Dorothy Parker | |
|---|---|
 Parker,c. 1910s-1920s | |
| Born | Dorothy Rothschild (1893-08-22)August 22, 1893 Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | June 7, 1967(1967-06-07) (aged 73) New York City, U.S. |
| Resting place | Woodlawn Cemetery |
| Occupation |
|
| Genre | Poetry, satire, short stories, criticism, essays |
| Literary movement | American modernism |
| Notable works | Enough Rope,Sunset Gun,A Star Is Born |
| Notable awards | O. Henry Award 1929 |
| Spouses | |
Dorothy Parker (néeRothschild; August 22, 1893 – June 7, 1967) was an American poet, literary critic and writer of fiction. Based in New York, she was known for her causticwisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.
Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such asThe New Yorker, and for her role as a founding member of theAlgonquin Round Table. In the early 1930s, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursuescreenwriting. Her successes there, including twoAcademy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement inleft-wing politics resulted in her being placed on theHollywood blacklist.
Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a "wisecracker".[1] Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music.
Also known as Dot or Dottie,[2] Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in 1893 to Jacob Henry Rothschild and his wife Eliza Annie (née Marston)[3] (1851–1898) at 732 Ocean Avenue inLong Branch,New Jersey.[4] Parker wrote in her essay "My Home Town" that her parents returned from their summer beach cottage there to theirManhattan apartment shortly afterLabor Day (September 4) so that she could be called a true New Yorker.
Parker's mother was ofScottish descent. Her father was the son of Sampson Jacob Rothschild (1818–1899) and Mary Greissman (b. 1824), bothPrussian-bornJews. Sampson Jacob Rothschild was a merchant who immigrated to the United States around 1846, settling inMonroe County, Alabama. Dorothy's father was one of five known siblings: Simon (1854–1908); Samuel (b. 1857); Hannah (1860–1911), later Mrs. William Henry Theobald; and Martin, born inManhattan on December 12, 1865, who perished in the sinking of theTitanic in 1912.[5]
Her mother died in Manhattan in July 1898, a month before Parker's fifth birthday.[6] Her father remarried in 1900 to Eleanor Frances Lewis (1851–1903), aProtestant.[7]
Author Dorothy Herrmann claimed that Parker hated her father, who allegedly physically abused her, and her stepmother, whom she refused to call "mother", "stepmother", or "Eleanor", instead referring to her as "the housekeeper".[8] However, her biographerMarion Meade refers to this account as "largely false", stating that the atmosphere in which Parker grew up was indulgent, affectionate, supportive and generous.[3]
Parker was raised on theUpper West Side and attended aRoman Catholic elementary school at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament on West79th Street with her sister, Helen,[3] and classmateMercedes de Acosta. Parker once joked that she was asked to leave following her characterization of theImmaculate Conception as "spontaneous combustion".[9]
Her stepmother died in 1903, when Parker was nine.[10] Parker later attendedMiss Dana's School, afinishing school inMorristown, New Jersey.[11] She graduated in 1911, at the age of 18, according to Arthur F. Kinney, just before the school closed,[12] although Rhonda Pettit[13] and Marion Meade[3] state she never graduated from high school. Following her father's death in 1913, she played piano at a dancing school to earn a living[14] while she worked on her poetry.
