YOU MIGHT AS WELL LIVE

An appreciation of Dorothy Parker

 

By Charles Deemer

 

 

ACTOR 4

In her 1926 book of verse called Enough Rope, Dorothy Parker included a poem she called “Resumé.” Perhaps nothing better summarizes the theme of her work – and of her life.

 

ACTOR 1

Razors pain you; 

 

ACTOR 2

Rivers are damp; 

 

ACTOR 3

Acids stain you;

 

ACTOR 4

And drugs cause cramp. 

 

ACTOR 2

Guns aren't lawful;

 

ACTOR 1 

Nooses give; 

Gas smells awful; 

 

ACTOR 3

You might as well live. 

 

ACTOR 4

“You might as well live.”

 

For Dorothy Parker, living really began in her twenties, with her first writing job at Vanity Fair. Her childhood had not been happy. Born Dorothy Rothschild in New Jersey in 1893, she once summarized her childhood this way:

 

ACTOR 1

I was a plain, disagreeable little child with stringy hair and & a yen to write verse. The only thing I learned at school was that if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink.

 

ACTOR 2

 School, in the beginning, was Blessed Sacrament Convent – although Dorothy was Jewish. She didn’t last long.

 

ACTOR 4

I was fired from Blessed Sacrament because I insisted the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion.

 

ACTOR 2

She moved on to Miss Dana’s School in Morristown, New Jersey. A classmate remembers her this way:

 

ACTOR 3

I admired Dottie as being an attractive girl; she was peppy and she was never bored. She was outstanding in school work, but I can't remember her playing games.

 

ACTOR 2

All her life Dottie Rothschild wanted to write. In 1913, she managed to talk herself into a job at Vogue.

 

ACTOR 1

Salary is no object. I only want enough to keep body and soul apart.

 

ACTOR 2

She began publishing light verse, though not yet getting paid for it. At Vogue she mostly was writing captions for photographs. One caption in particular got her in trouble. It was supposed to explain six photographs showing miscellaneous underwear. Dottie wrote:

 

ACTOR 4

“Brevity is the Soul of Lingerie, as the Petticoat said to the Chemise."

 

ACTOR 1

She was fired from Vogue but soon hired as a staff writer for Vanity Fair, replacing P.G. Wodehouse as the magazine’s drama critic. This was an unprecedented position for a woman of any age at that time – and Dottie was still in her twenties. She also published her first poem for money. Dottie wasn’t getting rich but later remembered her early writing days as happy ones.

 

ACTOR 2

There wasn’t any money. I lived in a boarding house at 103rd and Broadway, paying eight dollars a week for my room and two meals. But I’d sold a small verse for twelve dollars! Later I could afford to move.

 

ACTOR 3

It’s a small apartment. I’ve barely enough room to lay my hat and a few friends.

 

ACTOR 2

We used to sit around in the evening and talk and drink. There was no money, but Jesus we had fun.

 

ACTOR 3

I like to have a martini

Two at the very most

After three I’m under the table

After four I’m under my host

 

ACTOR 4

While at Vanity Fair, Dottie met Edwin Pond Parker II – and fell in love. They married in June, 1917, and Parker was soon off to war. The new Dorothy Parker doted on her husband. She wrote him daily, sending him short witty poems to cheer him up. But after the war, her husband doesn’t rush home. Then, in 1920, she was fired from Vanity Fair, this time for her outspoken criticism.

 

ACTOR 1

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

 

ACTOR 2

I went to the theater last night. “The House Beautiful” is the Play Lousy.

 

ACTOR 4

When Parker was fired, her friend and colleague Robert Benchley resigned in protest.

 

ACTOR 3

This was the greatest act of friendship I’ve ever known.

 

ACTOR 2

Acerbic criticism would become one of her trademarks throughout Dorothy Parker’s career.

 

ACTOR 4

I saw Katharine Hepburn in “The Lake” last night. Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.

 

ACTOR 3

I had the rare opportunity recently of attending a prom at Yale. It was a gala affair. If all the girls in attendance were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be surprised.

 

ACTOR 1

From Vanity Fair, Parker moved to Ainslee’s magazine, again as drama critic, remaining there until 1923. In the meantime she was publishing elsewhere: essays and verse in the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, and Life. Dorothy Parker was so often in print that she was fast becoming a household word.

