Notes

Abbreviations

BCASC	Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collection, Brooklyn College Library
CCOH	Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection
HRC	Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
LOC	Library of Congress
RBML	Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, NY
SML	Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University
SUL	M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries
TM	Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University Libraries
TTP-CLS: 11–0-8–108	Telford Taylor Papers, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University, NY
VCU	Vassar College Library
WHS	Wisconsin Historical Society

Introduction

1 Carl Rollyson, Lillian Hellman, Her Legend and Her Legacy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Deborah Martinson, Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels (New York: Counterpoint, 2005).

2 This information has been assembled with the generous help of Richard Workman, archivist at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

3 Annabel Davis-Goff, interview by author, September 2, 2010.

4 LH to Diane Johnson, September 13, 1978, box 62, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TK.

5 Carol Kolmerten, “Writing Modern Women’s Lives,” American Quarterly 50:4 (1998): 849–59.

6 LH to Donald Erickson, May 23, 1973, box 124, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

7 See especially William Wright, Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986) and Joan Mellen, Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett (New York: Harper Collins, 1996).

8 Pete Seeger is a case in point. See Daniel Wakin, “This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced Stalin over a Decade Ago,” New York Times (September 1, 2007).

9 Robert Newman, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), Appendix I.

10 Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination (New York: Knopf, 1975), 306, 309.

11 David Denby, “Escape Artist: The Case for Joan Crawford,” New Yorker (January 3, 2011), 65.

12 Charles McGrath, “Muriel Spark: Playing God” New York Times Book Review (April 25, 2010).

1. Old-Fashioned American Traditions

1 U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1900 Census of Population and Housing, Cincinnati Ward 2, Hamilton, Ohio, roll T623 1274, p. 3A.

2 Wedding guestbook, box 119, Folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

3 Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

4 LH to Diane Johnson, September 13, 1982, box 62, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

5 Bertram Wallace Korn, The Early Jews of New Orleans (Waltham, MA: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969), 22.

6 Julian Beck Feibelman, “A Social and Economic Study of the New Orleans Jewish Community” (doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1941), 134.

7 Ibid., 3. See also Leo Shpall, The Jews in Louisiana (New Orleans: Steeg Printing and Publishing Co., 1936), and Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir, 1st Back Bay paperback ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1999).

8 Feibelman, “A Social and Economic Study,” 134, 3.

9 Korn, The Early Jews of New Orleans, 228.

10 James Kern Feibleman, The Way of a Man: An Autobiography (New York: Horizon Press, 1969), 66.

11 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 24, 1977): 54.

12 Leonard Reissman, “The New Orleans Jewish Community,” in Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale Palsson, eds., Jews in the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 288.

13 Alfred O. Hero Jr., The Southerner and World Affairs (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 481.

14 Eli Evans, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)

15 Ronald Bern, The Legacy (New York: Mason Charter, 1975), ch. 8.

16 W. J. Cash, The Mind of the South (1941; repr., New York: Vintage, 1991), 332–33.

17 Feibelman, “A Social and Economic Study,” 134.

18 Lillian Hellman, “East and West: The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South by Eli Evans,” New York Times Book Review (November 11, 1973), 421.

19 Ibid.

20 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 2,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, p. 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

21 Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 12.

22 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, p. 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

23 Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 15.

24 Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

25 Lillian Hellman, The Little Foxes, in The Collected Plays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 145.

26 Ibid., 188.

27 Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 32. See also Peter Adam, “Unfinished Woman,” in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson, University of Mississippi Press, 1986), 230.

28 Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 15.

29 Ibid., 13.

30 Ibid., 3–4.

31 Ibid., 5.

32 Lillian Hellman, diary, c. 1923, box 97, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

2. A Tough Broad

1 Lillian Hellman, untitled and unpaginated typescript in response to an advertising agency’s request to prepare five one-hundred-word comments on women’s dress and style, spring 1963, box 40, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

2 Ann Scott, “After Suffrage: Southern Women in the Twenties,” The Journal of Southern History 30 (August 1943): 298–318.

