Dorothy Parker: Wit and Wisecracker Quiz

Answer: 1893

Dorothy Rothschild was born in West End, Long Branch, New Jersey, where her parents had a summer home. She claimed they took her back to New York City by Labor Day so she could say she was a native of NYC. (Info from wikipedia, which cites her essay "My Hometown" as the source.)

Answer: she attended Catholic school despite her parents being Protestant and Jewish

Her father was Jewish, her stepmother Protestant. Yet her father sent her to elementary school at the Convent of the Blessed Sacrament - where she claims she was asked to leave after her wit overstepped the bounds of Catholic propriety... she called the Immaculate Conception "spontaneous combustion". The nuns were not amused.

Answer: piano player

Parker attended Miss Dana's Finishing School in Morristown, NJ. After graduating in 1911, Parker took a job playing the piano for a dance academy.

Back in those days, any well-bred young lady learned the piano, if for no other reason than providing some entertainment during social gatherings - remember, there was no television or even radio, let alone streaming video! So while Ms. Parker perfected her poetry, she still had to pay the rent. There were far fewer areas in which women could find legitimate employment in those days, but tinkling the ivories was a respectable job. Working as an entertaining, witty, upscale courtesan, well versed in the erotic arts, was very largely a thing of the past.

Answer: Vogue

Her first poem sold to "Vanity Fair" in 1914, which opened up the world of journalism to her. Her first job as a journalist was with "Vogue Magazine", after which she moved to "Vanity Fair".

Answer: The Algonquin Hotel

The Algonquin Hotel is on W 44th St in Manhattan. It opened in 1902, initially as a long-stay hotel but the owners quickly changed to a "normal" hotel format.

Traditionally, the hotel keeps a cat which has free range of the building - each male "cat in residence" has been named Hamlet, while the females were called Matilda.

Answer: Enough Rope

"Enough Rope" was published in 1926. I don't know if the title came from one of my favourite of her little poems or not:

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.

(First published in "New York World", 16 August 1925)

Answer: Three

Parker was married three times. The first, in 1917, was to the man whose name she kept professionally, Edwin Pond Parker II. They divorced in 1928. She then married Alan Campbell in 1934, divorced him in 1947 and remarried him in 1950. They remained married until his death from a drug overdose in 1963.

Answer: Yes

Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin, was a terrible bully (as well as being a drunk). The '40s and '50s in America were marred by the threat of blacklisting by the House Un-American Activities Committee. The man saw reds under every bed, and particularly under every bed in Hollywood, the State Department and the U.S. Army. Claiming that somehow Communism and homosexuality were linked, he seemed to revel in the role of the archetypal rabble-rouser.

Many actors, directors, screenwriters etc were blacklisted by him in the '50s. Eventually, McCarthy went too far, was ridiculed and those on the blacklist were once again able to work.

Answer: A Star is Born (1937)

The 1937 screenplay for "A Star is Born" earned an Academy Award Nomination, but "The Life of Emile Zola" took the Oscar.

Parker's final screenplay was an adaptation of Lady Windermere's Fan, in 1949.

Answer: NAACP

Dorothy Parker died of a heart attack at age 73, on 7 June 1967.

As a life-long activist for civil rights, and having no children, Dorothy Parker left her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr. When Dr. King was killed, her estate passed to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Eventually they rescued her ashes from her lawyer's office and inurned them in a garden designed specially for them, at their headquarters in Baltimore.

Her memorial 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. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988."