Billed as
The Early Bookworm, Woollcott was first heard on CBS radio in October 1929, reviewing books in various timeslots until 1933. His CBS show
The Town Crier, which began July 21, 1933, opened with the ringing of a bell and the cry, "Hear ye, hear ye!", followed by Woollcott's literary observations punctuated with acidic anecdotes. Sponsored by Cream of Wheat (1934—35) and Grainger Tobacco (1937—38), it continued until January 6, 1938. He had no reservations about using this forum to promote his own books, and the continual mentions of his
While Rome Burns (1934) made it a bestseller.
He was one of the most quoted men of his generation. Among Woollcott's classics is his description of the Los Angeles area as "Seven suburbs in search of a city" ... a quip often attributed to his friend Dorothy Parker. Describing
The New Yorker editor Harold Ross, he said: "He looks like a dishonest Abe Lincoln." He claimed the
Brandy Alexander cocktail was named for him.
Woollcott was renowned for his savage tongue. He dismissed a notable wit and pianist: "There is absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix." He greeted friends: "Hello, Repulsive." He submitted the shortest theatrical review in history: in his review of the Broadway show
Wham!, he simply wrote "Ouch." When a waiter asked him to repeat his order, he demanded "muffins filled with pus."
His judgments were frequently eccentric. Dorothy Parker once said: "I remember hearing Woollcott say reading Proust is like lying in someone else's dirty bath water. And then he'd go into ecstasy about something called,
Valiant Is the Word for Carrie, and I knew I had enough of the Round Table."
Wolcott Gibbs, who often edited Woollcott's work at
The New Yorker, was quoted in James Thurber's
The Years with Ross on Woollcott's writing:
- "Shouts and Murmurs" was about the strangest copy I ever edited. You could take every other sentence out without changing the sense a particle. The whole department, in fact, often had no more substance than a "Talk [of the Town]" anecdote. I guess he was one of the most dreadful writers who ever existed.
After being kicked out of the apartment he shared with
The New Yorker founders Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, Woollcott moved first into the Hotel des Artistes on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, then to an apartment at the far end of East 52nd Street. The members of the Algonquin Round Table had a debate as to what to call his new home. Franklin P. Adams suggested that he name it after the Indian word "Ocowoica", meaning "The-Little-Apartment-On-The-East-River-That-It-Is-Difficult-To-Find-A-Taxicab-Near". But Dorothy Parker came up with the definitive name: Wit's End.
Woollcott yearned to be as creative as the people with whom he surrounded himself. Among many other endeavors, he tried his hand at acting and co-wrote two Broadway shows with playwright George S. Kaufman, while appearing in two others. He also starred as Sheridan Whiteside, for whom he was the inspiration, in the traveling production of
The Man Who Came to Dinner in 1940. He also appeared in several cameos in films in the late 1930s and 1940s. He was caricatured twice in Warner Brothers Cartoons in 1937: as "Owl Kott" in
The Woods Are Full of Cuckoos, and as the town crier in
Have You Got Any Castles, playing almost identical roles in each.
Politically, Woollcott called for normalization of U.S.-Soviet relations. He was a friend of reporter Walter Duranty, even though he described him as a "man from Mars." He was also a friend of Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov, and traveled to the USSR in the 1930s, as well as sending his friend Harpo Marx to Moscow on a comedy tour in 1934. Yet he was attacked viciously in the left-wing press after his visit to the Soviet Union for his less than laudatory depiction of the "worker's paradise."
Towards the end of Woollcott's life he semi-retired to Neshobe Island in Lake Bomoseen in Vermont, which he had purchased. Shortly before he died, Woollcott admitted: “I never had anything to say.”
Thurber in
The Years With Ross also reports Woollcott describing himself as 'the best writer in America', but with nothing in particular to say; Wolcott Gibbs made a similar criticism of himself; both men had a background of journalism and theatrical criticism, their principal literary efforts being judgements upon the efforts of others. Both were reluctant to test their talent with any boldly original work. Woollcott was primarily a storyteller, a retailer of anecdotes and superior gossip, as many of his personal letters reveal. His letters also reveal a warm and generous heart and a self-effacing manner distinct from his waspish public persona, and his many lasting and close friendships with the theatrical and literary elite of his day.
Woolcott was friends with actress Katharine Cornell and it was he who bestowed the moniker "First Lady of the Theatre" upon her. He often gave her extremely favorable reviews, and also her husband's productions, director Guthrie McClintic.
Woollcott was still not saying anything...at great length...when, on January 23, 1943, he appeared on his last radio broadcast, as a participant in a panel discussion on the CBS Radio program
The People's Platform. Marking the tenth anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, the subject was "Is Germany Incurable", and featured Woollcott and Rex Stout and Marcia Davenport. Ten minutes into the broadcast, Woollcott commented that he was feeling ill, but continued his remarks. "It's a fallacy to think that Hitler was the cause of the world's present woes," he said. Woollcott continued, adding "Germany was the cause of Hitler." He said nothing further. The radio audience was unaware that Woollcott had suffered a heart attack. He died at New York's Roosevelt Hospital a few hours later, aged 56.
He was buried in Clinton, New York, at his alma mater, Hamilton College, but not without some confusion. By mistake, his ashes were sent to Colgate University in Hamilton, New York. When the error was corrected and the ashes were forwarded to Hamilton College, they arrived with 67¢ postage due.