Lillian Hellman was born on June 30th, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana. She was born to Jewish parents Max Hellman and Julia Newhouse. Her father was a successful salesman, and her mother’s family had a small fortune in the banking industry. When Lillian was five years old her family moved to New York. Due to her father’s frequent traveling, Lillian spent half of the year in New York, where she attended public schools, and the other half of the year back in Louisiana at a boarding home run by her aunts. Hellman was an only child, but her headstrong, argumentative, and stubborn attitude was enough to keep her parents busy. In later years, she rebelled against her family, especially the wealthy relatives from her mother’s side. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman#Blacklist_and_aftermath) Hellman claims later in her memoirs that she took refuge in books during her childhood. It was said that Hellman had pawned a ring given to her on her fifteenth birthday by her uncle, Jake Newhouse, and used the money to buy herself several books. Feeling guilty, she confessed immediately after to her uncle what she had done, and he laughed and stated, “So you’ve got spirit after all. Most of them are made of sugar water.” Hellman later used her uncle’s words in her famous play The Little Foxes. (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/birthday/0620.html)
In 1922, Hellman began studying at the University of New York. After two years she went on to Columbia University, although Hellman never completed a degree. In 1925 she began reviewing books for the New York Herald Tribune. During this time Lillian Hellman and Arthur Kober, writer and press agent, got married, but only seven years later got divorced. In those years, Hellman got various jobs around New York such as reading scripts, and writing short stories, partly due to the fact that she was married to a writer for the New Yorker. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260435/Lillian-Hellman)
By the time of their divorce, Hellman was already intimately involved with famous American author Dashiell Hammett, who in earlier years convinced Hellman to continue pursuing her dreams as a writer, at a time she was considering giving it up. Hellman’s intimate relationship with Dashiell continued until his death in 1961. At one point Hammett told Hellman that she was the model for Nora Charles, a witty woman in one of his most famous books. He also told her that she was the model for many of his villainous women as well. In an interview in 1973 Hellman confessed that they had two periods of planning to be married.
In 1934, Hellman made her name known. After several years of coaching from Dashiell, Hellman wrote a controversial play about a lawsuit in Scotland involving a vicious little girl falsely accusing two of her teachers of having a lesbian affair. It was an immediate hit, although it was banned in many cities such as Boston, Chicago. Miss Hellman earned 125k from its first run, and a 50k movie contract from Samuel Goldwyn. By 1935, Hellman was one of the country’s highest paid writers. Meanwhile, Hellman was obsessively working on her next play; a play that would cement her career and become her most acclaimed work. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman#Blacklist_and_aftermath)
The Little Foxes was a play about a Southern family corrupted by money and power, and Hellman later admitted that the play helped her release much of the resentment towards her mother’s family. It was a success not only on the stage, but also on screen, which Miss Hellman also wrote. With her earnings she bought an estate and for thirteen years she lived there, and continued her writing, while maintaining an active social life. (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/birthday/0620.html)
Although Hellman refused to admit being a political person, her plays and other writings were often politically oriented or socially conscious. They were also frequently centered on subjects that were “untouched”, such as lesbianism, and getting away with murder. Because of Hellman’s involvement in liberal and leftist activities and organizations, she was widely attacked as a Communist. Then in early 1941 Hellman released an anti-Nazi play called Watch on the Rhine. One of the two successes out of the eleven was plays released on Broadway during the 1940-1941 season. After the release of this play, Hellman was criticized by the Communist press for supporting the Allies. (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260435/Lillian-Hellman) She just couldn’t win.
During the forties Hellman released two other plays, The Searching Wind and Another Part of the Forest. Then, when the fifties came around, Hellman was called to appear in front of the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) because of her relations with Dashiell Hammett, who was a known Communist Party affiliate. After refusing to give the names of people who supposedly had associations with the Communist Party she was blacklisted and risked imprisonment for contempt of Congress. She later wrote in a letter to HUAC and in it stated, “I will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” It is true that she had participated with Communists in many leftist causes, but despite rumor, Lillian Hellman was not a communist. She talked about her troubles with HUAC in her third memoir, titled Scoundrel Time. Hellman was applauded for her opposition to the “Communist witch hunts” of the 1950’s.
Unfortunately, because of Hellman’s blacklisting after the HUAC trials, she saw her income drop from one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year to virtually nothing. Hellman ended up selling her estate, and during the fifties began adapting works from other writers for the stage. It wasn’t until Hellman’s last theatrical success, titled Toys in the Attic, did her financial straits come to an end. This play was centered around family drama involving jealously and repressed desire. This play earned Hellman a New York Drama Critics Award. (Barlow)
During the sixties Hellman began developing a series of memoirs. Starting in 1969, Hellman released three memoirs starting with An Unfinished Woman, which leads into Pentimento: A Book of Portraits, and ends with Scoundrel Time. These memoirs discussed her career, her love life, her political activities, and other relationships. There was much discussion at the time about the validity of some of the content in these memoirs. Mary McCarthy was more than honest about her feelings about Hellman’s work when she made the comment, “every word she writes is a lie” on a PBS interview on national television. Hellman was more than just offended, which she proved to be true when she filed a lawsuit not only against Mary, but also against PBS and the interviewer, Dick Cavett. She sued for around two million dollars for “mental pain and anguish”. (http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthiday/-birthday/0620.html) The lawsuit was a success to neither woman.
Julia, a character in Hellman’s second memoir, was supposedly a woman Hellman had once smuggled 50,000 dollars to in order to bribe Nazi guards to free prisoners. In the late seventies Hellman turned down 500,000 dollars to movie rights to these memoirs, including the one involving the infamous lady named Julia. Her reasoning being that several people she had written about in her books were still living and she did not want them at risk of being hurt. Later she sold rights to the Julia story, which was made into a movie in 1977. Then Muriel Gardiner surfaced with accusations that Hellman’s Julia was an appropriation her life. Nothing came from these accusations. (Partnow)
Hellman’s tough and fierce, but intellectual and sometimes melodramatic style of writing constantly decorated stages and screens during the twentieth century. She is arguably the most successful professional woman playwright that has ever existed. She was a member of the American Academy of Arts, and she taught writing classes and the University of New York, as well as Yale, Harvard, and MIT. In 1964 the National Institute of Arts and Letters presented her with the Gold Medal for Drama, and in 1976 she was awarded the MacDowell Medal. She was elected to the Theatre Hall of Fame in 1973, and received a National Book Award for her first memoir. (Partnow) She was a truly remarkable and determined woman.
Works Cited
Barlow, Judith E., ed. Plays by American Women 1930-1960. New York: Applause Theatre Book Publishers, 2001.
"Lillian Hellman." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 25 Aug. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260435/Lillian-Hellman>.
“Lillian Hellman”. Wikipedia. 2009. Wikipedia the Free Encyclopedia. 25 Aug. 2009. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_Hellman#Blacklist_and_aftermath >.
Partnow, Elaine. The Female Dramatist. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1998.
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