Marc Connelly was an American playwright and member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors, and intellectuals who met daily for lunch and exchanged witty commentary. Connelly collaborated with other members on various projects, including co-writing four plays with George Kaufman. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in his nineties and is best known for his play The Green Pastures, which was adapted into a film in 1936.
Marc Connelly is an American playwright best known for his play The Green Pastures. He was born in 1890 and died in 1980 in New York City, winning numerous awards in his nineties, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Connelly was also a member of the Algonquin Round Table, and was often referred to as its wittiest member.
The Algonquin Round Table was a group of various writers, actors and revelers who gathered each day at the Algonquin Hotel for lunch. Together, they would pass witty commentary on the day’s events, to each other, and other celebrities. As a number of the Roundtable members were journalists and members of the media, the best of these witty remarks often found a place in news columns, and thus in the wider world.
The Round Table originally began in 1919 as a running joke, before maturing into a place where writers and intellectuals met and built connections that often led to collaborations. Marc Connelly was a founding member of the 1919 roundtable, along with fellow playwrights Robert E. Sherwood and George S. Kaufman, novelist Dorothy Parker, columnists Heywood Broun, Alexander Woollcott and Franklin Pierce Adams, actor Robert Benchley , publicist John Peter Toohey, and New Yorker editor Harold Ross. All three Roundtable members have won Pulitzer Prizes, with Kaufman winning four.
Membership in the Round Table included more than just lunches at the Algonquin, and Marc Connelly was part of the group’s other activities, from games like charades to time spent on privately owned Neshobe Island. Members of the group also frequently collaborated, both officially and unofficially, and Marc Connelly frequently received advice from other members on his plays, as well as help in their production and beneficial publicity from journalistic and editorial members.
The members, including Marc Connelly, only officially collaborated as a group once, to produce a magazine titled No Sirree!. It ran for one night only, in 1922, and featured Connelly in a number of roles, including the opening chorus and “The Greasy Hag, an O’Neill Play in One Act,” opposite George Kaufman and Alexander Woollcott. Connelly joined Kaufman after the show to try and produce it professionally, using professional actors, titling it The Forty-niners. The show ran for fifteen performances before closing, an absolute flop.
Marc Connelly and George Kaufman continued to work together on projects, co-writing four plays during the 1920s: Dulcy in 1921, Little Old Millersville in 1922, Merton of the Movies in 1922, and Beggar on Horseback in 1925. Alone in 1931 , Connelly produced his largest work, The Green Pastures, which told the story of the Old Testament from an African American perspective, placing it in New Orleans. The Green Pastures derives from the 1928 collection of short stories by Roark Bradford, Ol’ Man Adam and His Chillun. The play was eventually adapted into a film in 1936, which met with condemnation from a number of industries for being sacrilegious, but was widely well received.
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