Dorothy parker brief biography of mahatma

American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist (–)

Not to be confused with Dorothee Parker.

Dorothy Parker
Parker, c.&#;ss
Born	Dorothy Rothschild ()August 22, Long Branch, New Jersey, U.S.
Died	June 7, () (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
Spouses	Edwin Pond Parker II &#; &#; (m.&#;; div.&#;)&#; Alan Campbell &#; &#; (m.&#;; div.&#;)&#; &#; &#; (m.&#;; died&#;)&#;

Dorothy Parker (née Rothschild; August 22, – June 7, ) was an American poet and writer of fiction, plays and screenplays based in New York; she was known for her caustic wisecracks, and eye for 20th-century urban foibles.

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. In the early s, 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.

Early life and education

Also known as Dot or Dottie,^[1] Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild in to Jacob Henry Rothschild and his wife Eliza Annie (née Marston)^[2] (–) at Ocean Avenue in Long Branch, New Jersey.^[3] Parker wrote in her essay "My Home Town" that her parents returned from their summer beach cottage there to their Manhattan apartment shortly after Labor Day (September 4) so that she could be called a true New Yorker.

Parker's mother was of Scottish descent. Her father was the son of Sampson Jacob Rothschild (–) and Mary Greissman (b. ), both Prussian-born Jews. Sampson Jacob Rothschild was a merchant who immigrated to the United States around , settling in Monroe County, Alabama. Dorothy's father was one of five known siblings: Simon (–); Samuel (b.

); Hannah (–), later Mrs. William Henry Theobald; and Martin, born in Manhattan on December 12, , who perished in the sinking of the Titanic in ^[4]

Her mother died in Manhattan in July , a month before Parker's fifth birthday.^[5] Her father remarried in to Eleanor Frances Lewis (–), a Protestant.^[6]

Dorothy Herrmann^[who?] 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".^[7] However, her biographer Marion Meade refers to this account as "largely false", stating that the atmosphere in which Parker grew up was indulgent, affectionate, supportive and generous.^[2]

Parker grew up on the Upper West Side and attended a Roman Catholic elementary school at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament on West 79th Street with her sister, Helen,^[2] and classmate Mercedes de Acosta.

Parker once joked that she was asked to leave following her characterization of the Immaculate Conception as "spontaneous combustion".^[8]

Her stepmother died in , when Parker was nine.^[9] Parker later attended Miss Dana's School, a finishing school in Morristown, New Jersey.^[10] She graduated in , at the age of 18, according to Kinney, just before the school closed,^[11] although Rhonda Pettit^[12] and Marion Meade^[2] state she never graduated from high school.

Following her father's death in , she played piano at a dancing school to earn a living^[13] while she worked on her poetry.

She sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine in 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.^[14]

In , she met a Wall Streetstockbroker, Edwin Pond Parker II^[15] (–)^[16] and they married before he left to serve in World War I with the U.S. Army 4th Division.^[17]

Algonquin Round Table years

Parker's career took off in while she was writing theater criticism for Vanity Fair, filling in for the vacationing P.

G. Wodehouse.^[18] At the magazine, she met Robert Benchley, who became a close friend, and Robert E. Sherwood.^[19] The trio began lunching at the Algonquin Hotel almost daily and became founding members of what became known as the Algonquin Round Table. This numbered among its members the newspaper columnists Franklin P.

Adams and Alexander Woollcott, as well as the editor Harold Ross, the novelist Edna Ferber, the reporter Heywood Broun, and the comedian Harpo Marx.^[20] 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.^{[citation needed]}

Parker's caustic wit as a critic initially proved popular, but she was eventually dismissed by Vanity Fair on January 11, , after her criticisms had too often offended the playwright–producer David Belasco, the actor Billie Burke, the impresario Florenz Ziegfeld, and others.

Benchley resigned in protest.^[20] (Sherwood is sometimes reported to have done so too, but in fact had been fired in December ^{[citation needed]}) Parker 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.^[21]

When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in , 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.^[22] She 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.^{[citation needed]}

The next 15 years were Parker's period of greatest productivity and success.

In the s alone she published some poems and free verses in Vanity Fair,Vogue, "The Conning Tower" and The New Yorker as well as Life, McCall's and The New Republic.^[23] Her poem "Song in a Minor Key" was published during a candid interview with New York N.E.A.

Dorothy parker brief biography of mahatma gandhi They divorced in , and remarried in Privacy policy. Parker continued to write over the next 15 years, doing little else with her time. See Terms of Use for details.

writer Josephine van der Grift.^[24]

Parker published her first volume of poetry, Enough Rope, in It sold 47, copies^[25] 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".^[26] Although some critics, notably The New York Times' reviewer, dismissed her work as "flapper verse",^[27] the book helped Parker's reputation for sparkling wit.^[25] She released two more volumes of verse, Sunset Gun () and Death and Taxes (), along with the short story collections Laments for the Living () and After Such Pleasures ().

