by Marion Meade
295 “unfortunately”: Anthony Adams interview.
LIST OF WORKS
EDNA FERBER
BOOKS
Dawn O’Hara, 1911
Buttered Side Down, 1912
Roast Beef, Medium, 1913
Personality Plus, 1914
Emma McChesney & Co., 1915
Fanny Herself, 1917
Cheerful, by Request, 1918
Half Portions, 1919
The Girls, 1921
Gigolo, 1922
So Big, 1924
Show Boat, 1926
Mother Knows Best, 1927
Cimarron, 1930
American Beauty, 1931
They Brought Their Women, 1933
Come and Get It, 1935
A Peculiar Treasure, autobiography, 1939
Saratoga Trunk, 1941
No Room at the Inn, 1941
Great Son, 1945
One Basket, 1947
Giant, 1952
Ice Palace, 1958
A Kind of Magic, autobiography, 1963
PLAYS
$1200 a Year, with Newman Levy, 1920
Minick, with George S. Kaufman, 1924
The Royal Family, with George S. Kaufman, 1927
Dinner at Eight, with George S. Kaufman, 1932
Stage Door, with George S. Kaufman, 1936
The Land Is Bright, with George S. Kaufman, 1941
Bravo!, with George S. Kaufman, 1949
ZELDA FITZGERALD
BOOKS
Save Me the Waltz, 1932
The Collected Writings, 1991
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
BOOKS
Renascence and Other Poems, 1917
A Few Figs from Thistles, 1920
Second April, 1921
The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, 1923
The Buck in the Snow, 1928
Fatal Interview, 1931
Wine from These Grapes, 1934
Flowers of Evil, with George Dillon (translation), 1936
Conversation at Midnight, 1937
Huntsman, What Quarry?, 1939
Make Bright the Arrows, 1940
The Murder of Lidice, 1942
Mine the Harvest, 1954
Collected Poems, 1956
PLAYS
The Lamp and the Bell, 1921
Aria da Capo, 1921
Two Slatterns and a King: A Moral Interlude, 1921
The King’s Henchman, 1927
The Princess Marries the Page, 1932
DOROTHY PARKER
BOOKS
Enough Rope, 1926 Sunset Gun, 1928
Laments for the Living, 1930
Death and Taxes, 1931
After Such Pleasures, 1933
Not So Deep as a Well, 1936
Here Lies, 1939
The Portable Dorothy Parker, 1944
PLAYS
Close Harmony, with Elmer Rice, 1929
The Ladies of the Corridor, with Arnaud D’Usseau, 1954
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I started writing this book in the fall of 2000, I found myself debating in which category it belonged. The first draft did not look quite like a biography to me. Neither did I consider it a collective portrait, because the personalities didn’t make up a formal group, not even an informal circle. Certainly, all of these people were linked together: they were young and unspoiled during the years 1920 to 1930, frequently knew each other and lived in the same places, and shared a profession and generally the same concerns. Eventually I realized that the book was turning into a series of vignettes: quick pictures snapped on the fly by a determined shutterbug, two-thirds paparazzo out of John Dos Passos’s U.S.A. with its nosey “Camera Eyes,” one-third voyeuristic descendant of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s oculist, Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. In the end, I concluded that the jittery rhythms seemed to suit the lives of my subjects.
I conceived this book because I love the Twenties and I love writers, especially those blessed with the gift of laughter. Dorothy Parker was a funny woman, obviously. But the rest of my heroines could be surprisingly hilarious, too, however many horrible calamities they suffered. They made me laugh and weep for three years.
In the writing I have accumulated many debts. Foremost, I owe thanks to my leading ladies, whose own literary work not only provided inspiration but also opened windows into their world. I was also able to use a trove of letters, diaries, and memoirs left behind by confessional writers such as Edmund Wilson and Franklin P. Adams. Had these fabulous gossips not set down their thoughts, this book would have been greatly diminished.
In personal interviews, a number of people generously shared important knowledge of their families. Heywood Hale Broun spoke with me about his mother and father, as did Anthony Adams and Anne Kaufman Schneider about their parents. Julie Gilbert enriched the book with exceptional insights into her great-aunt Edna Ferber. For recollections about the Fitzgerald, Murphy, and Myers families, my source once again was Frances Myers Brennan, an authentic lady and elegant hostess. A gold mine of information about the French admiral Edouard Jozan came from his daughter, Dr. Martine Work. Robert Cowley cheerfully answered my questions about his father, Malcolm.
