Happy New Year

Someone sent me this years ago; I've been waiting to spring it on you. I file it under "Things That Sound Like Dorothy Paker Would Say, But I Don't Have Any Proof That She Really Did" ...

YOU COME RIGHT OVER HERE
AND EXPLAIN WHY THEY
ARE HAVING ANOTHER YEAR

--Telegram from Dottie to Robert Benchley one December 31st.

Happy New Year from the Dorothy Parker Society of New York!

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Thursday, December 30, 2004 at 4:36 PM | Permalink

Plays & Study Guides Added

New in the Constant Reader Book Shop is a new listing of plays & study guides for Dorothy Parker and her Round Table chums. Some of these are downloadable PDF files for all you students out there reading this.

We also joined the iTunes program. So if you like downloading music, do it with us and we'll make a few crummy pennies for the effort. Thanks!

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Friday, December 17, 2004 at 6:06 PM | Permalink

Supremes Back Penguin Putnam in Lawsuit

Today the United States Supreme Court let stand a ruling that said Penguin Putnam's book Dorothy Parker Complete Poems did not violate copyright laws. Stuart Y. Silverstein had previously edited a similar book, Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker, but the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned whether his selection was sufficiently "creative" to be protected by copyright.

The case is detailed here.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Monday, December 13, 2004 at 5:29 PM | Permalink

Meade Book Put on Year-End "Best" List

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin by Marion Meade was named one of the "finest books of the year" in a list by the San Francisco Chronicle. It concerns the 1920s of Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna Ferber and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Meade wrote the excellent Parker bio What Fresh Hell is This in 1987. The newspaper writes:

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties by Marion Meade (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday; 352 pages; $26.95): The women profiled by biographer Marion Meade -- Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald and Edna Ferber -- used everything from prayer to sex to profanity to humor to bootleg booze to plain old hard work in their attempt to achieve careers as writers. Reading "Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin" is like looking at a photo album while listening to a witty insider reminisce about the images. Her writing is bright, her language charged with gritty details, gossipy tidbits and accomplished one-liners.

Read the April 2004 DPSNY story about the book here; or the San Francisco Chronicle "Best Of" list.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on at 12:05 AM | Permalink

Dorothy Parker Strips

Dottie and her pals make an appearance in the comic stip Jazz Age Comics. Is this a first for the Round Table in this medium?

History aside, George Gershwin wasn't known to hang out with this group in the Twenties.

And where did Mrs. Parker get that hat? Indiana Jones?

Read it here...

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Thursday, December 09, 2004 at 2:04 AM | Permalink

Diamonds Not Rough at Algonquin

Someone has already bought the $10,000 martini at the Algonquin Hotel's Blue Bar, which we told you about last week. The story was all over the papers today, as a Westchester guy proposed to his girlfriend with a $13,000 martini & diamond.

What would Dorothy Parker think of this? How about one of her classics:

Unfortunate Coincidence

By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, December 08, 2004 at 4:02 PM | Permalink

Silverstein Court Battle to Supreme Court

The Dorothy Parker copyright case we've been following since the late 1990s is now being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court. The article here says, "The question under copyright law is, to what degree did (Stuart) Silverstein exercise creativity in selecting and copyediting Parker's lost verses for publication?"

This case is the reason that Penguin Putnam has withdrawn from sale Dorothy Parker Complete Poems. More Parker books are here.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Friday, December 03, 2004 at 9:37 AM | Permalink

Algonquin $10,000 Martini is International News

The Algonquin Hotel made international news this week after they unveiled their $10,000 martini. Included in all news is Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table. Congratulations go out to GM Anthony Melchiorri and Quinn & Company, the hotel's crack PR firm. Here is the story from Reuters & CNN:

New York hotel offers $10,000 martini

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- Drinkers might want to keep a clear head when ordering a martini at New York's historic Algonquin Hotel or they might pay $10,000 for that cold sip.

The landmark hotel, where famed wit Dorothy Parker and fellow literary lights at the Round Table imbibed, offers a $10,000 martini, complete with a loose diamond at the bottom.

No one has ordered one yet, in the martini's first week on the menu, but the hotel hopes some romantic soul will buy one any day now.

"We haven't had any buyers yet, but a lot of people are talking about it," said Anthony Melchiorri, the hotel's general manager, on Wednesday.

The drink is designed to fit with tradition at the Algonquin, where Round Table members including Parker, writer Robert Benchley, playwright George S. Kaufman and "The New Yorker" magazine founder Harold Ross gathered regularly.

Today, Parker's ode to the martini adorns hotel napkins: "I love a martini -- but two at the most. Three I'm under the table; Four, I'm under the host."

Parker's response to the $10,000 martini might be mixed, the manager conceded.

"I think she would like the idea so long as she'd get to drink it," he said. "I don't think she'd care about the diamond, but she'd care about the martini."

Fear not, the manager added, no one can really order the martini by mistake.

The tipple requires 72 hours' notice, and buyers meet with a jeweler to select a gem and with hotel staff to ensure the cocktail is delivered to the right table.

Posted by Kevin Fitzpatrick on Wednesday, December 01, 2004 at 10:38 PM | Permalink