Most people aware of Dorothy Parker associate her with wisecracking light verse: 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 Romania. In fact, she was a reviewer, an accomplished, O. Henry Prize winning author of short stories and, despite scorning 35 years in Hollywood, an Academy Award nominated screenwriter.
Parker is also known for being one of the first and few women at The Algonquin Round Table in her own right (not a wife or girlfriend), a gathering of irreverent, sophisticated authors and journalists (1919-1929) who would meet for long, boozy lunches in The Oak Room of New York’s Algonquin Hotel. Instead of looking back wistfully, she would later describe those assembled as “people who needed to grow up and grow out of showing off and drinking too much.”
The extent of her own alcoholism contributed to four suicide attempts, serial, ill-advised affairs, marrying, divorcing and remarrying the love of her life, and disintegration of a thriving career that might’ve continued much longer. There’s no mention of psychiatric care or medication in this well researched volume.
The first book (Public Domain)
Less noted by the public is Parker’s activism including, in part, petitioning for Sacco and Vanzetti, supporting the Spanish Civil War, co-founding the Screen Writers Guild and Hollywood Anti-Nazi League – which the FBI suspected of being a Communist Party front, blacklisting by the HUAC. Author Gail Crowther reports on these commitments. You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.
Dorothy Rothschild was born to a comfortable enough New Jersey household to support live-in help. Losing her mother at five, then a stepmother at nine meant she had little maternal influence. A convent school found the hellion too much to handle. She did better boarding elsewhere.
At 21, the young woman sold her first poem to Vanity Fair for $12. She became a staff member two years later. Rothschild married stock broker Eddie Pond Parker II. The couple had little time before her husband was sent to service in WWI. He returned addicted to morphine and alcohol. They drank and partied, remaining wed, if embattled, 11 years before divorce.
The new managing editor of Vanity Fair, Robert Benchley, shared Parker’s gallows humor. Despite being a teetotaler, he would become her lifelong best friend. When editor Frank Crowninshield went away a month leaving Benchley in charge, deadlines were barely met, practical jokes blossomed, selected salaries rose. It was then The Algonquin Round Table took shape.
Portrait of Art Samuels, Charlie MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott. 1919 (Public Domain)
Author Crowther tells us just enough to encourage the unfamiliar to further reading (Algonquin Round Table wiki). Critics accused members of exchanging favorable plugs of one another’s works, and of rehearsing witticisms in advance, both likely: I like to have a martini/Two at the very most/After three I’m under the table/After four, I’m under my host.
Parker had an affair with the married Charles MacArthur, followed by an abortion. “It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard,” she quipped. There followed a first attempt at suicide. Friends attributed this and subsequent attempts as ploys for attention. No one took them seriously. She recuperated abroad in the company of Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the Gerald Murphys. At 27, the writer returned to a job at the nascent New Yorker and published her second successful book of verse.
As silent films gave way to talkies, studio head Sam Goldwyn looked east for writers. One of the first to move west, Herman Mankewietz, solicited his friends. Parker went to test the waters, an unapologetic woman in a man’s territory. Her salary was high, but there were too many idle weeks after which scripts passed from hand to hand without regard to previous efforts or credit. At fancy dinners sat in order of hierarchy, writers were placed with hairdressers.
Crowther effectively sketches the growth of Hollywood, peppering background with her subject’s frustrations and remarks. “‘Working at Metro- Goldwyn Merde”…she wrote to friends. “I only write because of the wolf you must’ve stumbled over at the door.” Parker returned to New York with an increased streak of mostly inebriated cruelty and was famous for sending apologetic flowers the day after. I’m weary of wearing love, my friend/Of worry and strain and doubt;/Before we begin, let us view the end,/And maybe I’ll do without.
In 1933, she met bisexual actor/writer Alan Campbell, 11 years her junior. “He became her lover, nurse, stylist, manager,” Crowther observes. Marriage was tempestuous. The pair sold themselves Hollywood as collaborators – with Alan occasionally acting – and moved into The Garden of Allah (apartment hotel), described by columnist Sheila Graham as “The Algonquin Round Table gone west and childish.” Her husband kept her on track. His skill was putting a scene together, hers dialogue and wit.
Film synopses and anecdotes are included. A first Academy Award nomination was garnered for the 1937 version of A Star is Born with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. Parker’s politics became progressively radical with myopic blindness in regard to her own lifestyle. Campbell warned his wife to no avail. She was put under government surveillance.
Theatrical release poster for the 1937 American film A Star Is Born.
(Public Domain)
Despite being 38, Campbell enlisted (WWII) and was accepted. Parker seems to have goaded him into it. Even while away, he arranged extravagant gifts to be delivered. Meanwhile in Hollywood, his wife worked on the film noir, Smash-Up-The Story of A Woman, one of the first films to deal with alcoholism. She tapped her own experience. “In sensitive hands it included none of the woman shaming you might expect,” Crowther comments.
Hearing Campbell was having a long term affair while stationed in Europe, Parker took yet another young, alcoholic lover and instigated another divorce. Blacklisted and drunk, she spent ten years away from screenwriting, publishing only three short stories. No matter how terrible she was to people, they clamored for her approval. The couple remarried a second time 16 years after the first. Their final script would’ve been Marilyn Monroe’s last film.
Nina Foch, who lived across the street, drew parallels between Parker and Judy Garland. The aging author held court, but stopped writing. Scotch was of progressively poorer quality. A visiting professorship proved to be disaster. The couple applied for unemployment benefits. In 1959, elected to The National Institute of Arts and Letters, Parker gave her speech twice. Campbell died of alcohol and drugs. Unable to take care of herself, Parker moved back to New York and hired a nurse. She would live three more years reading glossy magazines and watching soap operas.
There be three things I shall have till I die/Laughter and hope/And a poke in the eye. Dorothy Parker’s estate was left to Martin Luther King, Jr. and then the NAACP. Prolifically published and portrayed, her wit and skill lives on.
Dorothy Parker In Hollywood thrives on context, a missing element in many personal chronicles. It fills in blanks with respect, appreciation, and a smidge of sympathy.
Opening: Dorothy Parker in backyard of residence at 412 West 47th Street, New York City 1924
(Public Domain)
Italic verse is by Dorothy Parker
Dorothy Parker In Hollywood
Gail Crowther
Gallery Books
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