3 Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 46–47.

4 Susan Ware, “Unlocking the Porter-Dewson Partnership,” in Sarah Alpern et al., The Challenge of Feminist Biography (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 63

5 Ibid. See also Susan Cahn, Sexual Reckonings: Southern Girls in a Troubling Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

6 Otto Weininger, Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005).

7 Lillian Hellman, diaries, November 28, 1922, box 97, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

8 Lillian Hellman Kober, “Perberty in Los Angeles,” American Spectator 3 (January 1934): 4.

9 Lillian Hellman Kober, “I Call Her Mama,” American Spectator 2 (September 1933): 2.

10 Lillian Hellman, diaries, April 22, 1924, box 97, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

11 An Unfinished Woman, 33. “I have often asked myself whether I understood the damage that so loveless an arrangement made on my future,” she wrote in An Unfinished Woman, 32. These questions are raised as well in Maybe (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), the last of her autobiographical volumes.

12 Ibid., 36.

13 Ibid., 41

14 Muriel Gardiner, Code Name “Mary”: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 33.

15 LH to “Baby,” c. early 1930, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

16 LH to Arthur Kober, c. June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

17 LH to “Dear Babe,” c. summer 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

18 An Unfinished Woman, 32; Pentimento, 43.

19 Lewis M. Dabney, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 271.

20 Margaret Harriman, “Miss Lily of New Orleans,” New Yorker (November 8, 1941): 22.

21 Elia Kazan, Elia Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), 324.

22 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 24, 1977): 55.

23 Lucius Beebe, “An Adult’s Hour Is Miss Hellman’s Next Effort,” New York Herald Tribune (December 13, 1936): 2.

24 Harriman, “Miss Lily of New Orleans,” 22.

25 Fern Maja, “A Clearing in the Forest,” New York Post (March 6, 1960), M2.

26 Ernestine Carter, “Lillian Hellman,” Sunday Times (October 19, 1969), 55.

27 LH to John Melby, December 30, 1945, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

28 LH to William Abrahams, box 21, folder 5, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

29 LH to “Dear Babe,” c. fall 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

30 LH to Arthur Kober, June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

31 LH to “Dear Babe,” c. fall 1934, Box 1, Folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

32 Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009. See also Diane Johnson, “Obsessed,” Vanity Fair (May 1985): 79. For a different version of the story, see Peter Feibleman, Lilly: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman (New York: William Morrow, 1988), 168.

33 Johnson, “Obsessed,” 79.

34 David Denby, “Escape Artist: The Case for Joan Crawford,” New Yorker (January 3, 2011): 65–69.

35 Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

36 Patricia Meyer Spacks, The Female Imagination (New York: Knopf, 1975), 306.

37 This story is pieced together from Hellman, Pentimento, 13–14, and Richard Layman, Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), 166–67.

38 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55.

39 Lillian Hellman, Typescript: “I was speaking of Hannah Weinstein,” box 41, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Patricia Neal, interview by author, August 26, 2010.

40 Lillian Hellman, typescript, box 77, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

41 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55.

42 LH to John Melby, spring 1946, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

43 LH to John Melby, c. August 1946, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

44 LH to “Maggie darling,” c. 1947, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

45 LH to Maggie Kober, May 10, 1950 and May 22, 1950, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

46 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2009.

