The Last Days of Dorothy Parker (13 page)

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Collectively, everybody who had a stake in protecting Parker's reputation – an extended family of publishers, executors, relatives, and lawyers, as well as a host of devoted friends and admirers (some wondrously wealthy) – failed her. Whether out of carelessness, misunderstandings, spite, or whatever, nobody assumed responsibility for providing one of the essential rites of existence: a grave of one's own.

There is a temptation to judge Lillian Hellman a plainly bad friend or worse. Her obstructive behavior was no accident: she always acted in her own best interest, not Parker's and not Hammett's either. A controlling person, she expected to profit from Parker's royalties though she had plenty of money of her own – and when her scheming was foiled, she punished Dottie. Looking back, the insensitive disposal of her friend's personal belongings seems callous. But, more important, her refusal to cooperate with biographers succeeded in damping – even if only temporarily – critical attention to Parker's work.

But while some of Hellman's actions appear to be indefensible, there may be a simple reason for them: after losing her influence over Parker's estate, with her obligations at an end, she simply washed her hands of any further involvement and moved on. Who can really blame her? The dead, with perhaps the exception of immediate family, are more easily screened out than we like to imagine.

The saga of Dottie and Lilly may be sad, but it's almost comical too. Surely the first to smile about it would be Parker herself. She always imagined the hereafter as paradise, a sort of luxury hotel with hot and cold running dogs. Little did she guess that settling permanently would require a Homeric journey of twenty-one years. More galling, her real-life coda – afterlife in a tin can – doomed her to spend fifteen of those years hanging around Wall Street, the symbol of everything she hated, followed by eternal rest in Baltimore, another place not to her taste, a short distance from a parking lot (she didn't drive). One of her oh-let's-kill-ourselves verses (the aptly titled “Coda”) concludes with a courteous request: “Kindly direct me to hell.”
188

She should have been a lot more careful about what she asked for.
189

Can the accumulations of a lifetime vanish? Over the years, I continued to keep an eye out in case anything should turn up. As it happened, two research collections that opened for use have made contributions to what is known about Dorothy Parker.

At the University of Michigan, new material regarding Parker's life in the 1930s and 1940s, during her marriage to Alan Campbell, became available in 1999. More than thirty years after Campbell's death, his cousin Ann Gregory donated his papers in 1991 to the university's Special Collections. This archive (1.25 linear feet) contains a batch of unpublished letters, one-sided and truncated, which Campbell wrote to Parker while he was stationed overseas during World War II, describing his wartime experiences. There are no replies to any of these letters. Neither does the archive include exchanges that might indicate problems in their marriage, which is disappointing because Campbell fell in love with an English woman. When the relationship did not work out, he returned to America in November 1946; Parker divorced him in 1947. Presumably, the files were weeded at some point and correspondence relating to the split removed.

The bulk of the archive is professional, mainly a dozen or so film scripts coauthored by the Campbells in the 1930s, especially notes and incomplete scripts for
A Star Is Born,
aka
It Happened in Hollywood
. The most interesting work by Parker without Campbell is the play script of
The Coast of Illyria
, written with Ross Evans, about the lives of Charles and Mary Lamb, which was staged in 1949 by the Margo Jones Theatre in Dallas. Included too are fragments of several stories (“Clothe the Naked,” “Cousin Larry,” “Glory in the Daytime”), most of them written during the years she knew Campbell. Financial documents include canceled checks and bank statements.

The Michigan collection is valuable for its description of the couple's professional lives as a Hollywood screenwriting team in the 1930s, along with details of Alan Campbell's military service. In contrast to the Campbell papers, intentionally saved by his family, the University of Texas material consists primarily of sweepings, you could say, that had wound up on the cutting-room floor. Still, these odds and ends also add a minuscule amount of information to the last years of Parker's life.

At the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, archivists spent a decade cataloging Lillian Hellman's papers, a hulking collection filling some 157 boxes (68 linear feet), which officially opened for use in 2005. Could some of Parker's things be mixed in by accident? As it turned out, yes, because librarians processing the collection found various business and legal correspondence involving the settlement of Alan Campbell's estate in 1963, along with a few royalty statements and permission requests. A single item relating to Parker's work is the handwritten manuscript of “New York at 6:30
P.M.
,” her description of John Koch's paintings that was published in 1964. Apparently not in Parker's possession at the time of her death, it was sent to Hellman by former
Esquire
editor Harold Hayes a decade later.

In addition, the Hellman archive includes scripts submitted prior to and during the period when she was Parker's literary executor. Three writers were hoping to adapt Parker's work for the stage: John B. Tarver (“The Sexes,” 1964); Gail Bell (“One Perfect Rose, An Evening with Dorothy Parker,” 1966); and Sandy Wilson (“As Dorothy Parker Once Said,” 1969).

