Fifty years after her death, famed Jazz Age poet Dorothy Parker (pictured) received an official headstone Monday
Fifty years after her death, famed Jazz Age poetess Dorothy Parker received an official headstone Monday, after her remains were left at a crematorium then dumped in a filing cabinet for 15 years.
Although the literary icon's ashes were buried last year at Woodlawn Cemetery, Parker didn't receive an official tombstone until yesterday, in a ceremony that featured a jazz band and readings from her work, as attendees poured masses of gin on her grave.
Parker was a fan of a gin martini.
'This is finally her homecoming to her beloved New York City,' said Kevin Fitzpatrick, president of the Dorothy Parker Society, a non-profit promoting works of the Algonquin Hotel's famed Round Table of authors, humorists and actors.
Parker, who died of a heart attack in 1967, left the majority of her estate to Martin Luther King Jr. It was supposed to pass on to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) after he died. King was assassinated in 1968.
Although the literary icon's ashes were buried last year at Woodlawn Cemetery, Parker didn't receive an official tombstone until Monday
Because Parker's will left no instruction regarding her ashes, they remained in a Westchester crematory for six years before being transferred to the Manhattan office of her lawyer, languishing in a filing cabinet for an additional 15 years
Because Parker did not leave instructions regarding her ashes, they remained in a Westchester crematory for six years before being transferred to the Manhattan office of her lawyer, where the languished in a filing cabinet for an additional 15 years.
Parker was born to a Jewish father and Scottish-American mother in 1893 at her family's summer home in New Jersey. Her mother died just before her fifth birthday; her father died in 1913.
She supported herself as a dancing school pianist shortly before entering the world of New York magazine publishing.
Parker's fierce wit immediately earned her notoriety among her colleagues; her first break came when she sent a poem to Vanity Fair magazine editor Frank Crowninshield.
American writer Dorothy Parker reviews a draft copy of a manuscript at her home
Parker (left) is pictured at a restaurant with her then-husband, Alan Campbell
It didn't take long for Parker to climb through the ranks of the literary realm, progressing from caption