 

ACTOR 2

It’s during this period that she became a member of a group of writers and artists who met regularly for lunch at the Algonquin Hotel and became known as the Round Table. Later in life Parker would downplay her contribution to the group.

 

ACTOR 3

I wasn't there very often -- it cost too much. Others went. Kaufman was there. I guess he was sort of funny. Mr. Benchley and Mr. Sherwood went when they had a nickel.  Harold Ross, the New Yorker editor, went. Ross had a profound ignorance. On one of Mr. Benchley’s manuscripts he wrote in the margin opposite Andromache – “Who’s he?" Mr. Benchley wrote back, "You keep out of this."

 

ACTOR 2

An occasional participant corroborates Parker’s memory.

 

ACTOR 4

Dottie was not there often, and she was shy and quiet when she was there. But I think the Algonquin lunches influenced her. They taught her the value of a good punch line. Once, I remember, someone challenged her to use horticulture in a sentence.

 

ACTOR 3

You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think.

 

ACTOR 1

As Parker’s literary reputation skyrocketed, her personal life deteriorated. When her husband didn’t return promptly after the war, she had an affair with a budding playwright. After an abortion in 1923, she attempted suicide. After an affair with a football hero much younger than she, she failed at suicide again. She finally divorced Parker in 1928. Dorothy Parker began living a chaotic personal life that would become her best material.

 

ACTOR 2

Oh, gallant was the first love, and glittering and fine; 

The second love was water, in a clear white cup; 

The third love was his, and the fourth was mine; 

And after that, I always get them all mixed up. 

 

ACTOR 1 

With you, my heart is quiet here, 

And all my thoughts are cool as rain. 

I sit and let the shifting year 

Go by before the windowpane, 

And reach my hand to yours, my dear... 

I wonder what it's like in Spain. 

 

ACTOR 3 

If I don't drive around the park, 

I'm pretty sure to make my mark. 

If I'm in bed each night by ten, 

I may get back my looks again. 

If I abstain from fun and such, 

I'll probably amount to much; 

But I shall stay the way I am, 

Because I do not give a damn. 

 

ACTOR 4 

I do not like my state of mind; 

I'm bitter, querulous, unkind. 

hate my legs, I hate my hands, 

I do not yearn for lovelier lands. 

I dread the dawn's recurrent light; 

I hate to go to bed at night. 

I snoot at simple, earnest folk. 

I cannot take the gentlest joke. 

I find no peace in paint or type. 

My world is but a lot of tripe. 

I'm disillusioned, empty-breasted. 

For what I think, I'd be arrested. 

I am not sick, I am not well. 

My quondam dreams are shot to hell. 

My soul is crushed, my spirit sore; 

I do not like me any more. 

I cavil, quarrel, grumble, grouse. 

I ponder on the narrow house. 

I shudder at the thought of men.... 

I'm due to fall in love again. 

 

ACTOR 2

Falling in love again … and falling out of love again … love and betrayal and love again, the battle of the sexes we see again and again in Parker’s work. In this battle, the enemy was … men.

 

ACTOR 3

They hail you as their morning star 

Because you are the way you are. 

If you return the sentiment, 

They’ll try to make you different; 

And once they have you, safe and sound, 

They want to change you all around. 

Your moods and ways they put a curse on; 

They'd make of you another person. 

They cannot let you go your gait; 

They influence and educate. 

They'd alter all that they admired. 

They make me sick, they make me tired. 

 

 ACTOR 1

Oh, beggar or prince, no more, no more

Be off and away with your strut and show. 

The sweeter the apple, the blacker the core 

Scratch a lover, and find a foe!

 

ACTOR 2 

By the time you swear you're his, 

Shivering and sighing, 

And he vows his passion is 

Infinite, undying

Lady, make a note of this: 

One of you is lying. 

 

 ACTOR 3

Authors and actors and artists and such 

Never know nothing, and never know much. 

Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney 

Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney. 

Playwrights and poets and such horses' necks 

Start off from anywhere, end up at sex. 

Diarists, critics, and similar roe 

Never say nothing, and never say no. 

People Who Do Things exceed my endurance; 

God, for a man that solicits insurance! 

 

ACTOR 4

Woman wants monogamy; 

Man delights in novelty. 

Love is woman's moon and sun; 

Man has other forms of fun. 