But the things that interested me most – the unpublished short stories written during the 1950s, a draft of her unfinished novel,
Sonnets in Suicide
, caches of letters, personal effects, keepsakes – were not found.

Hellman could be unusually generous to her friends, with numerous instances of financial help to her credit, but she could also be extremely stingy. An Olympic-class donor to charity shops – Irvington House Thrift Shop was her favorite – she painstakingly distributed everything of no further use in exchange for a tax deduction. Off to Irvington House went Dashiell Hammett's suits, cast-off toasters, her own worn apparel, including intimate items like girdles.

The likelihood that Parker's clothing and books might also find their way to thrift stores seems reasonable because Hellman would hesitate to destroy anything that qualified for a tax credit. All the same, how was it possible to dispose of personal memorabilia like a Social Security card or a birth certificate? What about everyday things like her reading glasses, jewelry, address book, her typewriter? In
An Unfinished Woman
, Hellman wrote that Parker left no family heirlooms, and she inventoried her worldly goods as “odds and ends,” in other words, laundry bills paid and unpaid, a favorite poodle's registration certificate, and the letter she claimed to have sent Parker from the Soviet Union a few weeks before her death. In the Ransom archive, there is not a trace of the dog's papers or the Russian letter.

As a last resort, I decided to seek out a few Hellman sources on my own. Recalling that court papers listing Parker's debts had mentioned a payment of $50 to Hellman's secretary for cleaning the apartment, I tried to reach Rita Wade in the hope that she might recollect something. For weeks I left messages on an answering machine before she finally returned my calls, and then her responses to my questions were brief.

RITA WADE:
I'm very busy with two jobs. There's really no time I can spare.

MARION MEADE:
You are one of the few people who remember when Mrs. Parker died. I wonder if you could help me out.

RW:
It's been so long. When did she die? 1965?

MM:
1967. At the Volney.

RW:
I went down there with Miss Hellman's cleaning man, and either disposed of things or brought things up to her house.

MM:
I've been curious about what happened to Parker's personal belongings.

RW:
Oh, there was really nothing left. Or it got thrown out. She was living in a furnished hotel room.

MM:
Was her dog there? I've heard that Beatrice Stewart rescued it.

RW:
Not when I went there.

MM:
You're sure nothing was saved?

RW:
It was all disposed of. She didn't need anything.
190

It seemed unlikely that Parker would have parted with her set of Napoleon generals and, in fact, they can be seen in the background of a photograph taken at the Volney, probably in 1965. As soon as I mentioned the figurines to Hellman's executor, Peter Feibleman, he reported remembering them well. “Lillian left them to me,” he wrote in an e-mail. “I gave them to her secretary when she came to work for me after Lillian's death.” He assured me that Rita Wade could explain everything.
191

In a second conversation with Rita Wade, I asked her explicitly about the bric-a-brac. This time she recalled seeing five or six of the generals (originally thirteen) on a bookshelf in Hellman's living room. Peter Feibleman did indeed pass them on to her, she said to me. Unfortunately, they became badly damaged in the mail, with hands broken and a sword missing. Beyond repair, they had to be discarded.
192

It is theoretically possible, even likely, that other material about Parker will surface, perhaps in library archives where collections have not yet been processed, or among family papers remaining in private hands. In literary history, there have been many incidents when precious documents – biographers' treasure – have been found in mismarked boxes, somehow lost in attics or barns for decades. Miracles do happen.

The following abbreviations are used for frequently cited sources:

Prologue: The Big Crack-Up

1
. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” in
The Crack-Up
(New Directions, 1945), 13–21. The piece, first published in
Scribner's Magazine
, November 1931, was written while Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were living in Switzerland – Scott in Lausanne and his wife a patient at Les Rives de Prangins in Nyon. They returned to the United States in September 1931.

2
. LH,
Three
, 232.

Chapter 1: Times Square (1931–1933)

3
. DP,
Portable
, 240.

4
. Ibid., 112.

5
. Ibid., 107.

6
. WC,
Esquire
, July 1968.

7
. Quoted in John Keats,
You Might As Well Live
(Simon & Schuster, 1970), 85.

8
. DP introduction, James Thurber,
The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments
(Harper Brothers, 1932), 10.

9
. DP,
Portable
, 582.

10
. At the time, McClain was greatly disliked by some of Parker's friends who disparaged his physical appearance as a brawny bohunk and a male version of a beefy Rubens nude. He would go on to become a powerful New York drama critic at the
Journal-American
in the 1950s.

11
. Orville Prescott,
Cue
, July 10, 1937.

12
. DP,
Portable
, 99.

13
. William Rose Benet,
Saturday Review of Literature
, December 12, 1936.

