Return of the Vicious Circle

"Algonquin Round Table" Al Hirschfeld

Caricaturist Al Hirschfeld was famous for his spot on black and white drawings of noted actors, writers, and other celebrities of the 20th century. “Return of the Vicious Circle,” a new installation at the Algonquin Hotel, brings together 25 Hirschfeld portraits of members of the renowned Algonquin Round Table and their friends.

I attended a preview reception and it was quite nice to walk in and see those familiar faces looking down on the people in the lobby. The whole gang's there: Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Irving Berlin, Alexander Woollcott, Harpo Marx, James Thurber, and Tallulah Bankhead (to name a few). And hanging proudly above the round table itself is Hirschfeld’s group portrait. Cocktails and treats were served, there were sightings of various theatre and literary folk, and the hotel was decorated for the holidays including a large gingerbread village.

"Dorothy Parker" Al Hirschfeld

The installation is up through January 9, 2015. So stop by the Algonquin to see the portraits and have a drink (or two). 

Fall Roundup

Images (clockwise, from left): "The Misfits" Elliott Erwitt (1961); Juliette Binoche in Camille Claudel 1915; George Sanders and Ingrid Bergman in Journey to Italy; Mariza; Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide.

The fall so far has been filled with events of all sorts and as a result I haven’t had time to post about everything. So I thought I’d share some brief recaps of a few of them here.

A modern actress who I love is Juliette Binoche. She always imbues a rawness in her performances that results in more realistic characters. Her latest film is Bruno Dumont's Camille Claudel 1915, which tells the story of the first year of the great artist’s incarceration by her family in a mental institution where she stayed, even though doctors encouraged the family to bring her home, for the last 30 years of her life. Filmed on site at a real institution with actual patients, it was emotionally draining to watch. Yet Binoche was mesmerizing as usual and her portrayal stayed with me long after I left the cinema.

To celebrate the release of the Criterion Collection’s new Rossellini/Bergman box set, Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU hosted a special screening of the one of the films—Journey to Italy (1954)—along with a panel discussion with some scholars, and Isabella and Ingrid Rossellini. Isabella had to cancel at the last moment (she broke her hand that morning) but Ingrid was there, telling stories about when they were children including the time their father, a big animal lover, brought home a kangaroo. The film about a troubled marriage was strong and gave an up close look at life in post-war Italy.

One of the best concerts I’ve seen in a long time was a performance by Mariza, the Portuguese Fado singer, at Carnegie Hall last weekend. She was, in a word, amazing. For two hours she poured her heart out, singing traditional Fado songs as well as some new ones. Dressed in a long gown, the striking 6-foot tall singer spoke with the audience between songs, explaining the origin of the music and thanking her talented band. The audience was enthralled and was up on their feet by the end, cheering her on. She announced that she’s coming back to New York next year, and I for one can’t wait.

Under the Table: A Dorothy Parker Cocktail Guide is a new book by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, the president of the Dorothy Parker Society, which tells the story of Mrs. Parker and her circle and the cocktails that they enjoyed. The book is great fun, and I'm looking forward to trying out some of the recipes. At the launch party for the release at the Algonquin Hotel, my friend and I sampled one of the drinks from the book, an Algonquin Cocktail (rye, vermouth, and pineapple juice), before turning to my classic go-to, the Manhattan. I think Mrs. Parker would approve.

And speaking of books, Elliott Erwitt’s Kolor is the latest from the incomparable photographer, gathering together his colour work for the first time. The International Center for Photography (ICP) held a book signing for the new publication, and I was thrilled to get to meet a man whose work I so admire. I wanted to tell him how much I loved his work and how one of the most popular posts on this blog was the one about his ICP exhibit from a few years ago but I thought that would be silly and just thanked him instead while I grinned like an idiot.

Lunch Hour

"Hot Dog Stand, West St. and North Moore, Manhattan" Berenice Abbott (1936)

Lunch is a meal that most of us give little thought to other than what type of sandwich or salad we can grab. A current exhibit at the New York Public Library—“Lunch Hour NYC”—takes a look at how over the years this meal evolved to reflect the busy needs of the city's workers and residents.

At one time in our past, lunch was a meal eaten at home. Yet in New York City at the turn of the last century, with an increased focus on time efficiency, most workers could not afford that luxury. Hence the creation of the lunch hour, a fixed time during which workers could consume a quick meal, often at one of the city’s many cafeterias or company lunch rooms (an ingenious invention that ensured workers came back from their lunch break on time). Later on the power lunch would emerge, distinguishing that group who were not confined to a regimented time slot for dining. 

Prominently on display in the centre of the exhibit are the all-important food carts that have long helped to feed a hungry city. Among the foods sold on the street over the years were oysters, hot dogs, and pretzels. Did you know that pretzels once had a bad reputation? They were associated with saloons.

Workers are not the only ones to receive mention in the exhibit. A section on children discusses the creation of school lunch programs and includes a wall of lunch boxes (I actually recognized two that I had as a child).

Dorothy Parker makes an appearance. Photo: Michele.

I was happy to see Mrs. Parker make an appearance. A small wall is devoted to the Algonquin Hotel with its famed Round Table—a group of writers and artists who routinely met for lunch at the hotel in the 1920s. Mrs. Parker, one of the few women in the group, is represented with a portrait and a note to Harold Ross, editor and founder of the New Yorker, that reads “Ah, look, Harold. Isn’t it cute? Dorothy. I love you.” A menu from 1949 features one of the hotel’s most popular menu options—chicken hash with pancakes and new peas ($2.25). For those short on funds, a cup of tea ($.35) was consumed along with the free popovers and celery sticks.

