The high spirits of the twenty-somethings in the 1920’s. A circle of young exuberant wits regaled Dry-Era America from around a hotel table. Nothing quite like them has been seen since…
Dorothy Parker had come to Vanity Fair in 1915 following a brief and uncomfortable sojourn on Vogue as Dorothy Rothschild, an elfin young woman, slim, sleek and tiny, with masses of dark hair which, if not battened down by a large mushroom of a hat, was described as being tornado tossed. To manager Frank Crowninshield she was said to appear reticent, self-effacing, and preternaturally shy.
—Her insistent hopefulness always seemed to be sideswiped by catastrophe or disappointment-as she put it, “laughter, hope and a sock in the eye.” She was deeply dissatisfied with the free-lance magazine writing she did in the 1920s, had serious money problems, and was involved in a succession of painfully brief love affairs with men who cared little for her. All these troubles led to two failed suicide attempts, in 1923 (following an abortion) and 1925. Her marriage to the morphine-and alcohol-addicted Edwin Parker finally ended in 1928. Through her worst years, Parker maintained a tough-talking and hard-drinking public exterior, scoffing at her own misery with blasé humor.—click image for source…
Parker was described as someone with a smile of radiator warmth; manners perfect enough to have been suburban. But a tongue, which dripped honey, could also suddenly be asp like in its sting. Eyes, laughing, thoughtful, and exceptionally luminous, were a mixture of hazel and green, and encircled by horn-rimmed spectacles that she removed abruptly if anyone spke to her without warning. Her walk, in flat heeled shoes or pumps with black bows, was short stepped and quick, and her mind was quicker still.
To those she did not like or who bored her, she was a stiletto made of sugar. Her malice came from the disappointment of a romantic rather than the cynicism of the disillusioned. Delightful as it was to be in her presence, it was dangerous t leave it. Her spitaphs for the dear departed were widely repeated. She was to become not only a legend, treasured and feared, but a dictionary of quotations, any of which, with her annihilating wit, se had said or written herself but all of which, if they were witty or annihilating, were automatically attributed to her. In spite of her japeries, she, like Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood, had a conscience ready to erupt and the courage to back up what she fiercely felt. ( to be continued)…
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