American humorist, one of the most famous for her exceptional wit and corrosive style. By the time she was in her 20’s, she was the most quoted woman in America. Parker authored short stories, plays, a handful of poems and a slight amount of bitchy journalism.
Her mom died when she was four; she adored her dad but loathed the woman he married to replace her mom; the reviled step-mother died when Dorothy was nine. She had two broken marriages and a number of unhappy love affairs; both husbands were alcoholics. Her first mate, Eddie Parker, came back from WW I addicted to morphine. She married and divorced Alan Campbell twice during their 30-year relationship, with the second marriage to him in 1950. Their strain was primarily due to his homosexuality, fueled by an easy flow of alcohol. Of the many men in her life, not one could be called a healthy relationship.
Awaking to politics at a 1927 Boston demonstration in support of Sacco and Vanzetti, Parker was concerned with race relations, the support of Spanish loyalists in 1937, and the championing of the writers guild and other political causes. She helped form an Anti-Nazi league in 1936 but her flirtation with the Communist Party brought her to McCarthy’s attention, and she later said she’d been blackballed during the ’50s. Friends tended to be mystified by her radicalism, as her luxurious Hollywood home and lavish life style furnished an unlikely backdrop for left-wing fund-raisers.
Parker herself drank to excess for decades and made four suicide attempts. She had appeal, style, brains and celebrity but did not find happiness or peace. With no kids, she devoted love to her many dogs.
She suffered a fatal heart attack on June 7, 1967 in New York, NY, leaving her entire estate to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Link to Wikipedia biography