WEBVTT - Who was Dorothy Parker, really? 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:13.280 Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, 0:00:13.280 --> 0:00:15.760 and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is 0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:22.599 stuff you should know. Yeah, all right, what are you 0:00:22.720 --> 0:00:25.720 laughing at? Chuck? You made your first joke right out 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.560 of the gate. What was it? You know? You just 0:00:29.600 --> 0:00:32.040 did it. I'm not gonna do it. Oh the little 0:00:32.120 --> 0:00:35.440 jazz hands, Yeah, that's what I pictured. That was not 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:39.800 a joke. I was dead serious, all right, speaking of jazz, Chuck, 0:00:39.840 --> 0:00:44.279 how about that jazz age? Oh, look at you don't 0:00:44.320 --> 0:00:48.720 anti paca. So you requested this when Livia helped us 0:00:48.720 --> 0:00:52.720 out with it? What? What? What? Why? What? I have 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:55.760 no idea why. Dorothy Parker popped into my brain. There 0:00:55.800 --> 0:00:58.480 wasn't anything. I had seen the movie a long time 0:00:58.520 --> 0:01:02.160 ago with the arth Dorothy Parker story. Yeah, Dorothy Parker 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:03.800 in the Vicious Circle was the name of the movie. 0:01:04.640 --> 0:01:07.640 Great Alan Rudolph film starring Jennifer Jason Lee, j J. 0:01:07.880 --> 0:01:11.760 L as Uh, Dorothy Parker. Great cast rounded it out, 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:18.360 Cambell Scott, Matthew Broderick, others. Campbell Scott was this. It 0:01:18.480 --> 0:01:20.920 was not quite that old, but it was. I think 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:25.640 it was late nineties or early odds, although he was 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.520 just in something I saw recently. Yeah, he's in like 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:32.520 a Marvel movie or something. I think. Okay, is he 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:34.600 a good guy or a bad guy? I don't think 0:01:34.640 --> 0:01:38.320 he's a bad guy. Um, I like Campbell Scott though 0:01:38.319 --> 0:01:41.039 you know that's Georgeie Scott's son, right, I did not 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:43.840 know that for real. Yeah, he's one of those I 0:01:43.880 --> 0:01:48.600 think that somehow that's not the most common knowledge despite 0:01:48.640 --> 0:01:52.640 having the name in profession. If I didn't know, it's 0:01:52.680 --> 0:01:55.160 not common knowledge. He doesn't really look like him, so 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:58.440 not at all. Uh. Yeah, I have no idea why 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.720 Dorothy Parker popped into my head. I really don't. So 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:07.400 it's kind of it's kind of understandable because I'm trying 0:02:07.400 --> 0:02:10.600 to figure out how to describe her. Dorothy Parker is 0:02:11.080 --> 0:02:16.000 one of those very rare people who was so witty 0:02:16.280 --> 0:02:20.560 that that is what she's remembered for. She worked prolifically 0:02:20.720 --> 0:02:24.560 through the through Prohibition, basically through the twenties to the 0:02:24.600 --> 0:02:28.560 early thirties, um, and apparently like basically in step with it, 0:02:29.080 --> 0:02:32.840 and then that was it. Like her, her her writing 0:02:32.880 --> 0:02:35.400 really fell off after that. She did some screenwriting but 0:02:35.760 --> 0:02:38.560 her body of work is not super extensive. If you 0:02:38.639 --> 0:02:41.359 asked her, it wasn't that great. But she was so 0:02:41.400 --> 0:02:47.440 witty and so she's sharp and funny. Um that that 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:52.320 she's still she just became a literary legend because of it. Yeah, 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.400 I think this quote from the New York Times kind 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:58.960 of says it all. Uh. Most writers are known for 0:02:59.040 --> 0:03:01.959 the works they lead on. Dorothy Parker is best known 0:03:01.960 --> 0:03:07.720 for having lunch and this was I resist. I'm not 0:03:07.760 --> 0:03:10.040 going to say that. I'm not going to compare her 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:12.840 to people these days that are famous without really having 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:16.360 done much, because that's a different category. She was a writer, 0:03:16.520 --> 0:03:19.639 and she was a very talented writer. She just wasn't 0:03:19.919 --> 0:03:25.120 extraordinarily prolific. Um. I don't think she loved to write 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:28.839 from what I've gathered, Like I can't crawl into her head, 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:31.520 but all the stuff I've read, it didn't seem like 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:33.240 it was like her favorite thing in the world. Like 0:03:33.320 --> 0:03:36.120 she you know, she was a poet, but she wouldn't 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:39.080 even call them poems. She called them versus. She didn't 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.600 know it. Yeah, she was always she's