While Rome burns

As indicated in my title, Alexander Woolcott was described in his lifetime as "a first-class reporter, a great story-teller, a fine writer, and a leading wit of {his} time." His articles appeared in the "New Yorker", "Colliers", and "Cosmopolitan" and various other popular magazines of his era. The stories and essays included in __WHILE ROME BURNS__ are dated from the late '20's to the early to mid '30's. For those of us who grew up a bit later in the century, they give some idea of what a great time we missed. In an article titled "Our Miss Parker," he relates some of his personal experiences with another great wit of the time, Dorothy Parker. He tells of the time she substituted for Bennet Cerf in his position as a theater critic. Her review of the play, THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL consisted of a single line, "THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL is the play lousy." Another time Woolcott went to visit Mrs Parker in the hospital, where she was ready to be released but was delaying leaving the hospital because she couldn't pay the bill. (Mrs Parker delayed doing most of her writing until she had to do so in order to pay her rent or, as in this case, had to come up with money immediately for something major.) She was propped up in her bed with her typewriter on her lap working on an article for one of the magazines which published her work. When Cerf came in she greeted him and almost immediately rang for the nurse. Suspecting that perhaps she needed some sort of service that required privacy, he offered to wait outside her room. Her response was, "No, it is supposed to fetch the night nurse, so I ring it whenever I want an hour of uninterrupted privacy." One other example of her rather acidic wit was when a friend tried to sneak up behind her on a major New York shopping street and frighten her. She evidently saw his reflection in the glass window as he approached, so she turned and in her loudest voice began to shout at him that no, she wouldn't give him another cent and that he had already bled her dry. She kept this up until she drew a crowd, and he had to slink off with his eyes diverted to the ground. Most people learned very quickly that she was the master of "the game." One of the articles is devoted to Charlie Chaplin, who Woolcot considered the finest silent actor of all time. Along with praising Chaplin, Woolcott makes no bones about his feeling that these new "talkies" are going to ruin moving pictures. (I guess no one can win them all.) There are articles of nostalgia for people, animals, and places long gone, and also for plays and books that have meant something to him. One play that he couldn't praise highly enough was "Journey's End" which takes place entirely in the trenches of World War One. From his description of the conversations and relationships of these mostly doomed foot soldiers, it sounds very much like a play that I would like to see revived. I have a feeling that this play, written around 1929 to 1930 contains some universal truths.