Born On This Day- August 22nd... American Wit- Dorothy Parker

"One more drink and I'd have been under the host."
Long ago, in a galaxy far away (Spokane), I played a wonderful character named- Banjo (based on Harpo Marx) in a play – The Man Who Came To Dinner, that was based on a real life incident in the life of Algonquin Round Table regular- Alexander Woollcott. As I tended to over research my character work as an actor, I was sent into an Algonquin Round table jag that lasted for decades. I read everything I could by & about these interesting, talented & witty friends & colleagues during one of NYC’s richest periods. I have books about & by Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Robert Benchley, Ira Gershwin, George S. Kauffman, Herbert Ross & S.J. Perelman, but Dorothy Parker was the personality that engaged me the most. I believe I read everything by her by the time I was 21."You can't teach an old dogma new tricks."

When I lived in NYC in the 1970s, my handsome, sexy, neurotic, born in NYC boyfriend- Stephen Rosenblatt (he looked like young Frank Langellla. I wonder if he now looks like present day Langella?) took me on a Dorothy Parker NYC tour one autumn day, with stops at her girlhood home on the Upper West Side, the Algonquin Hotel (of course), Woollcott’s home- Wits End, the Waldorf- Astoria, the old offices of the New Yorker, & “21”. She led an interesting & difficult life with a troubled childhood, 3 marriages ( 2 to the same man & one to a homosexual), & several suicide attempts, but her her caustic wit, talent, wisecracks & sharp eye for urban sophisticates & their foibles endure. She has been portrayed on film and television by Dolores Sutton in F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash and Lilly (1999) & most interstingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994). Neuwirth was nominated for an Emmy Award for her performance & Leigh received a number of awards & nominations, including a Golden Globe nomination. Parker was an early defender of human & civil rights. She left here estate to the NAACP, where her ashes are buried at that organization’s Baltimore Headquarters. She had suggested that her epitaph read- “Excuse my dust”."You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think."