She sold her first poem toVanity Fair magazine in 1914 and some months later was hired as an editorial assistant forVogue, anotherCondé Nast magazine. She moved toVanity Fair as a staff writer after two years atVogue.[15]
In 1917, she met aWall Streetstockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II[16](1893–1933)[17] and they married before he left to serve inWorld War I with theU.S. Army 4th Division.[18]
Parker's career took off in 1918 while she was writing theater criticism forVanity Fair, filling in for the vacationingP. G. Wodehouse.[19] At the magazine, she metRobert Benchley, who became a close friend, andRobert E. Sherwood.[20] The trio lunched at theAlgonquin Hotel almost daily. They were founding members of what became known as theAlgonquin Round Table. Among its members were newspaper columnistsFranklin P. Adams andAlexander Woollcott, as well as the editorHarold Ross, the novelistEdna Ferber, the reporterHeywood Broun, and the comedianHarpo Marx.[21] Through their publication of her lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams' column "The Conning Tower", Parker began developing a national reputation as a wit.[22]
Even though many found Parker's caustic theater reviews very entertaining, she was dismissed byVanity Fair on January 11, 1920, after her criticisms had too often offended the playwright–producerDavid Belasco, the actressBillie Burke, the impresarioFlorenz Ziegfeld, and others. Benchley resigned in protest.[21] (Sherwood is sometimes reported to have done so too, but in fact had been fired in December 1919.[23]) Parker soon started working forAinslee's Magazine, which had a higher circulation. Her poems and short stories were published widely, "not only in upscale places likeVanity Fair (which was happier to publish her than employ her),The Smart Set, andThe American Mercury, but also in the popularLadies' Home Journal,Saturday Evening Post, andLife".[24]
WhenHarold Ross foundedThe New Yorker in 1925, Parker and Benchley were part of a board of editors he established to allay the concerns of his investors. Parker's first piece for the magazine was published in its second issue.[25] She became famous for her short, viciously humorous poems, many highlighting ludicrous aspects of her numerous and largely unsuccessful romantic affairs, and others wistfully considering the appeal of suicide.[26]
The next 15 years were Parker's period of greatest productivity and success. In the 1920s alone she published some 300 poems and free verses inVanity Fair,Vogue, "The Conning Tower" column, andThe New Yorker as well as inLife,McCall's andThe New Republic.[27] Her poem "Song in a Minor Key" was included as part of a candid 1922 interview withN.E.A. writerJosephine Van de Grift.[28]
Parker published her first volume of poetry,Enough Rope, in 1926. It sold 47,000 copies[29] and garnered impressive reviews.The Nation described her verse as "caked with a salty humor, rough with splinters of disillusion, and tarred with a bright black authenticity".[30]Enough Rope included Parker's two-line poem "News Item" – "Men seldom make passes / At girls who wear glasses" – that would remain among her most remembered epigrams.[31] She amused readers with poems that had a surprise or trick ending, akin to anO. Henry short story,[32] such as:
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying—
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.[33]
— Unfortunate Coincidence
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.[34]
— Résumé
While some critics, notablyThe New York Times' reviewer, dismissed her work as "flapper verse",[35] the book helped secure Parker's reputation for sparkling wit.[29] She released two more volumes of verse,Sunset Gun (1928) andDeath and Taxes (1931), along with the short story collectionsLaments for the Living (1930) andAfter Such Pleasures (1933).Not So Deep as a Well (1936) collected much of the material previously published inRope,Gun, andDeath; and she re-released her fiction with a few new pieces in 1939 asHere Lies.
In a 2000 essay, Literature Professor Wendy Martin said of Parker: "Although her sardonic poetry was extremely popular when it was published and remains readable today, her short stories are her greatest accomplishment."[36] Parker's story "Big Blonde", published inThe Bookman, won theO. Henry Award as the best short story of 1929.[37] Several of her stories were written assoliloquies,[38] where the narrator's voice evokes humor and pathos, such as the opening two paragraphs of "A Telephone Call":
Please, God, let him telephone me now. Dear God, let him call me now. I won't ask anything else of You, truly I won't. It isn't very much to ask. It would be so little to You, God, such a little, little thing. Only let him telephone now. Please, God. Please, please, please.
If I didn't think about it, maybe the telephone might ring. Sometimes it does that. If I could think of something else. If I could think of something else. Maybe if I counted five hundred by fives, it might ring by that time. I'll count slowly. I won't cheat. And if it rings when I get to three hundred, I won't stop; I won't answer it until I get to five hundred. Five, ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty, thirty-five, forty, forty-five, fifty…. Oh, please ring. Please.[39]
Parker also tried her hand at writing for the stage. She collaborated with playwrightElmer Rice to createClose Harmony, which ran on Broadway in December 1924. The comedic play was well received in out-of-town previews and favorably reviewed in New York, but it closed after only 24 performances. AsThe Lady Next Door, it became a successful touring production.[40]
Her other celebrated writing was published inThe New Yorker in the form of acerbic book reviews under the byline "Constant Reader". Her response to the whimsy ofA. A. Milne'sThe House at Pooh Corner was "Tonstant Weader fwowed up."[41] Her reviews appeared semi-regularly from 1927 to 1933,[42] and were deemed "immensely popular".[43] They were posthumously published in 1970 in a collection titledConstant Reader, and then anthologized again in 2024.[44][45]
