Dorothy Parker Comes Home

More than fifty-years after the death of the legendary comic writer and public wit Dorothy Parker (think Fran Liebowitz before Fran Liebowitz), the great lady has come home to NYC.

Specifically, her ashes were returned to the city and interred at Woodlawn Cemetary in the Bronx, now to rest in eternity with fellow scribes like Herman Melville and Irving Berlin.

Parker died in 1967, leaving her entire estate to the NAACP but not indicating what should be done with her remains. For various reasons, largely due to Parker not indicating what should be done with her remains after her death, the ashes bounced around lawyers' offices in Westchester and Manhattan before taking up a long residence in the NAACP offices in Baltimore (where the great lady stayed in a filing cabinet for years). After closing their offices in Baltimore, the NAACP decided to send Dorothy home to NYC -- all without closing her eyes or clicking any ruby red slippers.

Dorothy Parker may not be well known today but she was a rare female to succeed in the male-dominated 20th century snake pit of comic writers. She wrote stories, poems, and books, even working in Hollywood. She also had bad marraiges, love affairs, and drank LOTS of booze. She was a party.

I've written about Dorothy Parker before -- you can read it all here. However, I previously failed to mention that she was the subject of a fine 1994 movie starring Jennifer Jason Leigh called Mrs Parker and the Viscious Circle, about her days with the Algonquin Roundtable. It's worth a viewing if you want to know more about this quintessential New York City character whose like we won't ever see again (although Dorothy Parker would doubtless be brilliant on Twitter if she were still around).