Product Review

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Dorothy Parker holds a place in history as one of New York’s most beloved writers. Now, for the first time in nearly a century, the public is invited to enjoy Mrs. Parker’s sharp wit and biting commentary on the Jazz Age hits and flops in this first-ever published collection of her groundbreaking Broadway reviews.

Starting when she was twenty-four at Vanity Fair as New York’s only female theatre critic, Mrs. Parker reviewed some of the biggest names of the era: the Barrymores, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, Helen Hayes, Al Jolson, Eugene O’Neil, Will Rogers, and the Ziegfeld Follies. Her words of praise—and contempt—for the dramas, comedies, musicals, and revues are just as fresh and funny today as they were in the age of speakeasies and bathtub gin. Annotated with a notes section by Kevin C. Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, the volume shares Parker’s outspoken opinions of a great era of live theatre in America, from a time before radio, talking pictures, and television decimated attendance.

Dorothy Parker: Complete Broadway, 1918–1923 provides a fascinating glimpse of Broadway in its Golden Era and literary life in New York through the eyes of a renowned theatre critic.

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