O. O. McIntyre // Another striking figure in the life of Broadway ascended the starry trail. In the passing of Rennold Wolf, the Great White Way lost its most conspicuous historian. He knew the theatre, the night and cage life as no other. He was a martyr to over-work and for two years had been only a shell of his former self.

I saw him three weeks before the end in the New Amsterdam theatre foyer. He was stooped and gaunt and his speech, failing to co-ordinate with his brilliant mind, came in halting phrases.

For 16 years Rennold Wolf reviewed plays for the Morning Telegraph. He wrote ten plays in collaboration with Channing Pollock, who was with him when he died. He was the sole author of four plays and wrote one edition of the Ziegfeld Follies aside from hundreds of vaudeville and motion picture plays.

Mr. Wolf was at his best, however, as an after dinner speaker. He had a sublime sense of the ridiculous and was a master at forensic flights. He was in his finest form the night of the dinner to Irvin Cobb about seven years ago. It was a dinner the like of which New York had never seen. The most brilliant minds in art, literature and law yere there. Great speakers spoke and then Wolf was introduced. It was a speech that inspired two big metropolitan journals to print it verbatim on their editorial pages.

Rennold Wolf was not a part of the so-called gaiety of New York’s night life. He was merely a journalist looking on. Most of the time he went to first nights with his white haired mother whom he always called his “sweetheart.” One of his best friends was J. Fred Zimmerman, the theatrical producer, and oddly he pilloried him every day in the Morning Telegraph as the Modern Hercules.

One of the last quips he wrote read. “J. Fred Zimmerman came up from Philadelphia yesterday to attend the premiere of “Lightnin’.” “Lightin’” had closed its three years’ run some time ago and moved to Chicago.