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wet martini.” He was a playboy, Benchley--a wonderful, wonderful man.

Did you go places with him?

No, he was not part of the Liveright group. He was on the fringe. He was at the Roundtable. But Dotty Parker was up at our layout a lot of the time.

Would you like to describe her?

She was already being devastatingly witty, and things were being ascribed to her she'd never said. Anybody's great lines were ascribed to Dotty Parker. Later on it was Fred Allen, you know, or Bob Hope.

What kind of a woman was she? Could you describe her at all?

Dorothy Parker was something of a fraud all her life. She was a charm girl. “Oh,” she'd say to a girl I'd introduced her to, “what a darling person you are.” And then she'd come up to me ten minutes later and hiss, “If you bring that girl around me once more I'll knock your goddamned brains in.”

This is what I wanted to get.