At typewriter: Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was one of the members of the Algonquin Round Table, the group of 1920s-era writers and artists and intellectuals that included Harold Ross, who would soon found the New Yorker magazine. Parker, already known as a critic, was one of the names that helped Ross get the magazine off the ground. 

Parker, who wrote short stories in addition to her criticism, is known for a New York-sharp wit, on display in poems like "Resumé":

Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.

As identified as she was with New York, Parker also spent quite a lot of time in Los Angeles, where this 1941 photograph was probably taken. Doesn't that look like a script she's holding? While here, off and on from the 1930s until the early 1950s, she wrote for various studios. She received two Oscar nominations for her screenwriting -- for "A Star Is Born" (the 1937 version starring Janet Gaynor) and 1947's "Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman" starring Susan Hayward.

This weekend, Flavorpill posted a photo series of authors with their typewriters. They've got one of Parker too -- plus William Faulkner, William S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath and more.

-- Carolyn Kellogg
twitter.com/paperhaus

Photo: Dorothy Parker at work in 1941. Credit: Associated Press.

Comments

[Bill Peschel]

This reminds me of Dorothy's acerbic description of Hollywood from her Paris Review interview:

"Hollywood money isn’t money. It’s congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are. I can’t talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and it’s a horror to look back on. I can’t imagine how I did it. 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."

[Celsius1414]

Ah, excellent photo. Coincidentally, I just started reading through The Portable Dorothy Parker yesterday. Some of her great short stories to start with.