Some of those who gave me their time and memories in previous years are gone. As Frank Crowninshield’s secretary at Vanity Fair, Jeanne Ballot Winham reported from a front-row seat on the office pranks of the editors Parker, Benchley Wilson, and John Peale Bishop. The artist Charles Baskerville never forgot the behavior of the Parker dog. Marc Connelly and Margalo Gillmore savored lunches at the Algonquin Round Table more than a half century after the last popover was consumed. At the age of eighty-nine, the newswoman Mildred Gilman Wohlforth readily admitted seducing Parker’s lover John Garrett; the actress Lois Moran Young, at the age of seventy-seven, famously admitted nothing about a romantic relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Brendan Gill and E. J. Kahn Jr. dredged up tales of The New Yorker and its employees. Parker’s dirty talk and unsanitized verse stuck in the minds of the dramatist Ruth Goodman Goetz and the artist Allen Saalburg. Alice Lee Myers led me on a guided tour through expatriate Paris, while Honoria Murphy Donnelly revisited in memory Antibes and her beloved Villa America. (Two people whose acquaintance I first made in the early Eighties, Woodie Broun and Fanny Brennan, died in 2001.)
In addition, I owe an immense debt to the highly talented biographers whose works I have consulted, among them Steven Bach, Daniel Mark Epstein, James Gaines, Brian Gallagher, Julie Gilbert, Malcolm Goldstein, Thomas Kunkel, Eleanor Lanahan, Sara Mayfield, Scott Meredith, Nancy Milford, Stanley Olson, Michael Reynolds, Kendall Taylor, and Amanda Vaill.
A number of scholars, historians, and knowledgeable individuals generously contributed to my research, especially Ann Douglas with her first-rate history Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s. Much-appreciated favors were extended to me by Mary Ellin Barrett, Maryann Chach of the Shubert Archive, Bert Fink of the Irving Berlin Music Company, Andrea Jolles, Michael Macdonald, Steve Mandel, Wendy Meeker, Dorshka Raphaelson, Charles Scribner, Marian Seldes, Nancy Woloch, and Stephen Young of Poetry magazine.
For help in finding and using the precious archival sources, I owe thanks to numerous organizations. Those who helped me beyond the call of duty were the admirable special-collections staff of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University (curator Patricia C. Willis and her efficient colleagues Ellen Cordes, Ngadi Kponou, Lorraine Ouellette, and Karen Spicher); Jean Ash-ton and Bernard Crystal of the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library; Sid Huttner and Kathryn Hodson of University of Iowa Special Collections; Dorinda Hartmann of the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research; Mary Ellen Rogan of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection, New York Public Library; Isaac Gewirtz and Diana Burnham of the Berg Collection, New York Public Library; Linda Long of Knight Library, University of Oregon; Vincent Fitzpatrick of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore; Sarah Hutcheon of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe; Elizabeth Falsey of the Houghton
Library, Harvard University; Margaret Sherry and AnnaLee Pauls of Rare Books and Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University; Pascal Geneste of the Service Historique de la Marine; Robert Feuilloy of the Association pour la Recherche de Documentation sur l’Histoire de lAéronautique Navale; Steven Friedman of the Great Neck Historical Society; Timothy Murray and Iris Snyder of Special Collections, University of Delaware Library; Alice L. Birney of the Library of Congress; and Michele McKee of the Kristine Mann Library at the C. G. Jung Center of New York.
In particular I must mention my all-time favorite librarians, Stephen Crook and Philip Milito of the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library.
I’m also obliged to the literary executors and heirs whose kind cooperation contributed to my labors: Anthony Adams, the always-gracious Elizabeth Barnett of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, Wolstan Brown, John Donnelly, Laura Donnelly, Julie Gilbert, Carrie Hamilton, Harold Ober Associates, Anne Schneider, and Nan Bright Sussmann.
Biographers require dynamic subjects and reliable sources, but most of all they need a lot of friends. For moral support I would like to thank Erica Abeel, Deirdre Bair, Myron Brenton, Marlene Coburn, Judy Feiffer, Barbara Foster, Kyle Gallup, Janet Gardner, Judith Hennessee, Diane Jacobs, Vanessa Levin, Minda Novek, Lisa Paddock, Carl Rollyson, Florence Rubenfeld, Marlene Sanders, Kenneth Silverman, Sydney Stern, Philip Turner, Ann Waldron, and Brenda Wineapple.
I am grateful to Patricia O’Toole and the Hertog Research Assistantship Program in the Graduate Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. My enterprising intern, Amy Greene, did a wonderful job for me.
