Alexander Woollcott
(1887-1943)

wit

Died aged c. 56

Alexander Humphreys Woollcott (January 19, 1887 – January 23, 1943) was an American drama critic and commentator for The New Yorker magazine, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, an occasional actor and playwright, and a prominent radio personality. Woollcott was the inspiration for two fictional characters. The first was Sheridan Whiteside, the caustic but charming main character in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, later made into a film in 1942. The second was the snobbish, vitriolic columnist Waldo Lydecker in the novel Laura, later made into a film in 1944. Woollcott was convinced he was the inspiration for his friend Rex Stout's brilliant, eccentric detective Nero Wolfe, an idea that Stout denied.

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Commemorated on 1 plaque

The Algonquin Hotel. Site of the legendary Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s, where such acid-tongued wits as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and Alexander Woollcott traded barbs and bon mots daily over lunch. The century's literary luminaries -- William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Harold Ross of The New Yorker, Gertrude Stein and James Thurber, among countless others -- also found a haven within its oak-lined walls.

The Algonquin Hotel, West 44th Street, New York, NY, United States where they was