“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy,” said my girlfriend Risa, quoting Dorothy Parker, as we clinked glasses of white wine. The toast was apropos, as we were lunching at the Algonguin Hotel’s dining room, where Parker probably coined this catchy phrase in the 1920s as she joked with her friends around the legendary Algonquin Round Table.
Our mission for the day was to pay homage to Parker by poking around midtown to see if anything remained of the swanky New York she had written about. Like millions, we adore her stories for their cutting wit and dry humor. They cut to the truth about the female condition with hilarious accounts of flustered debutantes, boozy mistresses, and society ladies trying to “get it right.”
The Algonquin Hotel, or “The Gonk” as Parker called it, was a perfect starting point. In contrast to the nearby tourist-filled Times Square where chain stores and neon announce the new millennium, The Gonk has kept its 1903 look. From the moment we entered the Edwardian lobby—grandly designed with art deco sconces, carved wooden columns, and comfy antique chairs—we were brought back to the days when Parker sauntered in, wearing her flapper hat and a fur, and entertained the clientele with quips including, “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.”
When the grandfather clock chimed eleven, Kevin Fitzpatrick, founder of the Dorothy Parker Society of New York, arrived with a firm handshake and welcoming smile. We’d contacted him to take us on a neighborhood tour, where we hoped to discover more Parker haunts. Fitzpatrick has a boundless knowledge of Dorothy Parker history, and has covered all bases spreading the word about her, through his Web site DorothyParker.com, a book (“A Journey Into Dorothy Parker’s New York”), and his Algonquin Round Table Walking Tours.
We began in front of the dining room’s painting of Round Table regulars. Parker and Harpo Marx were the only two characters I recognized, but Fitzpatrick filled us in on the rest, who included playwright George Kaufman, humorist Robert Benchley, and Harold Ross, who got the idea to create the New Yorker while lunching with the gang.
Fitzpatrick told us how the famous lunch of wits, intellectuals, and actors began in 1919, when a party was given to welcome New York Times critic, Alexander Wolcott, back from World War One. Dorothy Parker, and other writers from the nearby magazine Vanity Fair, were invited and had such a good time that they thought, “Why not do this more often?” Manager Frank Case welcomed the group over their ten-year-stay, always extending them credit and sending over complimentary popovers. In keeping with that tradition, the hotel offers discounts to writers to this day.
Outside The Gonk, with his binder full of old photos, Fitzpatrick showed us what the street looked like in Parker’s day. An elevated train ran down Sixth Avenue, and just across from The Gonk, where there is now a parking structure, was the Hippodrome, the largest theatre in New York. Circuses performed there, and midgets or elephants were often spotted on the street, lending it a rather bohemian vibe.
It was easy to see why Parker chose The Gonk for lunch and drinks, the former offices of Conde Nast publications were located just a few doors down the street. Parker got her start at Conde Nast writing captions for Vogue, including the famous: “Brevity is the soul of lingerie.” She moved across the hall to Vanity Fair, where, as New York’s first female drama critic, she penned classics including this quip about a Katherine Hepburn performance: “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”
Though Fitzpatrick had his charms, the tour became increasingly disappointing. Not much exists from Parker’s day, except for the theatres she frequented—including the Cort, Biltmore, and Longacre. Most of the sites could only be seen by looking at old photos that show how much more colorful New York used to look before concrete, glass, and steel took over. And I can only take so much of that. Fitzpatrick told us he gets lots of foreign Parker fans on these walks—from as far away as Tokyo, New Zealand, and Sweden. I’m guessing they’re thrilled to be walking around this neighborhood (which can seem overwhelming) with such a friendly, American know-it-all.