Throughout much of the 1920s, she was separated from her husband Edwin Parker; they eventually divorced in 1928.[46] She had a number of affairs, her lovers including reporter-turned-playwrightCharles MacArthur and the publisherSeward Collins. Her relationship with MacArthur resulted in a pregnancy. Parker is alleged to have said, "how like me, to put all my eggs into one bastard".[47] She had an abortion, and fell into a depression that culminated in her first attempt at suicide.[48]
Toward the end of this period, Parker became more politically aware and active. What would turn into a lifelong commitment to activism began in 1927, when she grew concerned about the pending executions ofSacco and Vanzetti. Parker traveled toBoston to protest the proceedings. She and fellow Round TablerRuth Hale were arrested, and Parker eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of "loitering and sauntering", paying a $5 fine.[49]
In February 1932, over a breakup with boyfriend John McClain, Parker attempted suicide by swallowing barbiturates.[50][51][52][53]
In 1932, she metAlan Campbell,[54] an actor hoping to become a screenwriter. They married two years later inRaton, New Mexico. Campbell's mixed parentage was the reverse of Parker's: he had a German-Jewish mother and a Scottish father. She learned that he wasbisexual and subsequently proclaimed in public that he was "queer as a billy goat".[55] The pair moved to Hollywood and signed ten-week contracts withParamount Pictures, with Campbell (also expected to act) earning $250 per week and Parker earning $1,000 per week. They would eventually earn $2,000 and sometimes more than $5,000 per week as freelancers for various studios.[56] She and Campbell "[received] writing credit for over 15 films between 1934 and 1941".[57]
In 1933, when informed that famously taciturn former presidentCalvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, "How could they tell?"[58]
In 1935, Parker contributed lyrics for the song "I Wished on the Moon", with music byRalph Rainger. The song was introduced inThe Big Broadcast of 1936 byBing Crosby.[59]
With Campbell andRobert Carson, she wrote the script for the 1937 filmA Star Is Born, for which they were nominated for anAcademy Award for Best Writing—Screenplay. She wrote additional dialogue forThe Little Foxes (1941), and did an uncredited "dialogue polish" ofIt's a Wonderful Life (1946).[60] Together withFrank Cavett, she received a "Writing (Motion Picture Story)" Oscar nomination forSmash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947),[61] starringSusan Hayward.
After the U.S. entered the Second World War, Parker andAlexander Woollcott collaborated to produce an anthology of her work as part of a series published byViking Press for servicemen overseas. With an introduction byW. Somerset Maugham,[62]The Portable Dorothy Parker (1944) compiled over two dozen of her short stories, along with selected poems fromEnough Rope,Sunset Gun, andDeath and Taxes. In 1973, when a revised and enlarged edition of the book was released, the "Publishers' Note" stated that of the 75 volumes in the Viking Portable Library series,Dorothy Parker was one of three—along withShakespeare andThe World Bible—that "have remained continuously in print and selling steadily through time and change."[63]
During the 1930s and 1940s, Parker became an increasingly vocal advocate of civil liberties and civil rights and a frequent critic of authority figures. During theGreat Depression, she was among numerous American intellectuals and artists who became involved in related social movements. She reported in 1937 on theLoyalist cause in Spain for the Communist magazineNew Masses.[64] At the behest ofOtto Katz, a covert Soviet Comintern agent and operative of German Communist Party agentWilli Münzenberg, Parker helped to found theHollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, which the FBI suspected of being a Communist Party front.[65] The League's membership eventually grew to around 4,000. According toDavid Caute, its often wealthy members were "able to contribute as much to [Communist] Party funds as the whole American working class", although they may not have been intending to support the Party cause.[66]
Parker also chaired theJoint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee's fundraising arm, "Spanish Refugee Appeal". She organized Project Rescue Ship to transport Loyalist veterans to Mexico, headed Spanish Children's Relief, and lent her name to many other left-wing causes and organizations.[67] Her former Round Table friends saw less and less of her, and her relationship with Robert Benchley became particularly strained (although they would reconcile).[68] Parker metS. J. Perelman at a party in 1932 and, despite a rocky start (Perelman called it "a scarifying ordeal"),[69] they remained friends for the next 35 years. They became neighbors when the Perelmans helped Parker and Campbell buy a run-down farm inBucks County, Pennsylvania, nearNew Hope, a popular summer destination among many writers and artists from New York.[70]
After theattack on Pearl Harbor, Parker applied for a passport with plans to become a foreign correspondent, but her application was denied for political reasons.[71] TheFBI had compiled a 1,000-page dossier on her, detailing her involvement in leftist activities, which doomed her post-war screenwriting career. It was the time of theSecond Red Scare when SenatorJoseph McCarthy was raising alarms about communists in government and Hollywood.[72] In 1950, she was identified as aCommunist by the anti-Communist publicationRed Channels.[73] As a result, movie studio bosses placed her on theHollywood blacklist. Her final screenplay wasThe Fan, a 1949 adaptation ofOscar Wilde'sLady Windermere's Fan, directed byOtto Preminger.[74]
