Franklin Pierce Adams (November 15, 1881 – March 23, 1960) was an Americancolumnist known asFranklin P. Adams and by his initialsF.P.A. Famed for his wit, he is best known for his newspaper column, "The Conning Tower", and his appearances as a regular panelist on radio'sInformation Please. A prolific writer of light verse, he was a member of theAlgonquin Round Table of the 1920s and '30s.
Adams was born Franklin Leopold Adams toGerman Jewish immigrants Moses and Clara Schlossberg Adams in Chicago on November 15, 1881.[1] He changed his middle name to "Pierce" when he had abar mitzvah at age 13.[2] Adams graduated from the Armour Scientific Academy (nowIllinois Institute of Technology) in 1899, attended theUniversity of Michigan for one year and worked in insurance for three years.
Signing on with theChicago Daily Journal in 1903, he wrote a sports column and then a humor column, "A Little About Everything." The following year he moved to theNew York Evening Mail, where he worked from 1904 to 1913 and began his column, then called "Always in Good Humor," which used reader contributions.
During his time on theEvening Mail, Adams wrote what remains his best known work, the poem "Baseball's Sad Lexicon," a tribute to theChicago Cubs'double play combination of "Tinker toEvers toChance". In 1911, he added a second column, a parody ofSamuel Pepys'sDiary, with notes drawn from F.P.A.'s personal experiences. In 1914, he moved his column to theNew-York Tribune, where it was famously retitled "The Conning Tower" and was considered to be "the pinnacle of verbal wit".[3]
During its long run, "The Conning Tower" featured contributions from such writers asRobert Benchley,Edna Ferber,Moss Hart,George S. Kaufman,Edna St. Vincent Millay,John O'Hara,Dorothy Parker, andDeems Taylor. Having one's work published in "The Conning Tower" could launch a career. This was true for Dorothy Parker and James Thurber. Parker quipped that the columnist "raised me from a couplet."[4] She dedicated to Adams, her poetry bookNot So Deep as a Well. It contained many poems previously published in "The Conning Tower."
Adams is credited with coining the term "aptronym" for last names that fit a person's career or job title. A variant spelling is "aptonym." He was known for being overly concerned with grammar and accuracy, which earned him the nickname "the comma-hunter ofPark Row." Many writers lived on Park Row, the location of many newspaper buildings.[5]
His favorite recreational sport for decades was tennis. He was a longtime member of theUniversity Heights Tennis Club. It hosted an annual open singles tournament. Adams reached the third round in both 1914 and 1919. "The Conning Tower" often included tournament tidbits.[6][7] Adams served as a line judge in the U.S. National Championships (US Open) in 1922. It was for a semifinal match betweenBill Johnston andVincent Richards.[8] He was also a line judge at the Nationals, in a semifinal match between Bill Tilden and Vincent Richards, 1924.[9]
No Sirree!, staged for one night only in April 1922, was a take-off of a then-popular European touring revue calledLa Chauve-Souris directed byNikita Balieff.[10]Robert Benchley is often credited as the first person to suggest the parody of Balieff's group.[11]
No Sirree! had its genesis at the studio ofNeysa McMein, which served as something of asalon for Round Tablers away from the Algonquin. Acts included: "Opening Chorus" featuring Woollcott, Toohey, Kaufman,Marc Connelly, Adams, and Benchley with violinistJascha Heifetz providing offstage, off-key accompaniment; "He Who Gets Flapped," a musical number featuring the song "The Everlastin' Ingenue Blues" written by Dorothy Parker and performed byRobert Sherwood accompanied by "chorus girls" includingTallulah Bankhead,Helen Hayes,Ruth Gillmore, andLenore Ulric; "Zowie, or the Curse of anAkins Heart"; "The Greasy Hag, anO'Neill Play in One Act" with Kaufman, Connelly and Woollcott; and "Mr. Whim Passes By - AnA. A. Milne Play."[12]
F.P.A. often included parodies in his column. His satire ofEdgar Allan Poe's poem "Annabel Lee" was later collected in his book,Something Else Again (1910):
"Soul Bride Oddly Dead in Queer Death Pact"
"High-Born Kinsman Abducts Girl from Poet-Lover—Flu Said to Be Cause of Death—Grand Jury to Probe"
Annabel L. Poe of 18341⁄2 3rd Ave., the beautiful young fiancee of Edmund Allyn Poe, a magazine writer from the South, was found dead early this morning on the beach off E. 8th Street. Poe seemed prostrated and, questioned by the police, said that one of her aristocratic relatives had taken her to the "seashore," but that the cold winds had given her "flu," from which she never "rallied." Detectives at work on the case believe, they say, that there was a suicide compact between the Poes and that Poe also intended to do away with himself. He refused to leave the spot where the woman's body had been found.
