The Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table (1987)
4.0 of 5 from 45 ratings
56 minutes
- General info
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- Synopsis:
"The Ten Year Lunch" Won the Oscar for Best Feature Documentary in the 1988 Academy Awards. It was nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Acheivement in Informational Programing, and it won the Lilian Gish Award from the Los Angeles Women in Film Festival for Excellence in Documentary. The Ten-Year Lunch (also known in full as the Ten-Year Lunch: The Wit and Legend of the Algonquin Round Table) is a documentary film about the Algonquin Round Table, a floating group of writers and actors in the "Roaring Twenties" in New York City, which included great names such as Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber, Harold Ross and Harpo Marx. It was narrated by Heywood Hale Broun. The title refers to the fact that the members of the Round Table met over lunch at the Algonquin Hotel. The film shows how the group drifted apart once the 1920s ended, as Hollywood beckoned for some and as they grew older. The Ten-Hour Lunch combines photos, newspaper articles, literary excerpts, home movies, and interviews with the group's last surviving members, including playwright Marc Connelly and actress Ruth Gordon. Despite the fact that most of the group's members had died, and meetings were never recorded on film, Slesin succeeded in capturing the atmosphere of the Round Table and the 1920s literary scene. PBS aired the film as part of its American Masters series in 1987. Having again been immortalized on film in the 1994 feature Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, the Algonquin Round Table today retains its stature as one of the 20th-Century's most influential literary groups. As drama critic Brook Atkinson once wrote, "By force of character, they changed the nature of American comedy and established the tastes of a new period in the arts and theatre." - Actors:
- Heywood Hale Broun, Marc Connelly, Margalo Gillmore, Ruth Gordon, Averell Harriman, Helen Hayes, Franklin P. Adams, Robert Benchley, Edna Ferber, Raoul Fleischman, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker, Robert E. Sherwood, Alexander Woollcott
- Directors:
- Aviva Slesin
- Writers:
- Peter Foges, Mary Jo Kaplan
- Genres:
- Documentary
- Awards:
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