With only a small income from her book royalties, Parker and Campbell moved into an apartment "in an unfashionableWest Hollywood neighborhood."[71] She collectedunemployment benefits while listing herself each week as available for work.[71] Her persistent money troubles in Hollywood contributed to her harsh assessment of the place during a 1956 interview in New York:
Hollywood money isn't money. It's congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are. I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it. When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. 'Out there,' I called it.[75]
Her marriage to Campbell was tempestuous, with tensions exacerbated by her increasing alcohol consumption and by his long-term affair with a married woman in Europe duringWorld War II.[76] Parker and Campbell divorced in 1947,[77] remarried in 1950,[78] and then separated again in 1952 when she moved back to New York.[79] From 1957 to 1962, she wrote book reviews forEsquire.[80] Her writing became increasingly erratic owing to her continued abuse of alcohol. She returned to Hollywood in 1961, reconciled once more with Campbell, and collaborated with him on a number of unproduced projects until Campbell died from a drug overdose in 1963.[81]
Following Campbell's death, Parker returned to New York City and the Volney apartments on East 74th Street.[82] In her later years, she denigrated the Algonquin Round Table, although it had brought her such early notoriety:
These were no giants. Think who was writing in those days—Lardner,Fitzgerald,Faulkner andHemingway. Those were the real giants. The Round Table was just a lot of people telling jokes and telling each other how good they were. Just a bunch of loudmouths showing off, saving their gags for days, waiting for a chance to spring them ... There was no truth in anything they said. It was the terrible day of the wisecrack, so there didn't have to be any truth ...[83]
Parker occasionally participated in radio programs, includingInformation Please (as a guest)[84] andAuthor, Author (as a regular panelist).[85] She wrote for theColumbia Workshop,[86] and bothIlka Chase andTallulah Bankhead used her material for radio monologues.
Parker died on June 7, 1967, at age 73, of aheart attack.[4] At the time of her death, she was still residing at the Volney building.[87] In her will, she bequeathed her estate toMartin Luther King Jr., and upon King's death, to theNAACP.[88]
Following her cremation, Parker's ashes were unclaimed for several years. Finally, in 1973, the crematorium sent them to her lawyer's office; by then he had retired, and the ashes remained in his colleaguePaul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet for about 17 years.[89][90] In 1988, O'Dwyer brought this to public attention, with the aid of celebrity columnistLiz Smith; after some discussion, the NAACP claimed Parker's remains and designed a memorial garden for them outside its Baltimore headquarters.[91] The plaque read:
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 28, 1988.[92]
In early 2020, the NAACP moved its headquarters to downtown Baltimore and how this might affect Parker's ashes became the topic of much speculation, especially after the NAACP formally announced it would later move to Washington, D.C.[93]
The NAACP restated that Parker's ashes would ultimately be where her family wished.[94] "It’s important to us that we do this right," said theNAACP.[93]
Relatives called for the ashes to be moved to the family's plot inWoodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, where a place had been reserved for Parker by her father. On August 18, 2020, Parker's urn was exhumed.[95] "Two executives from the N.A.A.C.P. spoke, and a rabbi who had attended her initial burial saidKaddish." On August 22, 2020, Parker was re-buried privately in Woodlawn, with the possibility of a more public ceremony later.[90] "Her legacy means a lot," added representatives from the NAACP.[93]
On August 22, 1992, the 99th anniversary of Parker's birth, theUnited States Postal Service issued a 29¢ U.S. commemorativepostage stamp in the Literary Arts series. The Algonquin Round Table, as well as the number of other literary and theatrical greats who lodged at the hotel, contributed to the Algonquin Hotel's being designated in 1987 as a New York City Historic Landmark.[96] In 1996, the hotel was designated as a National Literary Landmark by theFriends of Libraries USA, based on the contributions of Parker and other members of the Round Table. The organization's bronze plaque is attached to the front of the hotel.[97] Parker's birthplace at the Jersey Shore was also designated a National Literary Landmark by Friends of Libraries USA in 2005[98] and a bronze plaque marks the former site of her family house.[99]
In 2014, Parker was elected to theNew Jersey Hall of Fame.
Parker inspired a number of fictional characters in several plays of her day. These included "Lily Malone" inPhilip Barry'sHotel Universe (1932), "Mary Hilliard" (played byRuth Gordon) in George Oppenheimer'sHere Today (1932), "Paula Wharton" in Gordon's 1944 playOver Twenty-one (directed byGeorge S. Kaufman), and "Julia Glenn" in the Kaufman–Moss Hart collaborationMerrily We Roll Along (1934). Kaufman's representation of her inMerrily We Roll Along led Parker, once his Round Table compatriot, to despise him.[100] She also was portrayed as "Daisy Lester" inCharles Brackett's 1934 novelEntirely Surrounded.[101] She is mentioned in the original introductory lyrics inCole Porter's song "Just One of Those Things" from the 1935Broadway musicalJubilee, which have been retained in the standard interpretation of the song as part of theGreat American Songbook. Additionally, she was mentioned in the title and lyrics ofPrince's song "The Ballad Of Dorothy Parker" on his 1987 albumSign o' The Times.
