Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is
Speaker 1: stuff you should know. Yeah, all right, what are you
Speaker 1: laughing at? Chuck? You made your first joke right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. What was it? You know? You just
Speaker 1: did it. I'm not gonna do it. Oh the little
Speaker 1: jazz hands, Yeah, that's what I pictured. That was not
Speaker 1: a joke. I was dead serious, all right, speaking of jazz, Chuck,
Speaker 1: how about that jazz age? Oh, look at you don't
Speaker 1: anti paca. So you requested this when Livia helped us
Speaker 1: out with it? What? What? What? Why? What? I have
Speaker 1: no idea why. Dorothy Parker popped into my brain. There
Speaker 1: wasn't anything. I had seen the movie a long time
Speaker 1: ago with the arth Dorothy Parker story. Yeah, Dorothy Parker
Speaker 1: in the Vicious Circle was the name of the movie.
Speaker 1: Great Alan Rudolph film starring Jennifer Jason Lee, j J.
Speaker 1: L as Uh, Dorothy Parker. Great cast rounded it out,
Speaker 1: Cambell Scott, Matthew Broderick, others. Campbell Scott was this. It
Speaker 1: was not quite that old, but it was. I think
Speaker 1: it was late nineties or early odds, although he was
Speaker 1: just in something I saw recently. Yeah, he's in like
Speaker 1: a Marvel movie or something. I think. Okay, is he
Speaker 1: a good guy or a bad guy? I don't think
Speaker 1: he's a bad guy. Um, I like Campbell Scott though
Speaker 1: you know that's Georgeie Scott's son, right, I did not
Speaker 1: know that for real. Yeah, he's one of those I
Speaker 1: think that somehow that's not the most common knowledge despite
Speaker 1: having the name in profession. If I didn't know, it's
Speaker 1: not common knowledge. He doesn't really look like him, so
Speaker 1: not at all. Uh. Yeah, I have no idea why
Speaker 1: Dorothy Parker popped into my head. I really don't. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of it's kind of understandable because I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure out how to describe her. Dorothy Parker is
Speaker 1: one of those very rare people who was so witty
Speaker 1: that that is what she's remembered for. She worked prolifically
Speaker 1: through the through Prohibition, basically through the twenties to the
Speaker 1: early thirties, um, and apparently like basically in step with it,
Speaker 1: and then that was it. Like her, her her writing
Speaker 1: really fell off after that. She did some screenwriting but
Speaker 1: her body of work is not super extensive. If you
Speaker 1: asked her, it wasn't that great. But she was so
Speaker 1: witty and so she's sharp and funny. Um that that
Speaker 1: she's still she just became a literary legend because of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this quote from the New York Times kind
Speaker 1: of says it all. Uh. Most writers are known for
Speaker 1: the works they lead on. Dorothy Parker is best known
Speaker 1: for having lunch and this was I resist. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say that. I'm not going to compare her
Speaker 1: to people these days that are famous without really having
Speaker 1: done much, because that's a different category. She was a writer,
Speaker 1: and she was a very talented writer. She just wasn't
Speaker 1: extraordinarily prolific. Um. I don't think she loved to write
Speaker 1: from what I've gathered, Like I can't crawl into her head,
Speaker 1: but all the stuff I've read, it didn't seem like
Speaker 1: it was like her favorite thing in the world. Like
Speaker 1: she you know, she was a poet, but she wouldn't
Speaker 1: even call them poems. She called them versus. She didn't
Speaker 1: know it. Yeah, she was always she's always kind of
Speaker 1: undercutting her own work, and I think in a self
Speaker 1: deprecating way, which was maybe just sort of part of
Speaker 1: the stick of being Dorothy Parker. Well, I said, I
Speaker 1: read a Esquire article from written by Wyatt Cooper, who's
Speaker 1: Anderson Cooper's dad. Oh okay, called, um, I think whatever
Speaker 1: you know about Dorothy Parker is wrong. Something along those
Speaker 1: lines anyways on the internet. Really good. Yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: a bunch of ellipses in there, uh in the title
Speaker 1: um but he he kind of pegged it as she
Speaker 1: had that same kind of um uh fear of inadequacy
Speaker 1: that any writer has, but hers just got worse and
Speaker 1: worse to the point where it paralyzed her and she
Speaker 1: just couldn't write any longer. Yeah. She also was quoted
Speaker 1: as saying she, um, she would write five words and
Speaker 1: then change seven, which in and of itself is a
Speaker 1: great line, which is what she's known for, Yeah, known
Speaker 1: for hum Dinger's zingers one liners. Um. Yeah. And that
Speaker 1: whole quote about having lunch is a reference to her
Speaker 1: membership in the Algonquin Roundtable, which was basically basically a
Speaker 1: lunch bunch of these great literary minds all coming together
Speaker 1: in the Algonquin Hotel that have lunch, and it became
Speaker 1: really famous and really beloved, and she's probably the most
Speaker 1: famous of that whole group. Right, And that is the
Speaker 1: vicious circle of the movie title. It was also called
Speaker 1: the Vicious Circle, Yeah, the Algonquin roundtable was right. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it was named because they were all having lunch
Speaker 1: one day and I'm sure someone nearby said, look at them,
Speaker 1: that is a vicious circle. That was great. Hopefully we'll
Speaker 1: be able to get across kind of what we're trying
Speaker 1: to stay here, because this is going to be one
Speaker 1: of the most challenging episodes ever because we have to
Speaker 1: get across why she was so why she's worth doing
Speaker 1: an episode on. You know, It's it's more like other
Speaker 1: people could be like, oh, well they figured out the
Speaker 1: double helix of DNA, or you know, they they invented
Speaker 1: the race car something like that. She was as kind
Speaker 1: of a short lived writer who had a really great
Speaker 1: way in like, we have to flesh it out more
Speaker 1: than that. All Right, you seem doubtful. You're not saying,
Speaker 1: what does she ever do that was so great? Right? No,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm questioning our ability to get across why she
Speaker 1: was so great. That's my that's that's my trepidation. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, she would like if she was alive today,
Speaker 1: she would be the person that was most well known
Speaker 1: for like Twitter. Oh yeah, she would be good at that.
