Merry Gentlemen (And One Lady)

The author shares his reminiscences about fourteen writers, humorists and wits including Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Fred Allen, Nunnally Johnson, John Steinbeck, and S.J. Perelman

Bryan, who has been an editor for Town and Country and the Saturday Evening Post, here remembers 13 "warm, witty, delightful" men and one bittersweet woman, Dorothy Parker, all of whom had little in common except that Bryan regarded them as wonderful company. "Bedlam Bob" Benchley, Fred Allen, Donald Ogden Stewart ("the Commie comic"), punster Corey Ford, Frank Sullivan and S. J. Perelman were renowned for their wit; Hugh Troy was a supreme practical joker; George Bond was "a rascal, a knave" and "a witty, delightful companion." John Steinbeck, script-doctor Nunnally Johnson, litterateur Finis Farr, magazine editor Arthur Samuels and playwright Marc Connelly were better known for their professions than for their personalities. The anecdotes are generally entertaining, but one senses it is necessary to have known these people to be able to agree that they were as "merry" as Bryan assures us they were. Photos not seen by PW. November
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Fourteen separate essays make up the contents of this unsentimental memoir. Bryan was an editor and free-lance writer during the period (the 1930s, 40s, and 50s) to which these random recollections relate. The circle in which he moved included (among the better known wits, raconteurs, and writers) such figures as Robert Benchley, Frank Sullivan, Dorothy Parker (the ``one lady''), Fred Allen, John Steinbeck, and S.J. Perelman, and among the lesser knowns such individualists as Hugh Troy, Cory Ford, and George Bond. Bryan has many intimate anecdotes to tell, and the resulting portraits are often quite as illuminating as full-length biographies. An omnium-gatherum for occasional reading and consistent pleasure. A.J. Anderson, Graduate Sch. of Library & Information Science, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.