Alexander Woollcott - (1887 - 1943)

A caustic wit and brutal honesty made Alexander Woollcott the most feared and hated critic on Broadway, first at the New York Times and eventually on the New York World. Conscious of his influence, many of the era's leading artists gave him previews of their works: Gershwin played Rhapsody in Blue, F.Scott Fitzgerald read his latest stories, Irving Berlin played his songs. His enormous personality inspired Kaufman and Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner.

Harpo Marx once arrived at Woollcott's Lake Bomoseen home in a broken-down Model T Ford. "This is my town car," Harpo explained. "What was the town?" asked Woollcott, "Pompeii?"