MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE

If you think you and your group of friends are expert at incestuous intrigue, clever put-downs, and collaborations that can produce some insights, next time you get together with your crowd rent this movie.

In the New York ‘20's, a group of young men and women, mostly aspiring writers who toiled at newspapers and magazines, began to meet for long lunches, gossip, what we would now call “networking.”

In 1994, Alan Rudolph directed this movie, a bio of Dorothy Parker and the other brutally witty members of an informal club who frequented the Algonquin Hotel dining room daily and became known as the Round Table. These liberated men and women became as famous as their expatriate counterparts in Paris - Stein, Toklas, Hemingway, Picasso, Fitzgerald, Murphy, etc. - and had an arguably greater cumulative impact on popular culture of their period. They remain relevant today.

The movie shows the competitive and convivial atmosphere that spurred the group to eventually create some of the best literature, plays, and movies of the 20th Century. Their voices - urbane, sophisticated, witty to the point of cruelty - became the voice of some of the most memorable Broadway and Hollywood product of the 1930's and 1940's.

Dorothy Parker was more immediately famous for what she said than what she wrote. She coined many of the most notorious barbs of The Table: Reviewing Katherine Hepburn’s Broadway performance: “She ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” About a notorious society trollop: “That woman speaks 18 languages and can’t say ‘No’ in any of them.” Did she enjoy the cocktail party? “One more drink and I’d have been under the host.” And my favorite: “You may lead a whore-to-culture, but you can’t make her think.” When someone commented that a particular actress was her own worst enemy, Dot winked: “Not while I’m alive.”

But she wrote some of the best short stories of the time and poetry which she derided as doggerel but when read today still bites. She became an icon for women of the era, who pioneered feminism, dove into a liberated life and nearly drowned in tears, alcohol, and eventual misery. She led an unhappy but very productive life.

In Hollywood with her husband Alan Campbell, she wrote A STAR IS BORN, and the original screenplay for Hitchcock’s SABOTEUR, added scenes and dialogue for her friend Lillian Hellman’s THE LITTLE FOXES.

The role is a tour de force for Jennifer Jason Leigh, whose performance includes a difficult to take nasal delivery that approximates Parker’s alcohol induced speech. Rudolph is a disciple of Robert Altman, who produced and influenced the style of ensemble acting and camera work, eavesdropping on the overlapping dialogue.

The cast includes Campbell Scott as Robert Benchley, Parker’s soulmate, Matthew Broderick as her lover, Charlie MacArthur, Andrew McCarthy as Eddie Parker, her morphine addicted and abusive husband. Stanley Tucci, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Beals, Stephen Baldwin, and Heather Graham have small roles.

The Round Table included the following characters with their eventual work:


George S. Kaufman (played by David Thornton). Playwright, often collaborating with other Round Table friends - Moss Hart, Marc Connelly, Ring Lardner, Edna Ferber, or Morrie Ryskind, among others).

Films adapted by others from his plays include the Marx Brothers’ plays/movies: THE COCOANUTS (1929) and ANIMAL CRACKERS (1930), and DINNER AT EIGHT (1933), STAGE DOOR (1937) and YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938), and THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1941), which included a character based on Alexander Woollcott, the critic and member of the Round Table, whose famous quote was “Everything I like is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.”

Kauffman hated Hollywood and co-wrote only one script - with Morrie Ryskind, A NIGHT AT THE OPERA (1935), the best and funniest of the Marx Brothers films. He returned in 1947 to direct THE SENATOR WAS INDISCREET (1947), a very funny political satire starring William Powell.

Charles MacArthur was a Chicago newspaperman who teamed up with Ben Hecht to write several Broadway hits, including THE FRONT PAGE (1928) better known in its Howard Hawks adaptation (HIS GIRL FRIDAY) and TWENTIETH CENTURY (1932), a classic movie starring Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. With Hecht, he wrote the script for WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939). MacArthur married actress Helen Hayes in 1928 and their adopted son is actor James MacArthur.

Moss Hart wrote the screenplays for GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT, HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, PRINCE OF PLAYERS.

Robert Benchley. He was managing editor of Vanity Fair, then a columnist for the New York World, later drama editor of Life and ltheater critic for The New Yorker. He became famous doing stand up routines that satirized middle class values, including short films in the form of lectures: THE SEX LIFE OF THE POLYP, THE TROUBLE WITH HUSBANDS, and HOW TO TAKE A VACATION, HOW TO SLEEP. His son, Peter Benchley, wrote JAWS.

Robert E. Sherwood (Nick Cassavettes). In the 1920's, he was movie critic for Life Magazine and the New York Herald. In the 1930's, he wrote plays which became famous films: WATERLOO BRIDGE, THE PETRIFIED FOREST, TOVARICH.

In Hollywood, he adapted his own plays: IDIOT'S DELIGHT, ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS and wrote or co-wrote original screenplays: THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL, REBECCA, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, THE BISHOP'S WIFE.

Ben Hecht was an occasional member of the club. He was probably the most successful screenwriter of the crowd, though later in his life he demeaned his career as a waste of his talent. The story for SCARFACE, scripts for DESIGN FOR LIVING, TWENTIETH CENTURY, VIVA VILLA, NOTHING SACRED, GUNGA DIN, WUTHERING HEIGHTS, SPELLBOUND, NOTORIOUS, KISS OF DEATH, MONKEY BUSINESS.

Other members of The Circle include Edna Ferber (played by Lili Taylor) - wrote the novels GIANT and SHOW BOAT, the plays STAGE DOOR and DINNER AT EIGHT with Kaufman); Harpo Marx, Will Rodgers (Keith Carradine); Broadway critic and wit Alexander Woollcott (whose personality was the basis of “The Man Who Came To Dinner” and the Clifton Webb character in LAURA); Harold Ross (Sam Robards), founder of The New Yorker for whom Parker and many others of The Circle contributed stories and reviews; Franklin P. Adams (Chip Zein), wit and columnist; James Thurber (THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY), New Yorker cartoonist and writer; Ring Lardner and Heywood Broun, sports columnists and writers.

Occasional diners included Elmer Rice (Jon Favreau) playwright and screenwriter STREET SCENE; Marc Connelly (Matt Malloy) who wrote CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS; and Donald Ogden Stewart (David Gow) screenplays for Phillip Barry’s plays HOLIDAY and THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, and LOVE AFFAIR (remade twice) AN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER, Lubitsch’s THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING, and the Tracy - Hepburn WITHOUT LOVE. He was also script doctor on many films, including DINNER AT EIGHT, with his fellow lunchers.

After you and your friends watch the movie, get sober and start writing.