always kind of 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.720 undercutting her own work, and I think in a self 0:03:44.760 --> 0:03:47.760 deprecating way, which was maybe just sort of part of 0:03:47.760 --> 0:03:51.560 the stick of being Dorothy Parker. Well, I said, I 0:03:51.600 --> 0:03:57.160 read a Esquire article from written by Wyatt Cooper, who's 0:03:57.200 --> 0:04:01.560 Anderson Cooper's dad. Oh okay, called, um, I think whatever 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:06.880 you know about Dorothy Parker is wrong. Something along those 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:11.560 lines anyways on the internet. Really good. Yeah, there's like 0:04:11.600 --> 0:04:14.080 a bunch of ellipses in there, uh in the title 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:17.960 um but he he kind of pegged it as she 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.839 had that same kind of um uh fear of inadequacy 0:04:22.920 --> 0:04:26.680 that any writer has, but hers just got worse and 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:28.680 worse to the point where it paralyzed her and she 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.680 just couldn't write any longer. Yeah. She also was quoted 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.960 as saying she, um, she would write five words and 0:04:35.960 --> 0:04:39.039 then change seven, which in and of itself is a 0:04:39.040 --> 0:04:41.720 great line, which is what she's known for, Yeah, known 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:47.680 for hum Dinger's zingers one liners. Um. Yeah. And that 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:51.279 whole quote about having lunch is a reference to her 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:54.960 membership in the Algonquin Roundtable, which was basically basically a 0:04:55.040 --> 0:05:00.440 lunch bunch of these great literary minds all coming together 0:05:00.480 --> 0:05:03.200 in the Algonquin Hotel that have lunch, and it became 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.880 really famous and really beloved, and she's probably the most 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:10.240 famous of that whole group. Right, And that is the 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:14.080 vicious circle of the movie title. It was also called 0:05:14.080 --> 0:05:18.440 the Vicious Circle, Yeah, the Algonquin roundtable was right. Yeah. 0:05:18.480 --> 0:05:20.320 And it was named because they were all having lunch 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:23.800 one day and I'm sure someone nearby said, look at them, 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:31.080 that is a vicious circle. That was great. Hopefully we'll 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.360 be able to get across kind of what we're trying 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:35.080 to stay here, because this is going to be one 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:38.279 of the most challenging episodes ever because we have to 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:42.760 get across why she was so why she's worth doing 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.880 an episode on. You know, It's it's more like other 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:48.080 people could be like, oh, well they figured out the 0:05:48.080 --> 0:05:52.560 double helix of DNA, or you know, they they invented 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:57.120 the race car something like that. She was as kind 0:05:57.160 --> 0:05:59.400 of a short lived writer who had a really great 0:05:59.440 --> 0:06:01.560 way in like, we have to flesh it out more 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:07.719 than that. All Right, you seem doubtful. You're not saying, 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:09.560 what does she ever do that was so great? Right? No, 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.640 I'm I'm questioning our ability to get across why she 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:17.839 was so great. That's my that's that's my trepidation. Okay, Well, 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:19.719 I mean, she would like if she was alive today, 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:21.680 she would be the person that was most well known 0:06:21.760 --> 0:06:25.560 for like Twitter. Oh yeah, she would be good at that. 0:06:25.800 --> 0:06:28.320 She'd be really good at that. All right, So let's 0:06:28.400 --> 0:06:30.880 jump back in her life. Um her. She was born 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:35.719 in down the Shore in New Jersey too. She was 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:40.839 born Dorothy Rothschild. Uh. This makes me immediately sidetrack quickly. 