Woollcott, Alexander

(1887-1943)

   The critic, raconteur, and self-styled cultural commentator may be best remembered as the inspiration for "Sheridan Whiteside," the waspish, self-indulgent title character of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's* classic comedy, The Man Who Came to Dinner* (1939). Between the 1910s and the early 1940s, Woollcott was both feared and admired as drama critic for the New York Times (1914-1922), after which he wrote for the Herald (1922-1924), the Sun (1924-1925), and the World (1925-1928). Beginning in 1928, he wrote a column, "Shouts and Murmurs," for New Yorker magazine, and began a popular radio show, "The Town Crier." Woollcott was also author of numerous books on theatre, art, and American culture, and collaborated on two plays with Kaufman, The Channel Road (1929) and The Dark Tower (1933). His urbane writing captures the tastes of his time, but his own taste often led him to overlook significant developments of the American stage. Woollcott's friend, Kaufman wryly referred to him as "Louisa May Woollcott," a crack simultaneously indicating sentimental literary tastes and Woollcott's effeminacy. One of the famed "wits" of the Algonquin Round Table, Woollcott reveled in his predominance, but his critical writing, once admired, has lost much of its cachet since his death.