Speaker 1: She'd be really good at that. All right, So let's
Speaker 1: jump back in her life. Um her. She was born
Speaker 1: in down the Shore in New Jersey too. She was
Speaker 1: born Dorothy Rothschild. Uh. This makes me immediately sidetrack quickly.
Speaker 1: Her nickname was dot or Dottie. Uh. And I cannot
Speaker 1: hear the name Dotty without thinking of one of my
Speaker 1: favorite comedy bits of all time, stand up bits, which
Speaker 1: is Gary Goldman's bit on abbreviating the states. Have you
Speaker 1: ever seen that? No, I don't know who carry Goldman
Speaker 1: is Goldman g L M A N. He he's really tall,
Speaker 1: he's like six six. He's a comedian. But just everyone should,
Speaker 1: but you, especially because you like stand up, just go
Speaker 1: go after this and and find Gary Goldman's state abbreviations
Speaker 1: bit because it was fan fantastic. And there's a character
Speaker 1: in the bit named Dotties. I always think of that.
Speaker 1: But she was born in to a father who was Jewish.
Speaker 1: He was in the garment district. He worked in the
Speaker 1: garment district. Henry rothschild and her mother was Scottish American.
Speaker 1: Her name was Eliza, And like I said, she was
Speaker 1: born down the shore of New Jersey, but mainly I
Speaker 1: grew up on the upper West side of Manhattan, right. Um.
Speaker 1: And she had a lot of tragedy surrounding her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw, I saw her missing thropy was chalked up
Speaker 1: to this early just about of tragedy. Yeah, okay, what
Speaker 1: would you say, missanthropy? No, alright, so, um, she she
Speaker 1: is kind of adopted this persona which is you would
Speaker 1: call it kind of emo today a little bit, but
Speaker 1: like a really funny, sharp emo person maybe a little bit,
Speaker 1: especially when she was young. She described herself as um,
Speaker 1: a plain, disagreeable child with stringy hair and agenda write poetry. Um.
Speaker 1: And that tragedy began when she was four years old
Speaker 1: when her mom died. Apparently that was just that just
Speaker 1: shaped her immediately, which something like that will. She also
Speaker 1: said that her father was terrible to her, possibly physically abusive,
Speaker 1: although some of the biographers of her aren't sure if
Speaker 1: that's true, and Olivia points out that that's an uh
Speaker 1: long running ongoing thing about whether stuff she said about
Speaker 1: herself was true or not, and then the converse of that,
Speaker 1: she frequently denied saying some of the quips that were
Speaker 1: attributed to her. Yeah, it's pretty interesting, like uh. She
Speaker 1: seemed like the kind of person that would she loved
Speaker 1: to spin a yarn and if the facts were fudged
Speaker 1: because it made for a better story, then that's fine.
Speaker 1: But it kind of makes it difficult to parse out
Speaker 1: the person from the persona and that was certainly the case.
Speaker 1: Like you said, some people aren't so sure about the dad. Uh.
Speaker 1: She apparently also had a pretty evil stepmother situation. She
Speaker 1: referred to her stepmother as the housekeeper, which I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty funny. I also saw she would call her
Speaker 1: hey you, hey you. Uh. Stepmom died in nineteen o three,
Speaker 1: so Dorothy was still just nine years old, and also
Speaker 1: had an uncle um that was apparently pretty close to
Speaker 1: the family that died on the Titanic. Her dad died
Speaker 1: shortly thereafter, and if I do the math right, I
Speaker 1: think she was like nineteen or twenty when she was
Speaker 1: basically kind of she seems like left alone in the
Speaker 1: world for the most part, although she did have a sister,
Speaker 1: but I didn't I didn't see much about how close
Speaker 1: they were. I didn't even see that she had a sister. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a sister in there somewhere. So when her
Speaker 1: dad died, her dad was very prosperous um as a
Speaker 1: garment in the garment industry. So it was her uncle. Apparently, Um,
Speaker 1: he did not invest wisely and so when he died,
Speaker 1: he didn't leave much for her. So that was the
Speaker 1: first time that she had to go get a job.
Speaker 1: And her first job was um playing piano in a
Speaker 1: dance school, which is kind of a cool first job,
Speaker 1: but apparently she hated it because it was like actual work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That's the one thing that maybe a through line here
Speaker 1: is that I don't think she loved to work super hard.
Speaker 1: She did not. She said she doesn't like rich people,
Speaker 1: but she she thought she'd be a darling at it
Speaker 1: right exactly, Um, things changed for her. Nineteen fourteen, she
Speaker 1: sold her first poem to Vanity Fair magazine. It was
Speaker 1: called any Porch, and this sort of began her career
Speaker 1: as kind of a high society satirist. UH paid twelve
Speaker 1: bucks for that poem, which is about three hundred bucks today,
Speaker 1: which was a lot of money for a poem even today.
Speaker 1: I mean good luck at three for a poem. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then a gentleman came into her life name a
Speaker 1: very formative figure named Frank Crown and Shield, and he said, Hey,
Speaker 1: I like to cut of your jib, pretty talented writer.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you a full time staff job here
Speaker 1: at Vogue Magazine, and I'm gonna pay ten bucks a week,
Speaker 1: which is not bad pay at the time, even though
Speaker 1: apparently Parker said she spent most of that on her housing,
Speaker 1: like eight of ten right to her room and board. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Crown and Shield he was the editor of Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: but Vogue was like a sister magazine to Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: I believe. Yeah, they were all Conde Nast publications, so
Speaker 1: he was or she was Crowning Shields protege from what
Speaker 1: I understand. And she went to work for a woman
Speaker 1: named Edna W. Woodman or woman. Uh yeah, woman Chase.
