Dorothy Parker on Hollywood

Since its inception, the Paris Review has interviewed writers -- T.S. Eliot, William Faulkner, Elizabeth Bishop, James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut, Jorge Luis Borges and more are included in two anthologies. Some of the interviews are available on its website, including one with Dorothy Parker from 1956.

Parker, who became famous for her writing and wit as a member of the Algonquin Round Table in New York, came to California in the 1930s with her husband with the oh-so-common intention of making it in Hollywood. The two collaborated with Robert Carson on the screenplay for "A Star Is Born" -- about the way making it in Hollywood can destroy people and relationships --and they received an Oscar nomination. Parker stayed in California until the early 1950s, when she seemed to return to New York for good.

She told her Paris Review interviewer that she didn't want to talk about her time in California -- then proceeded to keep right on talking. Hollywood, Parker said, "was a horror to me when I was there and it's a horror to look back on."

Parker: When I got away from it I couldn't even refer to the place by name. "Out there," I called it. You want to know what "out there" means to me? Once I was coming down a street in Beverly Hills and I saw a Cadillac about a block long, and out of the side window was a wonderfully slinky mink, and an arm, and at the end of the arm a hand in a white suede glove wrinkled around the wrist, and in the hand was a bagel with a bite out of it.

Interviewer: Do you think Hollywood destroys the artist’s talent?

Parker: No, no, no. I think nobody on earth writes down. Garbage though they turn out, Hollywood writers aren’t writing down. That is their best. If you’re going to write, don’t pretend to write down. It’s going to be the best you can do, and it’s the fact that it’s the best you can do that kills you. I want so much to write well, though I know I don’t, and that I didn’t make it. But during and at the end of my life, I will adore those who have.

Interviewer: Then what is it that's the evil in Hollywood?

Parker: It’s the people. Like the director who put his finger in Scott Fitzgerald’s face and complained, “Pay you. Why, you ought to pay us.”

By the mid 1930s, Parker was getting paid well enough to move into this house on Roxbury Drive -- Maybe she saw that big car in Beverly Hills when she stepped out to pick up the paper.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution © Estate of George Platt Lynes

Comments

[Oaktown 357]

"Good article.

[jim haynes]

There exists an inborn attitude that native New Yorkers possess, whether you are a critic, intellectual writer or a street peddler. To westerners it is an attitude of arrogance and "know it all" posturing. They're not that bad and it makes life interesting to interact with them if so inclined.

Their sense of freedom differs from westerners who are greatly influenced from by the wide expanse of land that they dwell in making their freedom as one close to nature not tall buildings and social diversity.

Jim

[Martin]

I remember Andrew Lloyd Webber, wrote in one one of his songs: "Every man and beast is from back east." He was referring, of course, to the East Coast transplant living and thriving in Greater Los Angeles.

It was a common fact that, during Dorothy Parker's time through the 1970's, East Coast (sic: New York area) flight to the Golden State and California dream was common.

As a baby boomer, I grew up in the New York/New Jersey area. My family moved here in 1970 and right after my high school graduation. However, even after 39 years here, I still proudly wear my New York heritage proudly. I "come home" at least every two years. Why?

...Because, about New York, "if you can make it there you can make it anywhere." There is an urbanity and sophistication that New Yorkers proudly point to when referring to their "city that never sleeps." They still call Los Angeles Lah-Lah-Land and, wrongly, where the only cultural contribution is being able to turn right at red light.

Sorry, folks. Dorothy Parker had a valid point. Los Angeles always has been and likely always will be a region of many suburbs in search of a city.

[Mike Roddy]

I agree with Jim, #2. My first experience with this attitude was at Cal when I had New York roommates who were quite provincial in their own way- they kept insisting that their high schools were academically superior, that we were more or less boring airheads, etc. They started spouting that stuff as soon as they got off the plane.
They're wrong, of course, more so now. New York is more of a center for frivolous spending and empty talent than LA is, since their whole economy relies on the ill gotten gains of the financial industry. There has been a corresponding decline in creativity, as New York theater relies on tired revivals, and its writers are dated and verbose.
Here is where it's happening. As far as Californians being more greedy and unprincipled, as her remark about the director implied, I haven't seen evidence of that, either. Parker was wrong then, but she's really wrong now. The West Coast is now the center of the nation's creativity and quality of life.

[JP Lanham]

In the final paragraph, author somehow seems to suggest that money should have mitigated Parker's observations of pernicious behavior.

How Hollywood.

[verbwank]

A sympathetic biographer wrote a full book about Dottie resulting in a portrait of a woman whose vicious wit drove away friends and potential allies. She worked long hours making verbal needles delivered with airy casualness at the Algonquin Round Table. You can't copyright this stuff but you can destroy a lot of good will. Alcohol was one of her afflictions,but arrogance was the worst. She took a bite out of everything. A more interesting and less likable character never lived. Not a life anyone could want.

[Barbara]

Oh tosh - I agree with Budd Schulberg, "The trouble with Hollywood is that too many people who won't leave are ashamed to be there... Hollywood may be full of phonies, mediocrities, dictators and good men who have lost their way, but there is something that draws you there that you should not be ashamed of."

Of Parker: she came, she saw, she was conquered?