Do you know anything about Frank Sullivan? I fancy myself the sort of person who would know about the sort of person he was (midcentury humorist), but I have to confess if you had asked me I would have drawn a blank (except maybe for an old Red Sox pitcher by that name…). He was a big figure alongside somewhat better-remembered writers like Will Rogers and Robert Benchley, but as of now doesn’t even rate a Wikipedia entry, which means he pretty much doesn’t exist.
Which is all to say, that I ran across this lovely anecdote of Sullivan at impish leisure, written by someone who came upon him (they met cute, as the screenwriters would say) decades ago in Saratoga, NY, while in the middle of some college-boy hijinks:
from Bruce’s left, and expertly captured what was left of the prime
rib, both his and mine. Astonished by this effrontery, not to mention
the deftness with which the deed was done, we turned to see where our
dinner had gone. And there, grinning broadly, was a white-haired pixie,
an elf, a creature of benign mischief so immensely pleased with his
coup he could hardly contain himself. It was Frank Sullivan.
The wiki hive may not be aware of Sullivan, but there is a collection of his pieces, Frank Sullivan at His Best, in print, including such tales as “A Bachelor Looks at Breakfast” and “How to Change a Typewriter Ribbon.” You can get an idea of how many (or, rather, how few) copies we’ve sold by the fact that there are only four things listed under Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought. But it’s a nice little list of semi-forgotten classics:
- 
- Appointment in Samarra by John O’Hara
- A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin
- Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky
- Gilda, starring Rita Hayworth






That looks like a superbly eclectic syllabus for a Jan-term course on mid-century American culture: the tentacles would lead all kinds of places… –Tom
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