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Dorothy Parker

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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.

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Early life

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.

The Round Table years

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.

Hollywood and later life

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, "HERE LIE THE ASHES OF DOROTHY PARKER [1893 - 1967] HUMORIST, WRITER, CRITIC. DEFENDER OF HUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS. FOR HER EPITAPH SHE SUGGESTED, 'EXCUSE MY DUST'. THIS MEMORIAL GARDEN IS DEDICATED TO HER NOBLE SPIRIT WHICH CELEBRATED THE ONENESS OF HUMANKIND AND TO THE BONDS OF EVERLASTING FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN BLACK AND JEWISH PEOPLE. DEDICATED BY THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE. OCTOBER 20, 1988."

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.

In popular culture

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.

Publications

Movies

Sources

External links

 

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