Living with Legends

While other hotels are mere Chelsea wannabes, the Algonquin can give the Chelsea a run for her money in the literary department.  The Algonquin was home to literary great, Dorothy Parker. The seventh annual Dorothy Parker festival happens next week, and festival organizer Kevin Fitzpatrick has written an overview of Parker’s encounters with the men of the Chelsea:

"Dorothy Parker was a resident of the Algonquin and Plaza hotels, but probably never at the Chelsea. Her residences extended as far south in Manhattan as 44th Street.  But she did venture downtown; indeed her tattoo was inked in a village shop; her friends Edmund Wilson, James Thurber, Andy White and Franklin P. Adams all lived below 23rd Street.  However, she did have a connection with at least four Chelsea Hotel all-star writers.

Thomas Wolfe — Thomas Wolfe visited Mrs. Parker in Hollywood in September 1935.  "Dorothy Parker seems to like me," he told editor Max Perkins, "Swears she does, and last night told a room full of people that I was built on a heroic scale and that there was no one like me.  Maybe the old girl is laughing at me behind my back and making wicked jokes about me but I think she meant what she said.  She and her young husband are living in a magnificent imitation Colonial house…and the liquor and hospitality flows like the Mississippi — I am going there again this afternoon."

Vladimir Nabokov — In October 1958 Mrs. Parker tipped her pen to Nabokov upon the U.S. publication of Lolita.  She was a sometimes book critic for Esquire magazine, her last regular writing assignment.  "I do not think that Lolita is a filthy book," she wrote.  "I cannot regard it as pornography, either sheer, unrestrained, or any other kind.  It is the engrossing, anguished story of a man, a man of taste and culture, who can love only little girls..an anguished book, but sometimes wildly funny, as in the saga of his travels across and around the United States with her."

Arthur Miller — The National Institue of Arts and Letters inducted Dorothy Parker into its memberhsip in 1958.  IT was the great literary achievement of her career.  She was also invited to Columbia University, where playwright Arthur Miller was speaking.  Mrs. Parker wanted to attend, not so much as to meet the great man of the theater, but to get an audience with his new wife, Marilyn Monroe.

O. Henry — The first literary prize Dorothy Parker was awarded was the O.Henry award for best short story of the year, in 1929.  It was for her gem "Big Blond" — a semi-autobiographical novella of love and loss.  Parker and O. Henry had another connection through New York World columnist Franklin P. Adams, a member of the Algonquin Round Table and mentor to Parker.   Adams and O. Henry (William Sydeny Porter) collaborated on a play.

Sunday, September 18th, 4:00 p.m.  The Museum of Moving Images screens "The Lost Weekend."  "The Lost Weekend," stars Ray Milland and Jane Wyman and is based on the bestselling, autobiographical novel by former Hotel Chelsea resident Charles Jackson.

"The Lost Weekend," is the story of Don Birnman, who has the good fortune of getting a short story published in The Atlantic Monthly at the age of 19.  Don takes that to be a sign that he should quit college and move to NY and become a writer.  Unable to write another story, Don succumbs to writer’s block/alcoholism, familiar maladies here at the Hotel Chelsea.  After all, the Do Not Disturb signs here at the Chelsea read “Don’t Bother Me!” I’m writing the next great American novel.”

Two women are infatuated with Don:  his long suffering girlfriend (Time Magazine editor Henry Luce’s gal Friday) Helen St. James, and Gloria, the hooker who hangs out in P.J. Clarke’s, Don’s favorite bar. (Unfortunately, they never show the inside of the men’s room, which I hear from reliable sources had the mother of all urinals before the bar was yupscaled a few years ago).  In classic Edith Head style, both women are exquisitely attired.  Gloria makes her entrance in a black sheath with a sexy, see-through, lacy top, and we first see Helen St. James at the Opera in a leopard skin coat.

Don goes for a quick drink at P.J. Clarke’s at 55th & 3^rd.  One drinks turns to two and then the next thing you know he’s on a bender that ends with him trying to pawn his typewriter up and down Third Avenue. When he can’t find a pawnshop open, he borrows money from Gloria, but at least she gets to keep her clothes.  He pawns Helen’s Leopard Skin Coat.

Suffering from DT’s near the end of the bender, Don consults the bartender at P.J. Clarke’s about how his proposed autobiographical novel should end, the bartender advises Don that the character should kill himself.  He helpfully recommends several options: either get his gun out of hoc, or, if he doesn’t have enough money for that spend $1 for a trip to the top of the Empire State building and jump.

The movie won four Oscars.  Actor (Ray Milland); Director (Billy Wilder); Best Motion Picture; and Screenwriting.  Nothing for Edith Head this time.  She wasn’t even nominated. Oh well, can’t win them all.

Sadly, on Sept 22, 1968, Charles Jackson, at the age of 65, took an overdose of sleeping pills in the Chelsea Hotel.