DOROTHY PARKER & THE 20TH CENTURY URBAN FOIBLES

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Dorothy Parker, the American poet, writer, critic, and satirist, who was born on a day like today in 1893.

Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, 1893-June 7, 1967) was an American poet, writer, critic, and satirist based in New York; she was best known for her wit, wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

From a conflicted and unhappy childhood, Parker rose to acclaim, both for her literary works published in magazines, such as The New Yorker, and as a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table. Following the breakup of the circle, Parker traveled to Hollywood to pursue screenwriting. Her successes there, including two Academy Award nominations, were curtailed when her involvement in left-wing politics resulted in her being placed on the Hollywood blacklist.

Dismissive of her own talents, she deplored her reputation as a wisecracker. Nevertheless, both her literary output and reputation for sharp wit have endured. Some of her works have been set to music; adaptations notably include the operatic song cycle Hate Songs by composer Marcus Paus.

Also known as Dot or Dottie, Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in 1893 to Jacob Henry Rothschild and his wife Eliza Annie (née Marston) (1851-1898) at 732 Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey.

She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 1914 and some months later was hired as an editorial assistant for Vogue, another Condé Nast magazine. She moved to Vanity Fair as a staff writer after two years at Vogue.

In 1917, she met a Wall Street stockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II (1893-1933) and they married before he left to serve in World War I with the U.S. Army 4th Division. 

Dorothy Parker filed for divorce in 1928. He later remarried, to Anne E. O’Brien, former probation officer of the Juvenile Court, and died at 39, following a dental procedure. It is disputed whether he died from an overdose of analgesic or sepsis resulting from multiple tooth extractions. 

Dorothy Parker retained her married name, though she remarried the screenwriter and former actor Alan Campbell, and moved to Hollywood.

More information: Dorothy Parker

Parker's career took off in 1918 while she was writing theater criticism for Vanity Fair, filling in for the vacationing P. G. Wodehouse. At the magazine, she met Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, and Robert E. Sherwood. The trio began lunching at the Algonquin Hotel on a near-daily basis and became founding members of what became known as the Algonquin Round Table. 

The Round Table numbered among its members the newspaper columnists Franklin Pierce Adams and Alexander Woollcott. Through their publication of Parker's lunchtime remarks and short verses, particularly in Adams' column The Conning Tower, Dorothy began developing a national reputation as a wit. When the group was informed that famously taciturn former president Calvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, How could they tell?

Parker's caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was eventually dismissed by Vanity Fair in 1920 after her criticisms too often offended powerful producers. In solidarity, Benchley resigned in protest.

Sherwood is sometimes reported to have done so as well, but in actuality he had been fired in December 1919. She soon started working for Ainslee's Magazine, which had a higher circulation. She also published pieces in Vanity Fair, which was happier to publish her than employ her, The Smart Set, and The American Mercury, but also in the popular Ladies’ Home Journal, Saturday Evening Post, and Life.

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, Parker and Benchley were part of a board of editors established by Ross to allay the concerns of his investors. Parker's first piece for the magazine was published in its second issue.

Parker became famous for her short, viciously humorous poems, many highlighting ludicrous aspects of her many (largely unsuccessful) romantic affairs and others wistfully considering the appeal of suicide.

Parker published her first volume of poetry, Enough Rope, in 1926.

In 1932, Parker met Alan Campbell, an actor with aspirations to become a screenwriter. They married two years later in Raton, 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 was bisexual and later proclaimed in public that he was "queer as a billy goat".

Parker occasionally participated in radio programs, including Information Please (as a guest) and Author, Author (as a regular panelist). She wrote for the Columbia Workshop, and both Ilka Chase and Tallulah Bankhead used her material for radio monologues.

Parker died on June 7, 1967, of a heart attack at the age of 73. In her will, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King Jr., and upon King's death, to the NAACP.

More information: BBC

 I hate writing, I love having written.

Dorothy Parker