The Alan Campbell and Dorothy Parker Collection consists of four series, Correspondence, Financial Papers, Writings and Miscellaneous. The Collection contains correspondence and writings of Alan Campbell and Dorothy Parker. Included is correspondence from Campbell to Parker, written during World War II; several letters from Zeppo Marx; and a few letters from Leland Hayward and Rosalie Stewart, with many references to other celebrities. Also included is a portion of the Campbell-Parker collaboration on the screenplay A Star is Born, written with Robert Carson. Campbell’s writings include the script for Told to the Children while Parker is represented by fragments of several short stories and her play The Coast of Illyria. The collection also includes typescripts of pieces written by contemporaries of Campbell and Parker, including Stephen Vincent Benét, Elliott Nugent, John O’Hara, Robert Penn Warren, and Sagittarius (aka Olga Katzin).
Alan Campbell was born in 1904 in Richmond, Virginia. His early education was at the Virginia Military Institute where he majored in civil engineering. In spite of this, he showed promise in artistic endeavors, with a special interest in acting. He lived with his mother, Horte, and her parents for two years after graduation while working for the Virginia State Highway Department. Unhappy with this life, Campbell ran away from home and took a train to New York City, determined to become an actor. By 1933, when Campbell met Dorothy Parker, he had become a relatively successful actor who had also published some stories in The New Yorker .
Dorothy Parker, forty years old in 1933, was already a sensation in New York society known for her scalding wit. Born Dorothy Rothschild on August 22, 1893 to Eliza and Henry Rothschild, she was the last of four children. Eliza died when Dorothy was five and her father re-married Eleanor Franes Lewis in 1900, who died in 1903. Dorothy attended Catholic school as a child and attended a private school in New Jersey. She did not attend college. In 1914, her first poem, “Any Porch,” was accepted by Vanity Fair , and Parker immediately asked the editor for a position with the magazine. He did not give her this position, but offered her a position on the staff of Vogue , which she took. She wrote copy for lingerie advertisements before making her debut with Vanity Fair in 1918. She married Edwin Pond Parker III in 1917, whose name she kept for the rest of her life. In 1920, Parker was fired from Vanity Fair for the acerbity of her theater reviews. She immediately embarked on her freelance career, sharing a small office with Robert Benchley, who quit Vanity Fair out of sympathy at the same time she was fired. Her freelance writing career continued through the rest of her life.
Campbell and Parker met in 1933 and were married in 1934. They worked together as a screenwriting team, receiving writing credit for over 15 films between 1934 and 1941. They also worked with other Hollywood writers. Together, they wrote for the big Hollywood film companies and producers, including David O. Selznick, Paramount and United Artists. And, for a time, their manager was Zeppo Marx. The Parker and Campbell writing team was well known, and they were active in both Hollywood and in New York’s social circle. As a team, their major achievement was writing A Star is Born with Robert Carson, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 1937.
In 1942, Campbell enlisted as a private in the military at Parker’s urging. He was stationed in Miami, Florida, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Long Island, and attended Officer Candidate School, where he attained the rank of Lieutenant. He was shipped overseas in November of 1943, where he was initially stationed in London with the Air Force Intelligence. Campbell then served in Paris and Germany before returning to New York in November of 1946. Parker and Campbell were divorced in 1947, but re-married in 1950, only to move to apart from each other in 1952. They finally settled in Hollywood in 1956, remaining together until Alan’s suicide in 1963. After his death, Dorothy Parker returned to New York where she died four years later, in 1967.
