The first was Sheridan Whiteside, the caustic but charming main character in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart,[1] later made into a film in 1942.

The family lived in an 85-room house, a vast ramshackle building in Colts Neck Township, New Jersey known as "the North American Phalanx," which had once been a commune where many social experiments were carried out in the mid-19th century.

[4] The six years Woollcott lived in Kansas City were transformative, and set him on the literary and theatrical path that would guide the rest of his life.

His second-grade teacher, Sophie Rosenberger, who would remain a lifelong friend, considered him precocious and set him on a reading program that began with Louisa May Alcott and progressed to Charles Dickens by the time he was 8 years old.

When young Aleck discovered that journalists could get free tickets to theatrical events he decided that he, too would become a newspaper man[5] In 1895 Walter Woollcott lost the longest job he'd ever held, and sent his wife Frances and their children back to the Phalanx, where Alexander went to school and spent most of the remainder of his boyhood.

Despite a rather poor reputation (his nickname was "Putrid"), he founded a drama group, edited the student literary magazine, and was accepted by a fraternity (Theta Delta Chi).

These included Harold Ross, founder of The New Yorker magazine; Cyrus Baldridge, multifaceted illustrator, author and writer; and the future columnist and radio personality, Franklin P. Adams.

[7] One of New York's most prolific drama critics, he was banned for a time from reviewing certain Broadway theater shows due to his florid and often vitriolic prose.

[8] He sued the Shubert theater organization for violation of the New York Civil Rights Act, but lost in the state's highest court in 1916 on the grounds that only discrimination on the basis of race, creed or color was unlawful.

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.

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.

"[18] 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 him.

[20] 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.

He never married or had children, although he had some notable female friends, including Dorothy Parker and Neysa McMein, to whom he reportedly proposed the day after she had just wed her new husband, Jack Baragwanath.

The radio audience remained unaware that Woollcott had suffered a heart attack and died at New York's Roosevelt Hospital, just four days after his 56 birthday,[26] of a cerebral hemorrhage.

[28] At the time of his death, Woollcott had completed the editorial work on his last book, As You Were, an anthology of fiction, poetry and nonfiction for members of the armed forces.

The idea of creating a much-needed "knapsack book" for service members reportedly came to Woollcott while he was staying at the White House in November 1942.

An experienced anthologist, he drew on the knowledge of soldiers' reading preferences he gained while he was editor of Stars and Stripes during World War I, and also asked for nominations from friends including Stephen Vincent Benét, Carl Sandburg and Mark Van Doren.

Like his final radio broadcast, As You Were was a contribution to the war for which Woollcott waived all royalties and planned to donate profits to welfare organizations.