Not So Deep as a Well () collected much of the material previously published in Rope,Gun, and Death; and she re-released her fiction with a few new pieces in as Here Lies.

Parker collaborated with playwright Elmer Rice to create Close Harmony, which ran on Broadway in December The play was well received in out-of-town previews and favorably reviewed in New York, but it closed after only 24 performances.

As The Lady Next Door, it became a successful touring production.^[28]

Some of Parker's most popular work was published in The New Yorker in the form of acerbic book reviews under the byline "Constant Reader". Her response to the whimsy of A. A. Milne's The House at Pooh Corner was "Tonstant Weader fwowed up."^[29] Her reviews appeared semi-regularly from to ,^[30] were widely read,^{[citation needed]} and were posthumously published in in a collection titled Constant Reader.

Her best-known short story, "Big Blonde", published in The Bookman, was awarded the O. Henry Award as the best short story of ^[31] Her short stories, though often witty, were also spare and incisive, and more bittersweet than comic;^{[citation needed]} her poetry has been described as sardonic.^[32]

Parker eventually separated from her husband Edwin Parker, divorcing in She had a number of affairs, her lovers including reporter-turned-playwright Charles MacArthur and the publisher Seward 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”.^[33] She had an abortion, and fell into a depression that culminated in her first attempt at suicide.^[34]

Toward the end of this period, Parker began to become more politically aware and active.

What would become a lifelong commitment to activism began in , when she became concerned about the pending executions of Sacco and Vanzetti. Parker traveled to Boston to protest the proceedings. She and fellow Round Tabler Ruth Hale were arrested, and Parker eventually pleaded guilty to a charge of "loitering and sauntering", paying a $5 fine.^[35]

Hollywood

In February , over a breakup with boyfriend John McClain, Parker attempted suicide by swallowing barbiturates.^{[36][37][38][39]}

In , Parker met Alan Campbell,^[40] an actor hoping 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".^[41] The pair moved to Hollywood and signed ten-week contracts with Paramount Pictures, with Campbell (also expected to act) earning $ per week and Parker earning $1, per week.

They would eventually earn $2, and sometimes more than $5, per week as freelancers for various studios.^[42] She and Campbell "[received] writing credit for over 15 films between and ".^[43]

In , when informed that famously taciturn former president Calvin Coolidge had died, Parker remarked, "How could they tell?"^[44]

In , Parker contributed lyrics for the song "I Wished on the Moon", with music by Ralph Rainger.

The song was introduced in The Big Broadcast of by Bing Crosby.^[45]

With Campbell and Robert Carson, she wrote the script for the film A Star Is Born, for which they were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Writing—Screenplay. She wrote additional dialogue for The Little Foxes in Together with Frank Cavett, she received a "Writing (Motion Picture Story)" Oscar nomination for Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (),^[46] starring Susan Hayward.

After the United States entered the Second World War, Parker and Alexander Woollcott collaborated to produce an anthology of her work as part of a series published by Viking Press for servicemen stationed overseas.

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Dorothy Parker | Biography, Books, & Facts | Britannica

With an introduction by W. Somerset Maugham,^[47] the volume compiled over two dozen of Parker's short stories, along with selected poems from Enough Rope, Sunset Gun, and Death and Taxes. It was published in the United States in as The Portable Dorothy Parker. Hers is one of three volumes in the Portable series, including volumes devoted to William Shakespeare and the Bible, that had remained in continuous print as of ^[48]

During the s and s, Parker became an increasingly vocal advocate of civil liberties and civil rights and a frequent critic of authority figures.

During the Great Depression, she was among numerous American intellectuals and artists who became involved in related social movements. She reported in on the Loyalist cause in Spain for the Communist magazine New Masses.^[49] At the behest of Otto Katz, a covert Soviet Comintern agent and operative of German Communist Party agent Willi Münzenberg, Parker helped to found the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in , which the FBI suspected of being a Communist Party front.^[50] The League's membership eventually grew to around 4, According to David 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.^[51]

Parker also chaired the Joint 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.^[52] Her former Round Table friends saw less and less of her, and her relationship with Robert Benchley became particularly strained (although they would reconcile).^[53] Parker met S.

J. Perelman at a party in and, despite a rocky start (Perelman called it "a scarifying ordeal"),^[54] they remained friends for the next 35 years. They became neighbors when the Perelmans helped Parker and Campbell buy a run-down farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, near New Hope, a popular summer destination among many writers and artists from New York.^{[citation needed]}

Parker was listed as a Communist by the anti-Communist publication Red Channels in ^[55] The FBI compiled a 1,page dossier on her because of her suspected involvement in Communism during the era when Senator Joseph McCarthy was raising alarms about communists in government and Hollywood.^[56] As a result, movie studio bosses placed her on the Hollywood blacklist.

