Aviva Slesin collection of research and production materials for the ten-year lunch: the wit and legend of the Algonquin Round Table

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Collection Data

Description
This collection documents the creation of the film The Ten Year Lunch. Slesin acquired significant materials from numerous sources about the core group of the Round Table including Marc Connelly, Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Harold Ross, Robert Benchley, Ruth Gordon, and Edna Ferber, as well as satellite figures. Types of materials in this collection include photographs (both originals and copies), personal correspondence and ephemera, telegrams, sound recordings, a script, theatre programs, posters, and bound volumes. Includes the work of notable photographers such as James Abbe, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Nickolas Muray, and Carl Van Vechten. Slesin's production notebook includes a descriptive listing of 702 items that she consulted during her research, most of which are in this final collection. The final script for the film is accompanied by a promotional poster illustrated with a drawing by Al Hirschfeld of the Round Table members.
Names
Slesin, Aviva (Creator)
Eisenstaedt, Alfred (Photographer)
Muray, Nickolas, 1892-1965 (Photographer)
Van Vechten, Carl, 1880-1964 (Photographer)
Dates / Origin
Date Created: 1920 - 1988
Library locations
Billy Rose Theatre Division
Shelf locator: *T-Mss 2010-110
Topics
Actors
Dramatists
Editors
Journalists
Press agents
Algonquin Round Table
American wit and humor -- History and criticism
Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography
Humorists, American -- 20th century -- Biography
New Yorker (New York, N.Y. : 1925)
Abbe, James Edward, 1883-1973
Bankhead, Tallulah, 1902-1968
Benchley, Robert, 1889-1945
Connelly, Marc, 1890-1980
Ferber, Edna, 1887-1968
Gillmore, Margalo, 1897-1986
Gordon, Ruth, 1896-1985
Harriman, W. Averell (William Averell), 1891-1986
Hayes, Helen, 1900-1993
Hirschfeld, Al
Parker, Dorothy, 1893-1967
Ross, Harold Wallace, 1892-1951
Woollcott, Alexander, 1887-1943
Genres
Correspondence
Posters
Programs
Photographs
Notes
Biographical/historical: Aviva Slesin (b.1943) is a documentary filmmaker based in New York City whose film The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature of 1987. The Algonquin Round Table was a group of journalists, editors, actors and press agents that met on a regular basis at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. The group began having lunch together in June 1919 and continued on a regular basis for about eight years.
Content: Audiocassette tapes of oral history interviews with Round Table members were separated to the Library's Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound
Physical Description
Extent: 2 linear feet (4 boxes)
Type of Resource
Text
Still image
Identifiers
NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b18980535
MSS Unit ID: 22110
Universal Unique Identifier (UUID): 5ed4d510-b864-0136-17c0-63a87b208d20
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