American writer Dorothy Parker is remembered as a purveyor of withering bon mots, but her influence is enduring and wide ranging, whether as a ruthless cultural commentator or an early voice of resistance. Lesser known, for instance, is her commitment to progressive causes and social justice issues, like helping to form the Screen Writers Guild and Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, and leaving her literary estate to Martin Luther King Jr., which was turned over to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after his assassination.
Now, there’s a new collection of her snarky New Yorker book reviews, Constant Reader, and British sociologist and literary scholar Gail Crowther has just published Dorothy Parker in Hollywood, which explores Parker’s complicated life through the lens of her film career and sheds light on her talents.
To this day, Crowther says many people can probably recite a Parker jibe (“you can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think,” is one of the more famous examples). Even journalist Tina Brown’s Substack newsletter is called Fresh Hell, a reference to Parker’s well-worn quip: “What fresh hell is this?” The author sprinkles more through the book as she dissects milestones of the writer’s life; “It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard” accompanies an episode about an unplanned pregnancy.
The 18 film scripts Parker worked on before she died in 1967 at the age of 73 are less remembered, despite her 30-year career as a Hollywood screenwriter and two Academy Award nominations (one for the original 1937 A Star is Born).
Surprisingly, as Crowther discovered during her research, archival material was scarce, but CNN anchor Cooper Anderson helped by sharing his father’s papers and memories, since Wyatt Cooper was a close friend of Parker’s. The academic also found letters Parker’s second husband, Alan Campbell, wrote to her from Europe during the Second World War, although her letters to him were missing, likely lost in the chaos of war.
In an interview from her home in Northern England, Crowther says her interest in Parker – and the “aural espionage” of Parker’s writing – started with her short stories. “I immediately recognized someone who spent their time eavesdropping. I loved the seemingly gossipy, yet exquisitely crafted nature of them,” she explains.
In the following Q&A, Crowther talks about how Parker deserves just as much recognition for her screenwriting as her witticisms, why the prolific woman of letters left no paper trail and how her public persona hid a life marked by tragedy, alcoholism and mental illness.
Nathalie Atkinson: You mention Parker has an “unresolved legacy.” What do you mean by that?
Gail Crowther: I got the feeling that Parker was someone who people knew about, but if you asked them what they had actually read, well, it all became a little vague. You’d be quoted the odd quip. And the further into my research I got, I realized that although Parker is quintessentially emblematic of her time now, she was not then. This really struck me, because today we think no one sums up 1920s, Algonquin Round Table, wise-cracking New York more than Dorothy Parker. As I mention in the book, I actually think Dorothy Parker was quite temporally displaced all her life, either ahead of her time or, in later years, regarded as something of a relic. I also felt she never got anywhere near enough recognition for the work she did in Hollywood. For example, I think lots of people know about the 1946 film The Lost Weekend written by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder as one of the first Hollywood films to deal with male alcoholism. But do as many people know about Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947), the first film to deal with women and alcoholism, in part written by Dorothy Parker? Or the Hitchcock film Saboteur, where Parker was drafted in to strengthen the female role?
NA: Why was it important to you to shed light on Parker and her complex, almost mythic reputation?
GC: The one thing that I absolutely loved about researching this book was chasing Parker, often to no avail. Her elusiveness, her mysteriousness, her lack of paper trail, the moments when I thought I’d had a breakthrough for it to slip away, made me really cherish those moments when she did appear and I could put a voice to her. She was complex, and I guess a huge challenge of the book was that her reputation is of someone who is extremely funny – which she was – but her life didn’t necessarily match up to that humour. It wasn’t all laughs and japes; far from it. And I began researching chronologically, so all the messing about at Vogue and Vanity Fair was great fun, and then suddenly darker elements crept in and it took a very different turn. But I suppose it’s important to remember her historical context – she lived through two world wars and the Wall Street crash. Her first husband came home from the war utterly traumatized and her second husband spent years in Europe fighting the Nazis. She went to Spain during the Civil War. We are dealing with a woman here who did not shy away from atrocity, and in fact tried her best to fight against it. So, I think in that sense putting flesh on the bones of her activism, which I think in many ways was just as important to her as her writing, seemed a respectful thing to do.
