Welcome to the History Tricks, where any resemblance to a boring old history lesson is purely coincidental.

Hello and welcome back to the show. This is part two of the life of writer and woman about town Dorothy Parker,

whose work with Vanity Fair, Vogue, and the New Yorker, not to mention her downtime with those wits and wags over at the Algonquin Hotel,

have made her the toast of New York and in fact the whole country. Her personal life, though, has taken a turn for the worse.

Separated from her husband and at the end of a relationship with Charles MacArthur that resulted in a suicide attempt,

her friend Robert Benchley has told her to pull herself together.

Our Dorothy is kind of at a crossroads. What to do? What to do?

And now on with the show.

At this point in her life, she's made peace with Charles MacArthur. She kind of had to because he and Robert Benchley moved in together and brought Benchley's city apartment.

They became roommates and really buddyed around. They got along famously and romance, total romance, but Dorothy didn't want to give up Benchley,

so she had to make peace with Charles even though she was bitter towards him.

Oh, dear, Blamer. But she made peace with him. And to put it delicately, she had relations with several men of buried degrees of marriage.

Well, hearing friends talking about Paris and all the art and literature going on there, particularly this fellow named Ernest Hemingway,

who had a very realistic style, just like hers, that she really admired.

She found Richman to fall in love with her. It is just that easy and frankly just that one-sided and went off to Europe to live the easy life for a while.

No, Benchley went along. What? Shaperone? I don't even know.

How he talked his wife into letting him go.

I don't even know that she had any power. That's what I'm saying. Well, he went and asked. He needed permission, right?

And he said, quotes, but I think it's a formality. I think he would have gone. Yeah, oh, he probably had a good point.

One of my favorite things about that departure is the Dorothy Parker leaned off the boat dangerously so to yell at her friends down below.

And she goes, Marlena, Dietrichs on the boat, but my suitcase didn't make it.

I don't know if Marlena Dietrich was really on the boat. I have no idea.

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