Speaker 1: She was a female editor in chief, which was very
Speaker 1: rare at the time. Um and uh, Dorothy Parker got
Speaker 1: her first job writing captions, and she would get bored
Speaker 1: easily because captions are supposed to be pretty normal and
Speaker 1: boring is prosaic the correct word. Uh, I don't know Okay,
Speaker 1: let's just go with prosaic because it seems like it's
Speaker 1: the right word. But um, so she very quickly started
Speaker 1: to trust try to slip in Remember when we used
Speaker 1: to write for house stuff work, so we try to
Speaker 1: slip in hilarious things into into um, like cut lines,
Speaker 1: the captions under photos. Dude. I thought of us a
Speaker 1: lot during this because that's all. We did that all
Speaker 1: the time, to try and make things a little more interesting.
Speaker 1: And I think both of us had editors that were
Speaker 1: constantly saying, like, what are you doing? You can't do that?
Speaker 1: So so she would she was doing basically the same thing.
Speaker 1: So she became kind of a a thorn and Edna
Speaker 1: Chase's side. Um, but not enough that she was fired
Speaker 1: at this point. She actually was um. Uh. She was
Speaker 1: promoted basically after P. G. Woodhouse Um, the humorists stopped
Speaker 1: being the drama critic for Vanity Fair. They turned to
Speaker 1: Dorothy Parker to become that to fill that role to
Speaker 1: review plays. And she was only twenty four at the time. Uh.
Speaker 1: And by that time she'd been married a year to
Speaker 1: a guy named ed Edwin Pond Parker, the second stockbroker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was. He enlisted in the army, as a lot
Speaker 1: of guys did back then. What fault in World War One? Um?
Speaker 1: And like you said, when she was twenty four, she
Speaker 1: was this play uh or theater reviewer and was was
Speaker 1: known sort of for doing the same thing in the
Speaker 1: reviews of making sort of biting, cutting remarks about high society.
Speaker 1: Uh one kind of funny one she was writing about
Speaker 1: a play and she said, not even the presence in
Speaker 1: the first night audience of Mr William Randolph Hurst could
Speaker 1: spoil my evening. So a lot of great punch lines.
Speaker 1: She she was pretty good at, like setting someone up
Speaker 1: to think they may be getting a compliment and then
Speaker 1: cutting their legs up from under them. That was actually
Speaker 1: her whole thing. Like she was supposedly fairly soft spoken,
Speaker 1: kind of quiet, you might even callers shy at first,
Speaker 1: but also really complimentary, like really kind, and then she
Speaker 1: would kind of build you up until you weren't even
Speaker 1: paying attention to anymore because you were just so drunk
Speaker 1: on the praise she was giving you, and then bam,
Speaker 1: she cut your legs out. You probably didn't even notice,
Speaker 1: but everyone else in the conversation and listening in is
Speaker 1: having a good laugh. That was her her whole jam.
Speaker 1: And it's really important to say her purpose wasn't to
Speaker 1: be mean. There was a real purpose to her um
Speaker 1: her like biting criticism, and it was usually um a
Speaker 1: bullying self gratification, acceptance of praise, um worshiped from the
Speaker 1: lower classes. Like that's why she didn't like high society types.
Speaker 1: She also didn't like feign graciousness, like high society types
Speaker 1: who were so nice that they they gave their housekeeper
Speaker 1: an extra hour, u to go home early one one
Speaker 1: week and now they feel really great about the selves.
Speaker 1: Those kind of things, like just all the stuff that
Speaker 1: just kind of makes somebody gross that she was surrounded
Speaker 1: by in her life. That is what really kind of
Speaker 1: drove her the craziest. And that is what she would attack.
Speaker 1: And it didn't matter who you were, didn't matter what
Speaker 1: your station in life. Although I don't believe she punched
Speaker 1: down very often. Um, you were, you were subject to
Speaker 1: that criticism if you kind of allowed yourself to behave
Speaker 1: that way. Yeah, she probably would have been a stand
Speaker 1: up comedian today now that I think about it, Like
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of mis maasl in this, you know,
Speaker 1: But that wasn't really a job that women had back then.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a job period, I don't think at the time. No.
Speaker 1: And there was one other criticism I want to point
Speaker 1: out that she wrote in I don't remember where she
Speaker 1: wrote it, but she was criticizing I think an actress
Speaker 1: in a play and she said that um, as a
Speaker 1: source of entertainment, she ranks somewhere between a sprig of
Speaker 1: parsley and a single ice skate. That's just good stuff,
Speaker 1: that's not even it's is smart, you know, like who
Speaker 1: would think of a single ice skate is conveying like
Speaker 1: just how not fun something is? Like, it's just brilliant stuff.
Speaker 1: And she was full of that. Yeah, she pushed too
Speaker 1: far though, as people like that often do, lost her
Speaker 1: job in nineteen twenty. I think it was sort of
Speaker 1: a you insulted the wrong person kind of thing. There
Speaker 1: was a column where she was reviewing a play. She
Speaker 1: accused the playwright basically of plagiarizing himself. And then what
Speaker 1: the real deal was though, the real sort of last
Speaker 1: straw was that was an actor, an actress named Billy
Speaker 1: Burke in there, who was criticized and sort of likened
Speaker 1: to this risque vaudeville star, which was not like a
Speaker 1: good you know, comparison to make at the time. But
Speaker 1: that actress was the wife of Florence Zigfield, who put
Speaker 1: a lot of money into advertisements with Vanity Fair, and
Speaker 1: a good friend of Nast of Conde Nast, and that
Speaker 1: was kind of it. So apparently she got the new
Speaker 1: news at the Plaza hotel, and a legend has it
Speaker 1: she ordered the most expensive dessert on the menu, then
Speaker 1: left and took it with her. Right. So, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't even think she took it with her. I think
Speaker 1: she left before it came, just long enough to to
Speaker 1: waste it. Oh I saw that she took it with her.
Speaker 1: Oh did she awesome? Um? So uh, let's even even better. Um.
Speaker 1: There's one other thing I want to point out about
Speaker 1: her criticism, or two other things, chuck. First of all,
Speaker 1: after she was fired from Vanity Fair, she that was
Speaker 1: not the end of her critic critic career, like she
Speaker 1: went onto to be a book reviewer for The New Yorker. Um,
Speaker 1: but her her criticism, her columns, she had no training whatsoever.
