At the epicentre of 1920s New York stood the revered Algonquin Round Table – a loose group of gifted friends who met at the same hotel for lunch from Monday to Friday for ten years.
New York nursed a heady addiction for newspapers in those days. There were 19 daily papers in Manhattan and each member of the coterie had a readership in the hundreds of thousands.
Planet-size highly combative egos abounded at the Algonquin. But one unassuming member of the group never had a mean word to say about anyone – the gentle genius Robert Benchley (1889-1945), who died 80 years ago, aged 56.
He cut a charismatic, kindly figure in a crowd famed for their cruel jibes and snide put-downs. He was an internationally recognised humorist in his lifetime, but since his untimely death his legacy has sadly fallen into obscurity.
Born into an affluent East Coast family, Benchley attended Harvard, where he edited the Lampoon. Despite his prodigious abilities, he never took his studies seriously. In one law exam on Newfoundland fishing rights, he answered the questions from the point of view of the persecuted fish.
After Harvard, he wrote for Vanity Fair, replacing P G Wodehouse as drama critic, alongside another Algonquin attendee, Dorothy Parker.
The pair formed a close personal and professional partnership while sharing a tiny office and would often act as each other’s confidants.
His loyalty to Parker was so profound that when she was sacked, for writing a searing review of a performance by a media mogul’s actress girlfriend, Benchley resigned in protest and began a stint as a freelance scribbler.
As he said, a ‘freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps’.
Despite the freelancer’s financial difficulties, Benchley never lacked for work. His amusing reviews and essays were the most hotly anticipated articles in America, always with at least one eminently quotable line. When reviewing an unimpressive Shakespearean play, he said, ‘If there is a streak of ham in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.’
His most famous line was a telegram to a friend on his arrival in Venice: ‘STREETS FULL OF WATER. PLEASE ADVISE.’
Despite his popularity, he was endlessly self-effacing about his literary gifts, saying, ‘It took me 15 years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.’
At the height of the Depression, Benchley moved to Hollywood, where he led a lucrative life as a screenwriter and actor. He collaborated with giants such as George Gershwin, was the first person to speak in a film for more than five minutes and won two Academy Awards for his short film series The Treasurer’s Report (1928).
By the end of the 1930s, demand for his wit started to dry up. He took to drink. At a supper in New York in 1945, he collapsed and was rushed to hospital, where he succumbed to liver failure. His dining companions rendezvoused at the same place the next day and raised their glasses to their gallant friend.
Benchley preferred self-effacement to sniping and always aimed to make others laugh, even at his own expense. Geniuses are seldom gentle, especially comic ones; Robert Benchley was the gentlest genius of all.
