At one time Dorothy Parker's office was a tiny, drab and dingy cubbyhole in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. As no one ever visited, she soon became rather lonely.

One day a tradesman arrived to paint a sign on Parker's office door. Instead of her name, she had him paint a single word: "GENTLEMEN"!

[Parker's apartment on West 57th Street was also very small, furnished with little more than a portable typewriter and her pet canary. All she needed, she once remarked, was space "to lay a hat and a few friends."]