Woman lives but in her lord; 

Count to ten, and man is bored. 

With this the gist and sum of it, 

What earthly good can come of it? 

 

 

CHORAL SONG “BATTLE OF THE SEXES”

 

 

ACTOR 4

What earthly good can come of it? In life, in Parker’s life, considerable pain came of it … but in art, Parker’s art, considerable wit and good fun.

 

ACTOR 3

THE SEXES

Adapted from Dorothy Parker's short story of the same title

 

ACTOR 1=YOUNG MAN

"Want a cigarette?"

 

ACTOR 2=YOUNG WOMAN

"No, thank you. Thank you ever so much just the same." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Sorry I've only got these kind. You got any of your own?"

 

ACTOR 2

"I'm quitting. But thank you."

 

ACTOR 1 

"Because if you haven't, it wouldn't take me a minute to go up to the corner and get you some." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I wouldn't dream of making you go to all that trouble for anything. But it's awfully sweet of you to think of it. Thank you ever so much." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Will you for God's sakes stop thanking me?"

 

ACTOR 2

"Really. I didn't know I was saying anything out of the way. I'm awfully sorry if I hurt your feelings. I know what it feels like to get your feelings hurt. I'm sure I didn't realize it was an insult to say 'thank you' to a person. I'm not exactly in the habit of having people swear at me because I say 'thank you' to them." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I did not swear at you!"

 

ACTOR 2

"Oh, you didn't? I see." 

 

ACTOR 1

"My God, all I said, I simply asked you if I couldn't go out and get you some cigarettes. Is there anything in that to get up in the air about?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"Who's up in the air? I’m sure I didn't know it was a criminal offense to say I wouldn't dream of giving you all that trouble. I'm afraid I must be awfully stupid, or something." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Do you want me to go out and get you some cigarettes; or don't you?"

 

ACTOR 2

"Goodness, if you want to go so much, please don't feel you have to stay here. I wouldn't have you feel you had to stay for anything."

 

ACTOR 1 

"Ah. don't be that way, will you?"

 

ACTOR 2 

"Be what way? Tm not being any way." 

 

ACTOR 1

"You've been funny all evening. Hardly said a word to me, ever since I came in." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I'm terribly sorry you haven't been having a good time. For goodness' sakes, don't feel you have to stay here and be bored. I'm sure there are millions of places you could be having a lot more fun. The only thing, I'm a little bit sorry I didn't know before. That's all. When you said you were coming over tonight, I broke a lot of dates to go to the theater and everything. But it doesn't make a bit of difference. I'd much rather have you go and have a good time. It isn't very pleasant to sit here and feel you're boring a person to death." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I'm not bored! I don't want to go any place. Ah, honey, won't you tell me what's the matter?"

 

ACTOR 2

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about. There isn't a thing on earth the matter. I don't know what you mean." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Yes, you do. There's something the trouble. Is it anything I've done, or anything?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"Goodness, I'm sure it isn't any of my business, anything you do. I certainly wouldn't feel I had any right to criticize." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Will you stop talking like that? Will you?  Please?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"Talking like what?"

 

ACTOR 1

"You know. That's the way you were talking over the telephone today, too. You were so snotty when I called you up, I was afraid to talk to you." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I beg your pardon. What did you say I was?" 

 

ACTOR 1

"Well, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. You get me so balled up." 

 

ACTOR 2

"You see, I'm really not in the habit of hearing language like that. I've never had a thing like that said to me in my life." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I told you I was sorry, didn't I? Honest, honey, I didn't mean it. Would you excuse me? Please?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"Oh, certainly. Goodness, don't feel you have to apologize to me. It doesn't make any difference at all. It just seems a little bit funny to have somebody you were in the habit of thinking was a gentleman come to your home and use language like that to you, that's all. But it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I guess nothing I say makes any difference to you. You seem to be sore at me." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I'm sore at you? I can't understand what put that idea in your head. Why should I be sore at you?" 

 

ACTOR 1

"That's what I'm asking you. Won't you tell me what I've done? The way you were, over the phone, you had me worried all day. I couldn't do a lick of work." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I certainly wouldn't like to feel that I was interfering with your work. I know there are lots of girls that don't think anything of doing things like that, but I think it's terrible. It certainly isn't very nice to sit here and have someone tell you you interfere with his business."

