Dorothy Parker
I had coffee with a colleague yesterday at the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street, so I feel obligated to include an anecdote today on the hotel’s most iconic patron, Algonquin Round Table hostess Dorothy Parker.
Parker, Dorothy (1893-1967), US short-story writer, theater critic, doyenne of minor light verse, and wit.
“At one time Dorothy Parker had a small, dingy cubbyhole of an office at the Metropolitan Opera House building in New York. As no one ever came to see her, she became depressed and lonely. When the signwriter came to paint her name on the office door again, she got him instead to write the word “GENTLEMEN.”
Courtesy of The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, Editor. (A recommended buy.)
That’s great:-)
Asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence, she quipped, “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”
She sounded like a fun gal.