The Ten-Year Lunch; Wits & Legends of the Algonquin Round Table (Complete)

Video Description

The Algonquin Round Table set the standard for literary style and wit beyond its ten-year duration. After World War I, Vanity Fair writers and Algonquin regulars Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, and Robert E. Sherwood began lunching at The Algonquin. In 1919, they gathered in the Rose Room with some literary friends to welcome back acerbic critic Alexander Woollcott from his service as a war correspondent. It proved so enjoyable that someone suggested it become a daily event. This led to a near-quotidian exchange of ideas, opinions, and often-savage wit that has enriched the world's literary life. George S. Kaufman, Heywood Broun, and Edna Ferber were also in this august assembly, which strongly influenced writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Perhaps their greatest contribution, however, was the founding of The New Yorker. "The Ten-Year Lunch," which won Aviva Slesin an Academy Award in 1987 for best documentary, offers a vivid introduction to the Round Table and its unparalleled wit.