Alexander Woollcott

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Woollcott, Alexander (1887–1943), critic. Born in Phalanx, New Jersey, and educated at Hamilton College, he served as a police reporter for the New York Times before becoming one of its drama critics in 1914. With time off for World War I, he remained at the paper until 1922, when he wrote for the Herald, then the Sun, and finally the World. His fellow critic, John Mason Brown, called him “a sizzling mixture of arsenic and treacle,” and said “he was as warm in his resentments as in his enthusiasms . . . his daily reviews . . . may not have been criticism but they were performances, Woollcott performing so that the emotions of a first night were captured in print with an immediacy unmatched in our time.” He wrote paeans of praise on Mrs. Fiske and the Marx Brothers but detested many of Eugene O'Neill's best plays. His books, often filled with theatrical criticism and reminiscences, included Mrs. Fiske (1917), Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play (1923), Enchanted Aisles (1924), The Story of Irving Berlin (1925), Going to Pieces (1928), While Rome Burns (1934), and Long, Long Ago (1943). With George S. Kaufman he wrote two failed plays, The Channel Road (1929) and The Dark Tower (1933). In his last years he devoted himself largely to radio and to writing magazine articles but also took time to appear in Brief Moment (1931) and Wine of Choice (1938), and in 1940 headed the road company of The Man Who Came to Dinner, playing Sheridan Whiteside, a character drawn after his own image. Biography: Smart Aleck, Howard Teichmann, 1978.

Alexander Woollcott 1887-1943, American author and critic, b. Phalanx, N.J., grad. Hamilton College, 1909. Woollcott's flamboyant personality combined sharpness of wit with sentimentality. He was one of the best-known journalists of his time and exerted great influence on popular literary and theatrical tastes. From 1914 to 1922 he was drama critic for the New York Times and later, from 1925 to 1928, for the New York World. He also had a weekly radio show, the "Town Crier" (1929-42). His gossipy essays were collected in While Rome Burns (1934), Long Long Ago (1943), and others. Woollcott was the model for Sheridan Whiteside, the central character in The Man Who Came to Dinner, a play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart; he portrayed Whiteside in a road company production of the play.

Bibliography: See his letters (1944); biography by E. P. Hoyt (rev. ed. 1973).

Woollcott, Alexander [Humphreys] (1887–1943), New York dramatic and literary critic, and whimsical, gossipy essayist. His books, written in a fancifully embroidered style, include Mrs. Fiske (1917), Shouts and Murmurs (1922), Mr. Dickens Goes to the Play (1923), Enchanted Aisles (1924), The Story of Irving Berlin (1925), Going to Pieces (1928), While Rome Burns (1934), and Long, Long Ago (1943). His other activities included radio, stage, and screen performances, the compilation of anthologies, and collaboration with George S. Kaufman on the melodrama The Dark Tower (1933). The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939), a play by Moss Hart and Kaufman, is based on the character of Woollcott, who appeared in the leading role. His Letters (1944) were edited by Beatrice Kaufman and Joseph Hennessey, and his biography was written by Samuel Hopkins Adams (1945).