Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (42 page)

3) A widowed J. Henry Rothschild in 1899, six months after the death of his wife Eliza. Radiating prosperity and his customary confidence, he was known in the garment industry as “the greatest salesman of them all”
(Creraud’s Cloak Journal).
(HELEN IVESON. ROBERT IVESON, MARGARET DROSTE. SUSAN COTTON)

4) A boyish Edwin Pond Parker II, nicknamed “Spook” by friends in the 33rd Ambulance Company, because hangovers made him look pale as a ghost, in 1917. Already dependent on alcohol, Eddie (second from left, top row) became further scarred by his war experiences in France and turned to another means of escape when liquor was not available. “Unfortunately,” Dorothy said, “they had dope in the ambulance”
(Esquire)
. (SOURCE: UNKNOWN).

5) Dorothy and her husband, photographed by Robert Sherwood in October 1919, after Eddie’s return from the war. His features have coarsened, he is struggling with morphine addiction, and to Dorothy, who felt she had been married “for about five minutes,” he had become practically a total stranger. (COURTESY OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSTY LlBRAIRIES)

6) Dorothy and Robert Benchley pose demurely with their employers in 1919:
Vanity Fair
editor Frank Crowninshield,
Vogue
editor Edna Chase, and publisher Condé Nast. Dorothy and Robert Sherwood, behind the camera, would soon be, dismissed, and Benchley would resign in sympathy. “It was the greatest act of friendship I’d known” (
Paris Review
). (COURTESY OF THE BOSTON UNIVERSITY LIBRAIRIES)

7) Two revealing portraits of Dorothy in the early twenties: In 1921 (above) she still looks like a vulnerable, naive adolescent, but in Neysa McMein’s 1923 oil painting (left) her face has aged and her expression has grown tense. In the interval between the two portraits, she separated from Eddie, had an affair with Charles MacArthur complicated by pregnancy and abortion, and attempted suicide by slashing her wrists. Alcohol was becoming a problem. (ABOVE. COURTESY OF SAM

SCHAEFLER; LEFT, COURTESY OF CULVER PICTURES).

8) Charles MacArthur and Dorothy with Arthur Samuels, a wigless Harpo Marx, and an unusually thin Alexander Woollcott, 1924, probably partying at one of the Long Island mansions where they liked to spend weekends. (SUSAN MARX).

9) Dorothy sunbathing in Miami Beach, January 1924. The rest of the group includes Ray Goetz. William Emmerich. Neysa McMein, and Irving Berlin. (NEW YORK NEWS. INC.)

10) Painting of the Round Tablers and friends playing poker was commissioned by Paul Hyde Bonner. Seated counterclockwise around the table are Dorothy, Franklin P. Adams, Henry Wise Miller, Gerald Brooks, Raoul Fleischmann, George Kaufman, Paul Hyde Bonner, Harpo Marx, Alexander Woollcott, and Heywood Broun. Standing arc Robert Bcnehley, Irving Berlin, Harold Ross, Beatrice Kaufman, Alice Duer Miller, Herbert Bayard Swope, George Backer, Joyce Barbour, and Crosby Gaige. (PAUL BONNER, JR.)

11) Singing “The Internationale” on Beacon Street, Boston, during a demonstration to protest the execution of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, August 10, 1927. Marching ahead of Dorothy in her embroidered dress and white gloves is John Dos Passos. Minutes after the picture was taken, she was arrested. Next morning she pleaded guilty to a charge of loitering and sauntering and paid a five-dollar fine.

12) Dorothy dressed for an evening on the town around the time she fell in love with John Garrett and divorced Eddie Parker. Snapshot was taken by Heywood Broun’s assistant, Mildred Gilman, during a typical evening of partying and making rounds of the speakeasies,. (MILDRED GILMAN WOHLFORTH)