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The Dorothy Parker Society offers 30 clips recorded by the witty author.
Dorothy Parker made two full-length LP recordings of her work in 1964. A record company, Verve, asked her to read her poems and stories for a record called The World of Dorothy Parker (Verve V-15029). Her other LP is from Spoken Arts called An Informal Hour with Dorothy Parker (Spoken Arts 726). It is the best of the two: Parker reads more than two dozen of her favorite poems. It is from the latter that most of these audio clips are taken.At the time of the recording sessions, Mrs. Parker was approaching age 71. Her voice ravaged by years of Chesterfields and Johnny Walker, this offers a peek at the real Mrs. Parker. She died three years after recording her work.
The verse and stories were first published between 1923 and 1933, so she was reading, for posterity, work she had written as a young woman. The shortest clip is 14 seconds, the longest 1:33.
Here's the famous Men -- it's 35 seconds and. like the others, requires the free RealPlayer.
One more: Resume, just 17 seconds.
A collection of 194 of her verses is easily browsed at oldpoetry.com.