NA: Irreverence towards the rich and the powerful, openness about her mental pain, pointed critiques of the patriarchy, ruthless snark – would you agree that Parker’s voice not only shaped, but still looms large, in the culture today?
GC: This is a difficult question. I do wonder how Parker would be regarded today. Obviously, she’d be fantastic on social media throwing out devastating observations – if she felt like it – and I absolutely agree that she shaped cultural conversations, especially when she was the only female drama critic in New York. But, as a feminist, I’m trying not to be too pessimistic about the cultural environment today. It seems to me radical historical voices like Parker’s are just as urgent today as they were back then, because there is a whole new set of challenges and threats. As much as there are silences in Parker’s history, it really exposes the fact that if someone with her platform and wealth can have silences, imagine what it must be like for other women who don’t share that privilege.
NA: Researching during a pandemic is uniquely challenging, but I was shocked there is no comprehensive Parker archive. It surprised me, even after following the saga of her ashes taking 54 years to reach a final resting place.
GC: There are few surviving documents, but what a delight when you encounter them. I suspect there are a number of reasons for this, Parker’s perpetual moving about from one place to another being a major obstacle. But what an absolute treasure of letters she must have written to her husband Alan Campbell during the years of the Second World War that either got lost in transit or the chaos of war. I have to say I find it hard to believe he destroyed them, but it seems more likely in the chaos and aftermath they went astray. I wish we had more, because the letters that do survive truly are works of art in themselves. Utterly delightful and exactly what you would expect from a Parker letter; funny, moving, honest and sharp.
NA: Unlike the staggering depth and breadth of material in your approach to Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton for, say, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz, Parker material was thin. What was an unlikely source of insight?
GC: I can be honest and say it was a shock moving from the Plath/Sexton archives, which were packed with treasures of everything, to, well, a scarce Parker paper trail. It’s crucial to keep scholarship alive and vibrant around these amazing women and maintain their relevance across historical moments – have fresh takes, find new materials. Unlikely sources of insight came via other peoples’ archives, mostly her husband Alan Campbell. When he was in Europe during the Second World War he wrote to her almost every day and she kept the letters. Her side of the correspondence is missing, but even reading his letters she appears, almost phantom-like, as he answers questions that she has asked or responds to things she has written, or is confused about where she is now and what she is doing, and you get a real insight into what a truly lovely marriage they had even though ultimately it went wrong for a little while.
NA: I was struck by the biographical parallels to women who are public figures today, like Amy Winehouse and Britney Spears, and the lack of empathy and intervention from close friends and the public, given how troubled and self-destructive Parker was.
GC: I completely agree with this observation and it is depressing to see this sort of pattern over time. I think often women’s suffering is downplayed in a full-on gaslighting manner. I talk in the book about the reaction to Parker’s abortion. It is a horrific story and I cannot begin to imagine the trauma she went through and the trauma she was left with, and then the way this trauma was just dismissed by those around her. Equally, it seemed no one quite wanted to confront her alcoholism. Her drinking was seen as a great lark, and yet, especially when she was older, the falls she had when drunk that left lasting damage, and these stories being relayed as great jokes. I do think she did have friends who tried to look after her – Wyatt Cooper and neighbours in Norma Place, West Hollywood. But I don’t think she liked being looked after and I think she pushed people away.
NA: You’ve spent a lot of time in Plath academia and, by extension, exposed to Plath – I hesitate to call it fandom, but perhaps … enthusiasts? It’s early days yet, given the Parker bio is only just out, but how do these authors’ enthusiast groups compare, so far? Is the latter less fulsome, given how her aphorisms and bon mots are often detached in pop culture from her as a writer?
GC: I think Plath and Parker, and Sexton, too, are blessed with a wonderful readership. I say blessed, but of course they deserve it. In many ways I think there is more conflict around Plath’s legacy, especially regarding the role of Ted Hughes. Plath’s grave has become a site of contestation with the name Hughes often being scraped off. Parker, for many years, didn’t even have a grave. And as I mention in my book, while there were plays on Broadway and in London’s West End about Parker, her ashes were sitting in a filing cabinet and few people thought to ask where they were. She was so visible in popular culture, yet her remains were in a drawer. But people who love Parker have worked hard to keep her legacy alive and I hope my book adds to that existing conversation.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