14
. Dottie's marriage to Eddie Parker was a typical wartime romance. After living apart for most of the 1920s, they divorced in 1928.

15
. DP,
Portable
, 316.

16
. S. J. Perelman,
The Last Laugh
(Simon & Schuster, 1981), 171.

17
. DP,
Portable
, 519.

18
. Ibid., 223.

19
. WC, “Whatever You Think Dorothy Parker Was Like, She Wasn't,”
Esquire
, July 1968.

Chapter 2: Beverly Hills (1934–1935)

20
. DP,
Portable
, 581.

21
. S. J. Perelman to Betty White Johnston, October 17, 1931.

22
. DP to Alexander Woollcott, January 1935.

23
. James Silke,
Here's Looking at You, Kid: 50 Years of Fighting, Working, and Dreaming at Warner Bros.
(Little, Brown, 1976), 62.

24
. John O'Hara to F. Scott Fitzgerald, April 1936.

25
. DP to Alexander Woollcott, January 1935.

26
. LH,
Three
, 233.

27
. Ibid., 278.

28
. Peter Feibleman,
Lilly
, 25.

29
. Ibid.

30
. LH,
Three
, 466.

31
. Reviews from
New York Mirror
and
New York Post
.

32
.
Paris Review
, Winter-Spring 1965.

33
. LH,
Three
, 297.

34
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 167.

Chapter 3: Foreign Lands (1936–1950)

35
. In recent years, historians disagree about their guilt or innocence.

36
. LH,
Three
, 233.

37
. John Dos Passos,
The Big Money
(Houghton Mifflin, 1936), 469.

38
. Beatrice Stewart interview with John Keats,
You Might as Well Live
, 193.

39
. LH,
Three
, 403.

40
. Ibid., 403.

41
. Ibid., 233.

42
. Ibid., 409.

43
. DP,
Portable
, 464.

44
. DP, “The Siege of Madrid,”
New Masses
, November 23, 1937.

45
. LH,
Three
, 130.

46
. LH to John Melby, May 1946.

47
. Garson Kanin,
Hollywood
(Viking Press, 1974), 284.

48
. LH,
Four Plays by Lillian Hellman
(Modern Library, 1942), 219.

49
. Source for the title,
Little Foxes
, is the Bible, chapter 2 in the Song of Solomon: “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes.” The title was suggested by Parker.

50
. Perelman,
The Last Laugh
, 173.

51
. DP,
Portable
, 30.

52
. To know Holly Golightly, Parker wrote in an
Esquire
review, “would be to find her a truly awful pest.”

53
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 102.

54
. LH,
Three
, 233.

55
. Ruth Goetz interview with MM.

56
. Frances Goodrich interview with Carl Rollyson,
Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy
(St. Martin's, 1988), 55.

57
. DP to Helen Droste, September 1929.

58
. Mike Nichols e-mail to MM, November 20, 2005.

59
. After enlisting in 1942, Alan Campbell attended Officer Candidate School and was shipped overseas in November 1943. Lt. Campbell served with Air Force Intelligence in London and Paris. Dashiell Hammett, a disabled veteran of World War I, enlisted and served in the Aleutian Islands where he edited an Army newspaper.

Chapter 4: Norma Place (1951–1963)

60
. Joseph Rauh interview with Carl Rollyson,
Lillian Hellman
, 318.

61
. LH to Oscar Bernstien, February 18, 1964.

62
. Six women marooned without partners, all residents of an Upper East Side hotel, struggle to make meaningful lives for themselves when no longer young. Because the play is set during the Eisenhower years, when a woman's role was deemed wife and mother, they are forced to depend on themselves for the first time. The Broadway production ran forty-five performances after it opened in 1953 to mixed reviews. Parker's collaboration with Arnaud d'Usseau was filmed for television in 1975 but won renewed critical attention when revived off-Broadway in 2005 by the Peccadillo Theater Company.

63
. LH,
Three
, 238.

64
. DP quoted in Leonard Lyons column,
New York Post
, January 1955.

65
. LH to Oscar Bernstien, February 18, 1964.

66
. Ruth Goetz interview with MM.

67
. In the 1950s, the
New Yorker
published three stories, “I Live on Your Visits,” “Lolita,” and “The Banquet of Crow.” According to editor William Maxwell, other submissions were rejected because “her style had become heavily mannered.” (William Maxwell interview with MM.) Her last published story, “The Bolt Behind the Blue,” appeared in a 1958 issue of
Esquire
.

68
. Columbia University, “Reminiscences of Dorothy Rothschild Parker” oral history, 1959.

69
. DP to John Patrick, February 1962.

70
. WC,
Families: A Memoir and a Celebration
(Harper & Row, 1975), 38, 43.