Special thanks to Holly Peppe, Millay scholar and past president (1987–2000) of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society, and to Kendall Taylor, author of Sometimes Madness Is Wisdom: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, a Marriage. To them both I’m indebted in more ways than I can list, not only for professional guidance but also for their personal friendship.
My compliments to an ideal editor, the legendary Nan Talese. This book would not have been possible without her enthusiasm and generosity. For exacting standards in editing, I am especially grateful to the indefatigable Coates Bateman. Thanks also to Frieda Duggan, who deftly steered the manuscript through production, and to Ingrid Sterner, who did the copyediting.
My friend and literary agent, Lois Wallace, is one of a kind. She regularly offers more affectionate advice than I can be expected to use, explains the meaning of life in publishing, and tolerates jokes about the contents of her refrigerator. And she sells my work too. In other words, she’s a perfect agent.
ILLUSTRATION CREDITS
All photographs are used by permission.
PAGE 3: Robert Benchley Collection in Special Collections, The Boston University Libraries.
PAGE 39: Al Hirschfeld/Margo Feiden Galleries Ltd.
PAGE 60: Photograph from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Archives at Princeton University Library used by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees; reproduced courtesy of Princeton University Library.
PAGE 84: Library of Congress, used by permission of The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society.
PAGE 108: New York Public Library.
PAGE 129: Estate of Honoria M. Donnelly.
PAGE 158: The Edna St. Vincent Millay Society.
PAGE 186: Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.
PAGE 213: Photograph from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Archives at Princeton University Library used by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees; reproduced courtesy of Princeton University Library.
PAGE 237: Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research.
PAGE 266: Estate of Honoria M. Donnelly.
PHOTO INSERTS
Courtesy of Anthony Adams: Frank Adams portrait; Frank Adams and Esther Root wedding; Anthony Adams with Edna St. Vincent Millay et al; Frank Adams and Harold Ross.
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University: Dorothy Parker portrait.
Courtesy of Carrie Hamilton: Ruth Hale portrait.
Courtesy of the Estate of Honoria M. Donnelly: Sara and Gerald Murphy portrait; Villa America terrace; Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald at Antibes; Murphy family; Parker and Murphy drinking sherry; Parker in Switzerland.
Courtesy of Julie Gilbert and Anne Kaufman Schneider: Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman portrait.
Courtesy of William Marx: Parker, Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Alexander Woollcott, et al.
Courtesy of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society: Edna St. Vincent Millay portrait; Millay sisters with mother; Millay and Eugen Boissevain on honeymoon; Millay, Boissevain, and Arthur Davison Ficke portrait; Millay, Boissevain, and Cora Millay.
University of Oregon Libraries: Jane Grant portrait; Grant and Harold Ross portrait.
Photofest: Paul Robeson.
Photographs from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Archives at Princeton University Library used by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated as agents for the Fitzgerald Trustees, reproduced courtesy of Princeton University Library: Zelda in tutu; Zelda portrait; Zelda in knickers; Zelda and Scott in Montgomery; The Beautiful and Damned jacket; Zelda and baby Scottie; Fitzgeralds in Great Neck; Fitzgeralds on the Riviera; Fitzgeralds in Paris; Zelda’s room at Prangins.
Princeton University Library: Ernest Hemingway portrait.
Courtesy of Nan Bright Sussmann: George Dillon portrait.
United Press International: Frank Adams–Esther Root honeymoon.
Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research: Edna Ferber and William Allen White; Ferber in Native American costume; Ferber portrait; Ferber returning to New York.
Courtesy of the Edouard Jozan Family: Edouard Jozan portrait.
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University: Edmund Wilson in uniform; Wilson passport photo; Millay and Boissevain in China.
PUBLISHED BY NAN A. TALESE
AN IMPRINT OF DOUBLEDAY
a division of Random House, Inc.
DOUBLEDAY is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Meade, Marion, 1934-
Bobbed hair and bathtub gin : writers running wild in the Twenties /
by Marion Meade.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Authors, American—20th century—Biography. 2. Women and
literature—United States—History—20th century. 3. United
States—Social life and customs—1918–1945. 4. Women authors,
American—Biography. 5. Millay Edna St. Vincent, 1892–1950.
6. Fitzgerald, Zelda, 1900-1948. 7. Parker, Dorothy, 1893-1967.
8. Ferber, Edna, 1887–1968. 9. Nineteen twenties. I. Title.
PS151.M43 2004
810.9′9287′09042—dc22
[B]
2003064585
eISBN: 978-0-385-53301-0
Copyright © 2004 by Marion Meade
All Rights Reserved
v3.0