0:06:40.880 --> 0:06:43.719 Her nickname was dot or Dottie. Uh. And I cannot 0:06:43.760 --> 0:06:46.080 hear the name Dotty without thinking of one of my 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.479 favorite comedy bits of all time, stand up bits, which 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:54.200 is Gary Goldman's bit on abbreviating the states. Have you 0:06:54.240 --> 0:06:57.800 ever seen that? No, I don't know who carry Goldman 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:00.920 is Goldman g L M A N. He he's really tall, 0:07:00.960 --> 0:07:05.480 he's like six six. He's a comedian. But just everyone should, 0:07:05.480 --> 0:07:08.080 but you, especially because you like stand up, just go 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:13.120 go after this and and find Gary Goldman's state abbreviations 0:07:13.160 --> 0:07:17.119 bit because it was fan fantastic. And there's a character 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:18.600 in the bit named Dotties. I always think of that. 0:07:18.680 --> 0:07:24.600 But she was born in to a father who was Jewish. 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:27.080 He was in the garment district. He worked in the 0:07:27.080 --> 0:07:31.200 garment district. Henry rothschild and her mother was Scottish American. 0:07:31.680 --> 0:07:33.480 Her name was Eliza, And like I said, she was 0:07:33.520 --> 0:07:36.120 born down the shore of New Jersey, but mainly I 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.800 grew up on the upper West side of Manhattan, right. Um. 0:07:39.880 --> 0:07:44.440 And she had a lot of tragedy surrounding her. Yeah, 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:48.520 I saw, I saw her missing thropy was chalked up 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:53.600 to this early just about of tragedy. Yeah, okay, what 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:59.560 would you say, missanthropy? No, alright, so, um, she she 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:04.000 is kind of adopted this persona which is you would 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:06.440 call it kind of emo today a little bit, but 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:10.240 like a really funny, sharp emo person maybe a little bit, 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:13.600 especially when she was young. She described herself as um, 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:20.000 a plain, disagreeable child with stringy hair and agenda write poetry. Um. 0:08:20.080 --> 0:08:22.520 And that tragedy began when she was four years old 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.400 when her mom died. Apparently that was just that just 0:08:25.440 --> 0:08:28.880 shaped her immediately, which something like that will. She also 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.640 said that her father was terrible to her, possibly physically abusive, 0:08:32.679 --> 0:08:36.160 although some of the biographers of her aren't sure if 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.320 that's true, and Olivia points out that that's an uh 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:43.640 long running ongoing thing about whether stuff she said about 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:47.240 herself was true or not, and then the converse of that, 0:08:47.679 --> 0:08:51.480 she frequently denied saying some of the quips that were 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.840 attributed to her. Yeah, it's pretty interesting, like uh. She 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.080 seemed like the kind of person that would she loved 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:01.520 to spin a yarn and if the facts were fudged 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:03.959 because it made for a better story, then that's fine. 0:09:04.800 --> 0:09:06.720 But it kind of makes it difficult to parse out 0:09:06.880 --> 0:09:11.000 the person from the persona and that was certainly the case. 0:09:11.240 --> 0:09:14.640 Like you said, some people aren't so sure about the dad. Uh. 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:19.800 She apparently also had a pretty evil stepmother situation. She 0:09:19.920 --> 0:09:22.240 referred to her stepmother as the housekeeper, which I think 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:24.640 it's pretty funny. I also saw she would call her 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:29.720 hey you, hey you. Uh. Stepmom died in nineteen o three, 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.319 so Dorothy was still just nine years old, and also 0:09:33.360 --> 0:09:35.840 had an uncle um that was apparently pretty close to 0:09:35.880 --> 0:09:39.960 the family that died on the Titanic. Her dad died 0:09:40.000 --> 0:09:42.440 shortly thereafter, and if I do the math right, I 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:45.280 think she was like nineteen or twenty when she was 0:09:45.840 --> 0:09:48.400 basically kind of she seems like left alone in the 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.520 world for the most part, although she did have a sister, 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:53.120 but I didn't I didn't see much about how close 0:09:53.160 --> 0:09:56.160 they were. I didn't even see that she had a sister. Yeah, 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.760 that was a sister in there somewhere. So when her 0:09:58.840 --> 0:10:01.760 dad died, her dad was very prosperous um as a 0:10:01.800 --> 0:10:08.400 garment in the garment industry. So it was her uncle. Apparently, Um, 0:10:08.840 --> 0:10:12.120 he did not invest wisely and so when he died, 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:14.760 he didn't leave much for her. So that was the 0:10:14.800 --> 0:10:16.920 first time that she had to go get a job. 0:10:17.000 --> 0:10:21.600 And her first job was um