71
. WC,
Esquire
, 1968.

72
. DP to John Patrick, February 1962.

73
. DP,
Portable
, 1973 ed., 575.

74
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 103.

75
. For the script, see DP,
Portable
, 613.

76
. WC,
Esquire
, July 1968.

77
. Clara Lester interview with MM.

78
. LH,
Three
, 248.

Chapter 5: Upper East Side (1964–1967)

79
.
New York Herald Tribune
, April 8, 1965.

80
. WC,
Esquire
, 1968.

81
.
New York Herald Tribune
, April 4, 1963.

82
. DP,
Esquire
, November 1964.

83
. Rebecca Bernstien interview with MM.

84
. Ruth Goetz interview with MM.

85
. Carl Rollyson interview with MM.

86
. Heywood Hale Broun interview with MM.

87
. Peter Feibleman e-mail to MM, November 20, 2005

88
. Nora Ephron, “Women,”
Esquire
, October 1973.

89
. LH and Peter Feibleman,
Eating Together: Recollections and Recipes
(Little, Brown 1984), 21.

90
. Peter Feibleman e-mail to MM, November 20, 2005.

91
. Ruth Goetz interview with MM.

92
. LH,
Three
, 244.

93
. Ibid., 240.

94
.
New York Times
, November 14, 1967.

95
.
New York Times
, March 25, 1963.

96
.
New York Times
, February 19, 1966.

97
. Quoted in Joan Mellen,
Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett
(HarperCollins, 1996), 370.

98
. Ibid., 366.

99
. DP interviews with WC,
Esquire
, 1968.

100
. Gerald Clarke,
Capote: A Biography
(Ballantine, 1988), 337.

101
. Beatrice Stewart interview with John Keats,
You Might As Well Live
, 295.

102
. Fred Lawrence Guiles,
Hanging On in Paradise
(McGraw-Hill, 1975), 285.

Chapter 6: Ferncliff (1967)

103
. Quentin Reynolds,
By Quentin Reynolds
(McGraw-Hill, 1963), 6.

104
. Descriptions of the funeral derive from Kate Mostel interview with MM;
Washington Post
and
New York Times
, June 10, 1967; Donald Stewart e-mail to MM, September 5, 2005.

105
.
New York Times
, June 27, 1967.

106
. Howard Teichmann interview with William Wright,
Lillian Hellman: the Image, the Woman
(Simon & Schuster, 1986), 311.

107
. LH interview with Nora Ephron,
New York Times Book Review
, September 23, 1973.

108
.
New York Times
, June 27, 1967.

109
. LH,
Three
, 244.

110
. Andrew Weinberger interview with MM.

111
. Richard Workman and Bob Taylor correspondence with MM, April 19, 2005.

112
. LH to Oscar Bernstien, July 10, 1967.

113
. Cemetery correspondence with Kevin C. Fitzpatrick.

114
. LH to Oscar Bernstien, July 10 and 13, 1967.

115
. LH to Adele Lovett, June 18, 1967.

116
. Marshall Best to DP, April 21, 1967.

117
. LH to Leonard Lyons. April 15, 1968.

118
. DP to Bernard Geis, ca. 1960.

119
. LH to Oscar Bernstien, March 28, 1968; LH to Leonard Lyons, April 16, 1968.

120
. LH to Marshall Best, April 3, 1968.

121
. John Keats to LH, April 12, 1968.

122
.
New York Times
, October 12, 1970; LH correspondence with Wyatt Cooper, Archibald MacLeish, Arthur Kober, Adele Lovett, and others.

123
. LH to Paul O'Dwyer, August 17, 1967.

124
. Keats,
You Might As Well Live
, 8.

125
.
New York Times
, September 1973.

126
.
New York Times
,
New York Morning Telegraph
, and
New York Daily News
, respectively.

127
.
New York Times
, November 14, 1967.

Chapter 7: Wall Street (1968–1976)

128
. Taylor Branch,
The King Years: Historic Moments in the Civil Rights Movement
(Simon & Schuster, 2013), 183.

129
. Years after the assassination, the King family concluded that Ray was falsely charged with King's murder, which they believe resulted from a government conspiracy.

130
. Today the NAACP Image Awards honor outstanding work by African Americans in the fields of film, TV, music, and literature.

131
. Tom Wolfe,
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
(Bantam, 1970), 5.

132
. LH interview,
New York Times
, September 23, 1973.

133
. Characters in
The Big Crowd
(2014) by Kevin Baker are patterned after O'Dwyer and his brother William, mayor of New York City (1946–1950).

134
.
Rockland County Journal News
, January 23. 1989.

135
. Malachy McCourt interview with MM; Malachy McCourt,
A Monk Swimming
, (Hyperion, 1998), 165.