Her final screenplay was The Fan, a adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, directed by Otto Preminger.^[57]

Her marriage to Campbell was tempestuous, with tensions exacerbated by Parker's increasing alcohol consumption and Campbell's long-term affair with a married woman in Europe during World War II.^[58] They divorced in ,^[59] remarried in ,^[60] then separated in when Parker moved back to New York.^[61] From to , she wrote book reviews for Esquire.^[62] Her writing became increasingly erratic owing to her continued abuse of alcohol.

She returned to Hollywood in , reconciled with Campbell, and collaborated with him on a number of unproduced projects until Campbell died from a drug overdose in ^[63]

Later life and death

Following Campbell's death, Parker returned to New York City and the Volney residential hotel.

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 and Hemingway. 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&#;^[64]

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.^[65]

Parker died on June 7, , of a heart attack^[3] at the age of In her will, she bequeathed her estate to Martin Luther King Jr., and upon King's death, to the NAACP.^[66] At the time of her death, she was living at the Volney residential hotel on East 74th Street.^[67]

Burial

Following her cremation, Parker's ashes were unclaimed for several years.

Finally, in , the crematorium sent them to her lawyer's office; by then he had retired, and the ashes remained in his colleague Paul O'Dwyer's filing cabinet for about 17 years.^[68][69] In , O'Dwyer brought this to public attention, with the aid of celebrity columnist Liz Smith; after some discussion, the NAACP claimed Parker's remains and designed a memorial garden for them outside its Baltimore headquarters.^[70] The plaque read:

Here lie the ashes of Dorothy Parker (–) 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, ^[71]

In early , 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.^[72]

The NAACP restated that Parker's ashes would ultimately be where her family wished.^[73] "It’s important to us that we do this right," said the NAACP.^[72]

Relatives called for the ashes to be moved to the family's plot in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, where a place had been reserved for Parker by her father.

On August 18, , Parker's urn was exhumed.^[74] "Two executives from the N.A.A.C.P. spoke, and a rabbi who had attended her initial burial said Kaddish." On August 22, , Parker was re-buried privately in Woodlawn, with the possibility of a more public ceremony later.^[69] "Her legacy means a lot," added representatives from the NAACP.^[72]

Honors

On August 22, , the 99th anniversary of Parker's birth, the United States Postal Service issued a 29¢ U.S.

commemorative postage 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 as a New York City Historic Landmark.^[75] In , the hotel was designated as a National Literary Landmark by the Friends 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.^[76] Parker's birthplace at the Jersey Shore was also designated a National Literary Landmark by Friends of Libraries USA in ^[77] and a bronze plaque marks the former site of her family house.^[78]

In , Parker was elected to the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

In popular culture

Parker inspired a number of fictional characters in several plays of her day. These included "Lily Malone" in Philip Barry's Hotel Universe (), "Mary Hilliard" (played by Ruth Gordon) in George Oppenheimer's Here Today (), "Paula Wharton" in Gordon's play Over Twenty-one (directed by George S.

Kaufman), and "Julia Glenn" in the Kaufman–Moss Hart collaboration Merrily We Roll Along (). Kaufman's representation of her in Merrily We Roll Along led Parker, once his Round Table compatriot, to despise him.^[79] She also was portrayed as "Daisy Lester" in Charles Brackett's novel Entirely Surrounded.^[80] She is mentioned in the original introductory lyrics in Cole Porter's song "Just One of Those Things" from the Broadway musical Jubilee, which have been retained in the standard interpretation of the song as part of the Great American Songbook.

Parker is a character in the novel The Dorothy Parker Murder Case by George Baxt (), in a series of Algonquin Round Table Mysteries by J. J. Murphy (– ), and in Ellen Meister's novel Farewell, Dorothy Parker ().^[81] She is the main character in "Love For Miss Dottie", a short story by Larry N Mayer, which was selected by writer Mary Gaitskill for the collection Best New American Voices (Harcourt).

She has been portrayed on film and television by Dolores Sutton in F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (),^[82]Bebe Neuwirth in Dash and Lilly (), and Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance, and Leigh received a number of awards and nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination.

