Dorothy Parker

From New World Encyclopedia
Dorothy Parker
Born
August 22, 1893
Long Branch, New Jersey
Died
June 7, 1967
New York, New York

Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American writer, poet, critic, and influential feminist. Her reputation is legendary, and she is known today as one of the most brilliant writers in American history. Her thoughts and ideas, presented in her characteristic style of illustrating human nature with caustic wit, revolutionized the way many people thought, especially women. Her humor is sometimes cruel, sometimes truthful, but always sarcastic.

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania.

Dorothy Parker, known to many as Dot or Dottie, had one of the most successful writing careers of any woman of her time. She served as a writer and editor for both Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines, along with writing many successful screenplays and televison programs. She also published several articles in The New Yorker and had her own newspaper column called "Constant Reader". Even with this success she suffered from severe depression and self criticism. Dorothy Parker is perhaps most recognized as one of the founders of the famous Algonquin Round Table group.


Early life

Dorothy Rothschild, (Dot or Dottie), was the fourth and final child born to Jacob Henry and Annie Eliza (Marston) Rothschild. The family had an apartment in Manhattan and a summer house in the West End district of Long Branch, New Jersey. Dorothy spent her first few weeks of life in the summer home, but claimed that her parents brought her back to the city right after Labor Day, so she could claim to be a true New Yorker.

The Rothchild family was not part of the famous Rothschilds' banking dynasty. Her father worked as a garment manufacturer and the small family was happy and content for the next four years, living on the Upper West Side. On July 20, 1898, Annie died suddenly, leaving behind the four children and a single father to care for them. Jacob was remarried two years later to Eleanor Francis Lewis. However, tragedy struck again when Eleanor died just three short years later from a heart-attack. Although Dorothy never particularly warmed to her stepmother in the short three years, it still caused a deep sense of sadness to be motherless once again. The children each suffered from these loses, as well as Jacob, himself.

Dorothy was sent to Roman Catholic elementary school at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament. Many see this as an odd choice when considering her background, her father was Jewis and her stepmother was Protestant. The school was harsh and, she believed, completely horrific and pointless. She claims she never learned anything and felt guilt about everything. Dorothy went on to attend Miss Dana's School, a finishing school in Morristown, New Jersey. During these years, Dorothy was not encouraged to share her feelings, thus keeping them bottled up inside. This is thought to be one of the causes for her later episodes of depression. Her graduation of finishing school at 13 ended her formal education.

To add to this sad childhood, Dorothy's brother was a passenger on the RMS Titanic and was killed when the ship sunk in 1912. Finally, her father died on December 28, 1913. Dorothy suffered from the effects of all of these deaths, often finding it hard to form solid bonds with people. These events also played a role in her battle with alcholism, which began at this time.


Writing Career

Dorothy Parker felt ill prepared for the world of Manhattan that awaited her upon her completion of her limited schooling. Thus, she began earning money by playing piano at a local dancing school, along with other, sporatic gigs. In 1914 she sold her first poem to Vanity Fair, But her big break came in 1916, when Parker started submitting various poems to the editor of another Condé Nast magazine, Vogue. The editor was so impressed with young Dorothy's writings that a job was immediatly offered to her. Dorothy worked as an editorial assistant at Vogue for the next year.

In 1917 Dorothy met and married Edwin Pond Parker II, a stockbroker in the financial district of Manhattan. Dorothy was only too happy to marry and rid herself of the Rothchild name. She dealt with strong feelings about her Jewish heritage, most of them negative because of the raging anti-Semitism of the time period. She said that she married to escape her name. However, the marriage did not last long. The couple was separated when Edwin Parker was sent to fight during World War I. Edwin was seriously injured after only a few months of service. This injury, along with the pains and memories of the war, led Edwin to a life long addiction to alcohol and morphine. The relationship was not a positive one, and it ended in divorce in 1919. But Dorothy would never revert back to her maiden name. She kept the last name of Parker for the rest of her life, even when she married again. When she was asked if there was a Mr. Parker, she casually responded: "There used to be."

From late 1917 to 1920, Dorothy made a change of magazines and transfered over to Vanity Fair where she served as a drama critic and staff writer. Her critiques made her a household name and very well-liked among the universal reader. She initially took the position as a stand-in for the author P.G. Woodhouse while he was on vacation. But the rise of her popularity convinced the magazine to retain her in her own right as a writer, once Woodhouse had returned.

The managing editor, Frank Crowinshield, stated in an interview that Dorothy Parker had "the quickest tongue imaginable, and I need not to say the keenest sense of mockery." And in the introduction to Parker's Collected Stories, Regina Barreca wrote that, "Parker's wit caricatures the self-deluded, the powerful, the autocratic, the vain, the sill, and the self important; it does not rely on men and small formulas, and it never ridicules the marginalized, the sideline or the outcast. When Parker goes for the jugular, its usually a vein with blueblood in it."

In 1920, it would be this satirical wit and mocking caticatures that would lead to her termination from Vanity Fair. They claimed that she had offended too many people throughout her reviews.

The Round Table years

While writing away her hours at Vanity Fair, Dorothy Parker made friends with other writers that would change her life. Among was Robert Benchley, who can be said to be her best friend, as well as Robert E. Sherwood. The three writers began taking their daily lunch together at the Algonquin Hotel. These lunches were not merely for eating. They were for sharing ideas, giving critics of writing, lavishing encouragement and praise upon one another, and sincerely sharing their deepest ideas mixed with their best jokes and a cocktail. They became the founding members of the famous intellectual group, the Algonquin Round Table. As tales of these lunches grew, so did the members. Soon Parker, Benchley and Sherwood were joined by Franklin Pierce Adams and Alexander Woollcott. These men were successful newspaper columnists. Once they saw and became acquainted with the genius who was Dorothy Parker, the becamse adamant in wpublicizing her witticisms. Other members, like Harold Ross among others, would filter in and out of the group over the years.


Parker's caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was eventually terminated by Vanity Fair in 1920 after her criticisms began to offend too often. In solidarity, both Benchley and Sherwood resigned in protest.

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 was soon writing for the New Yorker as well.

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. She eventually separated from her husband, and had affairs with reporter-turned-playwright Charles MacArthur, and with the publisher Seward Collins.

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. Though Campbell's screenwriting ability soon proved ephemeral at best, Parker had a natural aptitude for the work, and soon began earning a serious living as a freelance screenwriter for various Hollywood film studios. 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.

Parker was a longtime advocate of left-wing causes, a fierce civil libertarian and civil rights advocate, and a frequent critic of those in authority. During the 1930s she drifted increasingly towards the left, and joined the American Communist Party in 1934. She reported on the Loyalist cause in Spain for the Communist paper New Masses in 1937, and helped to found the Anti-Nazi League in Hollywood. Her former Round Table friends saw less and less of her. A glimpse of her attitudes towards government, fascism, and law enforcement can be found in her script additions to the Alfred Hitchcock film Saboteur, in which she also made a cameo appearance.

Parker was listed as a Communist by the publication Red Channels 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 continued abuse of alcohol. During these years she concentrated on her interest in collecting salt and pepper shakers. 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 in various places, including a file cabinet for 21 years. The NAACP eventually claimed them and built a memorial garden for them in their Baltimore headquarters. The plaque reads,

Here lie the ashes of Dorthy 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 28, 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!'.")

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.

Recently, Rocky Horror veteran Patricia Quinn performed a 15-minute tribute to Dorothy Parker at the Charleston House Annual Quentin Follies.

Publications

  • 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

Movies

  • Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle IMDB

Sources

  • 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.

External links

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