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

"3 highballs & I'm St. Francis of Assisi."

As a screenwriter in Hollywood in the 1930s, she irritated Samuel Goldwyn with her stream of caustic remarks.

Goldwyn complained: "Wisecracks, I told you there's no money in wisecracks. People want a happy ending."

Parker: "I know this will come as a shock to you, Mr. Goldwyn, but in all history, which has held billions & billions of human beings, not a single one ever had a happy ending." 

"One more drink & I'd have been under the host."

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I played a wonderful character named- Banjo, inspired by 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.

I usually 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 Alexander 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 had 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 (he looked like the young Frank Langella. I wonder if he now looks like present day Langella?) took me on a Dorothy Parker's Manhattan tour one autumn day, with stops at her girlhood home on the Upper West Side, the Algonquin Hotel, Woollcott’s home- Wits End, the Waldorf-Astoria, the old offices of the New Yorker, & the restaurant- 21.

She led an interesting & difficult life, with a troubled childhood, 3 marriages ( 2 to the same man & 1 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 & TV by Dolores Sutto in Hollywood (1976), Rosemary Murphy in Julia (1977), Bebe Neuwirth in Dash & Lilly (1999) & most interestingly by Jennifer Jason Leigh in Mrs. Parker & 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. Parker's 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."

Born On This Day- October 27th... NYC Wit Fran Lebowitz

She is one of my idols. If you don't know her. you really should & you can start with the documentry- Public Speaking directed by Martin Scosese. Fran Lobowitz turns 61 years old today. Martin Scorsese’s 90-minute talkfest in which essayist & humorist Fran Lebowitz explains almost everything 2010 was quite the year for documentries about funny women, along with Joan Rivers: A Piece Of Work. 

The Scorsese flick is a sophisticated affair in which a series of interviews with Lebowitz at the Waverly Inn are seamlessly intercut. The film is the world view of a very witty & very cynical New Yorker who likes few of the changes she’s seen in her adopted home since she arrived 40 years ago.

The writer Lebowitz became famously paralyzed, she calls it “writer’s blockade” but she has few peers as a public pontificater. This gift has allowed the writer to be able to afford to stay in NYC & to hang out with famous friends.

I am mad jealous of the idea of having a Manhattan career out of a pair slim volumes of essays & then chatting away for the next 4 decades.

But conversation at Lebowitz’s level was once a much respected occupation, as Scorsese reminds us in brief clips that show us folks like James Baldwin, Gore Vidal, & William F. Buckley on talk shows back in the 1960s.

Lebowitz mentions at one point that she was thrilled & inspired as a young person by one of Baldwin’s many appearances on the David Susskind talk show, pointing up how today’s talk show in comparison,with guests that are pre-interviewed & plug thier product for 5 minutes.

“Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort. If you have a burning, restless urge to write or paint, simply eat something sweet and the feeling will pass”

I always loved & looked forward to Fran Lebowitz's pieces in Interview Magazine, hired by Andy Warhol himself. I will still re-read her books- Social Studies & Metropolitan Life, both published more than 30 years ago. Cranky, sardonic, witty, & dry; her essays make me think & make me laugh. She was named one most stylish women in Vanity Fair's International Best-Dressed List, & is known to sport tailored suits by the Savile Row tailor Anderson & Sheppard. Lebowitz has a reoccuring role on Law & Order as a judge. She had the best Proust Questionaire, on the back page of Vanity Fair, ever. I think her quips are on a par with Dorothy Parker:


"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable."

"Andy Warhol made fame more famous."

"As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you."

"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying."

"If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater suggest that he wear a tail."

"If you are of the opinion that the contemplation of suicide is sufficient evidence of a poetic nature, do not forget that actions speak louder than words."

"In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra."

"Polite conversation is rarely either."

"Romantic love is mental illness. But it's a pleasurable one. It's a drug. It distorts reality, and that's the point of it. It would be impossible to fall in love with someone that you really saw."

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."

Born On This Day... Oscar Levant

"Roses are red, violets are blue, I am schizophrenic, & so am I."

Alexander Woollcott, a member of the Algonquin Round Table, once said of him: "There's absolutely nothing wrong with Oscar Levant that a miracle can't fix."

Open about his neuroses & hypochondria, Oscar Levant, was addicted to prescription drugs & was frequently committed to mental hospitals. Despite his afflictions, Levant was considered a genius in many disciplines. Levant: "There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."

