Book Review | ‘Dorothy Parker in Hollywood’ by Gail Crowther

Late in her life, Dorothy Parker claimed during an interview that if she wrote a memoir — which she was loath to do (and never did) — she would title it Mongrel. That’s the kind of telling, troubling nugget that writer, researcher, academic Gail Crowther unearths in her fascinating Dorothy Parker in Hollywood. Crowther set herself a tricky task, as Parker is both someone people tend to feel they know — heck, her poems might get recited from memory more than anyone’s, especially by those fond of martinis or mordant wit — but also don’t know at all. It’s easy to think of her as a relic of the Roaring ‘20s and the brilliance of the Algonquin and not even realized she didn’t pass away until 1967. It’s hard to imagine her listening to the Velvet Underground and hanging with Warhol.

Parker also lacks a dedicated archive, and very little exists of her drafts or letters or journals. A paucity of such materials just made Crowther dig harder and deeper, both finding many helpful sources from her friends and contemporary writing about her, but also using Parker’s work itself as a means to measure the woman. And a complicated one she was, for as Crowther puts it, “It is difficult to know whether it is better or worse that however rude Parker was to other people she was equally hard on herself.”

As lacerating as she could be, especially deep in her cups, which was pretty much a daily occurrence, Parker beat herself up over her writing endlessly. Despite being New York City’s first female drama critic, despite being a literary celebrity by the time she was 33, there was clearly a drive in her to be better, and more importantly, be known for more than her verse she felt was often trifling. Of all things she ended up writing for the movies, the part of her life Crowther focuses on to give that work more of the glory it deserves. Writers, alas, had very little power in Hollywood until the 1940s when some, like Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder, insisted on directing, too. Such opportunities were hard to come by, especially for women.

That said, in her decades in Hollywood ,Parker definitely worked on 18 scripts and surely more got doctored by her clever way with words (studios loved having multiple scribes take stabs at each screenplay, partially to keep writerly egos at bay). As Crowther relates, Parker claimed, “I haven’t got a visual mind. I hear things.” And that way with dialog even led to two Academy Award nominations, including for her best-remembered film, the 1937 A Star Is Born with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. With that screenplay, Parker got to zing the system she had come to loathe (she called MGM “Metro-Goldwyn-Merde”) despite how well she got paid (which is why she stayed). She also got to unpack her own, alcohol-fueled demons. Crowther points to a piece of advice given to a character by her grandmother: “‘For every dream of yours you make come true, you’ll pay the price in heartbreak.’ This could be Parker writing about her own life.”

Parker was indeed no stranger to a broken heart. Her mother died before Dorothy turned 5. Her stepmom was fiercely religious, and according to Crowther, Parker “refused to call her anything other than ‘the housekeeper’ or ‘hey, you.’” Clearly her acerbic nature burned young. An aunt passed away; an uncle went down with the Titanic. Even her dad passed when she was just 20. That’s just the family sadness — her love life was often a shambles, and her struggles with depression and alcoholism led to numerous suicide attempts, including one by drinking shoe polish. Crowther couches all these struggles in a world of patriarchy — especially in the professions Parker worked in — but also her “existential angst that comes from caring about social issues that seem far out of one’s control.”

For Dorothy Parker in Hollywood is also a fervent chronicle of Parker’s leftist leanings, stirring while first marching for anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, and then only growing during her time with like-minded Lefties in Los Angeles. She helped form the Screen Writers Guild, was part of the conception of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, and, because of her friendship with Hemingway and his then inamorata Martha Gellhorn, even went to support the Republic in Spain.

Her politicization paralleled a desire to be taken more seriously. “Parker, a woman known primarily for her wit, her quips, and her willingness to dismiss even her own traumas with a glib, defensive joke, openly rejected humor as a powerful force for change,” is how Crowther puts it. “Though it can be a form of armor, ultimately, she believed, it could never be used as ammunition for transformation.”

Alas, her politics led to FBI investigations and blacklisting. Crowther writes: “With a glimmer of Parker acerbity and ambiguity she … declared, ‘I have no desire to sell any secrets, because I don’t know any. Overthrow our government? I want to overthrow prejudice and injustice.’” She was a woman of her word — upon her death in 1967, she left her assets to Martin Luther King Jr., a man she had never met but greatly admired. Because this is America, that money ended up with the NAACP less than a year later when MLK Jr. was assassinated.

This review originally appeared in the California Review of Books.