Born Dorothy Rothschild in West End, New Jersey. Tart-tongued wit and prolific writer of reviews, poetry, short stories, plays, screenplays and song lyrics who is best remembered for clever short verses like "Men never make passes/At girls who wear glasses." A founding member of the legendary Algonquin Hotel "roundtable" of wits and swells that thrived in the 1920s and 30s, Parker was an unpredictable, often self-destructive, obsessive woman who nonetheless managed to carve out a remarkable career in American letters. A political activist, she was a lifelong supporter of society's underdogs. She helped organize the Screenwriters Guild, covered the Spanish Civil War, and even found herself blacklisted as a communist sympathizer in the early 1950s when her name appeared in the notorious Red Channels pamphlet. A fighter for important social causes to the very end, Parker willed her entire estate to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. Parker was born Dorothy Rothschild to a Jewish-American father and a British gentile mother. Her brief early education was at a Roman Catholic academy and a girls' boarding school. She burst on the scene as a writer for Vogue magazine at age 24, and went on to write dramatic criticism for some of the most important periodicals of her day, including Vanity Fair, Smart Set, Ainslee's, Saturday Evening Post, and Life. Her sharp, often brief and pointed critiques of books and plays made her a force to be reckoned with. Parker's put-down of Katharine Hepburn's performance on Broadway in The Lake is legendary: "Miss Hepburn ran the gamut of emotions from A to B." Besides her own collections of poetry and short stories, Parker collaborated on stage pieces with some of the theater's giants including Robert Benchley, George S. Kaufman, and Elmer Rice. She was on the advisory committee that helped Harold Ross create the legendary magazine, The New Yorker, later becoming that periodical's chief book reviewer. Her first marriage to Wall Street broker Edwin Parker ended in divorce but she held on to his name. A second marriage to writer/actor Alan Campbell turned into a professional collaboration as well. Together they spent several years in Hollywood writing and doctoring screenplays. Although Parker worked on a number of scenarios for which she did not receive screen credit, her modest number of actual screenplay credits included the satirical screwball comedy classic NOTHING SACRED (1937) and the powerful, insightful portrait of Hollywood fame, A STAR IS BORN (1937). She added some welcome spice to the often sugary Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy musicals in SWEETHEARTS (1938) and even penned a fun screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock for SABOTEUR (1942). Parker and Campbell's lavish Hollywood lifestyle, meanwhile, provided an unlikely backdrop for her left-wing political fundraisers and platforms for speeches by radical trade unionists. She divorced Campbell in 1946 and remarried him in 1950. Parker made several suicide attempts throughout her life, yet she never let her deep depressions or strong attachment to drink interfere with her work. While today she is little read and primarily remembered for what she allegedly said and did, Parker was an original, liberated woman who met the world on her own terms. Director Alan Rudolph attempted to capture her spirit in the 1994 feature MRS. PARKER AND THE VICIOUS CIRCLE casting Jennifer Jason Leigh in the title role. The film's reception was uneven, but it did reintroduce the witty, bawdy lady to a whole new generation. Some of Parker's other notable writing credits (alone or in collaboration) include REMODELING HER HUSBAND (1920, titles), HERE IS MY HEART (1934, uncredited), ONE HOUR LATE (1935), SUZY, LADY BE CAREFUL, THE MOON'S OUR HOME and THREE MARRIED MEN (all 1936), THE COWBOY AND THE LADY (uncredited) and TRADE WINDS (both 1938), THE LITTLE FOXES (add'l scenes and dialogue) and WEEKEND FOR THREE (both 1941), THE FAN (1949) and QUEEN FOR A DAY (1951, from her story "Horsie"). She wrote the book and lyrics for the 1931 Broadway revue Shoot the Works, and she collaborated on the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein's Candide (1956).    Nominated for Writing (Screenplay) 1937: A STAR IS BORN (w. Alan Campbell & Robert Carson)    Nominated for Writing (Original Story) 1947: SMASH-UP, THE STORY OF A WOMAN (w. Frank Cavett) 2 nominations