47 LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, August 14, 1941, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

48 LH to “Dear Mr. Kober,” November 12, 1941, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

49 LH to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kober, telegram, May 29, 1943, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

50 LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, December 18, 1947, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

51 LH to “Arthur Baby Darling,” August 4, 1948, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

52 Ibid.; LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, June 13, 1941, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

53 LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, December 31, 1947, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

54 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Arthur Kober’s Funeral,” no date, box 42, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

55 Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 21, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

56 Dashiell Hammett to LH, February 12, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

57 Dashiell Hammett to LH, November 25, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

58 Dashiell Hammett to “Dearest Lily,” September 13, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

59 Dashiell Hammett to “Dearest Lily,” November 5, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

60 Dashiell Hammett to “Dear Lilishka,” October 26, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

61 Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 29, 1943, October 11, 1943, November 16, 1943, December 10, 1943, December 22, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

62 Dashiell Hammett to Maggie Kober, March 10, 1945, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

63 Dashiell Hammett to “Lily dear,” March 1, 1945, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL. He signed off, “Love and kisses and things,” instead of the usual “much love darling.” Ten days later, Hammett wrote once again to complain of her silence (March 10, 1945); again on March 13, he wrote, “I am doing my best not to attribute it to anything.” Finally, on March 15, he received two letters from her (one dated March 5), and told her “it was awful nice being on your mailing list again.”

64 LH to John Melby, April 17, 1946, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

65 Robert P. Newman, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), ch. 12.

66 Letters in Max Hellman file, box 66, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

67 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988), ch. 1.

68 Patricia Neal, interview by author, December 15, 2005.

69 Reminiscences of Helen Van dernoot Rosen (1994), on page 44, in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

70 Appointment book, 1960, box 78, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

71 Appointment book, 1960.

72 Johnson, “Obsessed,” 79–81, 116–19.

73 Most of this comes from a typescript written by Blair Clark, box 71, folder 11, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

74 Richard Locke and Wendy Nicholson, interview by author, June 4, 2007.

75 Blair Clark, “Typescript: Lillian Hellman,” box 71, folder 11, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

76 Ibid., 4.

77 Richard Locke and Wendy Nicholson, interview by author, June 4, 2007.

78 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

79 Stanley Hart, “Lillian Hellman and Others,” Sewanee Review 107 (Summer 1999): 409.

80 Ibid., 401

81 Ibid., 418

82 Ibid., 408.

83 Edmund Wilson, The Sixties, ed. Lewis Dabney (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993), 547.

84 Norman Podhoretz, Making It (New York: Random House, 1967), 117, 118.

85 John Hersey, “Lillian Hellman, Rebel” New Republic (September 18, 1976): 26

86 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

87 Ibid.

88 Richard Locke and Wendy Nicholson, interview by author, June 4, 2007.

89 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

90 Shirley Hazzard to William Abrahams, February 14, 1970, folder 36, box 77, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

91 LH to Robby Lantz, no date, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

92 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

93 Personal communication with Anne Navasky, July 2010.

94 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, July 21, 2010.

95 Maureen Howard, interview by author, January 27, 2010.

96 John Hersey to Victor Pritchett, January 23, 1986, box 133, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Hersey noted that Dorothy Pritchett, Barbara Hersey, and Annabel Nichols were exceptions.

97 Elizabeth Hardwick, “The Little Foxes Revived,” New York Review of Books (December 21, 1967): 4.

98 Bobbie Handman, interview by author, May 31, 2005.

99 Exchange of letters and telegrams can be found in box 77, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

100 Bobbie Handman, interview by author, May 31, 2005.

101 LH and Dina Weinstein correspondence, February 23, 1981, May 11, 1981, and April 29, 1981, box 91, “Dina Weinstein (1981–82)” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

102 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2009.

103 LH to Ann Tiffany, January 29, 1973, box 3, “January to October 1973” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. (New York, NY) Records, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

104 LH to Lois Fritsch, no date, box 122, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection. Also, LH to William Alfred, May 26, 1961, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn, NY.

105 Dabney, Edmund Wilson, p. 506. Note that Dabney remembers this apartment as being on 5th Avenue. In fact, it was on Park Avenue.

106 LH to William Alfred, March 29, 1971, box 51, folder 12; LH to William Alfred, January 5, 1972, box 51, folder 26; William Alfred to Richard de Combray, March 28, 1978, box 53, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, SUL.

