Lillian
Hellman
was born in New
Orleans on
20th June, 1905.
After graduating from New
York University she
worked as a publisher's reader.
Hellman's first play, The
Children's Hour
(1934), which tells of the havoc caused by a schoolgirl's invention
of a lesbian relationship, was an immediate success. Hellman held
left-wing political views and was active in the campaign against the
growth of fascism in Europe. She joined other literary figures such
as Dashiell Hammett, Clifford
Odets, Arthur
Miller, John
Dos Passos and Ernest
Hemingway in supporting the Republicans during the Spanish
Civil War.
In 1939 Hellman had her second major success with her play about a
Southern family, the Hubbards. The Little
Foxes was followed by two anti-Nazi plays, Watch
on the Rhine (1941) and The Searching
Wind (1944). Her next play, Another
Part of the Forest (1946) once again dealt with the Hubbard
family.
As a result of her well-known political views, in 1951 Hellman and
her partner, Dashiell Hammett, were called
to appear before the House
of Un-American Activities Committee. Hellman agreed
to talk about her own involvement with radical groups, but was unwilling
to give names of her comrades and as a result was blacklisted. Hammett,
as well as being blacklisted, was sent to prison for six months.
Hellman wrote two more plays, Autumn
Gardens (1951) and Toys
in the Attic (1960), and three
volumes of autobiography, An
Unfinished Woman (1969), Pentimento
(1973) and Scoundrel
Time (1976). Lillian
Hellman died at Martha's Vineyard,
on 30th June, 1984.
(1) J. Edgar Hoover, letter
concerning a proposed FBI investigation into Lillian Hellman's political
activities (20th October, 1943)
You are reminded that this subject
has a national reputation through her writings in which she has opposed
nazism and fascism. Under no circumstances should it be known that
this bureau is conducting an investigation of her. It should be handled
in a most discreet manner and under no circumstances should it be
assigned to the local police or some other agency.
(2)
When Lillian Hellman appeared before the House
Committee on Un-American Activities in 1951 she willing to talk
about her own political past but refused to testify against others.
To hurt innocent people whom
I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and
indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience
to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion
that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place
in any political group.
(3) William Wright, New
York Times (3rd December, 1996)
When in 1934 the success of
her first play, The Children's Hour, brought celebrity at the
age of 28, she immediately put her fame to work for leftist causes
and remained, throughout her life, a bellicose figure in the nation's
political arena. This commitment culminated in her courageous defiance
of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1952. As a dramatist,
author, screenwriter and activist, Hellman was a commanding presence
in America's cultural life for half a century.
Most women as plain as Hellman would have slunk off into a comfortable
marriage or sublimated their amorous side altogether. But she defied
her facial bad luck as resolutely as she defied the House committee.
She had a celebrated and glamorous affair with Dashiell Hammett -
and affairs as well with other handsome and distinguished men like
the publisher Ralph Ingersoll and the diplomat John Melby. And this
was a field from which she never retired. According to people present,
she discreetly propositioned a male guest at a dinner the night before
she died of cardiac arrest at age 79.
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