Parker Show back in August at Gonk

We got a note from George Demas of the The Culture Project at the Algonquin Hotel. More Parker performed: He says that Social Note: An Evening with Dorothy Parker will be back in August for three weeks at the landmark hotel. As more information is available, it will be here. Maybe we can tie into the Walking Tour and Speakeasy Crawl that is being planned for Dottie's birthday?

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, April 28, 1999 at 10:37 PM | Permalink

Off- Off- Broadway Show is Excellent

Christine Hahn (left) and Susanna Hobrath star in Laughter and Hope and a Sock in the Eye, a great little show that is playing in New York next week.

Make plans to attend a really enjoyable evening for Dorothy Parker fans. For three shows, May 3-5 at 6:30 p.m. at the Producers Club (358 W. 44th Street), Laughter and Hope and a Sock in the Eye is a wonderful production marvelously staged by Christine Hahn and Susanna Hobrath.

I'm no Robert Benchley, but I know what I like and I really like this show. The program is four of Parker's best stories: Sentiment, The Waltz, Arrangement in Black and White, and Just a Little One. The two actresses are fabulous. Period costumes, intimate setting, and a bar is right inside the place. Tickets are only $10 (50 cents more than The Matrix, what a deal).

The title of the production is of course lifted from the last line from her 1926 couplet Inventory. The actresses perform two monologues each: Susanna Sentiment and Arrangement (a personal favorite); Christine takes over for The Waltz and Little One.

A sparse set is all that is needed. The pair are rising stars in the New York theater and film world. Christine is in the upcoming Kevin Costner Tigers baseball movie For the Love of the Game (another Parker-baseball connection, very cool). She has had parts in The Last Days of Disco, Saturday Night Live, Law & Order and a lot of regional theater such as Amadeus and Fool For Love. Susanna is a beautiful redhead who is doing some soaps, Another World and All My Children. She has also starred in numerous indie films and Off-Off-Broadway shows. I think I saw her in a commercial, and she was in a sketch on Conan O'Brien.

The highlights for me were Christine as a drunk in Little One and Susanna as a drippy southern belle in Arrangement. Bring some friends and see this show, it isn't often you get to see Parker performed live.

Call the reservation line: 212-874-5300 x1395.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on at 7:33 AM | Permalink

What the hell...The Matrix

Spread the news, Dorothy Parker is back on cinema screens around the world. What does Dottie have to do with the No. 1 movie in the country? How is she linked to Keanu Reeves? If you see The Matrix -- the sci-fi thriller that is blowing up box offices -- Parker fans are smiling. When Reeves' character, Neo, utters his very first line in the movie, it is Pure Parker: "What the hell..." The three words are credited to Parker by the Oxford English Dictionary. So more than 60 years after Parker coined the phrase, Hollywood scriptwriters are keeping her memory going. Now, if only George Lucas is a Parker nut...

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Monday, April 26, 1999 at 6:31 PM | Permalink

Links Page Updated

I updated the Parker Links Page, it seems a few of the Parker pages died out. Does anyone know of any new Dottie sites? I am hoping A&E will make one for their new movie, Dash and Lilly.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Tuesday, April 20, 1999 at 8:40 PM | Permalink

Dottie's Last Apartment

I was going to a Mets game with Linn and Brooke, and I was in the neighborhood of The Volney apartments. This is where Dorothy lived for the last years of her life, and where she died in 1967. It was a beautiful spring day, so as the weather gets better I will be adding more locales to Dot City. It takes a lot of research, and that is what I did during the "off season" to prepare for the Spring. So have a look at the building.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Monday, April 19, 1999 at 9:30 PM | Permalink

Thomas Wolfe Connection

Are Dorothy Parker fans also Thomas Wolfe fans? We think some are. We got a note from Mark A. Moore of the North Carolina Division of Archives & History, and he works on the Wolfe web site in Asheville. It is among the best literary sites I've ever visited, and you should too. He has a link to this site, so we have a reciprocal link. I'd rather link to a Wolfe site over a Hemingway site any day!

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Monday, April 12, 1999 at 10:58 PM | Permalink

Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman TV Movie

Courtney from Wellesley dropped us a line to say that Dash and Lilly, the A&E cable movie about Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman, will FINALLY air on May 31. I have been seeking info on the broadcast for months. Bebe Neuwirth is playing Dorothy Parker, as reported here in January. I saw her in Chicago on Broadway early last month, she was fantastic and will make a good Dottie, I think.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Sunday, April 11, 1999 at 6:30 PM | Permalink