe Raposo)
 "Don't Worry 'bout Me" (Ted Koehler, Rube Bloom)
 "If" (David Gates)
 "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" (Jim Croce)
 "Ol' Man River" (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II)
 Famous Monologue
 Saloon Trilogy: "Last Night When We Were Young"/"Violets for Your Furs"/"Here's That Rainy Day" (Harold Arlen, E.Y. Harburg)/(Matt Dennis, Tom Adair)/(Jimmy Van Heusen, Johnny Burke)
 "I've Got You Under My Skin" (Porter)
 "My Kind of Town" (Sammy Cahn, Van Heusen)
 "Let Me Try Again" (Paul Anka, Cahn, Michel Jourdan)
 "The Lady Is a Tramp" (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart)
 "My Way" (Anka, Claude Francois, Jacques Revaux, Gilles Thibaut)

Frank Sinatra's Monologue About the Australian Press
I do believe this is my interval, as we say... We've been having a marvelous time being chased around the country for three days. You know, I think it's worth mentioning because it's so idiotic, it's so ridiculous what's been happening. We came all the way to Australia because I chose to come here. I haven't been here for a long time and I wanted to come back for a few days. Wait now, wait. I'm not buttering anybody at all. I don't have to. I really don't have to. I like coming here. I like the people. I love your attitude. I like the booze and the beer and everything else that comes into the scene. I also like the way the country's growing and it's a swinging place.

So we come here and what happens? We gotta run all day long because of the parasites who chase us with automobiles. That's dangerous, too, on the road, you know. Might cause an accident. They won't quit. They wonder why I won't talk to them. I wouldn't drink their water, let alone talk to them. And if any of you folks in the press are in the audience, please quote me properly. Don't mix it up, do it exactly as I'm saying it, please. Write it down very clearly. One idiot called me up and he wanted to know what I had for breakfast. What the hell does he care what I had for breakfast? I was about to tell him what I did after breakfast. Oh, boy, they're murder! We have a name in the States for their counterparts: They're called parasites. Because they take and take and take and never give, absolutely, never give. I don't care what you think about any press in the world, I say they're bums and they'll always be bums, everyone of them. There are just a few exceptions to the rule. Some good editorial writers who don't go out in the street and chase people around. Critics don't bother me, because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it, and if I'm good, I know I'm good before they write it. It's true. I know best about myself. So, a critic is a critic. He doesn't anger me. It's the scandal man who bugs you, drives you crazy. It's the two-bit-type work that they do. They're pimps. They're just crazy, you know. And the broads who work in the press are the hookers of the press. Need I explain that to you? I might offer them a buck and a half... I'm not sure. I once gave a chick in Washington $2 and I overpaid her, I found out. She didn't even bathe. Imagine what that was like, ha, ha.

Now, it's a good thing I'm not angry. Really. It's a good thing I'm not angry. I couldn't care less. The press of the world never made a person a star who was untalented, nor did they ever hurt any artist who was talented. So we, who have God-given talent, say, "To hell with them." It doesn't make any difference, you know. And I want to say one more thing. From what I see what's happened since I was last here... what, 16 years ago? Twelve years ago. From what I've seen to happen with the type of news that they print in this town shocked me. And do you know what is devastating? It's old-fashioned. It was done in America and England twenty years ago. And they're catching up with it now, with the scandal sheet. They're rags, that's what they are. You use them to train your dog and your parrot. What else do I have to say? Oh, I guess that's it. That'll keep them talking to themselves for a while. I think most of them are a bunch of fags anyway. Never did a hard day's work in their life. I love when they say, "What do you mean, you won't stand still when I take your picture?" All of a sudden, they're God. We gotta do what they want us to do. It's incredible. A pox on them... Now, let's get down to some serious business here...

See also
Concerts of Frank Sinatra

Frank Sinatra