As a panelist on radio'sInformation Please (1938–48), Franklin P. Adams was the designated expert on poetry, old barroom songs andGilbert and Sullivan, which he always referred to as Sullivan and Gilbert. A running joke on the show was that whenever asked to identify the author of a quotation that he didn't know, Adams would suggestShakespeare.Information Please's creator/producerDan Golenpaul auditioned Adams for the job with a series of sample questions, starting with: "Who wasThe Merchant of Venice?" Adams: "Antonio." Golenpaul: "Most people would sayShylock." Adams: "Not in my circle."[13]John Kieran was the real Shakespearean expert and could quote from his works at length.[citation needed]
A translator ofHorace and other classical authors, F.P.A. also collaborated withO. Henry onLo, a musical comedy.[citation needed]
Tobogganing on ParnassusIn Other WordsWomen I’m Not Married ToMen I’m Not Married ToSo There !The Book of DiversionHalf a Loaf
In Cupid's Court (1902)
By and Large (1908)
Tobogganing on Parnassus (1911)
In Other Words (1912)
Weights and Measures (1914; poetry)
Among Us Mortals with W. E. Hill (1916)
Something Else Again (1920; poetry)
Overset (1922)
Men I’m Not Married To; Women I’m Not Married To with Dorothy Parker (1922; humor)
So There! (1923)
So Much Velvet (1924)
The Book of Diversion compiled with Taylor and Bechdolt (1925)
The Conning Tower Book (1926)
Half a Loaf (1927)
The Second Conning Tower Book (1927)
Answer This One with Harry Hansen (1927; trivia)
Column Book of F.P.A. (1928)
Sins Of New York As "exposed" By The Police Gazette, by Edward Van Every with intro by Adams (1930)
Christopher Columbus and Other Patriotic Verses (1931)
The Diary of Our Own Samuel Pepys (2 volumes, 1935; columns)
The Melancholy Lute (1936)
The Kalmar Ruby Song Book by Harry Ruby and Bert Kalmar with Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Irving Berlin, Marc Connelly, Moss Hart, Nunnally Johnson, Groucho Marx, James K. McGuinness (1936)
Heywood Broun as He Seemed to Us by John L Lewis, Franklin P. Adams, Herbert Bayard Swope, Fiorello H. LaGuardia, Carl Randau, Lewis Gannett, Edna Ferbner, John Kieran, Charles Horowitz, Karl Virag, Morris L. Ernst, Quentin Reynolds, Theodore S. Kenyon, Frank Sullivan, Gardner Jackson, Edward G. Robinson, Kenneth G. Crawford, A.J. Isserman, Edward McNamara, Father Edward Dowling, and Rollin Kirby (1940)
Innocent Merriment: An Anthology of Light Verse (1942)
^Harap, Louis (1987).Dramatic Encounters. Contributions in Ethnic Studies, No. 20. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 49.ISBN0-313-25388-9 – via Internet Archive.; if we begin with Franklin P. Adams ("F.P.A."), born a generation after Traubel in 1881,...
^Ashley, Sally.F.P.A.: The Life and Times of Franklin Pierce Adams. Beaufort, 1986. page 25.
^Furia, Philip (1990).The Poets of Tin Pan Alley: A History of America's Great Lyricists. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 7.ISBN0195064089.
^Dorothy Parker: In Her Own Words, Parker, 2004, p. 12.
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