Speaker 1: She didn't she didn't like take any kind of classes
Speaker 1: or education on criticism like technique in theory and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. All of her reviews were just totally subjective.
Speaker 1: But she was so funny and so entertaining and so
Speaker 1: insightful that she became like an instant sensation. And then
Speaker 1: the other thing I want to say about it, from
Speaker 1: what I can tell, is that her criticism was not
Speaker 1: always negative. That if you actually produced like a really
Speaker 1: good or a really good book or something like that,
Speaker 1: she could use that same wit too for praise as well.
Speaker 1: And I read that there was there's some book that
Speaker 1: she reviewed. Um, she was saying, to say of it
Speaker 1: here as a magnificent novel is rather like gazing into
Speaker 1: the Grand Canyon and saying, well, well, well, quite a slice. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean she was a legitimate uh critique or she
Speaker 1: put she put forth legitimate critique, right, And if it
Speaker 1: was praise, it was praise. If it was negative, which
Speaker 1: I think it more often was, it was negative. She
Speaker 1: didn't like crud. Well, I don't even think it more
Speaker 1: often was negative even. I think that's the stuff that
Speaker 1: gets pulled because she's Dorothy Parker. I see that's a
Speaker 1: really good point, Chuck. I think you might be right.
Speaker 1: I don't think they were like, hey, this is supposed
Speaker 1: to be a real turd. Let's put Parker on it,
Speaker 1: because like she'll just she'll prop a new and it'll
Speaker 1: be great. I hate that word so much. Yes, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: It's terrible. It's even worse because it's spelled with to you.
Speaker 1: It looks bad on paper print and it even evokes
Speaker 1: the color brown somehow, somehow. Uh yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: should take a break. We should revisit that word. M hm, no, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we'll be right back. Learn it's stuff with Joshua, alright,
Speaker 1: Mr turd. So when when she got fired from Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: there were two employees, Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood,
Speaker 1: who were such friends with her that they actually quit
Speaker 1: and protest because apparently she wasn't wrong with her with
Speaker 1: her um her criticism that got her fired and she
Speaker 1: was just fired because she insulted a very high ranking
Speaker 1: friend of the publisher. So um, they actually quit and protesting.
Speaker 1: I mean that is to inspire a couple of people
Speaker 1: to quit because you were fired, is really saying something
Speaker 1: like it's almost like a trope, you know, but if
Speaker 1: you stop and think about it in reality, somebody being
Speaker 1: like so long paycheck, so long, steady works. I'm I like,
Speaker 1: this person should not have been fired, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: taking my talents away from you because you don't deserve
Speaker 1: them because you fired this person. That's a really big deal.
Speaker 1: If someone fired you, I would quit. Thank you, same
Speaker 1: to you. Okay, you hear that, everybody you hear that bosses? Yeah,
Speaker 1: hopefully that we don't. We don't get tested, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we have been fired by this point. If we were
Speaker 1: going to at all, you would think so. But hey,
Speaker 1: there's always the future. Uh So, now we get to
Speaker 1: the point where we can talk about the vicious circle again,
Speaker 1: which was the round table. Generally lunches, although they lunched
Speaker 1: for many hours at the Algonquin Hotel, which is I
Speaker 1: believe it's still there in New York, right, and still
Speaker 1: the Algonquin. Yeah, I want to stay there sometime. I
Speaker 1: gotta check out. But it's it's now the Algonquin by Hyatt.
Speaker 1: That's funny and probably true. Uh So, this was a
Speaker 1: period of time over about a decade or so that
Speaker 1: first started in June of nineteen nineteen, when they all
Speaker 1: got together for lunch to welcome home their friend Alexander
Speaker 1: Woolcott from his World War One correspondence job. They roasted him,
Speaker 1: they got drunk. Uh, they had a good time, and
Speaker 1: they said, hey, let's come back tomorrow and we don't
Speaker 1: have to have a special occasion to get together and
Speaker 1: drink scotch at lunch. And it kind of became like
Speaker 1: sort of a a Studio fifty four uh booth scene
Speaker 1: where you know, where you see Mick Jagger with uh
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol and like Mickey Dolan's from the Monkeys and
Speaker 1: like a painter, you know. It was people from all
Speaker 1: different walks of life, like Harpo Marx might be there.
