Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker (
August 22,
1893 –
June 7,
1967) was an
American writer and
poet best known for her caustic
wit, wisecracks, and sharp eye for
20th century urban foibles. Also known as
Dot or
Dottie, Parker was born
Dorothy Rothschild in the West End district of
Long Branch, New Jersey where her parents had a summer home. She liked to say that her parents got her back to their
Manhattan apartment shortly after
Labor Day, so she can be called a true New Yorker.
She lost her mother when she was an infant. She grew up on the
Upper West Side, and attended the
Blessed Sacrament Convent School -- despite having a
Jewish father and
Protestant step-mother. Her stepmother died when Dorothy was nine. Young Dorothy later went to Miss Dana's School, a
finishing school in
Morristown, New Jersey. Her formal education ended when she was 13.
Her uncle, Martin Rothschild, died in the sinking of the
RMS Titanic in 1912. Her father died a year later. Her family was not part of the
Rothschilds' banking
dynasty, and she had ambiguous feelings about her Jewish heritage given the strong
anti-Semitism of that era. She joked that she married to escape her name and kept the name Parker after she and her husband
divorced. When asked if there was a Mr. Parker she said, "There used to be."
After her limited schooling, she earned money by playing
piano at a dancing school, among other things. She first sold a poem to
Vanity Fair magazine in 1914, and, some months later, she was hired as an
editorial assistant for another
Condé Nast magazine,
Vogue.
In 1917 she met and married a
Wall Street broker, Edwin Pond Parker II, but they were separated by his army service in
World War I. She moved to
Vanity Fair as drama critic and staff writer following two years at
Vogue.
In
1919 her career took off while writing theatre criticism for
Vanity Fair, initially as a stand-in for the vacationing
P.G. Wodehouse. At the magazine she met
Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, and
Robert E. Sherwood. They began lunching at the
Algonquin Hotel, among the founding members of the
Algonquin Round Table. They were soon joined by
Franklin Pierce Adams and
Alexander Woollcott, both newspaper columnists who helped publicize Parker's witticisms,
Harold Ross, and many others.
She was fired from
Vanity Fair in
1920 — Benchley and Sherwood resigned in protest — and began earning a living as a freelance writer. She separated from her husband, and had affairs with reporter-turned-playwright
Charles MacArthur and with the publisher
Seward Collins.
When
Harold Ross founded
The New Yorker in
1925, she and Benchley were considered part of the staff, though at first they contributed little to the magazine.
Parker became famous for her short, viciously humorous poems, many about the perceived ludicrousness of her many (largely unsuccessful) romantic affairs and others wistfully considering the appeal of
suicide. She never considered these poems as her most important works.
Her greatest period of productivity and success came in the next 15 years; she published seven volumes of short stories and poetry:
Enough Rope,
Sunset Gun,
Laments for the Living,
Death and Taxes,
After Such Pleasures,
Not So Deep as a Well (collected poems), and
Here Lies.
After her death, the critic
Brendan Gill noted that these titles "amounted to a capsule autobiography." Some of this work was originally published in
The New Yorker, to which she also contributed acerbic book reviews, under the byline "Constant Reader"; these were widely read and later published in a collection under that name. She wrote or co-wrote several plays as well, some well-reviewed, though none of lasting note.
Her best-known story, published in
Bookman Magazine under the title "Big Blonde", was awarded the
O. Henry Award as the most outstanding short story of
1929. Her short stories, though often witty, were also spare and incisive, and more bittersweet than comic.
Her friends found her both a source of fun and of tragedy; she attempted suicide at least twice.
She married Alan Campbell, an actor with hopes to be a screenwriter, in
1934. He was reputed to be
bisexual — indeed, Parker did some of the reputing by claiming in public that he was "
queer as a billy goat" — but there is no substantial evidence for this. She and Campbell moved to Hollywood and worked on more than 15 films (on a salary of $5200 a week, an enormous sum during
the Depression).
With Robert Carson and Campbell, she wrote the script for the
1937 film
A Star is Born, which was nominated for an
Academy Award for Best Writing - Screenplay. Her marriage with Campbell was tempestuous; they divorced in
1947, remarried in
1950, and remained together on and off until his death in
1963 in
West Hollywood.
During the
1930s she became involved in
left-wing politics, helping to found the
Anti-Nazi League in Hollywood, and drifted away from some of her Round Table friends. She was named as a
Communist by the
Red Channels publication in
1950, and was investigated by the
FBI for her suspected involvement in Communism during the
McCarthy era. As a result, she was placed on the
Hollywood blacklist by the
movie studio bosses.
From
1957 to
1962 she wrote book reviews for
Esquire, though these pieces were increasingly erratic due to her problems with alcohol. She died of a
heart attack at the age of 73 in
1967 at the Volney Apartments in
New York City. Her ashes remained unclaimed and in various places -- including a file cabinet for 21 years. Finally, the NAACP claimed them and built a memorial garden for them in their Baltimore headquarters. The plaque reads,
In her
will, she bequeathed her estate to the Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. foundation. Following King's death, her estate was passed on to the
NAACP. Her executor,
Lillian Hellman, bitterly but unsuccessfully contested this disposition.
At the height of her fame,
George Oppenheimer wrote a play based on Parker,
Here Today (
1932); the character based on her was portrayed by
Ruth Gordon.
Her life was the subject of the
1987 video
Dorothy And Alan At Norma Place and the
1994 film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, in which she was played by
Jennifer Jason Leigh.
Parker's image appeared on a 29¢ U.S. commemorative postage stamp in the Literary Arts series issued
August 22,
1992, on what would have been Parker's 99th birthday.
Parker's name was used on a compendium of literary extracts about tattoos,
Dorothy Parker's Elbow - Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos by Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil, so named because she had a small star inked on the inside of her arm.
Her name is used in the opening verse of the song
Just One Of Those Things by
Cole Porter (
"As Dorothy Parker once said/ To her boyfriend: 'Fare thee well!'".)
A song titled
The Ballad of Dorothy Parker appears on
Prince's
Sign "☮" the Times album; though as it refers to a "waitress" who is a "dishwater blonde", it's unlikely to be about the writer.
Dorothy Parker, along with other figures of the era such as
Ira Gershwin and
George Gershwin, is featured as a character in Act 1, Scene 12 of the stage musical version of
Thoroughly Modern Millie.
* 1926.
Enough Rope* 1927.
Sunset Gun* 1929.
Close Harmony (play)
* 1930.
Laments for the Living* 1931.
Death and Taxes* 1933.
After Such Pleasures * 1936.
Collected Poems: Not So Deep As A Well* 1939.
Here Lies* 1944.
The Portable Dorothy Parker* 1953.
The Ladies of the Corridor (play)
* 1970.
Constant Reader* 1971.
A Month of Saturdays* 1996.
Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker*
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle IMDB* Keats, John, 1970.
You Might As Well Live: The Life and Times of Dorothy Parker. Simon and Schuster.
* Meade, Marion, 1988.
Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell is This? New York: Villard.
* Fitzpatrick, Kevin C., 2005.
A Journey into Dorothy Parker's New York. Berkeley, CA: Roaring Forties Press.
* Addonizio, Kim, and Dumesnil, Cheryl, eds., 2002.
Dorothy Parker's Elbow - Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. New York: Warner Books.
*
Dorothy Parker Society*
The Paris Review Interview*
Algonquin Round Table*
Minstrels Archive section on Parker's works
*
Selected Poems by Dorothy Parker*
Parker's resting place