Parker is a character in the novelThe Dorothy Parker Murder Case byGeorge Baxt (1984), in a series ofAlgonquin Round Table Mysteries by J. J. Murphy (2011– ), and inEllen Meister's novelFarewell, Dorothy Parker (2013).[102] She is the main character in "Love For Miss Dottie", a short story by Larry N Mayer, which was selected by writerMary Gaitskill for the collectionBest New American Voices 2009 (Harcourt).
She has been portrayed on film and television byDolores Sutton inF. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976),Rosemary Murphy inJulia (1977),[103]Bebe Neuwirth inDash and Lilly (1999), andJennifer Jason Leigh inMrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for anEmmy Award for her performance, and Leigh received a number of awards and nominations, including aGolden Globe nomination.
Television creatorAmy Sherman-Palladino named her production company 'Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions' in tribute to Parker.[104]
Tucson actress Lesley Abrams wrote and performed the one-woman showDorothy Parker's Last Call in 2009 in Tucson, Arizona, presented by the Winding Road Theater Ensemble.[105] She reprised the role at the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson in 2014.[106] The play was selected to be part of the Capital Fringe Festival in DC in 2010.[107]
In 2018, American drag queenMiz Cracker played Parker in the celebrity-impersonation game show episode of theSeason 10 ofRupaul's Drag Race.[108]
In the 2018 filmCan You Ever Forgive Me? (based on the 2008 memoir of the same name),Melissa McCarthy playsLee Israel, an author who for a timeforged original letters in Dorothy Parker's name.
In 2025, in the television show “Only Murders In The Building,” a character played by Christoph Waltz claims that Dorothy Parker took his virginity.
InSilverstein v. Penguin Putnam, Inc, the plaintiff claimed copyright in certain Parker poems that had been reproduced in Penguin'sDorothy Parker: Complete Poems after appearing inNot Much Fun, a volume edited by Stuart Y. Silverstein that had been the first collection to include these particular poems.
The Second Circuit reversed the district court’s initial award of summary judgment on the copyright claim insofar as it was based onNot Much Fun's arrangement of poems and the edits that Silverstein made and the titles he gave to some of the poems. The Second Circuit also vacated the judgment that Silverstein's selection of poems was protectible.... After a bench trial, the court held that the plaintiff’s selection of all of the poems lacked creativity and was therefore not copyrightable, ruling in favor of Penguin.[109]
In 1982,Anni-Frid Lyngstad recorded "Threnody", set to music byPer Gessle, for her third solo albumSomething's Going On, after she offered him a book of poems by Dorothy Parker.[110]
In the 2010s some of her poems from the early 20th century have been set to music by the composerMarcus Paus as the operatic song cycleHate Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra (2014);[111][112] Paus'sHate Songs was described by musicologistRalph P. Locke as "one of the most engaging works" in recent years; "the cycle expresses Parker's favorite theme: how awful human beings are, especially the male of the species".[113][114]
With the authorization of theNAACP,[115][better source needed] lyrics taken from her book of poetryNot So Deep as a Well were used in 2014 by Canadian singerMyriam Gendron to create afolk album of the same title.[116] Also in 2014,Chicagojazz bassist/singer/composerKatie Ernst issued her albumLittle Words, consisting of her authorized settings of seven of Parker's poems.[117][118]
In 2021 her bookMen I'm Not Married To was adapted as an opera of the same name by composer Lisa DeSpain and librettist Rachel J. Peters. It premiered virtually as part of Operas in Place and Virtual Festival of New Operas commissioned by Baldwin Wallace Conservatory Voice Performance, Cleveland Opera Theater, and On Site Opera on February 18, 2021.[119]
Parker wrote forty-six book reviews and essays forThe New Yorker between 1927 and 1933 under the pseudonym Constant Reader, with most appearing in 1927 and 1928. Some are included in the revised and enlarged edition ofThe Portable Dorothy Parker (1973). There are two other collections, both with limitations:
Dorothy Parker, Flanked by John McClain and Roger Davis
The composer wishes to thank the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People for authorizing the use of Dorothy Parker's works.
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