Levant was sad, ironic & self-deprecating & wildly talented. I have every reason to think that he was gay. Levant's life proves to be more interesting than that of his good friend, the legendary George Gershwin, who he possibly was involved romantically.  Perhaps this is because he lived for so much longer, & because of Levant's numerous talents other than music.

Levant was a notorious wit; he was so funny that he could afford to be obnoxious & insulting & still count on being a welcome guest in the homes of his many celebrity friends..

A perceptive musical theorist, Levant about the art of composing for films; it was he who coined the phrase "Mickey Mousing," in reference to movie scores that slavishly commented upon the action. The longer he stayed in Hollywood, the more he became famous as a "character" rather than a musician.

The public first became aware of Levant's acidic wit when he was a frequent guest on the Information Please radio program. From 1940 onward, he spent  more time as an actor: Humoresque (1945), Rhapsody in Blue (1945), The Barkeleys of Broadway (1949) & O. Henry's Full House (1952), in which he co-starred with Fred Allen in the Ransom of Red Chief segment. He was at his best in 2 classic MGM musicals: An American in Paris (1951), where he appears in a dream sequence, playing every member of the orchestra in a performance of Gershwin's Concerto in F; & The Band Wagon (1953), in which he & Nanette Fabray play characters based on Adolph Green & Betty Comden.

Oscar Levant's personality can be summed up by 2 of his most oft-repeated witticisms:  "In some moments I was difficult, in odd moments impossible, in rare moments loathsome, but at my best unapproachably great;" & the self-deprecating "I am the world's oldest child prodigy."

The son of a Pittsburgh repairman, Oscar Levant went to New York at 16 to study music under such masters as Stojowski, Schoenberg & Schillinger (I just can’t stop with the alliteration). Before reaching his 20th birthday, he had gained renown as a concert pianist, teacher, band leader & composer. In the early 1930s, he played a minor role in the stage play Burlesque with Cher. During his time in Hollywood, Levant became BFFs with George Gershwin & by the mid-1930s Levant was perhaps the greatest interpreter of Gershwin's works in the world.

While he continued with his popularity & circle of friends into the 1960s, Levant's mood swings & increasingly erratic behavior began having professional repercussions. He was nearly banned from television when he quipped about Marilyn Monroe's conversion to Judaism: "Now that Marilyn Monroe is kosher, Arthur Miller can eat her". As time went on, only late-night host Jack Paar would risk having Levant as a guest, & when Paar left TV in 1965, so, for all intents and purposes, did Levant.  Paar in later years would sign off by saying, "Good night, Oscar Levant, wherever you are."

In & out of mental institutions during his last 2 decades; his final film, Cobweb (1955), was set in a sanitarium, he became dependent upon pain-killers & other prescription drugs. Despite his deteriorating physical & mental condition, he was able to turn out 3 terrific memoirs:, A Smattering of Ignorance, The Unimportance of Being Oscar and The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. Oscar Levant died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 66.

He composed one of my favorite songs of all time, a song in my own repitoire:

Here are just some of his quips:

“Spinoza said rituals are all based on fear. My faith destroyed, I put down the book.”

"What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left."

"I only make jokes when I am feeling insecure."

"So little time & so little to do..."

"I'm a concert pianist, that's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment."

"I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."

"I have one thing to say about psychoanalysis: fuck Dr. Freud."

"The only difference between the Democrats & the Republicans is that the Democrats allow the poor to be corrupt, too."

"Everyone in Hollywood is gay, except Gabby Hayes... & that's because he is a transvestite."

"It's not a pretty face, I grant you but underneath its flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character."

When asked by Jack Paar what he does for exercise, he replied, "I stumble, then fall into a coma."

"Leonard Bernstein is revealing musical secrets that have been common knowledge for centuries."

Asked by Jack Paar to describe his reaction to Milton Berle converting to become a Christian Scientist- "Our loss is their loss."

Overheard at a dinner party: "The best kind of guests are the ones that know when to leave!"

“Happiness isn't something you experience; it's something you remember.”

“I don't drink. I don't like it. It makes me feel good.”

“I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.”

“I have given up reading books; I find it takes my mind off myself.”

"Strip away the false tinsel from Hollywood, and you find the real tinsel inside."

"It's not what you are, it's what you don't become that hurts."

“Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome.”

“I am no more humble than my talents require.”