 

ACTOR 1 

"I didn't say that!" 

 

ACTOR 2

"0h, didn't you? Well, that was the impression I got. It must be my stupidity." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I guess maybe I better go. I can't get anything right. Everything I say seems to make you sorer and sorer. Would you I rather I'd go?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"'Please do just exactly whatever you like. I'm sure the last thing I want to do is have you stay here when you'd rather be some place else. Why don't you go some place where you won't be bored? Why don't you go up to Florence Leaming's? I know she'd love to have you." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I don't want to go up to Florence Leaming's! What would I want to go up to FIorence Leaming's for? She gives me a pain." 

 

ACTOR 2

"Oh, really? She didn't seem to be giving you so much of a pain at Elsie's party last night, I notice. I notice you couldn't even talk to anybody else, that's how much of a pain she gave you." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Yeah, and you know why I was talking to her?"

 

ACTOR 2

"Why, I suppose you think she's attractive. I suppose some people do. Some people think she's quite pretty." 

 

ACTOR 1

"I don't know whether she's pretty or not. I wouldn't know her if I saw her again. Why I was talking to her was you wouldn't even give me a tumble, last night. I came up and tried to talk to you, and you just said, 'Oh, how do you do,' just like that, 'Oh, how do you do' and you turned right away and wouldn't look at me." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I wouldn't look at you?"  Oh, that's awfully funny. Oh, that's marvelous. You don't mind if I laugh, do you?" 

 

ACTOR 1

"Go ahead and laugh your head off."

 

ACTOR 2 

"Well, the minute you came in the room, you started making such a fuss over Florence Leaming, I thought you never wanted to see anybody else. You two seemed to having such a wonderful time together, goodness knows I wouldn't have butted in for anything."

 

ACTOR 1 

"My God, this what's-her-name girl came up and began talking to me before I even saw anybody else, and what could I do? I couldn't sock her in the nose, could I?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"I certainly didn't see you try."

 

ACTOR 1

"You saw me try to talk to you, didn't you?  And what did you do? 'Oh, how do you do.' Then this what's-her-name came up again, and there I was, stuck. Florence Leaming. I think she's terrible. Know what I think of her? I think she's a damn little fool. That's what I think of her."

 

ACTOR 2

"Well, of course, that's the impression she always gave me, but I don't know. I've heard people say she's pretty." 

 

ACTOR 1

"Why, she can't be pretty in the same room with you."

 

ACTOR 2

"She has got an awfully funny nose. I really feel sorry for a girl with a nose like that." 

 

ACTOR 1

"She's got a terrible nose. You've got a beautiful nose. Gee, you've got a pretty nose." 

 

ACTOR 2

"Oh, I have not. You're crazy." 

 

ACTOR 1

"And beautiful eyes and beautiful hair and a beautiful mouth. And beautiful hands. Let me have one of those little hands. Ah. look at that little hand! Who's got the prettiest hands in the world? Who's the sweetest girl in the world?" 

 

ACTOR 2

"I don't know. Who?"

 

ACTOR 1

"You don't know! You do so, too, know." 

 

ACTOR 2

"I do not. Who? Florence Leaming?" 

 

ACTOR 1

"Oh, FIorence Leaming. my eye! Getting sore about Florence Leaming! And me not sleeping at all last night and not doing a stroke of work all day because you wouldn't speak to me! A girl like you getting sore about a girl like Florence Leaming!" 

 

ACTOR 2

"I think you're just perfectly crazy. I was not sore! What on earth ever made you think I was? You're simply crazy. Ow! Careful with my new pearl beads. Wait a second till I take them off. There!" 

 

ACTOR 4

Dorothy Parker did not mellow with age. The older she got, the more reflective, but the edge of her wit never got dull …

 

ACTOR 3 

Into love and out again, 

Thus I went, and thus I go. 

Spare your voice, and hold your pen

Well and bitterly I know 

All the songs were ever sung, 

All the words were ever said; 

Could it be, when I was young, 

Some one dropped me on my head? 

 

ACTOR 4

This, no song of an ingenue, 

This, no ballad of innocence; 

This, the rhyme of a lady who 

Followed ever her natural bents. 

This, a solo of sapience, 

This. a chantey of sophistry, 

This, the sum of experiments

I loved them until they loved me. 