Speaker 1: There might be a fiction writer like Edna Ferber, or
Speaker 1: a sportswriter like Heywood Brown, or columnists or screenwriters or playwrights,
Speaker 1: and it was just like it kind of became the cool,
Speaker 1: like a certain kind of cool crowd was hanging out
Speaker 1: at this round table. Yeah. Especially it was especially considered
Speaker 1: cool among the intelligentsia, right, smart and literary types generally,
Speaker 1: So it became like a worshipful gathering um. And people
Speaker 1: knew about it because a lot of these people were
Speaker 1: columnists and like you know, the New York Times and
Speaker 1: later on the New York Parker and like these big publications,
Speaker 1: and they would write about like equip that that Dorothy
Speaker 1: Parker said apparently like um, she would say something at
Speaker 1: lunch one day and to be in the New York
Speaker 1: Times the next day. I think why Cooper was the
Speaker 1: one that said she was probably the most quoted woman
Speaker 1: of the nineteen twenties. Um because she was so funny,
Speaker 1: but also because she was in a position to be
Speaker 1: so exposed. Um. But that the Algonquin roundtable, the fact
Speaker 1: that it became the stuff of legend, the more legendary came,
Speaker 1: the I think the more um kind of disgruntled by
Speaker 1: the whole idea Dorothy Parker became. I think if Dorothy
Speaker 1: Parker heard that, she would say, name one other woman
Speaker 1: who was even quoted in the nineteen twenties, dear oh man,
Speaker 1: and I go uh her uh uh. They became so
Speaker 1: sort of popular and famous just for these lunches in
Speaker 1: this round table that the manager of the hotel, Mr
Speaker 1: Frank Case started seating them in a very sort of
Speaker 1: public area in the rose room, so people could just
Speaker 1: kind of come by and watch them have lunch and
Speaker 1: talk smack to each other. Yes, so, um, they like
Speaker 1: you said, like, these lunches would also go by the way,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say, Greta Garbo, how about that? Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: these lunches would turn into dinner and in very short
Speaker 1: order after Um there the initial meeting in June Prohibition
Speaker 1: started so that scotch they were sipping turned into bootleg
Speaker 1: scotch that they had to kind of surreptitiously drink. But
Speaker 1: they were all super drunk from lunch onward, and they
Speaker 1: would go to people's houses and have cocktails. Afterward, they
Speaker 1: would vacation together. They became like really good friends. It
Speaker 1: sounds fantastic. It does sound fun, for sure, Um. But
Speaker 1: even more um important I would say, is that a
Speaker 1: lot of them came to collaborate. It was like a
Speaker 1: really productive group. And so not only did some like
Speaker 1: get together and write like screenplays together or plays, they
Speaker 1: would actually use one another characters in their books or
Speaker 1: their plays. Like Um, Alexander Walcott. He was like the
Speaker 1: stock acerbic, um course, um character who was kind of
Speaker 1: the center of the man who came to dinner. It
Speaker 1: was based on him. There are plenty of characters in
Speaker 1: different plays that you never heard of that were based
Speaker 1: on Dorothy Parker, Um, they just used each other as
Speaker 1: inspiration in addition to collaborating with one another directly. And
Speaker 1: as you would think, Dorothy Parker also sort of undercut
Speaker 1: the importance of the whole algonquin vicious circle. She was
Speaker 1: quoted as saying that round table thing was greatly overrated,
Speaker 1: full of businessmen and publicity people and hangers on and
Speaker 1: a lot of second rate writers, saying did you hear
Speaker 1: what I said the other day? So I get the
Speaker 1: impression that it's a little bit of both. It may
Speaker 1: have been a little over played, but I think she
Speaker 1: also sort of vastly underplayed what was going on in
Speaker 1: that sort of self deprecating way. Again, well, I I
Speaker 1: also saw that she said it was just a bunch
Speaker 1: of loudmouth showing off save being their gags for days,
Speaker 1: waiting for a chance to spring them. So um, I that,
Speaker 1: and I think it kind of ties into that idea
Speaker 1: of like, you know, just being grossed out by people
Speaker 1: heaping praise onto other people and then those people accepting
Speaker 1: all that praise and basking in it. And then the
Speaker 1: more that that happened, the more she was like forget this.
Speaker 1: So um, yeah, I'm sure it's like you said, it
Speaker 1: was both, but I feel like that was the reason
Speaker 1: she kind of distanced herself from it through criticism. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I get the impression, and this is I may just
Speaker 1: be reading too much into this that she she didn't
Speaker 1: love the Spotlight, uh, and she was sort of in
Speaker 1: it because she was just so smart and funny. I
Speaker 1: think she definitely hated phonies, yes, and that sort of
Speaker 1: you know, ties into the upper crust thing. Um. She
Speaker 1: probably would have loved Catcher in the Rye. When was
Speaker 1: that written the fifties. She's I'm sure she was alive
Speaker 1: while it was published. She died in nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, yeah, sixty seven. She also it wasn't just
Speaker 1: the round table. I think Livia took great pains to
Speaker 1: sort of talk about other people in nonliterary people that
Speaker 1: she hung out with, um, as well as other writers
Speaker 1: that just didn't you know, like she was a friend
Speaker 1: of Ernest Hemingway. But I don't think Ernest Hemingway was
Speaker 1: one to like sit around a round table and like
Speaker 1: crack jokes and stuff like that. He had like elephants
Speaker 1: to shoot, So Hemingway was a buddy. Um. I think
Speaker 1: he supposedly, uh at Scott Fitzgerald ended up basing a
Speaker 1: lot of the Great Gatsby parties after what happened in
Speaker 1: the social circle at the Algonquin. So you know, I
Speaker 1: think she had an influence on other writers as well,
Speaker 1: you know, for sure, um yeah. And she was very
Speaker 1: quoted and also misquoted. Uh, And I think she inspired
Speaker 1: a lot of people, for sure. Let's talk should we
Speaker 1: talk about some of the great quotes? Sure? Al right,
Speaker 1: Well one of them was someone said a aparently like
Speaker 1: used the word horticulture in a sentence, and she said,
Speaker 1: you can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.
Speaker 1: And I think that's off the dome. Like she was
Speaker 1: known for just being that quick, you know, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a big part of it. And that's why she
Speaker 1: was saying, like people would be saving their gags for days,
Speaker 1: just waiting for a chance to spring him. She did
Speaker 1: not do that. It just came into her head, like
Speaker 1: she was just that sharp. Um my favorite is this?
Speaker 1: You're ready? So Calvin Coolidge, the president, apparently he was
Speaker 1: very famously quiet and um she uh, she was told
Speaker 1: about the death of Calvin Coolidge, and she whispered, how
Speaker 1: do they know. Yeah, it actually took me a second
Speaker 1: to figure that one out, and then once I got it,
Speaker 1: it was that's a really good one. Yeah, I like
Speaker 1: that one too. But she was also, like you said,
Speaker 1: misquoted or not only misquoted, but I think other quotes
Speaker 1: were attributed to her that she said that she never said. Um,
Speaker 1: a very famous one, uh from iron Rand's Atlas Shrugged.
Speaker 1: Supposedly she said it is not a novel to be
Speaker 1: tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force,
Speaker 1: which is a great quote. But she said that she
Speaker 1: never said that. Nor did she say the first thing
Speaker 1: I do in the morning is brush my teeth and
Speaker 1: sharpened my tongue. Yeah, that's a little too, like she's
Speaker 1: joining in the celebration of yeah. And she wouldn't do that.
