Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle
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| Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle | |
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| Directed by | Alan Rudolph |
| Produced by | Robert Altman |
| Written by | Alan Rudolph Randy Sue Coburn |
| Starring | Jennifer Jason Leigh Campbell Scott Matthew Broderick Andrew McCarthy |
| Music by | Mark Isham |
| Distributed by | Fine Line Features |
| Release date(s) | 7 September 1994 (premiere) |
| Running time | 126 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle was a film released in 1994. It was written and directed by Alan Rudolph and starred Jennifer Jason Leigh as the writer Dorothy Parker.
The film revolves around Mrs. Parker's life, career, and romances. Mrs. Parker (1893-1967) was a writer, critic, wit and champion for social justice.
Mrs. Parker was an original member of the Algonquin Round Table, a group of writers, actors and critics that met almost daily from 1919-1929 at Manhattan's Algonquin Hotel.
Many respected actors appear in very brief roles in the film. Actress Martha Plimpton discussed this in her appearance on the Jon Favreau documentary program Dinner for Five; she stated that much dialogue was improvised in the style of the real-life characters actors were playing, but that many of those characters were not integral to the plot. As such many of the actors had much larger parts that were edited down to nearly nothing. The following is a list of the actors and the real-life personalities they portrayed:
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[edit] Cast
[edit] The Vicious Circle
- Jennifer Jason Leigh played Dorothy Parker
- Campbell Scott played Robert Benchley
- Martha Plimpton played Jane Grant
- Sam Robards played Harold Ross
- Lili Taylor played Edna Ferber
- James LeGros played Deems Taylor
- Nick Cassavetes played Robert Sherwood
- David Thornton played George S. Kaufman
- Tom McGowan played Alexander Woollcott
- Chip Zien played Franklin Pierce Adams
- Gary Basaraba played Heywood Broun
- Jane Adams played Ruth Hale
- Matt Malloy played Marc Connelly
- Rebecca Miller played Neysa McMein
- Jake Johannsen played John Peter Toohey
- David Gow played Donald Ogden Stewart
- Leni Parker played Beatrice Kaufman
- J.M. Henry played Harpo Marx
[edit] Husbands, Wives, Lovers, Friends of the Round Table
- Jennifer Beals played Gertrude Benchley
- Peter Benchley played Frank Crowninshield
- Matthew Broderick played Charles MacArthur
- Keith Carradine played Will Rogers
- Amelia Campbell played Mary Brandon Sherwood
- Jon Favreau played Elmer Rice
- Peter Gallagher played Alan Campbell
- Malcolm Gets played F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Heather Graham played Mary Kennedy Taylor
- Andrew McCarthy played Eddie Parker
- Gisèle Rousseau played Polly Adler
[edit] Fictional Characters
- Stephen Baldwin played Roger Spalding
- Gwyneth Paltrow played Paula Hunt
- Wallace Shawn played Horatio Byrd
Peter Benchley who played editor Frank Crowninshield is the grandson of Robert Benchley, the humorist who once worked underneath Crowninshield. Actor Wallace Shawn is the son of William Shawn, the longtime editor of The New Yorker.
The film was a critical but not a commercial success. Some complained that Leigh mumbled her way through the film and was difficult to understand.
[edit] Awards
The film was a Official Selection of Cannes Film Festival (Palme d'Or nominee).
Leigh won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.
