While establishing himself as a hard‑bitten newspaperman turned playwright, Charles MacArthur became a fixture of the Algonquin Round Table — the ferociously witty New York circle that included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and others. The terse biography notes that MacArthur not only roomed with Benchley but also carried on an affair with Dorothy Parker, one of the group’s most notorious personalities. That liaison — occurring amid the 1920s bonhomie of after‑dinner barbs, literary salvos and headline‑grabbing repartee — cut across the Round Table’s tight social fabric and added a private, romantic spark to a public scene defined by caustic friendship. MacArthur would later marry stage and screen star Helen Hayes in 1928 and remain with her until his death, but the affair with Parker remained part of the lore of that era and was notable enough to be dramatized decades later: MacArthur is depicted by Matthew Broderick in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which revisits the group’s tangled personal and professional entanglements.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 1920s
Charles MacArthur's furtive affair amid the Algonquin Round Table's glitter and gossip
Charles MacArthur & Dorothy Parker / 1920s
While establishing himself as a hard‑bitten newspaperman turned playwright, Charles MacArthur became a fixture of the Algonquin Round Table — the ferociously witty New York circle that included Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and others. The terse biography notes that MacArthur not only roomed with Benchley but also carried on an affair with Dorothy Parker, one of the group’s most notorious personalities. That liaison — occurring amid the 1920s bonhomie of after‑dinner barbs, literary salvos and headline‑grabbing repartee — cut across the Round Table’s tight social fabric and added a private, romantic spark to a public scene defined by caustic friendship. MacArthur would later marry stage and screen star Helen Hayes in 1928 and remain with her until his death, but the affair with Parker remained part of the lore of that era and was notable enough to be dramatized decades later: MacArthur is depicted by Matthew Broderick in the 1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, which revisits the group’s tangled personal and professional entanglements.
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