Speaker 1: I could. I could have spotted that a mile away
Speaker 1: and been like nay, yeah. And and it seems like
Speaker 1: she got very annoyed at being having things attributed to her,
Speaker 1: because that's part of the phoniness. Yeah, which is why
Speaker 1: I think she would just deny saying stuff a lot
Speaker 1: of times too, even if she did, Yes, so, um,
Speaker 1: what the other And also, like you said, too, I
Speaker 1: think she was kind of creating this um fiction that
Speaker 1: was more entertaining than reality in some cases, like a
Speaker 1: character like I still think there's probably a lot of
Speaker 1: people who don't really understand who or maybe every no
Speaker 1: one knows who the real Dorothy Parker was. Even Dorothy
Speaker 1: Parker might not have known, but she probably did, although
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who really did know? Again? Is um
Speaker 1: Whyatt Cooper Anderson Cooper of sixty Minutes in CNN and
Speaker 1: New Year's Fame. Um His dad wrote that Esquire article
Speaker 1: I mentioned, I'm finally prepared to share the title. It's
Speaker 1: whatever you think Dorothy Cooper was, like she wasn't, and
Speaker 1: it is what did I say? Cooper? Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I got it wrong? Okay, and I even have it
Speaker 1: written down as Cooper. That's why I got it wrong.
Speaker 1: So that title I just said, but replaced Cooper with Parker.
Speaker 1: And it's one of the most insightful articles I've ever
Speaker 1: read about anybody. So even if Dorothy Parker didn't understand herself,
Speaker 1: why A Cooper understood her? Like It's a really good,
Speaker 1: interesting article that doesn't necessarily follow any timeline. It's just
Speaker 1: like why Cooper is kind of like oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: one other thing about her was this, and then he
Speaker 1: back it up with like three different stories that are
Speaker 1: also hilarious or maybe a little sad or something like that. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really really good article. I would recommend anybody
Speaker 1: go read it, even if you couldn't care less about
Speaker 1: Dorothy Parker. Well, hopefully they will after the end of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: She after she went away from Vanity Fair by getting fired,
Speaker 1: it's a nice way to say it. She never worked
Speaker 1: like a regular staff job again. She became a very
Speaker 1: successful freelancer. She wrote for all kinds of magazines that
Speaker 1: were popular at the time, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal.
Speaker 1: When The New Yorker was founded by her friend Harold
Speaker 1: ross In think you mentioned earlier, she became a regular columnist,
Speaker 1: doing reviews, short stories, her poems again what she called versus.
Speaker 1: Between twenty six and thirty three she did publish books
Speaker 1: of poetry. She published three books of poetry and two
Speaker 1: short story collections, and one of which was the best seller.
Speaker 1: Enough was a poetry collection which was a best seller
Speaker 1: and sold really well. And uh, where I'm trying to
Speaker 1: find where it was. She won a couple of big
Speaker 1: prizes to didn't she She won the Oh Henry Story
Speaker 1: Prize in nine for one. UM. Oh, I can't remember
Speaker 1: what it's called big Blonde about what a character I
Speaker 1: saw described as a serial mistress? Uh in decline and
Speaker 1: um she attempts suicide. Um. And apparently there was a
Speaker 1: like one, a pretty prestigious prize. UM. She wrote very
Speaker 1: frequently about uh. Love, especially modern love in the sense
Speaker 1: of in the twenties, they were just starting to deal
Speaker 1: with this idea of like, wait a minute, men and
Speaker 1: women are like working in the same places, and you know,
Speaker 1: we're kind of interacting more now and are you might equal? No,
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem right, But how does that translate into dating?
Speaker 1: You know, everybody kind of moved from the farm to
Speaker 1: the city and they were trying to figure it out.
Speaker 1: And so that was one of Dorothy Parker's favorite um
Speaker 1: topics of of writing both verse and short stories as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she eventually would get I think, kind of just leave
Speaker 1: poetry behind. She stopped because she said that she didn't
Speaker 1: think she was getting any better, which is man. That
Speaker 1: is admirable. Yeah. Yeah, to not just like run something
Speaker 1: into the ground like we're doing. I think we're still
Speaker 1: getting better here and starts yeah, man, I think I
Speaker 1: think this has been a great year. Actually, okay. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fifty six she talked about just again, sort of
Speaker 1: her reputation being overblown. She said it got so bad
Speaker 1: that audiences began to laugh before I opened my mouth.
Speaker 1: So her reputation preceded her in a way that she
Speaker 1: wasn't comfortable with, and I think she didn't feel like
Speaker 1: it was earned. Um. I have a suspicion that she
Speaker 1: might have been deeply uh, she's some blanking what's the
Speaker 1: word when you don't feel good about yourself? Um? Insecure? Sure.
Speaker 1: A lot of these things that happened with her in
Speaker 1: the way she betrayed herself kind of makes me think
Speaker 1: she might have been insecure in her in her writing
Speaker 1: and with sort of getting attention as somebody who was
Speaker 1: doing good things. If I can't if if no one
Speaker 1: minds me. Going back to the same well of whyatt Cooper,
Speaker 1: he basically said, she seemed to prefer misery. That's why
Speaker 1: I compared to like an emo person earlier, like um.
Speaker 1: He gave a great example where um, you'd be hanging
Speaker 1: out of her house and she'd get a phone call
Speaker 1: from a friend and she'd tell the the help like,
Speaker 1: tell tell them I'm not home. And then later on
Speaker 1: in that same visit, she complained about how that exact
Speaker 1: same friend never called anymore interesting, So like it was
Speaker 1: a self imposed kind of thing, Like she seemed to
Speaker 1: just feel more comfortable isolated, but tried to make it
Speaker 1: so that it wasn't her own choice. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: understand why. I don't know if it was to get sympathy,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to have been. It's she was just
Speaker 1: kind of bizarre in that way. All right, should we
Speaker 1: take a second break, Yes, yes we should. All right,
Speaker 1: so we'll take that break and we'll be back to
Speaker 1: talk about from this point forward. In Dorothy Parker's life
Speaker 1: learnt with Joshua John So Chuck, one of the things
Speaker 1: that she did very sensibly after she kind of abandoned
Speaker 1: poetry and short story writing was to go to Hollywood
Speaker 1: and become a screw writer. And she did that, um
Speaker 1: through kind of marrying a guy named Alan Campbell, an
Speaker 1: actor back in he was ten years younger than she was,
Speaker 1: and um, they ended up being screenwriting partners together after
Speaker 1: he moved her out to Hollywood. Yeah, so her just
Speaker 1: to tie up her first husband's situation. Uh. He came
Speaker 1: back from the war apparently was an alcoholic and drug addict,
Speaker 1: and they were separated. She had an abortion, uh, and
Speaker 1: they got divorced. So he died of a drug overdose
Speaker 1: at the age of thirty nine. Uh. And that's when
Speaker 1: she met the new guy. And the new guy Alan Campbell,
Speaker 1: and uh, like he said, went to Hollywood to write movies. Um.
