Dorothy Parker's final surprise almost 60 years after her death: Satirist famed for her biting humour who co-wrote A Star Is Born is unveiled as the wit behind mystery Life magazine poems published 100 years ago

• Dorothy Parker was one of the greatest wits and writers of the 20th century
• READ MORE: Jazz Age icon Dorothy Parker FINALLY receives headstone 50 years after her death

A series of anonymous comic poems published more than 100 years ago in Life magazine have finally been attributed – and the writer is famed satirist and screenwriter Dorothy Parker.

The poems were published under pseudonyms which included Waldemar Cringe and Florence Lippencott, reports the Times.

Seven of the pieces were identified as being penned by Dorothy by ‘literary detective and Parker enthusiast’ Stuart Silverstein.

He says he combed the magazine’s accounts to identify Dorothy as the author of a number of pieces that were published in issues of Life magazine from 1921 and 1922.

Silverstein said: ‘[Parker had] dipped a toe into parody of popular poetic styles before, but this is the first time we’ve seen her produce a series of such items, all with her stiletto-like wit.’

Dorothy Parker (1893-1976) was a successful writer, poet, wit, and screenwriter. She was also well- known as a satirist

A series of poems, published between 1921 and 1922 in Life magazine under pseudonyms have just been attributed to the satirist (pictured here circa 1948)

In one of the poems, titled The Profane Colyum Conductor, she targets diarist Frank Adams, who wrote in the style of Samuel Pepys, mocking him for ‘toiling’ in an office she describes as ‘gay as an empty barn’.

But while the name Dorothy Parker may be familiar to many, the influence and reach of her work during her time has been forgotten by many.

Dorothy, who was born in 1893, experienced an unhappy childhood, with her mother dying before she was five, in 1998. It has been reported that Dorothy had an unloving relationship with her father, who remarried after becoming widowed, wedding Eleanor Frances Lewis, in 1900.

Dorothy was said to have disliked her her stepmother, who she referred to as ‘the housekeeper’. Following the death of Eleanor in 1903, the young Dorothy was sent her to a New Jersey finishing school to complete her education.

However, according to other reports, she enjoyed a more cordial upbringing.

Either way, thanks to her unique wit and talent, rose to prominence as a poet, writer, and critic – one who was particularly known for her wisecracks.

It didn’t take long for Dorothy long to climb through the ranks of the literary realm, progressing from caption writer at Vogue to staff writer in 1916 at Vanity Fair, later becoming the publication’s drama critic.

However, the legendary wit that earned Dorothy praise among her peers became her downfall.

Dorothy Parker was reportedly a founding member of the ‘Algonquin Round Table.’ regulars included Fritz Foord, Wolcott Gibbs, Frank Case and Dorothy Parker (seated left to right) and Alan Campbell, St. Clair McKelway, Russell Maloney and James Thurber (standing left to right)

Dorothy is pictured at a meeting  of the Temporary National Economic Committee, to which she delivered an address in which she described what she saw during a recent four-week’s visit to war-torn Madrid

She was eventually fired from Vanity Fair after making a joke at the expense of actress Billie Burke, who also happened to be the wife of one of the magazine’s biggest advertisers.

But the incident didn’t hold her back for long.

Over her career, her output was prolific: she published around 300 poems and free verses in various magazines, later publishing her first volume of poetry, ‘Enough Rope,’ in 1926. It went on to become a bestseller despite being criticized as ‘flapper verse’ by the New York Times.

The bizarre story of Dorothy Parker’ remains

Although the writer and thinker died in 1967, she was not properly laid to rest (pictured) until 2021

Despite her death in 1967, the story of Dorothy Parker’s journey to her eventual resting place in 2021 is almost as unique as the story of her life.

Dorothy left the majority of her estate to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, with it passing onto to his organization, the NAACP after he was assassinated

Her will left no instructions regarding her ashes, so they remained in a Westchester crematory for six years after her death.

They were later transferred to the Manhattan office of her lawyer, languishing in a filing cabinet for an additional 15 years

They were finally brought to the Bronx, her final resting place, in 2021.

‘This is finally her homecoming to her beloved New York City,’ said Kevin Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, a non-profit promoting works of the Algonquin Hotel’s famed Round Table of authors, humorists and actors.

She married her first husband, Wall Street stockbroker Edwin Pond Parker II, in 1917. They would later go on to divorce in 1928.

She has also been reported as being one of  the founding members of the Algonquin Round Table, a well-known group of artists including writers, poets, actors, and wits.

The group, which initially called itself The Vicious Circle, met daily for lunch for around a decade between 1919 and 1929.

During these meetings, they would create their witticisms and wisecracks, putting together pieces that would be printed in newspaper columns.

Regulars included Woollcott, Parker, Robert Benchley, Heywood Broun, Franklin Pierce Adams (known as F.P.A.), George S. Kaufman, Herman Mankiewicz, Robert Sherwood and Harold Ross.

Franklin Pierce Adams, a newspaper writer and member of the group, started quoting Dorothy’s witticisms in his columns.

This led to her gaining a nationwide reputation, for her witticisms and snappy retorts.

Of her many famous comebacks, the best known was arguably when she was challenged to use the word ‘horticulture’ in a sentence.

‘You can lead a horticulture, but you can’t make her think,’ she speedily retorted.

At the founding of The New Yorker in 1925, Dorothy was one of the original members of the writing staff.

Here, she wrote book reviews for around a decade under the byline ‘Constance Reader’.

Some time after the group dissolved around 1932, Dorothy moved to California, to try her hand at writing for the big screen.

There, she would have success, earning two Oscar nominations for screenwriting – for the 1937 version of A Star is Born, and Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman.

She would go on to marry her second husband, Alan Campbell, an actor and writer 11 years her junior, in 1933, and she divorced him in 1947. They later remarried in 1950.

Over the next two decades, she concentrated, more on short stories and poems.

According to Dorothy, she said the poems were easier for her to write, but the stories were more painstaking.

As a perfectionist, she felt she had to edit every few words before moving on.

It was around this time that Dorothy, interested in activism, started becoming increasingly outspoken about civil liberties and civil rights.

By 1950, her screenwriting career came to an end, after she was blacklisted by Hollywood as she had been identified as a communist by the conservative pamphlet Red Channels.

She was one of 150 on the list, all of whom were immediately blacklisted by the movie industry.

Dorothy Parker is pictured on board an ocean liner in, circa 1939

Despite various setbacks, Dorothy (pictured) was a prolific writer and went on to publish around 300 poems and free verses in various magazines, later publishing her first volume of poetry, ‘Enough Rope,’ in 1926

As the movie industry stifled her film writing, her increasingly serious alcoholism affected her writing, which became less frequent.

In 1927, she was fined $5 for protesting the execution of anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, in addition to traveling to Europe to further the anti-Franco cause and become national chairman of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee.

Dorothy died in 1967 of a heart attack, leaving her estate to Martin Luther King, Jr. After his assassination in 1968, the estate was passed to the NAACP.

Her ashes were unclaimed until 1988, at which point they were interred by the NAACP in a memorial garden in Baltimore.

It was not until 2021 that her ashes were taken (by train) to their final resting place: Woodlawn Cemerary in the Bronx.

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