Alexander Woollcott, the kingpin of the Algonquin Round Table, was the real-life model for Sheridan Whiteside, the appallingly ill-mannered central character of The Man Who Came to Dinner, and Waldo Lydecker, the venomously campy critic-boulevardier played by Clifton Webb in Laura. The caricatures, as sometimes happens, outlived the man: Woollcott’s writings are no longer read, not even his drama criticism, though in his day he was one of Manhattan’s most powerful and influential men on the aisle and a regular contributor to The New Yorker. (The “Shouts and Murmurs” column in the present-day New Yorker was originally created for and written by Woollcott.)
Least of all is Woollcott remembered in his capacity as a radio personality. Yet The Town Crier, the series on which he held forth each week, trumpeting his opinions of everything from new books to celebrated murders, was immensely popular throughout the Thirties, so much so that it figures prominently in both Laura and The Man Who Came to Dinner. Sic transit!
Only one recording of a Town Crier broadcast is known to survive. It originally aired in 1933. You can listen to it here. Woollcott’s rambling, nostalgic musings offer a fascinating glimpse into the long-lost middlebrow culture of America in the Thirties.
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Read more about Woollcott’s radio career here.