Speaker 1: She was became pregnant at the uh. And it's still,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of old to get pregnant now, but
Speaker 1: it's certainly at the time. Being pregnant at forty two
Speaker 1: years old in the nineteen thirties was a tough situation,
Speaker 1: and she did have a miscarriage that devastated her. UM.
Speaker 1: But she was she sort had an on again, off
Speaker 1: again relationship with this guy. They were the kind that
Speaker 1: would get divorced and then reconcile and then remarry and
Speaker 1: then split up again, then move back together again. But
Speaker 1: they had a pretty prolific partnership wherein he would and
Speaker 1: a lot of writing partners still kind of have this arrangement.
Speaker 1: Someone might be really good at nailing dialogue and the
Speaker 1: other partner might be really good at structure and character
Speaker 1: development stuff like that. So he would develop the structure
Speaker 1: of a script and sort of sketch out scenes, and
Speaker 1: she would come in with her you know, rapiers wit
Speaker 1: and come up with all that clever dialogue and got
Speaker 1: a lot of money and attention and awards or at
Speaker 1: least nominations. She was a co writer on A Star
Speaker 1: Is Born, the first one from and they were making
Speaker 1: a hundred over a hundred thousand dollars a week a week.
Speaker 1: That's so much money. It's just just screenwriting. And they
Speaker 1: were having a blast doing it. They get drunk every day,
Speaker 1: they were everybody. Yeah. Yeah, they were friends with everybody
Speaker 1: in their neighborhood and it was just it sounds like
Speaker 1: a really grand time. Um. And then unfortunately, Alan Campbell died. Um.
Speaker 1: They think it might be a suicide, although she apparently
Speaker 1: decided that that was not the case, so she got
Speaker 1: it listed as an accident on his death certificate. And
Speaker 1: right after that, she's like, I'm I'm going back to
Speaker 1: New York. She said, New York is the only place
Speaker 1: to be in the whole country. Um, I'm guessing California
Speaker 1: was a little too painful. After the death of Alan Campbell.
Speaker 1: But I also think like she just preferred living in
Speaker 1: New York. Anyway, there was another thing that happened to
Speaker 1: her that probably prompted her to move to New York,
Speaker 1: and that was her activism. Like she's known for her
Speaker 1: quips and her sharp wit um and you kind of
Speaker 1: have to dig in a little further before you realize
Speaker 1: like she was actually like a legit died in the wool,
Speaker 1: lefty activists who really cared about things like racism and
Speaker 1: civil rights long before this was on the radar of
Speaker 1: most people. Yeah, she was one of the founders of
Speaker 1: the Screenwriters Guild. Very pro union, as you probably shouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised by this point. Uh, very anti Nazi early on.
Speaker 1: This is like, you know, before the long before the
Speaker 1: Americans were involved in World War Two. Uh. She you know,
Speaker 1: she had a half Jewish father, and I think it
Speaker 1: seems like sort of struggle over the years with her
Speaker 1: Jewish heritage, but came out hard against Uh Lenni Riefenstall
Speaker 1: when she visited Hollywood and was sort of and this
Speaker 1: was in I think, uh and basically said like, no,
Speaker 1: you shouldn't take meetings with her. You shouldn't take meetings
Speaker 1: with any Nazis, and like all these agents need to
Speaker 1: just close their doors to them, basically, and I thought
Speaker 1: I couldn't admire her anymore. She founded an anti Nazi league,
Speaker 1: I mean, hats off to her right. So she also
Speaker 1: helped raise money to defend the Scottsboro Boys, were nine
Speaker 1: black teenagers in Alabama who were unjustly convicted and sentenced
Speaker 1: in the rape of two white women. UM and there
Speaker 1: was a really big um push by the American Communist
Speaker 1: Party to to basically rescue these boys from this unjust system.
Speaker 1: And she was at the very least Communist adjacent, if
Speaker 1: not an outright sympathizer. I think a lot of her
Speaker 1: interests in viewpoints really kind of dovetailed with the Communist
Speaker 1: Party in America at the time. UM. And she was
Speaker 1: also virulently anti fascist. And for all of this, combined
Speaker 1: her anti fascism, her UM work for civil rights, her
Speaker 1: kind of sympathy for UM, the Communist Party UM got
Speaker 1: her essentially first informally blacklisted and then pretty much officially
Speaker 1: blacklisted in Hollywood starting in the forties. Yeah, so before
Speaker 1: the blacklist, there was something called the Red Channels, which
Speaker 1: was a pamphlet that kind of said, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: you may not want to hire these people if you're
Speaker 1: in broadcasting. Yeah, it was put out real quick, chuck
Speaker 1: by a right wing um publication that was um called
Speaker 1: counter Attack, I believe, and it was made by three
Speaker 1: former FBI agents who just basically created dossiers on everybody
Speaker 1: in Hollywood to root out who were the communists. And
Speaker 1: a lot of them were accused just for contributing to like,
Speaker 1: you know, civil rights causes or things like that. I
Speaker 1: was just about to point that out. That is again
Speaker 1: pre blacklist. It should not surprise you that she eventually
Speaker 1: was officially blacklisted for a short time. She was also
Speaker 1: on the FBI watch list Edifile honor. Uh. They called
Speaker 1: her a concealed communist and you know, just go back
Speaker 1: and listen to our McCarthy asm episode, uh if you
Speaker 1: want to learn anything else about the House of Unamerican
Speaker 1: Activities Committee. She did go before them in fifty five
Speaker 1: and took the fifth and the FBI eventually would clear her,
Speaker 1: uh being a security threat. But I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't think any of those people were ever completely
Speaker 1: off the list, if you know what I mean. No,
Speaker 1: for sure. And if you got on that list, if
Speaker 1: you were in that pamphlet, it doesn't matter how big
Speaker 1: of a starre you were, you just could not find work.
