Is that you in the lower right, Ike?
Yeah, I would have thought you were right when you said she’d wreck the curve. Well, good, now I can vote for Tallulah without worrying about further damaging Dorothy’s self-esteem.
And George S. Kaufman. I mean I always thought Groucho was unbearable sexy but it was probably just the stuff George had him saying. And Mary Astor’s word is good eough for me.
Hmmmmm…I’d like to be the middle on a Lynn Fontanne/Dorothy Parker sandwich. Probably be checking out early Sunday morning though.
Dave
From what I’ve read of Dorothy Parker, she would be fascinating to spend spend some time with. But the stakes of spending an intimate weekend with her would be extremely high. One well-aimed quip (“Robot Arm is dead. How could you tell?” or “Tonstant Scwewer fwowed up”) and I’d be off to the French Foreign Legion. In disguise.
I actually did stay at the Algonquin on the weekend of the dopefest. I’d have asked you to come to my hotel, but such an invitation could be misinterpreted.
Somehow I don’t think the mousy, suburban Mrs. Benchly would be a match for the two of us, Eve. Robert would have divorced her if she had let him, anyway. How about alternate weekends?
I am saving my Algonquin trip for some special occation. You know, she lived there for a number of years. Couldn’t get it together enough to move out of a hotel, the poor love. Maybe you had her room!
I’d be worried about her making a suicide attempt.
Finagle: Oh, you lovable mutt, that’s GEORGE S KAUFMAN! Me, I’VE never had sex with a 20something Mary Astor. Goddammit.
Slithy Tove: I believe that excerpts from Astor’s diary concerning the Kaufman-handle were published in Kenneth Anger’s HOLLYWOOD BABYLON…which leads me to
Eve: I’ll believe you when you take down the Johnny Weissmuller poster in yer bedroom.
plnnr: GREAT Bankhead anecdote!
Swiddles: Here’s one of my favorite “Hemingway - Asshole!” stories: There was a dinner party at some NY restaurant with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Dashiell Hammett in attendance. Hemingway mercilessly browbeat Fitzgerald until Hammett could stand it no more and told him to lay off. Hemingway asked the former private eye if he wanted to arm wrestle, and Hammett told him that he should go out into the parking lot and roll a hoop.
Swimming—I suspect Mrs. Benchley kept Mr. Benchley’s spine in a jar by the door. Not only was he too scared of her to divorce her, but she made a great excuse when some little starlet fell in love and wanted to marry him . . .
Ike—I took down the Johnny Weismuller shot last week and replaced it with Bix Biederbecke! And I have no doubt that a weekend with you would drive Mrs. Parker to suicide. Hell, it would drive nearly anyone . . .
Plnnr—Indeed, classic Tallu. My fave is when an acquaintance talked her into going to church with him. The priest passed by, dressed in his vestments and swinging the censer of incense. Tallu tugged at his sleeve and whispered, “Love the drag, dahling—but your purse is on fire.”
Very nice. I must learn more about Hammett, I do enjoy a good story about him.
Here’s my asshole-Hemingway story. Dottie, Benchley and Hemingway took the same boat to Europe. They’d stay up late drinking, playing cards and being clever. Dottie borrowed Hemingways’s typewriter, and returned it when they got arrived. When they got to Paris, they split up, occationally running into eachother at expat events. During one such party, Hemingway stood up and made an entire speech about the absent Parker, referring to her, amoung other things, as “That fat little kyke.” Because the expat community was so tiny, Dottie heard about this very soon afterward.
Hemingway, in the meantime, had never shut up about the damn typewriter. Every time he saw her he’d harrass her about returning his typewriter, which she had already done, with Benchley as a witness. He was just being an asshole. So finally, Dottie decides to return to the states. She has purchased a brand new, VERY expensive typewriter, as the whole point of her Europe trip was for her to write a novel. (never happened. She tried, but couldn’t do it. Perfectionist.) As her boat was pullling away from the warf, she was on the deck, waving to her friends. Hemingway appeared, and yelled “Hey, Parker! When am I gonna see my typewriter?” She calmly walked back to her cabin, picked up her brand new typewriter and hurled it overboard at him, saying something to the effect of “There’s your Godammed typewriter, Ernest!”
