August 22, 1893– Dorothy Parker:
“3 highballs & I am St. Francis of Assisi.”
As a screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1930s, Dorothy Parker irritated studio head Samuel Goldwyn with her stream of caustic remarks. Goldwyn complained:
“Wisecracks, I told you there’s no money in wisecracks. People want a happy ending.”
Parker’s retort:
“I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions & billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending.”
Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I played a wonderful character named Banjo, inspired by Harpo Marx, in the terrific play The Man Who Came To Dinner based on a real life incident in the life of Algonquin Round Table regular Alexander Woollcott. The group took its name from its hangout, the Algonquin Hotel in the theatre district, & was also known as The Vicious Circle because of the number of cutting remarks made by its members with their sharp-tongued banter.
I usually over-research my character work as an actor & I was sent on an Algonquin Round Table jag that lasted for decades. I read everything I could about & by these interesting, talented & witty friends during one of NYC’s richest periods. I have books about or by Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Robert Benchley, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kauffman, Herbert Ross & S.J. Perelman, but Parker is the personality that engaged me the most. She was the sharpest of the sharp.
In the 1920s, Parker’s fame came from writing a weekly column titled The Constant Reader which contained observations, book reviews, poetry, & short fiction for a fledgling little magazine called The New Yorker. Her review of A. A. Milne‘s The House At Pooh Corner read:
“Tonstant Weader fwowed up.”
I believe I had read everything by Parker by the time I was 21. A selection of her reviews was published in 1970 as The Constant Reader, the title of her column. My copy traveled with me from Spokane to Boston to LA to Seattle to Portland. It is dog-eared & stained, but sitting smartly on the bookcase as I write this.
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
She married Alan Campbell in 1934. Campbell was a failed actor who hoped to become a screenwriter. Like Parker, he was half-Jewish, half-Scottish. Campbell was the second gay husband & she married him twice. Parker claimed in public that he was “queer as a billy goat“. The couple was under contract at Paramount Pictures, with Campbell making $250 per week & Parker earning $1,000 per week. They eventually were paid more than $20,000 a month as freelancers.
“I require 3 things in a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, & stupid.”
Parker & Campbell worked together on more than 15 films including the first A Star Is Born (1937), the one with Janet Gaynor & Fredric March, & Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942). Her success during this period brought 2 Academy Award nominations, but her career as a screenwriter was thwarted by the Hollywood Blacklist after an investigation by The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) because her involvement in left-wing politics. Parker was staunchly anti-fascist in the 1930s & was a strong advocate for liberal causes all if her life.
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”
When I lived in NYC in the 1970s, my handsome, sexy, neurotic, born in NYC boyfriend treated me to a Dorothy Parker’s Manhattan Tour one autumn day, with stops at her girlhood home on the Upper West Side, the Algonquin Hotel, Alexander Woollcott’s home Wits End, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, the old offices of The New Yorker, & the restaurant- 21.
In an Algonquin Round Table game, when asked to use the word ‘horticulture” in a sentence, Parker quipped:
“You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.”
Parker led an interesting, but difficult life, with a troubled childhood, 3 marriages, & several suicide attempts, lots & lots of booze. Her caustic wit, talent, wisecracks & sharp eye for urban sophisticates & their foibles endures.
“Heterosexuality is not normal, it’s just common.”
Parker has been portrayed on film & on stage many times including by Dolores Sutto in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash & Lilly (1999) & most interestingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh in the terrific Mrs. Parker & The Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance & Leigh received a number of awards & nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination.
“Tell him I was too fucking busy… or vice versa.”
Parker was an early defender of human & civil rights. Her 1927 The New Yorker story Arrangement In Black & White deftly mocks people who claim not to be racist but act with incredible condescension & prejudice.
When Parker checked out for good in 1967, taken by a heart attack at the 73 years old, she left her entire estate to Martin Luther King, Jr. After King’s murder, the estate was passed to the NAACP. Her estate executor, playwright Lillian Hellman, bitterly, yet unsuccessfully, contested Parker’s wishes. Parker’s ashes remained unclaimed & knocked around various locations, including her lawyer’s filing cabinet, for 2 decades. She was finally placed beneath a brick circle at NAACP’s headquarters in Baltimore. Her epitaph reads:
“Excuse My Dust”
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