Lucy Barry Robe

I skimmed the last 1/3 of this; it became too repetitious. Robe relied heavily on quotes from books and news articles for her book. Much of the reportage would repeat stories about the same most famous women celebrity alcoholics: Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland...

Here are some quotes:
Judy Garland
P.152
After the California psychiatrist Departed, the Rigg's [a sanitarium in Stockbridge, MA] psychiatrist could not persuade Judy to move out of the Red Lion Inn and then to the sanitarium. Therefore, although she had "the most intensive therapy" she had ever experienced, according to Edwards, the star returned to the Inn every evening. There, liquor was available. There, she talked nightly on the telephone to California family, business associates - and to her California psychiatrist. There, against the Rigg's staff's medical advice, she took "a generous dose of barbiturates to fall asleep" every night.

Judy manipulated her treatment so that her California psychiatrist "won" the sad final round of this medical conflict. Barely two weeks after arriving, Judy suddenly left without her Rigg's psychiatrist's permission. She went home to California, to film "The Barclays on Broadway."

Maria Callas (opera singer and first wife of Aristotle Onassis)
P.161
As María increasingly waived her career to be with Onassis, she became noticeably dependant on pills. Stassinopoulis wrote that "by the time of her 'Norma' in Paris in 1964, she had to be tranquilized with pills and injections before she could go on stage. It is hardly surprising that as a result her appearances became even rarer. . ."

In 1968, when Onassis began openly courting Jackie Kennedy, Maria "began to find it impossible to sleep without pills," wrote Stassinopoulos. . .

In 1974 she overdosed again in New York on sleeping pills the night before a scheduled Carnegie Hall concert. The following year, Onassis died in a Paris hospital. Maria was in Palm Beach. "his death had struck her an almost immortal blow," wrote Stassinopoulos. "to exist in a world that did not contain him seemed pointless... Through the interminable days that followed, her only real action was reaching for one of the many bottles on her bedside table from more tranquilizers, more sleeping pills..."

Marion Davies
P.210
According to biographer Fred Lawrence Guiles in "Marion Davies," Marion's mother was unable "to convey in any meaningful way a feeling of love for her children. Sentiment embarrassed her and this was to bewilder little Marion, who was from infancy full of love and a need to be cuddled, touched, and reassured."

Dorothy Parker
P.315
John Keats described the way of life in "You Might as Well Live": Dorothy Parker "would wake at mid-morning and at noon meet friends for lunch. The working hours of many of the Algonquin group were elastic and nocturnal," particularly the newspaper columnists and drama critics, whose offices "did not care where or how they spent their time," as long as they met their deadlines.

"The whole point of their lives seemed to be to have fun, to be clever, to know where the best bartenders were, to be knowledgeable about the city, to know all the latest catch words... Fashions and fads, to go to all the first nights and... The Big Three football games... And to be satirical and blase, and to do as little work as possible."

Apparently no one saw evidence that Dorothy Parker worked - she would put a towel over her typewriter to hide writing and progress from visitors at her apartment.

She reportedly began drinking heavily after her first suicide attempt in 1923. Keats said that initially she did not do much of her drinking in public, because sometimes she already had enough when she arrived at a party. "Everyone thought well of her for this, because the ability to hold one's liquor was also a criterion of the twenties," wrote Keats. The heyday of the Round Table preceded Dorothy Parker's literary peak, which began in 1929. She was The Shining female star in the group of successful literary Peers, many of whom also drank heavily. The Round Table lifestyle set a pattern which she followed for the rest of her life; she became a world-famous writer while maintaining her disease of alcoholism.… (meer)