107 LH to Arthur Thornhill, April 12, 1976, box 3, “January to December, 1976” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML; LH to Don Congdon, early February 1982, box 47, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also reply, Alice Wexler to LH, February 9, 1982, box 47, folder 10; Margaret Mills to LH, June 16, 1982, box 45, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

108 Lillian Hellman, memo, May 24, 1978, box 41, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

109 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

110 Howard Kissel, “Lillian Hellman: Survival and the McCarthy Era,” Women’s Wear Daily (November 5, 1976): 28; Austin Pendleton interview by author for Bernstein story.

111 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript Lists: Europe Trip, April 1950,” box 102, folder 6; Lillian Hellman, “European Trip 1951,” box 102, folder 7; Lillian Hellman, “European Trip, 1968,” box 102, folder 8; Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

112 Leonard Bernstein to LH, c. 1956, box 4, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

113 According to Peter Feibleman, after Christina Stead died, Hellman anonymously contributed $10,000 to Stead’s estate to benefit Stead’s surviving father. Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

114 Felicia Geffen to LH, July 8, 1963, box 45, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

115 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

116 Quoted in Jack Kroll, “Hollywood’s New Heroines,” Newsweek (October 10, 1977): 79

117 Richard Stern to William Abrahams, July 22, 1984, box 71, folder 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

118 Robby Lantz to LH, September 29, 1965, box 29, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

119 LH to “Dearest Billy,” September 22, 1970 box 50, folder 36, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

3. A Serious Playwright

1 William Alfred, “Typescript of Alfred’s Introduction to Hellman’s Harvard Lectures,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

2 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 6A, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

3 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 2,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 2–3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

4 Lillian Hellman, Four Plays by Lillian Hellman (New York: Modern Library, 1942), vii.

5 The film, produced by Irving Thalberg and released in 1932, starred Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore. It won an Academy Award for Best Picture.

6 Lillian Hellman, “Light Reading Good of Its Kind,” New York Herald Tribune Books (November 28, 1926); Lillian Hellman, “A Moral Immorality,” New York Herald Tribune Books (December 4, 1927).

7 Lillian Hellman, “Futile Souls Adrift on a Yacht,” New York Herald Tribune Books (June 19, 1927).

8 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

9 LH interview with Harry Gilroy, “The Bigger the Lie,” New York Times (December 14, 1952): sec. 2, 3. Hellman was never happy with Dear Queen and only halfheartedly tried to get it produced. “We are absolutely cold on the damn play and I doubt whether we do much good by it,” she wrote to Arthur Kober after tinkering with it for years. LH to Arthur Kober, June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

10 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” 10.

11 Gilbert W. Gabriel, “ ‘The Children’s Hour,’” New York American (November 21, 1934): 13.

12 Ibid.

13 Robert Benchley, “Good News,” New Yorker (December 1, 1934): 34.

14 George Jean Nathan, “The Theatre,” Vanity Fair (February 1935): 37.

15 Brooks Atkinson, “Children’s Hour,” New York Times (December 2, 1934): sec. 10, 1.

16 Brooks Atkinson, “ ‘The Children’s Hour,’ Being a Tragedy of Life in a Girls’ Boarding House,” New York Times (November 21, 1934): 23.

17 Percy Hammond, “The Theatres,” New York Herald Tribune (December 9, 1934): 5.

18 Robert Garland, “ ‘Children’s Hour’: A Moving Tragedy,” New York World Telegram (November 21, 1934): 16; Benchley, “Good News,” 34.

19 Typescript: Yiddish-to-English translation of critique by N. Solovey, Daily Forward (November 24, 1934), box 50, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

20 Percy Hammond, “ ‘The Children’s Hour’: A Good Play About a Verboten Subject,” New York Herald Tribune (November 21, 1934): 16.

21 LH to Mr. H. J. Whigham, January 2, 1935, box 50, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also the controversy over the title of The Children’s Hour, New York Times (November 17, 1935): 3.

