Our Mrs. Parker

They ask; we answer (as best we can):

Thank you for contacting the Robert Benchley Society.

I tracked down the original of the quotation asked about; it's from "Our Mrs. Parker" from While Rome Burns, by Alexander Woollcott

"I pointed out celebrities in the manner of a barker on a Chinatown bus. Young Bill seemed especially interested in the seamy lineaments of a fellow Harvard man named Robert Benchley... Seated beside him was a little and extraordinarily pretty woman with dark hair, a gentle, apologetic smile, and great reproachful eyes. 'And that, I suppose,' said the lad from Emporia, 'would be Mrs. Benchley.' 'So I have always understood,' I replied crossly, 'but it is Mrs. Parker.'"

A Case of Mistaken Identity

Some time ago the Robert Benchley Society was contacted by someone looking for a copy of "The Man in the Middle," a one page approximately 300 word story that he thought was written by Benchley. The inquirer suggested it was probably for a magazine because he could not find it in any of his published collections. The story is set on subway late at night. An elderly man and his wife are on the train car and the only other occupants are three strange suspicious men sitting together, side by side. The wife imagines that the man in the middle staring at her gold bracelet and ring with an idea to rob her. As it turns out the man in the middle is dead.

We responded that this may be a piece by Alexander Woollcott. There is a collection titled: Fifty Modern Stories edited by Thomas Blair, published by Harper & Row in 1960. It contains a story "The Man In the Middle" by Woollcott.