The Last Days of Dorothy Parker by Marion Meade Read Free Book Online

the fellow with whom she was living dumped her for another woman. On top of that he stole her dog. She had to find her way, alone and without luggage, from Mexico City to the Plaza Hotel in New York. Another time, when she and d’Usseau were working on The Ladies of the Corridor , his wife Susan rationed her liquor and forced her to eat home-cooked dinners. From time to time she saw Alan Campbell, to whom she was still legally wed, but after two marriages there could be nothing more between them.
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    Norma Place covered a single block, from North Doheny to Hilldale, with a bank and post office at one end and small apartment buildings at the other. The street, located in West Hollywood and supposedly named after the silent-screen star Norma Talmadge, was known as Boys Town because its residents, men with muscular bodies and flawless tans, were primarily gay.
    It was a leafy green neighborhood of 1920s vintage cottages set on small lots with neat front yards and narrow, unpaved driveways. Alan Campbell scraped together enough to purchase a tidy two-bedroom, one-bath home at number 8983, possibly lending some credibility to rumors of his bisexuality, but more likely because he was drawn to the vibrant atmosphere. In his late fifties, he was a sociable, physically attractive gentleman who, a neighbor recalled, did not appear to be a practicing homosexual, nor did he seem to be romantically coupled with women either.
    In the spring of 1961, Dottie took up residence with Alan on Norma Place. Not that she changed her mind about marriage – it wasn’t any fresh start with him that tempted her back to Hollywood; it was, in fact, money.
    In recent months, Alan’s fortunes had taken a turn for the better when he began getting movie work again. His last job on a feature was a low-budget Universal film ( Woman on the Run ) in 1950; throughout the fifties he had eked out a modest living from television ( The Jack Benny Program , Lux Video Theatre ). On the verge of getting a break – the possibility of employment at Fox – he urged Dottie to join him. The movie was an upcoming star vehicle for Marilyn Monroe, an adaptation of a French comedy called The Good Soup , but getting hired depended entirely on Dottie’s collaboration. To Alan’s optimistic thinking, a Monroe picture could not help but do well, and further assignments could be expected. It was not too late, he believed, to reestablish themselves as the successful comedy duo of the thirties, the team whose work on A Star Is Born yielded them an Oscar nomination. To a professional pessimist like Dottie, invariably prepared for the possibility of failure, the idea must have been hard to imagine. Yet, what mattered was that his starry-eyed strategy appeared halfway promising for the short term. Whether it would continue indefinitely remained to be seen.
    Over the years Dottie had learned a lot about Hollywood, and what she knew was that she hated the place. Still, the Fox job meant good money and the satisfaction of lucrative paychecks for the foreseeable future, security that had been missing from her life. Obviously there were other factors to consider: much-needed dental work that she’d been postponing and Alan’s agreement that she could have a nice bedroom of her own. And, of course, the weather was glorious.
    A fiscally prudent individual, Alan owned a handful of stocks, two insurance policies, some real estate in Virginia, and with his good credit had no problem obtaining a mortgage. Brimming with home improvement projects, he intended to add a second bathroom and convert the garage into a rental apartment. It was a far cry from the glory days of swimming pools and Picassos, but if living grandly was no longer possible, he still wished to live well, and what he fancied next was a Jaguar, preferably dark green.
    The decision to return was terrifying, and yet Dottie had little to lose. At the time nothing was happening for her in New