Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? (43 page)

13) Dorothy and Robert Benchley (at right) were guests of the Murphy family at Cap d’Antibes in June 1929. Standing by the cabana with towels are Honoria and Gerald Murphy. Dorothy swam two kilometers a day and worked diligently on a novel. “Dear God,” she prayed, “please make me stop writing like a woman. For Jesus Christ’s sake, amen.” (PROPERLY OF MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM M. DONNELLY)

14) Dorothy in Montana-Vermala, Switzerland, late 1929, where she had accompanied the Murphy family after their son Patrick developed tuberculosis. Although the atmosphere of death in the sanatorium town depressed Dorothy, her sympathy for Sara and Gerald’s agony kept her with them off and on for more than a year. To cheer herself up she bought a Dandie Dinmont terrier and derived pleasure from characterising Switzerland as “the home of horseshit.” (PROPERTY OF MR. AND MRS. WILLIAM M. DONNELLY)

15)
New York Sun
reporter John McClain, described by a friend as resembling a male Rubens, with Dorothy during their affair in 1931. (BRENDAN GILL)

16) Dorothy and her dachshund, Robinson. During the early thirties she was one of the two most socially sought after women in New York (the other was Fanny Brice). On her nightly rounds of parties and speakeasies, Dorothy was usually accompanied by Robinson, who slept elegantly curled up beneath her chair. (HELEN IVESON, ROBERT IVESON, MARGARET DROSTE, SUSAN COTTON)

17) Thirteen-year-old Alan Campbell on the boardwalk in Atlantic City with his mother, Horte Campbell, and aunt Beulah Eichel. Across the face of the photograph Alan printed We
are pushed for
money. (AUTHOR COLLECTION) 17

18) Alan Campbell and a radiant, girlish Dorothy shortly after their marriage in 1934. The newlyweds had recently arrived in Hollywood to become a screen-writing team at Paramount Pictures. (COURTESY OF PARAMONT PICTURES CORPORATION)

19 Dorothy and Alan arriving in New York on the
Champlain,
October 1937, after returning from the Spanish Civil War. Horrified by her observations in Valencia and Madrid, Dorothy promptly volunteered her services to aid Spanish children. (WIDE WORLD PHOTOS)

20) Dorothy and Lillian Hellman with Fernando De Los Rios, Spanish Republic ambassador to the United States, at a luncheon to benefit homeless children in December 1937. As a passionate supporter of the Loyalists, Dorothy helped to raise an estimated $1.5 million for refugees from Franco. (CULVER PICTURES)

21) At Marc Connelly’s Hollywood house in the late thirties, Dorothy is shown chatting with William Faulkner (standing), Faulkner’s woman friend, Meta Carpenter Wilde, and his agent, Ben Wasson. Faulkner, unlike Dorothy, did not allow his screen-writing work to interfere with his fiction. (COURTESY OF THE DRAMATISTS GUILD FlND)

22) Dorothy and Alan enjoying cocktails at the Café Deux Magots in July 1939. That summer Paris was congested with American tourists eager to party and spend money, even though their sleep was broken by the drone of German planes circling overhead. World War II began on September 1. (COURTESY OF JOHN DAVIES)

23) Dorothy next to Dashiell Hammett, applauding a speaker at a meeting in Hollywood, late 1930s. Hammett’s aversion toward her increased until he refused to stay under the same roof. (COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LILLIAN HELLMAN)