Journalist, born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. A New York-based columnist for four decades up to 1941, he was better known under his initials FPA. Top writers vyed to contribute to his Conning Tower, to which he also supplied his own crisp, humorous verse and wide-ranging commentary. On a regular basis he contributed a diary of his activities on the New York literary scene, in a style parodying 17th-c English diarist Samuel Pepys. He was a panellist on the popular radio show Information Please (193848) and is also remembered for his verse, Tinker to Evers to Chance (1910).
Franklin Pierce Adams (November 15, 1881 – March 23, 1960), was an American columnist (under the pen name F.P.A.), writer, and wit, part of the famous Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s and 1930s. He first worked for the Chicago Journal in 1903 but soon moved to the New York Evening Mail, where he worked from 1904 to 1913 and began the famed column which would later be known as "The Conning Tower". In 1913, he moved his column to the New York Tribune, where it would take "The Conning Tower" name, staying there until 1921.
During World War I, Adams was in the U.S. Army, working on the Stars and Stripes, where he would work with Harold Ross, Alexander Woollcott, and other literary lights of the 1920s. He went to the New York World, in 1921, writing there until that paper closed in 1931. He returned to his old paper, renamed the New York Herald Tribune, staying until 1937 when he went to the New York Post.
During its long run, "The Conning Tower" publicized the work of such writers as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, George S.
He died in New York City in 1960.
Quote
"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way."
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