“The first things I do in the morning is brush my teeth, and sharpen my tongue.”
This was just one of the quips for which the inimitable Dorothy Parker was known. Grand Dame of the Algonquin Round Table in New York City, her life was one of highs and lows, success and bitter disappointments.
Born Dorothy Rothschild, upon her mother’s death and her father’s remarriage, she found herself an unwelcome stepchild. In what would become her means of surviving the slings and arrows, she honed her pithy wit from an early age and upon arriving in Manhattan immediately began making friends – and enemies.
“Brevity is the soul of lingerie.”
Her career encompassed plays, poetry and short fiction in addition to her critic’s career for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker’s Constant Reader column, in which she mercilessly skewered books with such short and to the point reviews as the one she bestowed upon A. A. Milne’s The House at Pooh Corner wherein she claimed “Tonstant Weader fwowed up”.
Whether in writing or extemporaneously, her words could slice like a linguistic razor, and did so on numerous occasions, but in personal situations as well as professional. Though many of my favorites may well be apocryphal, such as her response to a Manhattan society doyenne who ushered Parker through the door of a restaurant with the instruction, “Age before beauty”, to which Parker replied as she exited, “Pearls before swine”. Once, upon being chastised by her boss, Franklin Pierce Adams for not having turned in her assignment, her retort to his aide was:
“Tell him I’ve been too fucking busy. Or vice versa.”
While her professional life had its ups and downs, her love life was, in a word, disastrous. Her choice of beaux included her first husband, Edwin Pond Parker who, upon returning from wartime service during the Great War, became an alcoholic. After their divorce her next marriage to Alan Campbell was doomed from the beginning as she was the beard for the homosexual actor though they remained married for a number of years before his death. Throughout her adult life her staunch friendship with Robert Benchley – which caused difficulties in his own marriage – led to perennial speculation that she was, in fact, in love with him.
According to her biographies, the most painful of her star-crossed love affairs was her short-lived one with playwright Charles MacArthur, who ultimately chose the actress Helen Hayes over Dot, despite having gotten Parker pregnant. That pregnancy led her to an abortion, after which she slipped into depression, her blistering comment clearly announcing her bitterness:
“It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.”
Parker attempted suicide on several occasions, though the one led to her most effecting short story, “Big Blonde”, in which the description of the woman following an attempted overdose was said to have been based on the description of herself when discovered after her own attempt. It won an O. Henry award in 1929
Depression, drinking, moments of glittering fame and popularity followed by years of decline took Dorothy Parker from Manhattan to Hollywood and back. She wrote for film and stage, and her poems and short stories, like “But The One On Her Right”, and the short, bitter poem “Resume”:
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.
In the end Parker did live. In the end it was a quiet life for the sparkling wit, almost haphazard in its barren ugliness. She lived in Manhattan in NYC at the Volney hotel, with various pets including her parakeet Onan, so named because he “spilled his seed upon the ground”. She never stopped working at writing until the end came on June 7, 1967, when she died of a heart attack at the age of 73.
For the woman who suggested that her tombstone might read “Excuse my dust”, Parker would no doubt have appreciated the black humor of one of the resting places for her ashes: The filing cabinet of her lawyer Paul O’Dwyer.
“If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised.”
Ultimately Parker was rescued by the NAACP, who had been the recipient of her estate, originally intended to be bequeathed to Dr. Martin Luther King. Her lifelong left-leaning politics, and her support of human rights and civil liberty causes saw her honored by the NAACP who ultimately claimed her ashes and created a garden in her honor outside their Baltimore headquarters where the plaque reads:
“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.”
Life did not do as well as it might have by Dorothy Parker. But she did right by life.