 

Decked in garments of sable hue, 

Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents, 

Wearing shower bouquets of rue, 

Walk I ever in penitence.

Oft I roam, as my heart repents, 

Through God's acre of memory, 

Marking stones, in my reverence, 

"I loved them until they loved me." 

 

Pictures pass me in long review

Marching columns of dead events. 

I was tender and, often, true; 

Ever a prey to coincidence. 

Always knew I the consequence;

Always saw what the end would be. 

We're as Nature has made us -- hence 

I loved them until they loved me. 

 

 

ACTOR 2

This is what I vow: 

He shall have my heart to keep; 

Sweetly will we stir and sleep, 

All the years, as now. 

Swift the measured sands may run; 

Love like this is never done; 

He and I are welded one: 

This is what I vow. 

 

ACTOR 3

This is what I pray: 

Keep him by me tenderly; 

Keep him sweet in pride of me, 

Ever and a day; 

Keep me from the old distress; 

Let me, for our happiness, 

Be the one to love the less: 

This is what I pray. 

 

ACTOR 4

This is what I know: 

Lovers' oaths are thin as rain; 

Love's a harbinger of pain

Would it were not so! 

Ever is my heart a-thirst, 

Ever is my love accurst; 

He is neither last nor first 

This is what I know. 

 

ACTOR 1

Once, when I was young and true, 

Someone left me sad

Broke my brittle heart in two; 

And that is very bad. 

 

Love is for unlucky folk, 

Love is but a curse. 

Once there was a heart I broke; 

And that, I think, is worse. 

 

ACTOR 4

Say my love is easy had, 

Say I'm bitten raw with pride. 

Say I am too often sad

Still behold me at your side. 

Say I'm neither brave nor young, 

Say I woo and coddle care, 

Say the devil touched my tongue

Still you have my heart to wear. 

 

But say my verses do not scan, 

And I get me another man!

 

 

ACTOR 2

In Parker’s work the tension is often between dream and reality, between innocence and experience, between the way things should be and the way they are …

 

ACTOR 3

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, 

A medley of extemporanea; 

And love is a thing that can never go wrong; 

And I am Marie of Roumania. 

 

ACTOR 4

I always saw, I always said 

If I were grown and free, 

I'd have a gown of reddest red 

As fine as you could see, 

 

To wear out walking, sleek and slow, 

Upon a Summer day, 

And there'd be one to see me so, 

And flip the world away. 

 

And he would be a gallant one, 

With stars behind his eyes, 

And hair like metal in the sun, 

And lips too warm for lies. 

 

I always saw us, gay and good, 

High honored in the town. 

Now I am grown to womanhood.... 

I have the silly gown. 

 

ACTOR 2

In 1934, at the age of 40, Parker married the screenwriter Alan Campbell, who was 11 years her junior. They worked in Hollywood as a team whose credits include A Star Is Born, The Little Foxes, Weekend for Three, Saboteur. She didn’t think much of the experience.

 

ACTOR 3

Oh come, my love, and join with me 

The oldest infant industry. . 

Come seek the bourne of palm and pearl, 

The lovely land of Boy-Meets-Girl, 

Come grace this lotus-laden shore, 

This Isle of Do-What's-Done-Before. 

Come, curb the new, and watch the old win, 

Out where the streets are paved with Goldwyn. 

 

ACTOR 1

As versatile with her talent in Hollywood as in New York, Parker wrote song lyrics for musicals and movies. This is from the 1929 Cecil B. DeMille movie “Dynamite.” Music by Jack King, Lyric by Dorothy Parker.

 

CHORAL SONG “HOW AM I TO KNOW?” from “Dynamite” (MGM)

 

ACTOR 2

Despite her cynicism about the battle of the sexes, Parker was deeply earnest about politics. In the 1920s, to the surprise of many of her friends, she was arrested while marching for the release of the anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Later she went to Spain to work against Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

 

ACTOR 3

The proudest thing I’ve ever done!

 

ACTOR 2

She organized Hollywood screenwriters – and was blacklisted in the 1950s.

 

ACTOR 4

Parker wrote a series of epitaphs in verse, collecting them under the title “Tombstones in the Starlight” – an epitaph for a very rich man …

 

ACTOR 3

He'd have the best, and that was none too good; 

No barrier could hold, before his terms. 

He lies below, correct in cypress wood, 

And entertains the most exclusive worms. 

