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Dorothy Parker was a writer and critic known for her wit and cynicism. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table and published poetry and short stories. Her personal life was marked by tragedy and multiple marriages. She was investigated by the FBI during the McCarthy era and died in 1967, leaving her estate to the NAACP.
Dorothy Parker was an American author and critic famous for her caustic wit. She was a founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, a regular gathering of writers and actors at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. Although Dorothy Parker is perhaps best known for her witticisms, she has published numerous volumes of poetry and short stories, many inspired by her cynical view of life.
Dorothy Parker was born as Dorothy Rothschild in Long Branch, New Jersey on August 22, 1893, but grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. She became familiar with the tragedy at a young age. Her mother died in 1898, when Dorothy Parker was nearly five, and her stepmother died four years later. Dorothy Parker attended a Catholic elementary school and later finishing school in New Jersey, which she left at age 13. Dorothy Parker’s father died when she was 19 years old.
In 1917, Dorothy Parker married Edwin Pond Parker II, a Wall Street broker, but shortly thereafter she entered World War I service and the two later divorced. The same year, Dorothy Parker had her first poem published in Vanity Fair and later landed a job on the staff of Vogue. Two years later, in 1919, she moved to Vanity Fair as a theater critic.
Dorothy Parker’s fame grew through her position at Vanity Fair and allowed her to meet like-minded writers, including fellow Algonquin Round Table founders Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood. Over the next ten years, the trio were joined at lunches at the Algonquin Hotel by other journalists, authors and comedians, including Harpo Marx. Their witty banter was often repeated and published in magazines, and Dorothy Parker’s were among the most memorable and biting.
While it was a major step in her career, Dorothy Parker’s stint at Vanity Fair was short-lived, ending in 1920 as her scathing reviews lost their novelty and began to offend. Benchley and Sherwood resigned simultaneously. In 1925, Algonquin Round Table member Harold Ross founded a new magazine, The New Yorker, and offered Dorothy Parker the job of publishing. She began publishing her creative work in magazines, soon followed by collections of poetry and short stories in book form.
After a series of brief relationships, Dorothy Parker married actor and screenwriter Alan Campbell in 1934. She discovered her talent for screenwriting, and the couple moved to Hollywood, where they made a living by freelancing. Dorothy Parker’s relationship with her second husband was stormy: they divorced in 1947, only to remarry three years later.
Dorothy Parker became increasingly political in her Hollywood years, claiming to be a Communist and founding the Anti-Nazi League in 1936. In 1950, she was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under McCarthy and blacklisted. In the late 1950s, Dorothy Parker wrote book reviews for Esquire magazine to supplement her screenwriting income.
After her husband died in 1963, Dorothy Parker moved back to Manhattan, where she died of a heart attack on June 7, 1967. She bequeathed everything to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but it went to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after his death. Dorothy Parker’s ashes, unclaimed for many years, are now interred at the Baltimore headquarters of the NAACP.
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