They didn’t play cards again after that.
Hey, there’s a thought. Maybe I did share a bed with Mrs. Parker. Oh, sure, it was 70 years later, but that’s not bad for this thread. And I was just hoping someone would hold a door for me and say “Age before beauty.”
Wait, wait, wait, stay with me, people. I still need a ruling on this:
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas: In, or not in, the Algonquin Round Table?
Sorry, Five. NOT in. Gertrude looked down on the Algonquinites as “not taking their aht seriously enough.” And of course Alice B. agreed with whatever Gertie said . . . When she could understand what the hell she was talking about.
I understand your dejection, though . . . That Gertrude Stein was one hot mamma. Don’t suppose that saucy little vixen Edna Ferber will make up for her?
I’ve seen cites that Gertrude and Alice stayed at the Algonquin at the start of a national lecture tour for the publication of “The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas”. Maybe somebody else read that and mistakenly included them at the table.
On a very tangential note, has anyone ever seen Heywood Hale Broun (son of Heywood Broun)comment on any sporting events other than horse racing? He’s quite the dapper little guy with that handlebar moustache and checked coat, but I’ve never heard of him in conjunction with anything else.
From The Memoirs of a Private Detective:
“Pocket-picking is the easiest to master of all the criminal trades. Anyone who is not crippled can become adept in a day.”
“I know a man who once stole a Ferris-wheel.”
“Going from the larger cities out into the remote rural communities, one finds a steadily decreasing percentage of crimes that have to do with money and a proportionate increase in the frequency of sex as a criminal motive.”
“The chief of police of a Southern city once gave me a description of a man, complete even to a mole on his neck, but neglected to mention that he had only one arm.”
“In 1917, in Washington, D.C., I met a young woman who did not remark that my work must be very interesting.”
.
.
.
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Also, you should read Red Harvest, The Maltese Falcon, and The Glass Key. In that order.
Pat: “No, Mike, what WAS Heywood Hale Broun’s comment on any sporting events other than horse racing?”
Eve, is that really a line from, I’m assuming, “Pat and Mike?” I’ve never seen it and didn’t know anything about the HHB quote. A bit of a hoot for me.
Mmm…that Dorothy Parker had a wicked tongue, I hear…
In an attempt to do nice things for myself, I took the complete novels of Dashiell Hammet out of the library, Professor Ike. I am currently on Red Harvest, which I am enjoying quite a bit. I also took out the bio I read in High School of Dottie, You Might as Well Live, and Double Whammy, by Carl Hiassen, who along with Lawrence Block, is my fun-time reading guy.
Now, I think I have proven that I know many obscure things about both historical literary figures, and obscure silent and early sound film. Eve, Ike, can I join your cool intellectuals club? Please? Ike, tell her how charming I am.
In the 1950s Haywood Hale Broun did a lot of written work for the Hearst papers on the sports pages. But his father had been such a power for the same chain that he was always in his shadow. He did some radio work in college football in the same decade and some boxing also I believe. But he had, like many of his father’s generation, a particular fondness for the ponies. So when the “sport of kings” found a television audience, he had the connections and the expertise.
Ike, no mention of “Continental Op”?
I hesitate to do this, but I am going to be something of a devil’s advocate. Was the round table as worthy of as much note as it has received or merely a group of people in the “in crowd” who were very good at self promotion? Yes, Dorthy Parker had all the tools for brilliance, but did she use them? FPA? Woolcott? Lardner? MacArther (who I might add, said he wasn’t that crazy about the people at the table but liked the fact they couldn’t play poker well.[Harpo said something similar in “Harpo Speaks” but he clearly liked most if not all of the people.)
George Plimpton once said that Hemingway told him that he (Hemingway) always wondered what the big deal was about Parker (It was during Hemingway’s stay at the mental hospital). “What’s she ever done?” he asked.
Yes, Hemingway was an asshole, and yes, Parker was witty. And probably if she were alive, she would be the toast of the Dopers. Heck, she might even give Cecil a run for his money, but which one of them started a literary revolution? Which one of them really wrote? Really created?
Yes I know, they both ended the same, so what is my point?