Why do we love Dottie?
A caustic wit, a tender heart, and an indomitable spirit made Dorothy Parker one of the first true media mavens of the 20th century. She began her career as a poet and moved on to become a critic, bon vivant, and defining personality of the 1920s. In the '30s, she went to Hollywood and wrote screenplays for seminal films (such as A Star Is Born, 1937), before being blacklisted for speaking out against Joseph McCarthy's House Un-American Activities subcommittee. Most famous for being a member of the impromptu literary and drinking circle, the Algonquin Roundtable, Parker's witticisms were legendary. Almost as famous was her disastrous record of relationships and repeated depressions, which gave her writing both its comic edge and its painful truth. Despite her many suicide attempts, Parker outlived practically every one of her contemporaries, proving that beneath her brittle exterior lay a strong and complex woman. Captivated by the work and words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., she bequeathed her estate to him.
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Biography:
Born - August 22, 1893
West End, New Jersey
Died - June 7, 1967
New York, New York
Achievements:
- Published four collections of poems, the bestseller Enough Rope (1926), Sunset Gun (1928), Death and Taxes (1931), and Not So Deep as a Well (1936).
- Published two collections of short stories, Laments for the Living (1930) and After Such Pleasure (1931).
- Won the 1929 O. Henry Award for Best Short Story for "The Big Blond."
- Wrote for Vogue, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New Republic, Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and The American Mercury magazines, was a founding staff member at The New Yorker.
- Nominated for two Academy Awards for screenwriting, for A Star Is Born (1937) and Smash-up: The Story of a Woman (1948).
- Collaborated on two plays, The Coast of Illyria (1949) and Ladies of the Corridor (1953).
- Co-founder, in the 1930s, of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; member of the Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee and the Motion Picture Artists Committee to Aid Republican Spain.
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In her own words -- On her love life:
One Perfect Rose
A single flow'r he sent me, since we met.
All tenderly his messenger he chose;
Deep-hearted, pure, with scented dew still wet --
One perfect rose.
I knew the language of the floweret;
"My fragile leaves," it said, "his heart enclose."
Love long has taken for his amulet
One perfect rose.
Why is it no one ever sent me yet
One perfect limousine, do you suppose?
Ah no, it's always just my luck to get
One perfect rose.
~ 1923
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