playing piano in a 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.200 dance school, which is kind of a cool first job, 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:28.439 but apparently she hated it because it was like actual work. Yeah. 0:10:28.480 --> 0:10:31.560 That's the one thing that maybe a through line here 0:10:31.679 --> 0:10:34.760 is that I don't think she loved to work super hard. 0:10:35.400 --> 0:10:37.720 She did not. She said she doesn't like rich people, 0:10:37.760 --> 0:10:40.200 but she she thought she'd be a darling at it 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:43.680 right exactly, Um, things changed for her. Nineteen fourteen, she 0:10:43.840 --> 0:10:47.480 sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine. It was 0:10:47.520 --> 0:10:51.120 called any Porch, and this sort of began her career 0:10:51.200 --> 0:10:55.680 as kind of a high society satirist. UH paid twelve 0:10:55.679 --> 0:10:58.439 bucks for that poem, which is about three hundred bucks today, 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.040 which was a lot of money for a poem even today. 0:11:02.240 --> 0:11:05.280 I mean good luck at three for a poem. Uh. 0:11:05.320 --> 0:11:08.520 And then a gentleman came into her life name a 0:11:08.679 --> 0:11:13.480 very formative figure named Frank Crown and Shield, and he said, Hey, 0:11:13.559 --> 0:11:16.120 I like to cut of your jib, pretty talented writer. 0:11:16.320 --> 0:11:18.280 I'm gonna give you a full time staff job here 0:11:18.840 --> 0:11:21.320 at Vogue Magazine, and I'm gonna pay ten bucks a week, 0:11:22.000 --> 0:11:24.480 which is not bad pay at the time, even though 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:28.480 apparently Parker said she spent most of that on her housing, 0:11:28.600 --> 0:11:32.600 like eight of ten right to her room and board. Yeah. 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:36.120 So Crown and Shield he was the editor of Vanity Fair, 0:11:36.160 --> 0:11:38.720 but Vogue was like a sister magazine to Vanity Fair, 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.280 I believe. Yeah, they were all Conde Nast publications, so 0:11:42.559 --> 0:11:46.000 he was or she was Crowning Shields protege from what 0:11:46.040 --> 0:11:48.679 I understand. And she went to work for a woman 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:53.240 named Edna W. Woodman or woman. Uh yeah, woman Chase. 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:56.559 She was a female editor in chief, which was very 0:11:56.640 --> 0:12:00.199 rare at the time. Um and uh, Dorothy Parker got 0:12:00.200 --> 0:12:04.000 her first job writing captions, and she would get bored 0:12:04.040 --> 0:12:07.680 easily because captions are supposed to be pretty normal and 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:14.640 boring is prosaic the correct word. Uh, I don't know Okay, 0:12:15.000 --> 0:12:17.160 let's just go with prosaic because it seems like it's 0:12:17.200 --> 0:12:19.840 the right word. But um, so she very quickly started 0:12:19.840 --> 0:12:22.640 to trust try to slip in Remember when we used 0:12:22.640 --> 0:12:24.160 to write for house stuff work, so we try to 0:12:24.160 --> 0:12:28.200 slip in hilarious things into into um, like cut lines, 0:12:28.280 --> 0:12:31.720 the captions under photos. Dude. I thought of us a 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:34.760 lot during this because that's all. We did that all 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:37.440 the time, to try and make things a little more interesting. 0:12:38.080 --> 0:12:39.760 And I think both of us had editors that were 0:12:39.760 --> 0:12:41.559 constantly saying, like, what are you doing? You can't do that? 0:12:42.120 --> 0:12:45.000 So so she would she was doing basically the same thing. 0:12:45.080 --> 0:12:47.640 So she became kind of a a thorn and Edna 0:12:47.760 --> 0:12:52.080 Chase's side. Um, but not enough that she was fired 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:55.360 at this point. She actually was um. Uh. She was 0:12:55.440 --> 0:12:59.840 promoted basically after P. G. Woodhouse Um, the humorists stopped 0:12:59.840 --> 0:13:02.560 being the drama critic for Vanity Fair. They turned to 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:05.240 Dorothy Parker to become that to fill that role to 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.920 review plays. And she was only twenty four at the time. Uh. 0:13:08.960 --> 0:13:11.240 And by that time she'd been married a year to 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:15.480 a guy named ed Edwin Pond Parker, the second stockbroker. Yeah, 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:17.960 he was. He enlisted in the army, as a lot 0:13:18.000 --> 0:13:22.040 of guys did back then. What fault in World War One? Um? 0:13:22.080 --> 0:13:23.840 And like you said, when she was twenty four, she 0:13:23.960 --> 0:13:28.480 was this play uh or theater reviewer and was was 0:13:28.559 --> 0:13:30.320 known sort of for doing the same thing in the 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:33.960 reviews of making sort of biting, cutting remarks about high society. 0:13:34.679 --> 0:13:36.880 Uh one kind of funny one she was writing about 0:13:36.880 --> 0:13:39.160 a play and she said, not even the presence in 0:13:39.200 --> 0:13:42.960 the first night audience of Mr William Randolph Hurst could 0:13:43.040 --> 0:13:46.560 spoil my evening. So a lot of great punch lines. 