Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Friends with Dr. King
When Parker died in 1967, she left her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. (It was inherited by the NAACP after King was assassinated. (Source)
High Praise
No less a literary luminary than F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that Dorothy Parker's talent equaled his own. (Source)
A Member of "The Vicious Circle"
Parker was a member of the famous Algonquin Round Table—a group of writers and humorists who gathered to make wisecracks and eat lunch at The Algonquin Hotel in New York (they were also sometimes called "The Vicious Circle"). The group also included Harpo Marx and Robert Benchley (the father of Peter Benchley, who wrote Jaws). (Source)
Some Things Are Just Too Serious
After the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927 (Italian immigrants and political anarchists accused—some believe falsely—of murder), Parker commented: "I had heard someone say and so I said too, that ridicule is the most effective weapon. Well, now I know that there are things that never have been funny and never will be. And I know that ridicule may be a shield but it is not a weapon." (Source)