Mary, Queen of Scots had a good start: she was wearing the crown early and upgraded it at a young age under the watchful eye of many an interested party but once she started making decisions for herself? Ah, that’s when her life took dramatic twists and turns that ultimately took the crown off her head. Actually, those decisions got her whole head taken off, but let’s start at the beginning, shall we?
Mary Stuart about age 16 before her life turned quite contrary. (François Clouet – Royal Collection via Wikimedia Commons)
Once upon a time in a rugged Renaissance land lived a king and a queen…
Heeeeere’s your seven word summary: We asked, you responded and we answer.
For the first time in the five years that we have been doing this show we sat down with a couple of glasses of wine to deviate from our normal format and answer some of your questions. We had asked for them and you delivered! From questions about specific episodes to hypothetical situations and research methods to some semi-personal questions…we answered them all. We even revealed some of the names on our extraordinarily long list of future subjects and did a really bad job of keeping our next subject secret. (In vino veritas and all)
We thought that this cocktail party chatter was a perfect way to give our new audio recording system the proper welcome that it deserves. Isn’t it pretty?
When we left Dorothy Parker in Part One she was hanging on tenuously at best. Her marriage to Eddie Parker was over, her relationship with George MacArthur was over and the fall-out somewhat stabilized and her suicide attempt was unsuccessful. Professionally she was cobbling together a career as a freelance writer but powered by a steady diet of alcohol she was dancing on the edge.
It was the wild 20s, afterall. (No, this isn’t Dorothy, but you knew that)
She gave us fabulous quotes like, “Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” and “Brevity is the soul of lingerie,” but Dorothy Parker’s life wasn’t all wit and snark. Behind those flip one liners there was a very complex woman who lead a full life far beyond the banter of the Algonquin Round Table.
How complex was she and how full was her life? It’s going to take two episodes, that’s how much. (It’s okay, we were a little surprised, too.)
It was a dark and stormy night (what? It was!) when Dorothy Rothschild was born in West End, New Jersey at her family’s summer house on August 22, 1893. Her father Henry had fallen in love and married the girl next door, Eliza, and the pair had three children before Dorothy came along. They lived fairly affluently in New York; life as a Rothschild (not those Rothschilds) was very comfortable. (more…)