0:13:46.720 --> 0:13:48.880 She she was pretty good at, like setting someone up 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.200 to think they may be getting a compliment and then 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.120 cutting their legs up from under them. That was actually 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:58.040 her whole thing. Like she was supposedly fairly soft spoken, 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:01.160 kind of quiet, you might even callers shy at first, 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:06.600 but also really complimentary, like really kind, and then she 0:14:06.640 --> 0:14:09.760 would kind of build you up until you weren't even 0:14:09.800 --> 0:14:12.080 paying attention to anymore because you were just so drunk 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.679 on the praise she was giving you, and then bam, 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.679 she cut your legs out. You probably didn't even notice, 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:20.880 but everyone else in the conversation and listening in is 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:23.760 having a good laugh. That was her her whole jam. 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:28.120 And it's really important to say her purpose wasn't to 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:33.840 be mean. There was a real purpose to her um 0:14:34.240 --> 0:14:38.520 her like biting criticism, and it was usually um a 0:14:38.680 --> 0:14:45.440 bullying self gratification, acceptance of praise, um worshiped from the 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.520 lower classes. Like that's why she didn't like high society types. 0:14:48.760 --> 0:14:52.160 She also didn't like feign graciousness, like high society types 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.080 who were so nice that they they gave their housekeeper 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:58.440 an extra hour, u to go home early one one 0:14:58.480 --> 0:15:00.280 week and now they feel really great about the selves. 0:15:00.440 --> 0:15:02.160 Those kind of things, like just all the stuff that 0:15:02.200 --> 0:15:05.240 just kind of makes somebody gross that she was surrounded 0:15:05.280 --> 0:15:07.960 by in her life. That is what really kind of 0:15:08.040 --> 0:15:10.320 drove her the craziest. And that is what she would attack. 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:12.680 And it didn't matter who you were, didn't matter what 0:15:12.760 --> 0:15:15.480 your station in life. Although I don't believe she punched 0:15:15.480 --> 0:15:19.000 down very often. Um, you were, you were subject to 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:22.240 that criticism if you kind of allowed yourself to behave 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:25.480 that way. Yeah, she probably would have been a stand 0:15:25.560 --> 0:15:28.760 up comedian today now that I think about it, Like 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:32.560 there's a little bit of mis maasl in this, you know, 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:34.800 But that wasn't really a job that women had back then. 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:38.120 It wasn't a job period, I don't think at the time. No. 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:40.560 And there was one other criticism I want to point 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.680 out that she wrote in I don't remember where she 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.280 wrote it, but she was criticizing I think an actress 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:49.240 in a play and she said that um, as a 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:52.840 source of entertainment, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of 0:15:52.880 --> 0:15:58.720 parsley and a single ice skate. That's just good stuff, 0:15:58.760 --> 0:16:01.840 that's not even it's is smart, you know, like who 0:16:01.840 --> 0:16:04.360 would think of a single ice skate is conveying like 0:16:04.400 --> 0:16:09.120 just how not fun something is? Like, it's just brilliant stuff. 0:16:09.160 --> 0:16:12.080 And she was full of that. Yeah, she pushed too 0:16:12.120 --> 0:16:15.640 far though, as people like that often do, lost her 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:18.760 job in nineteen twenty. I think it was sort of 0:16:18.800 --> 0:16:21.760 a you insulted the wrong person kind of thing. There 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:25.640 was a column where she was reviewing a play. She 0:16:25.800 --> 0:16:30.120 accused the playwright basically of plagiarizing himself. And then what 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.200 the real deal was though, the real sort of last 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:34.720 straw was that was an actor, an actress named Billy 0:16:34.800 --> 0:16:38.880 Burke in there, who was criticized and sort of likened 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:43.040 to this risque vaudeville star, which was not like a 0:16:43.080 --> 0:16:46.040 good you know, comparison to make at the time. But 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.880 that actress was the wife of Florence