Ross Harold Wallace - Genius in disguise : Harold Ross of the New Yorker

Copyright 1995 by Thomas Kunkel
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. Published in the United States by Random
House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint both published and unpublished materials: The Estate of E. B. White: Excerpt from articles by E. B. White from May 28, 1927, September 9, 1939, February 17, 1945, and December 15, 1951, issues of The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of the Estate of E. B. White. Jacqueline James Goodwin: Excerpt from Dayton, Tennessee by Marquis James from the July 11, 1925, issue of The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission. The New Yorker: Drawing of Eustace Tilley courtesy of The New Yorker magazine. All rights reserved. Memo (February 9, 1944). Copyright 1944 by The New Yorker Magazine. Excerpt from book review of Ross and The New Yorker. Copyright 1951 by The New Yorker Magazine. Excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to E. B. White (April 1943), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Charles Morton (April 3, 1950), memo (June 25, 1951), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to H. L. Mencken, memo from James Kevin McGuinness to Harold Ross (undated), memo from Fillmore Hyde to Ralph Ingersoll (1926), memo to Ralph Ingersoll (1926), memos from Harold Ross (May 1931), memo from Harold Ross to Eugene Spaulding (March 12, 1930), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Lloyd Paul Stryker (July 25, 1944), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Arthur Kober (December 9, 1946), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Joseph Mitchell (February 13, 1945), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (November 30, 1945), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Emily Hahn, excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Rebecca West (January 7, 1948), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Samuel H. Adams (February 4, 1943), memo (September 6, 1940), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Henry Luce (November 23, 1936), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Katharine White (1939), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Frank Sullivan, excerpts from letters from Harold Ross to Gluyas Williams (August 7, 1934), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to James Thurber (December 13, 1944), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to E. B. White (June 24, 1941), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Alexander Woollcott (May 19, 1942), cable from William Shawn to John Hersey (March 22, 1946), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to E. B. White (1946), excerpt from letters from Harold Ross to Lloyd Paul Stryker (July 4, 1945, and October 29, 1945), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Julius Baer (November 12, 1945), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Rebecca West (October 4, 1949), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Elmer Davis (September 13, 1949), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to W. Averell Harriman (November 15, 1949), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to Howard Brubacker (January 22, 1951), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to E. B. White (October 1943), letter from Harold Ross to Rebecca West (June 20, 1951), excerpt from letter from Harold Ross to E. B. White (September 1951); Harold Rosss query sheets. Copyright 1955 by The New Yorker Magazine. All rights reserved. Reprinted courtesy of The New Yorker Magazine.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kunkel, Thomas.
Genius in disguise: Harold Ross of The New Yorker / Thomas Kunkel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82941-2
1. Ross, Harold Wallace, 18921951. 2. JournalistsUnited States20th centuryBiography. 3. The New Yorker (New York, N.Y.: 1925). I. Title.
PN4874.R65K86 1995 070.92dc20

[B] 94-33647

v3.1

I was going to wire you, but I couldnt think of anything to say that would sound tactful; Im hypersensitive because I hear Harpers said I wasnt tactful, which is the grossest misstatement ever made about me. I am the God damnedest mass of tact known to the human race. Thats about all I am. Fortune said I never read a book and Harpers says Im tactless. American reporting is at a low ebb.

H. W. Ross to E. B. White

PROLOGUE

A HELL OF AN HOUR

In early 1950, precisely at the midpoint of the american Century, New Yorkers were of a mind to build. They got that way from time to time, and after slogging through two world wars and a global depression, with vacant apartments nonexistent and business desperate for more space, they could be forgiven for being more concerned with their future than with their past. Still, even hardened New Yorkers were unsettled by the announcement, in January, that the landmark Ritz-Carlton Hotel would soon be pulled down to make way for another nondescript steel-and-glass box. The hotel, on Madison between Forty-sixth and Forty-seventh streets, was only forty years old, and while it was nothing special architecturally, in that short time it had attained a kind of venerability. Many considered the Ritz, with its storied debutante balls, lavish parties, and state receptions, the most glamorous venue in the city. In no other country of the world, and indeed in few cities of this country, would it be conceivable that a block-long, eighteen-story building in excellent condition and housing a world-famous hotel would be torn down after a life of only forty years, commented The New York Times, managing to sound a little proud and ashamed all at once.

More openly sad about the whole business was The New Yorker. Ahead of the wreckers ball, staff writer Geoffrey Hellman produced not one but two Talk of the Town lamentations on the Ritz. Beyond their obvious bond of a shared clientele, the magazine and the hotel had more or less grown up together, custodians of a distinctive urban gentility now in eclipse, and here one of them was about to be knocked down. It was fitting, then, that the last major fete in the hotels grand ballroom, on March 18, 1950, was The New Yorkers twenty-fifth anniversary gala.

This being The New Yorker, the invitation said in nonchalant fashion, Dress or not, as you like. Given the poignance of the occasion, few took this seriously, and it was very much a night for black ties and beautiful gowns. Seven hundred people crowded into the ballroom, and by almost every account, whether contemporaneous or recollected four decades later, it was that rare magical evening, the kind of party where everyone drank but not too much, the music played without end, and the toast beneath the lobster Newburg was crisp even at two in the morning. With the apparent exception of the Pecksniffian Edmund Wilson (Prominent persons whom I will not name were guilty of wholesale malignant rudeness), a splendid time was had by all. Every staff writer, every artist, every contributor, every editor who had had anything to do with the magazine through the years, was invited. Conspicuous by her absence was The New Yorkers first lady, Katharine White, who bought a new gown for the party, only to come down with flu at the last moment. But her husband, E. B. White, was there. So were most of the other old hands, reaching all the way back to the magazines colicky infancy in 1925, and a few, it seems, from even before: John Cheever reported hearing Wolcott Gibbs say, I danced with Harriet Beecher Stowe twice.