Lillian Hellman

Hellman, Lillian (1905–84), playwright. The New Orleans–born writer studied at New York University and Columbia, then took employment as a manuscript reader for Herman Shumlin and book reviewer before Shumlin produced her first play, the controversial The Children's Hour (1934), about two school teachers falsely accused of lesbianism. Hellman's labor drama, Days to Come (1936), was a quick failure, but her third play, The Little Foxes (1939), was a huge hit and is generally acknowledged to be her finest work. With the coming of World War II Hellman turned to current affairs, writing two timely (and popular) dramas, Watch on the Rhine (1941) and The Searching Wind (1944). Another Part of the Forest (1946) was a prequel to The Little Foxes and her Montserrat (1949) an adaptation of Emmanuel Robles's French drama about hostages who gave their lives to protect Simon Bolívar. Perhaps Hellman's most subtle, even Chekhovian, work was The Autumn Garden (1951), about some idlers at a summer resort who are forced to face the reality of their failures. Her translation of Jean Anouilh's version of the Joan of Arc story The Lark (1955) was a success, but her libretto for Candide (1956) was not. Hellman's final theatre efforts were the popular Toys in the Attic (1960) and the short‐lived My Mother, My Father and Me (1963). Her best writing has been characterized by a superb sense of theatre, taut construction, and acute personal observation of human behavior, often coupled with an attempt to probe major moral and political issues. Often a political activist, Hellman also wrote three controversial memoirs: An Unfinished Woman (1969), Pentimento (1973), and Scoundrel Time (1976). Biography: Lillian Hellman: The Image, The Woman, William Wright, 1986.

Lillian Florence Hellman (1905-1984), American playwright, wrote a series of powerful, realistic plays that made her one of America's major dramatists. She explored highly controversial themes, with many of her plays reflecting her outspoken political and social views.

Lillian Florence Hellman was born in New Orleans on June 20, 1906, of Jewish parentage. In 1910 her family moved to New York City, where she attended public schools. She studied at New York University (1923-1924) and Columbia University (1924). Her marriage to Arthur Kober in 1925 was dissolved in 1932.

She worked as a manuscript reader for Liveright Publishers before becoming main play reader for producer Herman Shumlin. In 1930, ready to drop her idea of being a writer, she was dissuaded by Dashiell Hammett, who became her lifelong mentor and partner.

Major Works Invited Controversy

After a "year and a half of stumbling stubbornness," Hellman finished The Children's Hour (1934), based on an actual incident in Scotland. The action of the play is triggered by a child's accusation of lesbianism against two teachers, which leads to one woman's suicide. The play reveals Hellman's sharp characterizations and explicit, moral comment on a theme considered dramatically untouchable at the time.

In Days to Come (1936), a play of family dissolution as well as of the struggle between union and management, Hellman's dramatic touch faltered. However, her next play, The Little Foxes (1939), ranks as one of the most powerful in American drama. Set in the South, it depicts a family almost completely engulfed by greed, avarice, and malice.

During World War II Hellman wrote two plays. Watch on the Rhine (1941), an anti-Nazi drama about an underground hero, received the New York Critics Circle Award. The Searching Wind (1944) championed anti-fascist activity and criticized the failure of influential Americans to halt the rise of Hitler and Mussolini. In Another Part of the Forest (1946), Hellman again portrayed the Hubbard family of The Little Foxes; she also directed the play. Autumn Garden (1951) lacked the usual ferocity of her dramas but was a touching and revealing insight into a Southern boardinghouse. The style of the play is sometimes compared to Anton Chekhov's work. Toys in the Attic (1960), a devastating portrait of possessive love set in New Orleans, won her another New York Critics Circle Award.

Work Outside of the Theater

Hellman demonstrated her versatility as an author with a witty book for the musical Candide (1956); adaptations of two plays, Montserrat (1949) and Jean Anouilh's The Lark (1956); and her departure from realism in the humorous play of Jewish family life, My Mother, My Father and Me (1963). She also edited The Letters of Anton Chekhov in 1955.

Hellman published three memoirs dealing with her career, personal relationships, and political activities (including her scathing criticism of the House Unamerican Activities Committee headed by Joseph McCarthy): An Unfinished Woman (1969), Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973), and Scoundrel Time (1976). There was much discussion at the time about whether the content of these memoirs was greatly enhanced by Hellman.

Hellman received honorary doctorates from several colleges and universities. Her theatrical awards included the New York Drama Critics Circle Award (1941 and 1960); a Gold Medal from the Academy of Arts and Letters for Distinguished Achievement in the Theatre (1964); and election to the Theatre Hall of Fame (1973). She also received the National Book Award in 1969 for An Unfinished Woman and a nomination in 1974 for Pentimento: A Book of Portraits.

Further Reading

For insights into Hellman's personal world, see Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir (1969), Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973), and Scoundrel Time (1976). Critical assessments of her writings can be found in Barnard Hewitt, Theatre U.S.A., 1668 to 1957 (1959); Allan Lewis, American Plays and Playwrights of the Contemporary Theatre (1965); Walter J. Meserve, ed., Discussions of Modern American Drama (1965); Jean Gould, Modern American Playwrights (1966); and John Gassner, Dramatic Soundings: Evaluations and Retractions (1968).

See also Mellen, Joan, Hellman and Hammett, Harper Collins, 1996, for a highly criticized account of the stormy relationship between these two talented writers.

