Dorothy Parker, noted as a wit, verse-writer (Sunset Gun) and movie-scripter (The Fan), seemed to be headed toward Broadway again. It had been 25 years since her first and only Manhattan production—Close Harmony, a flop co-authored by Elmer Rice. In Dallas last week, jittery but still hopeful, she sat with Collaborator Ross Evans in Margo Jones’s Theater ’49, awaiting the local verdict on their new play, The Coast of Illyria.
Titled after the shore on which Viola and her brother Sebastian are shipwrecked in Twelfth Night, it was a story based on the blighted, bittersweet life of Charles Lamb and his mad sister, Mary. Among its characters: a laudanum-shaken Coleridge, a sobersided Hazlitt, and an opium-eating De Quincey, who, as visiting friends of the Lambs, studded the play with some witty quotes picked from their own works.
Herself celebrated for claw-sharp quotes, Dorothy surprised the cast with her gentleness. With Evans, she fled the theater between acts to avoid stares by the curious, acknowledged compliments with a mild “Bless you.” Said one actress: “She’s sweet. She’s even shy. She’s a love.”
Audiences and critics liked the play, too; they called it the best of Dallas’ eight-play season. One reviewer ranked it as high as anything ever done at the playhouse, where Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke had its first showing. Already slated for this summer’s Edinburgh Festival of Music and Drama with Flora Robson starred, it was thought to be a cinch for Broadway production. Though the authors refused to share this prediction, Collaborator Evans sounded cautiously optimistic: “We’ve tasted blood. We don’t want to do anything ever again except write for the theater.”
More Must-Reads from TIME
- L.A. Fires Show Reality of 1.5°C of Warming
- How Canada Fell Out of Love With Trudeau
- Trump Is Treating the Globe Like a Monopoly Board
- Bad Bunny On Heartbreak and New Album
- 10 Boundaries Therapists Want You to Set in the New Year
- The Motivational Trick That Makes You Exercise Harder
- Nicole Kidman Is a Pure Pleasure to Watch in Babygirl
- Column: Jimmy Carter’s Global Legacy Was Moral Clarity
Contact us at letters@time.com