Television creator Amy Sherman-Palladino named her production company 'Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions' in tribute to Parker.^[83]

Tucson actress Lesley Abrams wrote and performed the one-woman show Dorothy Parker's Last Call in in Tucson, Arizona, presented by the Winding Road Theater Ensemble.^[84] She reprised the role at the Live Theatre Workshop in Tucson in ^[85] The play was selected to be part of the Capital Fringe Festival in DC in ^[86]

In , American drag queen Miz Cracker played Parker in the celebrity-impersonation game show episode of the Season 10 of Rupaul's Drag Race.^[87]

In the film Can You Ever Forgive Me? (based on the memoir of the same name), Melissa McCarthy plays Lee Israel, an author who for a time forged original letters in Dorothy Parker's name.

Dorothy Parker Trial

In Silverstein v. Penguin Putnam, Inc, the plaintiff claimed in certain Parker poems that had been reproduced in Penguin's Dorothy Parker: Complete Poems after appearing in Not Much Fun, a volume edited by 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 claim insofar as it was based on Not 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 able, ruling in favor of Penguin.^[88]

Adaptations

In , Anni-Frid Lyngstad recorded "Threnody", set to music by Per Gessle, for her third solo album Something's Going On, after she offered him a book of poems by Dorothy Parker.^[89]

In the s some of her poems from the early 20th century have been set to music by the composer Marcus Paus as the operatic song cycle Hate Songs for Mezzo-Soprano and Orchestra ();^[90][91] Paus's Hate Songs was described by musicologist Ralph 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".^[92][93]

With the authorization of the NAACP,^{[94][better&#;source&#;needed]} lyrics taken from her book of poetry Not So Deep as a Well were used in by Canadian singer Myriam Gendron to create a folk album of the same title.^[95] Also in , Chicagojazz bassist/singer/composer Katie Ernst issued her album Little Words, consisting of her authorized settings of seven of Parker's poems.^[96][97]

In her book Men 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, ^[98]

Bibliography

Essays and reporting

• Parker, Dorothy (February 28, ).

  "A certain lady". The New Yorker. 1 (2): 15–

• Parker, Dorothy (). Constant Reader. New York: Viking Press. (a collection of 31 literary reviews originally published in The New Yorker, –)
• Fitzpatrick, Kevin (). Complete Broadway, –.

• Dorothy Parker - Biography
• Dorothy Parker - Wikipedia

iUniverse. ISBN&#;. (compilation of reviews, edited by Fitzpatrick; most of these reviews have never been reprinted)^[21]

• Short story: A Telephone Call
• Short story: "Here We Are"

Short fiction

Collections

• Laments for the Living (includes 13 short stories)
  • The Sexes
  • Mr.

    Durant

  • Just a Little One
  • New York to Detroit
  • The Wonderful Old Gentleman
  • The Mantle of Whistler
  • A Telephone Call
  • You Were Perfectly Fine
  • Little Curtis
  • The Last Tea
  • Big Blonde
  • Arrangement in Black and White
  • Dialogue at Three in the Morning
• After Such Pleasures (includes 11 short stories)
  • Horsie
  • Here We Are
  • Too Bad
  • From the Diary of a New York Lady
  • The Waltz
  • Dusk Before Fireworks
  • The Little Hours
  • Sentiment
  • A Young Woman in Green Lace
  • Lady With a Lamp
  • Glory in the Daytime
• Here Lies: The Collected Stories of Dorothy Parker (reprints of the stories from both previous collections, plus 3 new stories)
  • Clothe the Naked
  • Soldiers of the Republic
  • The Custard Heart
• Collected Stories (stories from the first two collections)
• The Portable Dorothy Parker (reprints of the stories from the previous collections, plus 8 new stories and verse from 3 poetry books)
  • The Lovely Leave
  • The Standard of Living
  • Song of the Shirt,
  • Mrs.

    Hofstadter on Josephine Street

  • Cousin Larry
  • I Live on Your Visits
  • Lolita
  • The Bolt Behind the Blue
• Complete Stories (Penguin Books) (reprints of all stories, plus 13 previously uncollected stories)^[99]
  • Such a Pretty Little Picture
  • A Certain Lady
  • Oh!

    He's Charming!

  • Travelogue
  • A Terrible Day Tomorrow
  • The Garter
  • The Cradle of Civilization
  • But the One on the Right
  • Advice to the Little Peyton Girl
  • Mrs. Carrington and Mrs. Crane
  • The Road Home
  • The Game
  • The Banquet of Crow

Poetry collections

• Enough Rope
• Sunset Gun
• Death and Taxes
• Collected Poems: Not So Deep as a Well
• Two-Volume Novel
• Collected Poetry
• Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (UK title: The Uncollected Dorothy Parker)
  • Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker (2nd ed., with additional poems)

Plays

Screenplays

Critical studies and reviews of Parker's work

• Lauterbach, Richard E.

  (). "The legend of Dorothy Parker". In Birmingham, Frederic A. (ed.). The girls from Esquire. London: Arthur Barker. pp.&#;–

References