Happy Birthday, Mrs. Parker

We remembered the birthdays recently of three persons who gave, and continue to give, the world enormous pleasure: Julia Child, Gene Kelly and Dorothy Parker. All departed now, but we like to think of Mesdames Child and Parker hoofing thru Paradise with Mr. Kelly.

Dorothy Parker has eleven entries in "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," and she could have had eleven pages. They do have her critique of an early Katherine Hepburn performance, in which she wrote "Miss Hepburn runs the gamut of emotions from A to B." They do not have her riposte to Claire Booth Luce. The two found themselves together at a doorway. Mrs. Luce suggested Mrs. Parker go first, saying "Age before beauty." Mrs. Parker swept by, saying "Pearls before swine."

They have her review of A.A. Milne's "The House at Pooh Corner." In her New Yorker column, Constant Reader, she wrote "Tonstant Weader fwowed up." There is also her reworking of a classic nursery rhyme:

"Higgledy-piggledy my white hen,
She lays eggs for gentlemen.
She cannot be persuaded by gun or lariat
To come across for the proletariat."

Dorothy Parker chose for her epitaph "Excuse my dust." She would be 119 years old, if she were with us today. And perhaps she is. It has been reported that her ghostly presence has been sensed in her legendary hangout, Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel.