The Waterbury Democrat., 1939-11-02

And yet today the most success full play in town has been con- jured right from the elements he mixed in his magazine piece and playwrights Moss Hart and George s. Kaufman will reap a harvest.
 That the writer should not have seen a play in the fabulous Woollcott is, perhaps, not remark able. Neither did the opportunist Messrs. Hart and Kaufman until they read the magazine piece and got to thinking about "The Man Who Came to Dinner"
 This is their Woollcott, although they have given him the name of Sheridan Whiteside, and added a few whimsies of their own to the natural accumulation of whimsy that is Woollcott himself.
 WOOLLCOTT LEGENDS
 ARE LEGION
 Monty Wooley, one of the few ful-bearded actors on stage, plays Woollcott and so capitally that his performance has started anew the maze of legends in which Woollcott moves. You can't drop into any literary gathering place without hearing the play, or its protagonist discussed, and so num- erous are the stories concerning Woollcott that one begins to won- der whether he has lived one life or seven.
 Woollcott is one of the few fig ures on the literary horizon bulky enough to inspire these stories. His physical appearance is strik- ing. His body is huge, his fore- head is broad and high, but the rest of his face is small. His curved nose set between thick trimmed glasses gives him the as- pect of startled owl.
 HIS BEST FRIENDS
 PULL WORST GAGS
 Woollcott became writer in college and developed there the distinctive florid but fluent style that is now at its zenith. He got a job on the New York Times after graduation, but his repor- torial sense was in the essay vein.
 So badly beaten was his paper on the important Rosenthal mur- der, which he supposedly was covering, that he was made dra- matic critic. Another story is that the editor thought his style was wasted in the lifeless molds of the news column.
 From dramatic critic, he made the easy step to oracle, gathering friends as he rolled along. And yet 1t is these friends who have coined the most devastating de- scriptions of him.
 Edna Ferber used to describe him as TWO characters out of Dickens"
 Harpo Marx held that he was "just a dreamer - with a good sense of double entry bookkeep- ing"
 Howard Dietz called him Louisa M. Woollcott Ca pun on the girls book author, Louisa M. Alcott), and George Nathan described him as "the Seidlitz Powder of Times Square"
 HE'LL TAKE
 A CHANGE
 Woollcott likes money and makes a lot of 1t Cover $70,000 8 year), but during the stock market crash he left croquet game to hear his brokers voice sounding the doom of $2,000,000 and came back to the game without batting an eye. He loves to gamble and some game of chance or other is always in progress in his apart ment.
 He insults his friends cheerily and persistently, and his practical jokes have grayed the hair of more than one of them.
 Mrs. George s. Kaufman once asked his recommendation for @ boarding school for one of her children and got back a carbon copy of his letter in which he begged the schoolmaster to take the Kaufman child if only to re- move her from her family en- vironment.
 Woollcott runs his life on a schedule as Intricate as that of a railroad. He resents broken ap- pointments as much as the rail- road does a wreck. He has small patience when he considers him. self affronted.
 Not long ago Ina Claire came to his hotel to see him and was announced from below. Woollcott ordered her sent up, but the hotel clerk said he could not do 1t since she had a dog with her.
 Send her up," snapped the writer, "or I'll come down. And I'm in my pajamas."
 Terrorized at the effect this ap- partition might have on a crowd- ed hotel lobby, the clerk sent Miss Claire-and dog-right up.