Zigfield, who put 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:53.480 a lot of money into advertisements with Vanity Fair, and 0:16:53.880 --> 0:16:57.080 a good friend of Nast of Conde Nast, and that 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.960 was kind of it. So apparently she got the new 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:02.840 news at the Plaza hotel, and a legend has it 0:17:03.320 --> 0:17:06.239 she ordered the most expensive dessert on the menu, then 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:09.480 left and took it with her. Right. So, oh, I 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:11.000 don't even think she took it with her. I think 0:17:11.080 --> 0:17:13.520 she left before it came, just long enough to to 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:15.840 waste it. Oh I saw that she took it with her. 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:21.359 Oh did she awesome? Um? So uh, let's even even better. Um. 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:23.479 There's one other thing I want to point out about 0:17:23.520 --> 0:17:26.040 her criticism, or two other things, chuck. First of all, 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:30.000 after she was fired from Vanity Fair, she that was 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:32.199 not the end of her critic critic career, like she 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:36.080 went onto to be a book reviewer for The New Yorker. Um, 0:17:36.119 --> 0:17:41.240 but her her criticism, her columns, she had no training whatsoever. 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:46.240 She didn't she didn't like take any kind of classes 0:17:46.359 --> 0:17:50.240 or education on criticism like technique in theory and all 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:53.720 that stuff. All of her reviews were just totally subjective. 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.200 But she was so funny and so entertaining and so 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.680 insightful that she became like an instant sensation. And then 0:17:59.680 --> 0:18:01.560 the other thing I want to say about it, from 0:18:01.560 --> 0:18:04.080 what I can tell, is that her criticism was not 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.120 always negative. That if you actually produced like a really 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:09.360 good or a really good book or something like that, 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.879 she could use that same wit too for praise as well. 0:18:13.119 --> 0:18:15.399 And I read that there was there's some book that 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.240 she reviewed. Um, she was saying, to say of it 0:18:18.440 --> 0:18:22.120 here as a magnificent novel is rather like gazing into 0:18:22.119 --> 0:18:26.000 the Grand Canyon and saying, well, well, well, quite a slice. Yeah. 0:18:26.000 --> 0:18:30.440 I mean she was a legitimate uh critique or she 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.320 put she put forth legitimate critique, right, And if it 0:18:34.400 --> 0:18:37.080 was praise, it was praise. If it was negative, which 0:18:37.119 --> 0:18:39.280 I think it more often was, it was negative. She 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.000 didn't like crud. Well, I don't even think it more 0:18:42.040 --> 0:18:44.159 often was negative even. I think that's the stuff that 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:47.199 gets pulled because she's Dorothy Parker. I see that's a 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:48.919 really good point, Chuck. I think you might be right. 0:18:49.000 --> 0:18:50.760 I don't think they were like, hey, this is supposed 0:18:50.760 --> 0:18:52.720 to be a real turd. Let's put Parker on it, 0:18:53.320 --> 0:18:55.880 because like she'll just she'll prop a new and it'll 0:18:55.920 --> 0:19:01.360 be great. I hate that word so much. Yes, it's terrible. 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:04.200 It's terrible. It's even worse because it's spelled with to you. 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:09.440 It looks bad on paper print and it even evokes 0:19:09.480 --> 0:19:13.960 the color brown somehow, somehow. Uh yeah, I think we 0:19:13.960 --> 0:19:19.600 should take a break. We should revisit that word. M hm, no, okay, 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:52.880 all right, we'll be right back. Learn it's stuff with Joshua, alright, 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:58.040 Mr turd. So when when she got fired from Vanity Fair, 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:01.800 there were two employees, Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood, 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:05.120 who were such friends with her that they actually quit 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:08.760 and protest because apparently she wasn't wrong with her with 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:13.080 her um her criticism that got her fired and she 0:20:13.200 --> 0:20:16.199 was just fired because she insulted a very high ranking 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:19.960 friend of the publisher. So um, they actually quit and protesting. 