Speaker 1: All of us are you get fired from your current job?
Speaker 1: It was crazy, Um, but that's what happened, and it
Speaker 1: was part of that McCarthy era. So she moved back
Speaker 1: to New York and um, she I saw that. She
Speaker 1: basically lived out the last act of her life in
Speaker 1: a very surprising manner as a little old lady. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she died at a seventy three and uh, I think
Speaker 1: she left all her her money to Reverend Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King and then once he died, that went to the
Speaker 1: Inn Double a c p. Uh. There's a New Yorker
Speaker 1: article that um kind of indicates like, no one knows
Speaker 1: exactly how much money that ended up being for the
Speaker 1: Double a CP, but I think it was a lot.
Speaker 1: And um, this is sort of a not so fun
Speaker 1: way to end this. But one of her good friends,
Speaker 1: Lilian Hellman, was a playwright some when she knew for
Speaker 1: a long long time was designated as her executor for
Speaker 1: her will in a state but was mad because she
Speaker 1: wasn't left any money and so she basically threw all
Speaker 1: her stuff away the way, all her papers, all of
Speaker 1: the you know, manuscripts that she had been working on
Speaker 1: in her life. And uh, Dorothy Parker did not want
Speaker 1: to have a big deal made about her death, wanted
Speaker 1: a quiet cremation, and she, against her wishes, organized a
Speaker 1: big public memorial. It's it seems like just in defiance
Speaker 1: of her wishes because she was mad about being h
Speaker 1: I guess left out of her will slightly. In Hellman's defense,
Speaker 1: she largely supported Dorothy Parker during her old age years
Speaker 1: from nineteen to sixty seven, so I think she expected
Speaker 1: to kind of be repaid. But still, it's definitely not
Speaker 1: worth going against somebody's wishes, you know. So Dorothy Parker's
Speaker 1: ashes had a really interesting afterlife. She had no heirs,
Speaker 1: no family, so um, they were left at the crematorium
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty seven to nineteen seventy three, when the
Speaker 1: crematorium finally got fed up of storing it and just
Speaker 1: mailed them to the address of her former lawyer. But
Speaker 1: her lawyer had retired, but his partner was still in business.
Speaker 1: Her partner didn't know anything about this, didn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with the ashes, didn't know who to contact,
Speaker 1: so he just put her in his desk drawer, and
Speaker 1: from nineteen seventy three to Dorothy Parker spent uh in
Speaker 1: a desk drawer in her former lawyer's office. She'd probably
Speaker 1: think that's funny. I think so, But if she were
Speaker 1: in there, she would have been really bored too. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: They would eventually move though. If you go to New
Speaker 1: York now you can go up to the Bronx to
Speaker 1: Woodlawn Cemetery, where a tour guide and big fan of
Speaker 1: hers eventually put her ashes. Was given her ashes. He
Speaker 1: didn't steal them. And there's a little small plaque with
Speaker 1: a phrase that she apparently proposed for her epitat, which is,
Speaker 1: excuse my dust, it's just beautiful. It beat Shakespeare's epitaph, right,
Speaker 1: what was Shakespeare's? It was some clumsy, ham fisted curse
Speaker 1: that people are like. Shakespeare wouldn't have written that gas grass?
Speaker 1: Or what was it that no one rides for free?
Speaker 1: Oh man, Chuck. Since Chuck said that hilarious quip, that
Speaker 1: means this is the end of the Dorothy Parker ep
Speaker 1: So if you want to know more about her, go
Speaker 1: reader stuff. It's really good and uh fun. And since
Speaker 1: I said it's really good and fun, that means it's
Speaker 1: time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this a
Speaker 1: counterpoint to another listener mail. We got the email from
Speaker 1: the teacher that talked about p b i S positive
Speaker 1: behavioral Interventions in support. Oh yeah, and uh apparently there's
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy surrounding that, because Jennifer here says this, Hey,
Speaker 1: guys have been listening for years. I learned so many
Speaker 1: cool things after the Casino bombing episode. However, you read
Speaker 1: a letter from a gentleman who wrote about using p
Speaker 1: b i S and classroom. I taught school for thirty
Speaker 1: years and finally left, as did hundreds of my colleagues
Speaker 1: because p b i S has destroyed public education. Teachers
Speaker 1: can be kind of students without a PBS program in place.
Speaker 1: My co teacher was permanently disabled by a student. It's
Speaker 1: my feeling that once you're an adult in society, uh,
Speaker 1: society while hand you consequences, and students may not be
Speaker 1: taught how to be prepared for that with p b
Speaker 1: i S schools. Thanks for stating that it may or
Speaker 1: may not work in your own home, Chuck, I was
Speaker 1: required to take two college classes on this, so it's
Speaker 1: not that I don't understand it. Keep giving us great
Speaker 1: knowledge of millions of topics, and that is from Jennifer. Awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you Jennifer for the counterpoint. There may be a
Speaker 1: good episode in there, now that I see this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you might be right, Chuck. Anytime it was
Speaker 1: controversy like that, we're on let's do it. Every time
Speaker 1: I hear point or counterpoint, I'm reminded of that that. Um,
Speaker 1: apart from Airplane where there they're debating the whole thing
Speaker 1: where the I think it's airplane too maybe where the
Speaker 1: guy goes let them crash, I don't remember that line.
Speaker 1: That's good. Um, Yeah, it's way funnier in the movie
Speaker 1: than what I just did. If you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with this, like Jennifer didn't offer a counterpoint,
Speaker 1: you can send it to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.