In the 1920s, there was no group smarter or funnier than the Algonquin Round Table (aka "The Vicious Circle"). Such creative types as George S. Kaufman and Robert Benchley met daily at New York's Algonquin Hotel to dissect current events, the theatre, and each other.
The most notorious member was Dorothy Parker, who was as famous for her biting criticism ("This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force") as her suicide attempts.
Mrs. Parker may have met the most unusual end of all the Round Table members.
When she died on June 7, 1967, she left her ashes to writer Lillian Hellman, who let
them languish in a drawer at Parker's lawyer's office for 21 years until the NAACP interred them in a specially-built garden in Baltimore. Mrs. Parker's mock epitaph, "Excuse my dust," turned
out to be more prophetic than she could have dreamed.
Suggested Sites...
- Algonquin Round Table - "official" site of the Vicious Circle. All about its history, members, and legacy.
- Dorothy Parker Society - remembering Mrs. Parker with news, notes, walking tours, and other events.
- NPR: Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman and the NAACP - Marion Meade tells the bizarre story of Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, and an urn of cremains.
- Algonquin Hotel: The Round Table - information about the wits and writers who helped form American popular culture between the World Wars.
- The New Yorker: "The Improbable Story of Dorothy Parker's Ashes" - from New Jersey to New York to Baltimore to the Bronx, at last.
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