ཉྩ ཡོ, ''རཚན...

William Auerbach Levy's famous caricature of

Alexander Woollcott.

。,、,བཱཝུ་•.

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Astricom

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Woollcott's public triumphs

hid a hellish private life

By Peter Bellamy

He was waspish, ugly, mountainously fat, arrogant, irascible, two-faced and slightly effeminate.

He was also warmly sentimental, generous, morally and physically courageous beyond doubt, and brilliantly successful as a wit, drama critic, editor, book reviewer and radio broadcaster.

He brought stardom to many people of the theater and had met most of the world's celebrities. He was a frequent guest of President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House during World War II.

He was a household word for almost 20 years, ending with his death in 1943. The '20s, '30s and early '40s would have been vastly duller without him.

His name was Alexander Woollcott, and in Howard Teichmann's biography, "Smart Aleck, the Wit, World and Life of Alexander Woollcott," ($10.95, William Morrow and Company, Inc.) he inspires a compassion that would have turned his supersensitive head to the wall.

For as Teichmann explains, Woollcott was driven by a personal demon of shame and sense of inferiority over which he had no control that might have driven

Critic

at Large

others to suicide, alcoholism, complete heartbreak and failure.

Not knowing the truth, many have long assumed that Woollcott was a homosexual, which to him was a brutal slander on which he dare not comment for reasons of privacy.

The facts were that this tortured, talented man was born with a testosterone deficiency and hormonal imbalance which made it impossible for him to have what is called the normal sex life of a male.

He could revel spiritually in the beauty of a May morning or a Vermont sunset, the appeal of a poem, a play, a child and a talented or comely woman. Yet he knew that the pride of procreation or a physical life with a beloved female were for him unthinkable.

It hurt him unspeakably, and it is this agony of soul and triumph of the spirit which Woollcott accomplished that Teichmann

makes the reader appreciate with total respect and admiration.

Woollcott could never show his medals of the soul, because he never received any, even though he earned them. Not a male in the sexual sense, he deserved to be called a man in many ways.

If he was two-faced, it was because he preferred to be known for the portrait of him as an outrageous, selfish, fascinating monster penned by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman in "The Man Who Came To Dinner."

Apparently, he thought that if his countless, clandestine good deeds ever came to public attention, it would have ruined his public image.

Woollcott could claim many sons he never fathered. He sent them through prep school or college at his own expense, but would have been livid if this had become generally known.

Publicly, he gave the impression that he hated children. Privately, he was fond of many of his friends' children. He lavished gifts on his brother's two daughters and sent them through college, too.

When World War I came, he was rejected by the Army as physically unfit, but left his job as drama Continued on Page 9