 

ACTOR 4

For an actress …

 

ACTOR 3

Her name, cut clear upon this marble cross, 

Shines, as it shone when she was still on earth; 

While tenderly the mild, agreeable moss 

Obscures the figures of her date of birth. 

 

ACTOR 4

Even for herself …

 

ACTOR 3

Excuse my dust

 

ACTOR 1

Late in life, Parker was interviewed about her career as a poet …

 

ACTOR 4: You mean my verses. I cannot say poems. Like everybody was then, I was following in the exquisite footsteps of Miss Edna St. Vincent Millay, unhappily in my own horrible sneakers. My verses are no damn good. Let’s face it, honey, my verse is terribly dated -- as anything once fashionable is dreadful now. I gave it up, knowing it wasn’t getting any better, but nobody seemed to notice my magnificent gesture. 

 

ACTOR 3: What, then, would you say is the source of most of your work? 

ACTOR 4: Need of money, dear. 

 

ACTOR 3: And besides that? 

ACTOR 4: It's easier to write about those you hate-- just as its easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book. 

 

ACTOR 3: You have an extensive reputation as a wit. Has this interfered, do you think, with your acceptance as a serious writer? 

ACTOR 4: I don't want to be classed as a humorist. It makes me feel guilty. I've never read a good tough quotable female humorist, and I never was one myself. I couldn't do it. A "smart-B cracker" they called me, and that makes me sick and unhappy. There’s a hell of a distance between wisecracking and wit. Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words. I didn't mind so much when they were good, but for a long time anything that was called a crack was attributed to me -- and then they got the shaggy dogs. I was just a little Jewish girl trying to be cute. 

 

ACTOR 3: How about satire? 

ACTOR 4: Ah, satire. That's another matter. They're the big boys. If I'd been called a satirist there'd be no living with me. But by satirist I mean those boys in the other centuries. The people we call satirists now are those who make cracks at topics and consider themselves satirists -- creatures like George S. Kaufman and such who don't even know what satire is. Lord knows, a writer should show his times, but not show them in wisecracks. Their stuff is not satire; it's as dull as yesterday’s newspaper. Successful satire has got to be pretty good the day after tomorrow. 

 

ACTOR 3: What is your writing method?

ACTOR 4: It takes me six months to do a story. I think it out and then write it sentence by sentence -- no first draft. I can't write five words but that I change seven. 

 

ACTOR 3: How do you name your characters? 

ACTOR 4: The telephone book and from the obituary columns. 

 

ACTOR 3: How about Hollywood as provider for the artist? 

ACTOR 4: Hollywood money isn’t money. Its congealed snow, melts in your hand, and there you are. I can't talk about Hollywood. It was a horror to me when I was there and its a horror to look back on. I can't imagine how I did it.

 

ACTOR 2

Through much of the end of her life, Parker was sad, disappointed, and bitter.

 

ACTOR 1

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, 

Love, the reeling midnight through, 

For tomorrow we shall die! 

(But, alas, we never do.) 

 

ACTOR 2

When Parker died in 1967, Lillian Hellman was among those who addressed the mourners.

 

ACTOR 3

She was part of nothing and nobody except herself; it was this independence of mind and spirit that was her true distinction, and it stayed with her until the end, young and sparkling….The remarkable quality of her wit was that it stayed in no place, and was of no time.

 

ACTOR 1

In the end, the last word belonged to Dorothy Parker. Her victory was that her verse was better than she thought it was. Her victory was that her verse would last longer than she thought it would. Her writing is as witty and true today as it was over half a century ago. Her wit, in the end, defeats her cynicism.

 

ACTOR 3

They say of me, and so they should, 

It's doubtful if I come to good. 

I see acquaintances and friends 

Accumulating dividends, 

And making enviable names 

In science, art, and parlor games. 

But I, despite expert advice, 

Keep doing things I think are nice, 

And though to good I never come

Inseparable my nose and thumb! 

 

ACTOR 4

In youth, it was a way I had 

To do my best to please, 

And change, with every passing lad, 

To suit his theories. 

 

But now I know the things I know, 

And do the things I do; 

And if you do not like me so, 

To hell, my love, with you!

 

ACTOR 2

Excuse my dust.

 

CHORAL SONG “YOU MIGHT AS WELL LIVE”

 

[end]