Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This? by Marion Meade

observations about furnishings than from her offensive portrait of an hysterical and unmistakably homosexual decorator. Mrs. Chase, who apparently had not thought to question the article prior to publication, was not amused.
    Whenever Vogue needed a guinea pig, Dorothy volunteered. She tested beauty preparations, diets, and exercise regimens, and she agreed to submit her head to a permanent wave at a time when such procedures were still hazardous. Chase had to admit that getting the permanent had taken “rare courage,” but it was also clear that Dorothy was developing into a problem writer.
    At Vanity Fair , Frank Crowninshield could not help noticing Dorothy’s work, and he also must have realized that she was training herself to write the Frank Crowninshield genre. This called for, above all, a good sense of what was clever and entertaining. The formula, subsequently summed up by Robert Benchley as the Elevated Eyebrow School of Journalism, was by no means simple to master. You could write about practically any subject you wished, no matter how outrageous, so long as you said it in evening clothes. Crownie had no objection to serious topics and would publish, for example, a report on the Russian Revolution, but it had to be showered with references to debutante dinners, Grolier bindings, and French literature, then adorned with drawings by his favorite illustrator, Fish. Finally, it would be sandwiched between a survey of the polo season and “How to Be Idle Though Rich,” but at least it would be published.
    In some ways the Frank Crowninshield genre was more china-painting than writing. It took Dorothy only a few months to get the hang of Crownie’s style. Then she spent the next decade trying to unlearn it.
    Unlike Vogue, Vanity Fair seemed more like a playpen than an editorial office. Visitors had been known to whistle, throw paper darts, and play charades. Crowninshield proudly likened his private office to “a combined club, vocal studio, crap game, dance-hall, sleeping lounge, and snack bar,” and it was apparent that the magazine flourished on chaos. Vanity Fair, barely four years old, had already become publishing’s most fabulous success story, a financial winner that carried more advertising than any other monthly with page after glossy page of Rolls-Royces, diamond necklaces, and other gewgaws for the conspicuously wealthy. Crownie, however, could not have cared less about advertisers. His dedication was to the theater—and to painting, literature, dance, poetry, music, and satire—and he was as obsessive about exploration as Henry the Navigator was, fervently cruising the capitals of Europe and the drawing rooms of Southampton to seek out the most heretical work being done. When he had unearthed a work he feared too esoteric, he would tell his staff, “Remember, there’s an old lady sitting in Dubuque, and she has to be able to understand everything we print,” but he was the first to ignore this old publishing cliché. To the American public he would introduce a long line of innovators, from Picasso and Matisee and Beaton to Colette, Huxley, and Millay. Dorothy was determined to enter this exciting, elite club.
    From their first meeting, Crowninshield had been immensely taken with Dorothy and his admiration had continued to grow. He would describe her as wearing
horn-rimmed eyeglasses, which she removed quickly if anyone spoke to her suddenly. She had, too—perhaps the result of nervousness—a habit of blinking and fluttering her eyelids. She had a fondness for Chypre , as a perfume, and for flat-heeled shoes, sometimes for black patent leather pumps with black bows, She walked, whatever her shoes might be, with short, quick steps. Her suits, in the winter, at any rate, were tailor-made. Her hats were large and turned up at the brim. Green, as a colour, seemed to appeal to her greatly, whether in a dress, hat, or scarf.
     
    More important, seldom had he encountered anyone, man or woman, with