Estate of Marion Meade

Marion Meade (1934-2022) was a biographer and novelist. She wrote the biography Lonelyhearts: The Screwball World of Nathanael West and Eileen McKenney. Other subjects include Eleanor of Aquitaine, Madame Blavatsky, Dorothy Parker, Buster Keaton, and Woody Allen. Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties tells the story of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Zelda Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and Edna Ferber becoming writers in the Jazz Age.

She also wrote two novels set in medieval France, Stealing Heaven: The Love Story of Heloise and Abelard and Sybille.

Aside from her writing, she edited Dorothy Parker's collected works, The Portable Dorothy Parker, Parker's play “The Ladies of the Corridor,” and introduced Parker's Complete Poems.

Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?

In this lively, absorbing biography, Marion Meade illuminates both the charm and the dark side of Dorothy Parker, exploring her days of wicked wittiness at the Algonquin Round Table with the likes of Robert Benchley, George Kaufman, and Harold Ross, and in Hollywood with S. J. Perelman, William Faulkner, and Lillian Hellman. At the dazzling center of it all, Meade gives us the flamboyant, self-destructive, and brilliant Dorothy Parker.

(Penguin Books, March 1989)

Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase

An American icon, Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton is easily acknowledged as one of the greatest filmmakers in early cinema and beyond. His elaborate slapstick made audiences scream with laughter. But, his stone face hid an internal turmoil. In BUSTER KEATON: CUT TO THE CHASE, biographer Marion Meade seamlessly lays out the life and works of this comedy genius who lacked any formal education.

“Buster” made his name as a child of vaudeville, thrown around the stage by his father in a cartoon pantomime of very real abuse. The lessons he carried forward from that experience translated into some of the greatest silent films of all time. Keaton wrote, directed, performed, and edited dozens of features and shorts, including his masterpiece, The General. However, those early scars also led to decades of drinking and mistreatment of women. Keaton saw huge successes, Hollywood sex scandals, years of neglect from studios and audiences, and finally a shaky resurrection that assured his place in Hollywood’s film canon.

Meticulously researched, this book brings together four years of research and hundreds of interviews to paint a nuanced portrait of a compelling artist. No comedy fan or film buff should miss this insider story of the man behind the stone face.

(Open Road, April 2014)