Dorothy Parker Complete Broadway 1918 1923

"This collection covers the six years Mrs. Parker wrote a monthly theatre column, first for Vanity Fair, from 1918 to 1920, and then on Ainslee's, from 1920 to 1923"--Page xv.

"I love a martini— But two at the most. Three, I’m under the table; Four, I’m under the host." Raise a glass to Dorothy Parker’s wit and wisdom. Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, founder and president of the Dorothy Parker Society, gives us an intoxicating new look at the doyenne of the ripping riposte through the lens she most preferred: the bottom of a glass. A bar book for Parker enthusiasts and literary tipplers alike, Under the Table offers a unique take on Mrs. Parker, the Algonquin Round Table, and the Jazz Age by celebrating the cocktails that she, her bitter friends, and sweetest enemies enjoyed. Each entry of this delicious compendium offers a fascinating and lively history of a period cocktail, a complete recipe, and the characters associated with it. The book also features a special selection of twenty first–century speakeasy-style recipes from the country’s top mixologists. Topping it off are excerpts from Parker’s poems, stories, and other writings that will allow you to enjoy her world from the speakeasies of New York City to the watering holes of Hollywood.

"That is the thing about New York," wrote Dorothy Parker in 1928. "It is always a little more than you had hoped for. Each day, there, is so definitely a new day." Now you can journey back there, in time, to a grand city teeming with hidden bars, luxurious movie palaces, and dazzling skyscrapers. In these places, Dorothy Parker and her cohorts in the Vicious Circle at the infamous Algonquin Round Table sharpened their wit, polished their writing, and captured the energy and elegance of the time. Robert Benchley, Parker’s best friend, became the first managing editor of Vanity Fair before Irving Berlin spotted him onstage in a Vicious Circle revue and helped launch his acting career. Edna Ferber, an occasional member of the group, wrote the Pulitzer-winning bestseller So Big as well as Show Boat and Cimarron. Jane Grant pressed her first husband, Harold Ross, into starting The New Yorker. Neysa McMein, reputedly “rode elephants in circus parades and dashed from her studio to follow passing fire engines.” Dorothy Parker wrote for Vanity Fair and Vogue before ascending the throne as queen of the Round Table, earning everlasting fame (but rather less fortune) for her award-winning short stories and unforgettable poems. Alexander Woollcott, the centerpiece of the group, worked as drama critic for the Times and the World, wrote profiles of his friends for The New Yorker, and lives on today as Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner. Explore their favorite salons and saloons, their homes and offices (most still standing), while learning about their colorful careers and private lives. Packed with archival photos, drawings, and other images--including never-before-published material--this illustrated historical guide includes current information on all locations. Use it to retrace the footsteps of the Algonquin Round Table, and you’ll discover that the golden age of Gotham still surrounds us.

Women of the 1920s led a revolt against the old standards of womanhood that were dominating US culture. Flappers and feminists, they spoke and acted out, inspiring other women to follow. This book analyzes the work of eleven important 1920s female authors who chronicled this revolt: Anzia Yezierska, Anita Loos, Mae West, Josephine Lovett, Nella Larsen, Mourning Dove, Djuna Barnes, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, Bessie Smith, and Dorothy Parker. These trailblazers wrote counter-narratives to the sexism, racism, classism, and homophobia women faced during the Jazz Age. The author brings their novels, poems, plays, film scenarios, and blues lyrics into conversation with each other for the first time to show different approaches female readers could take to become autonomous individuals and full citizens. The works also encouraged readers to maintain supportive relationships with other progressive women. The author argues these works presented female readers with examples of how they could act individually and collectively to attain the political power, social status, economic independence, sexual freedom, and artistic recognition they deserved.

Taking the reader through the New York that inspired, and was in turn inspired by, the formidable Mrs. Parker, the new edition of this guide includes never-before-seen archival photographs to illustrate Dorothy Parker’s development as a writer, a wit, and a public persona. The book uncovers her favorite bars and salons as well as her homes and offices, most of which are still intact. With the charting of her colorful career, including the decade she spent as a member of the Round Table, as well as her intense private life, readers will find themselves drawn into the lavish New York City of the 1920s and 1930s.

In the Long Run: A Cultural History of Broadway’s Hit Plays presents in-depth analysis of 15 plays that ran over 1,000 performances, examining what made each so popular in its time—and then, in many cases, fall into obscurity. Covering one hundred years of theatre history, it traces the long-running Broadway play as a distinct cultural phenomenon that rises and falls from 1918 to 2018. Each chapter focuses on the longest-running plays of a particular decade, synthesizing historical research and dramaturgical analysis to explain how they functioned as works of theatrical art, cultural commodities, and reflections of the values, conflicts, and fantasies of their times. At the heart of each play’s history are the ideological contradictions often present in works of popular culture that appeal to diverse audiences, particularly around issues of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Suitable for anyone with an interest in Broadway and its history, In the Long Run explores the nature of time in this ephemeral art form, the tensions between commerce and art, between popularity and prestige, and the changing position of the Broadway play within American popular culture.

This collection of 23 new essays focuses on the lives of female screenwriters of Golden Age Hollywood, whose work helped create those unforgettable stories and characters beloved by audiences--but whose names have been left out of most film histories. The contributors trace the careers of such writers as Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St. Johns, Lillian Hellman, Gene Gauntier, Eve Unsell and Ida May Park, and explore themes of their writing in classics like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ben Hur, and It's a Wonderful Life.

Taking the reader through the New York that inspired, and was in turn inspired by, the formidable Mrs. Parker, this guide uses rarely seen archival photographs from her life to illustrate Dorothy Parker's development as a writer, a formidable wit, and a public persona. Her favorite bars and salons as well as her homes and offices, most of which ...