Dorothy Does LA -- LA Style

I did something over the weekend that will forever change the way I look at Los Angeles.

I went back in time.

We were lucky enough to be invited along on a tour, mapped out by Adrienne Crew, that chronicles Dorothy Parker’s stints living and working in LA from the 1930s through the 60s.

Adrienne had dug up dozens of wonderful, sometimes painful to hear stories about Dorothy Parker, relating some of the trials as well as the highlights of her life in LA.

At the same time, Adrienne mixed in the richest of the color and flavor of old Hollywood and the one-of-a-kind characters that filled Dorothy’s life.

It all wound itself into a fascinating story. Still, it was just a glimpse into the life of a remarkable woman.

Unbelievably, almost every stop on the tour was a house that was intact. Even if there were no historical markers.

It was surreal to see a guy in tennis shorts pull his Mercedes wagon up to one of the homes. We stood outside the gate, suddenly mute and pretending to inspect the sidewalk, as he walked in the front door without even looking at us. 

I wondered if he had any idea he was living in one of Dorothy Parker's houses.

In a lot of ways, Los Angeles doesn’t know its own history. The car culture sees what it is visible from the freeway; the oversized movie and TV billboards are huge to the point of blocking out the sun.

It all goes by in a blur. You forget to look around.

Adrienne, a true Los Angeles intellectual, has made it her work to find the gems that are hidden in the city.

“Not everything in LA was torn down,” Adrienne says. “Some things haven’t changed. It’s just a matter of opening your eyes and looking at your environment in a different way.”

Dorothy was a New Yorker who came to Hollywood reluctantly in 1934, during the Golden Era, with her new husband Alan Campbell so they could write screenplays together.

She lived here off and on, in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, until returning to New York for good in 1963.

Kevin Fitzpatrick of the Dorothy Parker Society, New York Chapter, has written about how much Dorothy hated screenwriting. She considered it a chore. And she quit most of her other writing -- poetry and verse -- while she was doing it.

She started out living in the Garden of Allah, a sort of bohemian artists’ colony free-for-all that didn’t discourage around-the-clock drinking and the anything-goes lifestyle of the writers and actors who lived there. Ernest Hemingway, Humphrey Bogart and F. Scott Fitzgerald all stayed there at some point before it was torn down in 1959.

From there, you can follow the map to see Dorothy’s progression of houses – small to large and back to small again. Start at the green dot and follow to the red....

View Larger Map

She lived high on the hog, drank up her earnings, regrouped, and started all over again.

A story that LA -- if it knew it -- would truly love.

 

Thank you, Anthony, for the photos and the map!

Comments

[Jessica]

Hi Gretchen,

Thanks for the great wrap-up of Saturday. I'm sorry I missed it and seeing you guys, but hopefully we can get together soon!