22 LH interview with Harry Gilroy, “The Bigger the Lie,” New York Times (December 14, 1952): sec. 2, 3, 4.

23 Ibid., 4.

24 “Children’s Hour Banned in Boston,” New York Times (December 15, 1935): 42.

25 The New York Times followed the dispute closely. See “American Play Banned,” New York Times (March 12, 1935): 24; “Fight Boston Play Ban,” New York Times (December 16, 1935): 22; “Boston Sued on Play Ban,” New York Times (December 27, 1935): 15; “Children’s Hour Ban Extended,” New York Times (December 18, 1935): 33.

26 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: The Children’s Hour,” no date, box 50, folder 36, 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

27 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Days to Come,” no date, box 50, folder 36, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

28 Joseph Wood Krutch, “Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant,” Nation (December 26, 1936): 769; Richard Watts Jr., “Class War,” New York Herald Tribune (December 16, 1936): 22.

29 Lucius Beebe, “An Adult’s Hour Is Miss Hellman’s Next Effort,” New York Herald Tribune (December 13, 1936): sec. 7, 2.

30 Terry Curtis Fox, “Early Work,” Village Voice (November 6, 1978): 127. Fox continued, in remarks that evoked Hellman’s battle with HUAC: “All people, Hellman tells us, have their failings: they are to be understood. But when those failings spill out onto other people, they become something which is no longer private and which cannot be overlooked. Hellman does not mind cowardice, but she will never countenance betrayal.” For the circumstances of the play’s revival, and for Hellman’s efforts to extend the production, see correspondence from November and December 1978 in the papers of Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University New York, NY.

31 Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 160–61; this section first appeared in the New York Review of Books, “Flipping for a Diamond” (March 30, 1973).

32 Lillian Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” Paris Review 33 (Winter/Spring 1965): 91; LH to “Dearest Art,” box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

33 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Theatre,” box 31, folder 16, 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

34 Hellman, Pentimento, 163.

35 The quotation is from Tish Dace’s review of a 1978 revival of Days to Come. See “Hellman: Beyond the Topical,” November 2, 1978, box 52, folder 9, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

36 Beebe, “An Adult’s Hour,” 2.

37 Krutch, “Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant,” 769.

38 Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 230.

39 Ibid.

40 John Gassner, The Theatre in Our Times: A Survey of the Men, Materials and Movements in Modern Theatre (New York: Crown, 1954), 11

41 Jacob H. Adler, Lillian Hellman (Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn and Company, 1969), 6.

42 Ibid.

43 Lucius Beebe, “Stage Asides: Miss Hellman Talks of Her Latest Play, The Little Foxes,” New York Herald Tribune (March 12, 1939): sec. 6, 1.

44 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” 2–3.

45 Ibid., 3.

46 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Smith College,” April 15, 1955, box 43, folder 1, 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

47 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” 3.

48 Hellman, “Typescript: Smith College,” 6; Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Smith/MIT,” April 15, 18, 1955; Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore,” April 6, 1950, box 43, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

49 Hellman, Four Plays, viii

50 Robert van Gelder, “Of Lillian Hellman,” New York Times (April 20, 1941): X1.

51 Hellman, Pentimento, 199.

52 LH to Arthur, late 1930s, box 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

53 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Wellesley Address,” March 22, 1951, box 43, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

54 Hellman, Four Plays, xiii.

55 On her gift for drawing character, see Adler, Lillian Hellman, 19.

56 Hellman, Four Plays, xiii.

57 Hellman, Pentimento, 193.

58 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 89.

59 LH to “Dearest Art,” no date, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

60 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 83.

61 Beebe, “An Adult’s Hour,” 2.

62 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 68.

63 Hellman, Four Plays, x.

64 Lillian Hellman, typescript, “The Children’s Hour,” 1.

65 Lillian Hellman, “The Time of the Foxes,” New York Times (October 22, 1967): sec. 2, 1.

66 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 83.

67 Ibid.

68 Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore Address,” 6, 7.

