FP Adams’s “Conning Tower” and the Parker/Benchley/Vanity Fair Affair
One hundred years ago today, Franklin Pierce Adams mentioned the Dorothy Parker firing (see our January 11th post) and its aftershocks in his “Conning Tower” column of the New-York Tribune.
Cover of FP Adams, Something Else Again, 1920. New York Public Library.
Excerpt, FP Adams’s “Conning Tower.” New York Tribune, Jan. 14, 1920. P. 10. Newspapers.com.
Specifically, Adams found newsworthy the fact that Robert Benchley had resigned as managing editor from Vanity Fair out of solidarity with Parker. None of this is surprising when one considers that Adams, Benchley, and Parker were all regulars at the Rose Room of the Algonquin Hotel, part of what would soon, not long from now, be called the Algonquin Circle.
Conning, indeed, apparently had a long history with Parker, as it is understood that he published poetry from Parker, unattributed (as was the norn), early in her writing career. “He raised me from a couplet,” was her quip, years later.
Being mentioned in “Conning Tower” was a big deal. Literary historian Faye Hammill writes that “writers could become well known through a single mention” by Adams.
FP Adams. Photo dated 1918-1921. National Photo Company Collection (Library of Congress)
1920 was a productive year for Adams; he published a volume of his own verse, “Something Else Again,” with Doubleday, Page, and Co., a publisher with headquarters just outside New York City, in Nassau County’s Garden City.