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:24.080 I mean that is to inspire a couple of people 0:20:24.200 --> 0:20:28.040 to quit because you were fired, is really saying something 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.320 like it's almost like a trope, you know, but if 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:33.800 you stop and think about it in reality, somebody being 0:20:33.840 --> 0:20:37.199 like so long paycheck, so long, steady works. I'm I like, 0:20:37.280 --> 0:20:39.360 this person should not have been fired, and I'm I'm 0:20:39.400 --> 0:20:42.760 taking my talents away from you because you don't deserve 0:20:42.840 --> 0:20:45.760 them because you fired this person. That's a really big deal. 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.560 If someone fired you, I would quit. Thank you, same 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:56.520 to you. Okay, you hear that, everybody you hear that bosses? Yeah, 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.000 hopefully that we don't. We don't get tested, but yeah, 0:20:59.680 --> 0:21:01.720 we have been fired by this point. If we were 0:21:01.720 --> 0:21:04.080 going to at all, you would think so. But hey, 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:07.159 there's always the future. Uh So, now we get to 0:21:07.160 --> 0:21:10.119 the point where we can talk about the vicious circle again, 0:21:10.200 --> 0:21:14.360 which was the round table. Generally lunches, although they lunched 0:21:14.480 --> 0:21:17.760 for many hours at the Algonquin Hotel, which is I 0:21:17.800 --> 0:21:20.440 believe it's still there in New York, right, and still 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:23.040 the Algonquin. Yeah, I want to stay there sometime. I 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:26.240 gotta check out. But it's it's now the Algonquin by Hyatt. 0:21:31.760 --> 0:21:35.000 That's funny and probably true. Uh So, this was a 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:38.920 period of time over about a decade or so that 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:43.080 first started in June of nineteen nineteen, when they all 0:21:43.080 --> 0:21:45.800 got together for lunch to welcome home their friend Alexander 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:51.640 Woolcott from his World War One correspondence job. They roasted him, 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:55.479 they got drunk. Uh, they had a good time, and 0:21:55.520 --> 0:21:59.280 they said, hey, let's come back tomorrow and we don't 0:21:59.280 --> 0:22:01.119 have to have a special occasion to get together and 0:22:01.160 --> 0:22:04.439 drink scotch at lunch. And it kind of became like 0:22:04.640 --> 0:22:09.760 sort of a a Studio fifty four uh booth scene 0:22:09.880 --> 0:22:14.240 where you know, where you see Mick Jagger with uh 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:18.439 Andy Warhol and like Mickey Dolan's from the Monkeys and 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:21.320 like a painter, you know. It was people from all 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.240 different walks of life, like Harpo Marx might be there. 0:22:24.800 --> 0:22:28.199 There might be a fiction writer like Edna Ferber, or 0:22:28.200 --> 0:22:33.840 a sportswriter like Heywood Brown, or columnists or screenwriters or playwrights, 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:36.639 and it was just like it kind of became the cool, 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:40.880 like a certain kind of cool crowd was hanging out 0:22:40.920 --> 0:22:44.920 at this round table. Yeah. Especially it was especially considered 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:49.560 cool among the intelligentsia, right, smart and literary types generally, 0:22:49.560 --> 0:22:54.720 So it became like a worshipful gathering um. And people 0:22:54.800 --> 0:22:56.760 knew about it because a lot of these people were 0:22:56.800 --> 0:22:59.200 columnists and like you know, the New York Times and 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:02.440 later on the New York Parker and like these big publications, 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:05.760 and they would write about like equip that that Dorothy 0:23:05.800 --> 0:23:08.760 Parker said apparently like um, she would say something at 0:23:08.800 --> 0:23:10.359 lunch one day and to be in the New York 0:23:10.359 --> 0:23:13.720 Times the next day. I think why Cooper was the 0:23:13.720 --> 0:23:16.160 one that said she was probably the most quoted woman 0:23:16.200 --> 0:23:19.320 of the nineteen twenties. Um because she was so funny, 0:23:19.359 --> 0:23:21.639 but also because she was in a position to be 0:23:21.720 --> 0:23:26.080 so exposed. Um. But that the Algonquin roundtable, the fact 0:23:26.080 --> 0:23:29.400 that it became the stuff of legend, the more legendary came, 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:34.480 the I think the more um kind of disgruntled by 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:38.159 the whole idea Dorothy Parker became. I think if Dorothy 0:23:38.160 --> 0:23:40.800 Parker heard that, she would say, name one other woman 0:23:40.800 --> 0:23:44.640 who was even quoted in the nineteen twenties, dear oh man, 0:23:44.960 --> 0:23:49.159 and I go uh her uh uh. They became so 0:23:49.200 --> 0:23:52.000 sort of popular and famous just for these lunches in 0:23:52.040 --> 0:23:55.360