The Roundtable

When I lived in New York I occasionally liked to visit The Algonquin Hotel  on W. 44th St.  It had an old school lobby with stuffed winged chairs and little bells on the tables for summoning the waiters. After WW I a group of literary persons began to gather there for lunch. There were playwrights, authors, critics and in all cases very witty people. Including Robert Benchley, Robert Sherwood who wrote about FDR, George S. Kaufman who spent a brief time in Hollywood as a script writer for the Marx Bros. who drove him crazy and back to New York. Also such as Alexander Woollcott & Heywood Broun were in the group. In the midst of all these Alpha males with their literary brilliance was one woman - Dorothy Parker who possessed an acerbic wit and a sharp tongue. One time she approached a restaurant door at the same time as a female "acquaintance" who deferred with an Alphonse/Gaston bow and said "Age before beauty." - to which Parker retorted "Pearls before swine." Ouch. Out of this group was born the famous Algonquin Roundtable and they were enabled by the hotel with their regular table and waiter.  And from this group was spawned the New Yorker magazine and all hotel guests are given a complimentary copy on arrival.
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