For more information on Lillian Florence Hellman, visit Britannica.com.

(1905-1984)

1934	The Children's Hour. The playwright's first production creates a sensation due to its subject of two private school teachers falsely accused of lesbianism. The play establishes Hellman as a major dramatic talent, and the controversy over its failure to win the Pulitzer Prize helps prompt the creation of the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
1936	Days to Come. Hellman's second Broadway production depicts a strike's effect on a Midwestern family. A failure with the critics and at the box office, the play closes after a week.
1939	The Little Foxes. The playwright's most acclaimed work anatomizes the rapacious Hubbard clan of New Orleans at the turn of the century as they scramble for the means to prop up their declining fortunes, revealing rivalries and disloyalty in a lacerating power struggle. A "prequel," giving the Hubbards' earlier history, Another Part of the Forest, would appear in 1946.
1941	Watch on the Rhine. Of the eleven war plays on Broadway during the 1940-1941 season, Hellman's anti-Nazi play set in Washington, D.C., along with Sherwood's There Shall Be No Night, are the two successes.
1944	The Searching Wind. Hellman's play concerns an American ambassador and his family. Set in wartime Washington, it flashes back to the family's prewar life in Rome, Berlin, and Paris.
1946	Another Part of the Forest. In a "prequel" to The Little Foxes (1939), Hellman looks at the Hubbard clan twenty years before the action of the previous drama. Reception is mixed; some reviewers find it too melodramatic and strident.
1951	The Autumn Garden. Hellman produces a play about a group assembled at a summer resort who confront the reality of their lives. The drama is praised for its lifelike characterizations; one reviewer notes that Hellman has few peers in presenting "meanness, loneliness, or frustration" on stage.
1956	Candide. In one of the most notorious initial failures in Broadway history, this musical treatment of Voltaire's novel features remarkable artistic credentials, including Hellman's book, lyrics by poet Richard Wilbur, music by Leonard Bernstein, and direction by Tyrone Guthrie. Yet the play fails with audiences, lasting for only seventy-three performances. It would finally succeed in 1974, in Harold Prince's radically revised version.
1960	Toys in the Attic. Hellman's last theatrical success is a family drama about two spinster sisters' domination over their brother, whose proposed marriage tears the family apart in jealousy and repressed desire. The play earns the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.
1963	My Mother, My Father, and Me. The final play in Hellman's career is an adaptation of Burt Blechman's novel How Much? (1961), a comedy about a beatnik. It is universally panned by reviewers, one of whom calls it "dismally dull."
1969	An Unfinished Woman. The first volume of Hellman's memoirs appears and is instantly taken up by the women's movement. Later, many would question the veracity of Hellman's account.
1973	Pentimento. The second volume of Hellman's memoirs consists largely of recollections of interesting persons Hellman had encountered. One of them, a woman Hellman calls Julia, seems to be a fictional creation drawn from the biography of the psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner, who would later accuse Hellman of appropriating her life. This part of Pentimento is the source for the 1977 film Julia.
1976	Scoundrel Time. The third installment of Hellman's memoirs recounts the playwright's experiences with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Hellman's opposition to the Communist witch hunts of the 1950s mark her as a cultural hero, despite revelations by others of her support for Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.
1980	Maybe. The fourth in Hellman's series of memoirs in many ways resembles a novel, and its title suggests its speculative mode. The account presents Sarah Cameron, Hellman's friend, a character who assumes many guises that indicate the ambiguity in storytelling, memory, and the lives people create for themselves. Hellman includes conflicting reports of Sarah's whereabouts and events in her life; she reveals her vulnerability and feminism when she speaks of her "feminine hurts and feminine humiliations."

Quotes:

"It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour."

"Since when do you have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?"

"Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America."

"You lose your manners when you're poor."

"It's an indulgence to sit in a room and discuss your beliefs as if they were a juicy piece of gossip."

"They're fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don't listen to writers talking about writing or themselves."

See more famous quotes by Lillian Hellman

• Born: Jun 20, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana
• Died: Jun 30, 1984 in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
• Occupation: Writer, Actor
• Active: '30s-'40s, '60s-'70s
• Major Genres: Drama
• Career Highlights: Julia, Watch on the Rhine, Dead End
• First Major Screen Credit: The Dark Angel (1935)

Biography

Lillian Hellman was one of the more popular and influential playwrights of the '30s and '40s. Her dramas were often politically oriented or socially conscious, and frequently centered on taboo subjects such as lesbianism, as in The Children's Hour, or getting away with murder, as in Little Foxes. Later she became a screenwriter, and not only adapted a few of her own plays to film, but also the work of others such as her distinguished screen version of Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End. In the early '50s, Hellman was called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, but she refused to testify saying "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." As a result she was blacklisted. Later in life she began writing autobiographies. The first, An Unfinished Woman (1969) chronicled her long-time relationship with author Dashiell Hammett; the second Pentimento (1973) was a chronicle of her attempts to smuggle money into Nazi Germany to help out a struggling, victimized friend. Pentimento was later adapted into the film Julia (1977). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Julia Buy this Movie	The Chase Buy this Movie	Toys in the Attic Buy this Movie	The Children's Hour Buy this Movie
The North Star Buy this Movie	Watch on the Rhine Buy this Movie	The Little Foxes Buy this Movie	Dead End Buy this Movie

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