A Horn & Hardart automat. Photo: Michele.

The highlight though was the section on the beloved automat. Horn & Hardart opened their first New York City automat in 1912, offering diners a variety of choices by simply dropping some nickels into a slot and opening a door to pull out their selected dish. Their popularity waned in the 1950s and the last one shut its doors in 1991.

An actual automat is in the exhibit complete with labels and working doors. For one nickel you could purchase baked beans or creamed spinach. Two nickels got you a couple of donuts, mac and cheese, or a chicken potpie. Unfortunately, opening the doors don't reveal these dishes but recipe cards are available so you can recreate the same meals at home. A nearby screen shows film and TV clips set in automats including my favourite food fight from Easy Living.

I'm not sure if New York can take total credit for the changes to our consumption of a mid-day meal but I do know that the exhibit will make you extremely hungry so make sure to eat your lunch before visiting.

“Lunch Hour NYC “ is at the main branch of the New York Public Library through February 17, 2013. For more information visit the site here.

Happy Birthday Mrs. Parker

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Parker. The original Mrs. Parker that is.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, it is said of Hermia that “though she be but little she is fierce.” Shakespeare could have been describing Dorothy Parker, one of America’s great wits and a New York City literary icon.

On 22 August 1893 Dorothy Rothschild was born in West End, New Jersey (she would always regret that her parents couldn’t make it back to New York in time for her birth). An unhappy childhood (she lost her mother at four and didn't get along with her stepmother) didn’t stop the precocious little girl from developing her unique take on language and the world. Expelled from Catholic school for describing the Immaculate Conception as “spontaneous combustion,” her formal education ended at 14. A voracious reader (her favourite character was Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair), she wanted to be a writer and worked on her verse, getting a poem “Any Porch” published in Vanity Fair the magazine in 1915. A job at Vogue soon followed.

A few years later she married the first of her two husbands. While the marriage didn’t work out, Edwin Pond Parker II gave Dorothy Rothschild one of the most important gifts she would ever receive, a new name, and for the rest of her life she would be known as Dorothy Parker.

She would go on to work for Vanity Fair, eventually becoming its theatre critic. (On Katherine Hepburn: “[she] delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.”) There she became colleagues and good friends with Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood. When the magazine’s editor, Frank Crowninshield, famously invited her to brunch at the Plaza only to fire her (one of her reviews had angered Flo Ziegfeld), Benchley and Sherwood walked out in protest.

"A Vicious Circle" by Natalie Ascencios, a painting of the Algonquin Round Table members, hangs in the hotel today. Mrs. Parker and Mr. Benchley can be seen at the far left.

The three would lunch regularly at the Algonquin Hotel and as their group grew (members included Alexander Woollcott, Harold Ross, Edna Ferber, and George S. Kaufman) so did their fame, and they were soon dubbed the Algonquin Round Table. Mrs. Parker’s acerbic comments and witty bon mots (Asked to use the word horticulture in a sentence: “You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.”) made their way into fellow diner Franklin Pierce Adams’ popular newspaper column “The Coning Tower,” and Mrs. Parker became famous as the woman who said clever things.

This reputation would come to haunt Mrs. Parker who was no frivolous flapper but an intelligent woman who wanted to be a good writer. Writing did not come easy to her. "I can't write five words but that I change seven," she once said. Writer’s block would cripple her for months at a time and her own insecurity in her writing didn’t help either. “Dear God, please make me stop writing like a woman.”

But she could write and write well. I dare you to read one of her short stories like “Big Blonde” or "A Telephone Call" and not feel moved by the plight of the female characters or read one of her poems such as “Inventory” or “Symptom Recital” and not nod your head in agreement with the truth of her words.

And it must not be forgotten than when Harold Ross began a new magazine in 1925 called The New Yorker, Mrs. Parker was one of its first contributors (Responding to Harold Ross' question of why she wasn’t in the office: "Someone else was using the pencil."). The contributions Mrs. Parker made in those early days helped to shape what would become arguably the most important literary magazine in America.

In addition to writing poems, short stories, criticism, and plays, Mrs. Parker also wrote screenplays in Hollywood with husband number 2 and 3, Alan Campbell. Her screen credits include A Star is Born (1937) (for which she earned an Academy Award nomination) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942).

She was also a political activist. In 1927 she was arrested in Boston for protesting the scheduled execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. Her support of left-wing causes would eventually get her blacklisted in Hollywood in the 1950s. When she died on 7 June 1967, she left her estate to Martin Luther King. After his assassination, the money reverted to the NAACP. Today, her ashes are buried on the grounds of their Baltimore headquarters.

Yet with all her fame, Mrs. Parker never seemed to find true happiness. Her marriages were unsuccessful (she probably received more happiness from her beloved dogs than from any of the men in her life). She attempted suicide multiple times and had a drinking problem. And she always had doubts about her writing.

But for me, she is an inspiration. Her fierce determination to succeed as a writer, her fearlessness in telling the truth, the fact that she didn’t try and hide her intelligence, her sentimentality and love of dogs, all of these things, I believe, are qualities to be admired.

So happy birthday Mrs. Parker. I shall be toasting your memory today.

Want to read some of Mrs. Parker's writing? Get yourself a copy of The Portable Dorothy Parker. For more information on her life, check out Marian Meade's Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? or become a member of The Dorothy Parker Society.