Leigh's performance, at the center of almost every scene, shows us a woman in a world of men, who wore it as a badge of honor that she could outdrink and outtalk them. Using recordings of Parker's smoky voice, Leigh creates a low-pitched, ironic tone with a little cynicism and a lot of booze in it. When the film was premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, many viewers thought Leigh slurred a little too much; redubbing has made the dialogue easier to understand, and no less hung over.
Her relationship with Eddie, the husband, is seen here as a sad case: He was handsome and dashing, smiling and confident, and a wreck. Bad as Parker's own habits were, his were worse, and after the drugs took over she left him. Charles MacArthur, on the other hand, was a ladykiller (presumably until he met and married his true love, Helen Hayes). Unable to be faithful to Dorothy, he won her heart and then broke it.
These relationships, and her friendship with Benchley, are seen as being played out largely in public. For the Algonquin crowd, it was not enough to do: One had to be seen doing it, preferably with the Round Table looking on. The dining room worked for them as a saloon or pub works for some people, as a living room, an arena, a stage: All experience was reduced to one-liners, and in Parker's face you can see the pain lines growing, as she tries to hide her private grief with public bravado. A friend uneasily observes, "Dotty can't be suffering and still say all those funny things."
The New Yorker magazine was born, more or less, around the Round Table, and many of the regulars wrote for it, including Parker. Then talking movies required writers who could handle dialogue, and Parker joined many others in an exodus to Hollywood, where she spent her last decades in well-paid exile. One of Leigh's best scenes is the last one, in which she is asked by a reporter to supply her own epitaph. "What a morbid thing to ask a person!" she says, and then adds quietly: "You've just stolen my heart."
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