THOUGH NOT MUCH READ today, Alexander “Aleck” Woollcott (1887–1943) was a hugely influential critic in his day, both of the theater and literature, single-handedly making James Hilton’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Lost Horizon bestsellers. Born in Phalanx, New Jersey, he became a prolific drama critic for The New York Times and then wrote a column titled “Shouts and Murmurs” for The New Yorker. His editor at the magazine was quoted as saying, “I guess he was one of the most dreadful writers who ever existed,” although the great bookman Vincent Starrett selected his While Rome Burns as one of the fifty-two “Best Loved Books of the Twentieth Century.”
He was one of the founders of the Algonquin Round Table (just as he later was one of the charter members of the Baker Street Irregulars, famously arriving at the first dinner in a hansom cab). He loved the theater and wrote two plays with fellow member George S. Kaufman, both failures. Kaufman, with Moss Hart, later wrote The Man Who Came to Dinner and based the titular character, Sheridan Whiteside, on Woollcott, exaggerating his best and worst characteristics. Less well known is that he also served as the inspiration for Waldo Lydecker in the noir novel and film Laura. Clifton Webb, who played the columnist, also toured as Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner; Woollcott starred in a traveling company of the comedy. Although he didn’t like Los Angeles, calling it “seven suburbs in search of a city,” he liked being in films and had numerous small parts and cameos.
“Full Fathom Five” was presented to readers as a true story; it was originally published in the June 22, 1929, issue of The New Yorker.