F**king-A

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:34 AM -0800 1/16/03, Dave Wilton wrote:
>  >         From George Plimpton, _Truman Capote_ (1997), as
>>  excerpted at
>  > http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1297/plimpton/excerpt.html
>>  , Norman Mailer is reminiscing:
>>
>>          >>For example, there was Talullah Bankhead! For
>>  twenty years she'd been enjoying the coup her public
>>  relations man had given her when as the legend had it, she
>>  said to me, "Oh, you're the young man who doesn't know how to
>>  spell 'fuck.'" For those who are too young to know, it was
>>  because I had used "fug" in The Naked and the Dead. Of course
>>  we had never met.<<
>
>I have always heard this story told with Dorothy Parker as the protagonist.
>Roy Blount's foreword to Jesse Sheidlower's "The F-Word" attributes the
>comment to Parker.

Actually, the version I was trying to remember did feature Parker,
now that the two nominees have been presented.  For all I know,
though, the stories are both apocryphal:  no, Charley, I vusn't dere.

I'd just as soon it was Tallulah, though, even if the misspelling
with the single L preceding the geminate makes me suspicious about
the anecdote in question.  I've had a soft spot for her ever since my
late mother told me Tallulah made a pass at her when she--my mother,
not Tallulah--was working as a cigarette girl in N.Y. night clubs in
the 30's.

larry, wondering if Dorothy Parker made the quip but Mailer
remembered it as having been Tallulah because she was more his type
--