69 Reminiscences of Harold Clurman (1979), on page 131 in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

70 Hellman, Pentimento, 202–3.

71 Hellman quoted in Gretchen Cryer, “Where Are the Women Playwrights?” New York Times (May 20, 1973): 129.

72 Jerome Weidman, “Lillian Hellman Reflects Upon the Changing Theater,” Dramatists Guild Quarterly 7 (Winter 1970): 22.

73 Walter Kerr, “Whose Play Is It?” New York Times (October 12, 1969): SM66.

74 Remiscences of Harold Clurman (1979), on page 132, CCOH.

75 Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009; and Pendleton to author, personal communication, August 14, 2011.

76 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” 10–11.

77 Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009.

78 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 72; Hellman, Pentimento, 162–63.

79 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 68.

80 Hellman, “The Time of the Foxes,” sec. 2, 1.

81 Miller, Timebends, 231.

82 Weidman, “Lillian Hellman Reflects,” 20.

83 This idea first put forward by Edith J. R. Isaacs, “Lillian Hellman, A Playwright on the March,” Theatre Arts 28 (January 1944): 20.

84 LH to Arthur Kober, 1935, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

85 Beebe, “An Adult’s Hour,” 2.

86 Joseph Wood Krutch, “Unpleasant Play,” Nation (February 25, 1939): 244; James Eastman, “Image of American Destiny: The Little Foxes,” Players 48 (1973): 70–73.

87 Beebe, “Stage Asides,” in Jackson Bryer, Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 7.

88 Transcript from interviews by Gary Waldhorn and Robert Murray, “Yale Reports,” June 5, 1966, box 30, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

89 Lillian Hellman, “Theatre Pictures: Excerpts from a Theatrical Journal, Remembered in Subacid Tone,” Esquire (August 1973): 64.

90 Lillian Hellman, The Collected Plays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 188.

91 Atkinson, “Children’s Hour,” sec. 10, p. 1.

92 John Mason Brown, “Tallulah Bankhead and ‘The Little Foxes,’” New York Post (March 11, 1939): 8. Brown credited Bankhead with “creating the kind of villainess even the Grand Guignol has never been able to match.”

93 Brooks Atkinson, “Tallulah Bankhead appearing in Lillian Hellman’s Drama of the South, ‘The Little Foxes,’” New York Times (February 16, 1939): 16.

94 Joseph Wood Krutch, American Drama Since 1918: An Informal History (New York: G. Braziller, 1967), 132

95 Richard Watts, “The Little Foxes,” New York Herald Tribune (February 16, 1939): 14.

96 Stark Young, “Watch on the Rhine,” New Republic (April 14, 1941): 498.

97 Hellman, Four Plays, x–xi.

98 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 3,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

99 The critic Barrett Clark agrees with Hellman on this point: “Melodrama is melodramatic not because it is violent or striking but because it uses violence for violence’ sake.” See Barrett H. Clark, “Lillian Hellman,” The English Journal 33 (December 1944): 524. Thanks to Emma Hulse for making this connection.

100 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 70; Richard Stern, “An Interview with Lillian Hellman,” May 21, 1958, box 1, folder 23, Richard Stern Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Regenstein Library, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL.

101 Hellman, Pentimento, 180. See also Lillian Hellman, “Back of Those Foxes,” New York Times (February 26, 1939): sec. 9, pp. 1, 2, and Richard Lockridge, “Lillian Hellman’s ‘The Little Foxes’ Opens at the National Theater,” New York Sun (February 16, 1939): 12. Lockridge described the plot as touching melodrama now and again, but “touches it effectively.”

102 Thanks to Anita Chapman for pointing out that The Little Foxes took on new life after the arrest of Bernard Madoff for constructing a financial Ponzi scheme in 2008.

103 John Gassner, The Theatre in Our Times: A Survey of the Men, Materials, and Movements in the Modern Theatre (New York: Crown, 1954), 78.

104 Adler, Lillian Hellman, 17.

105 Richard Watts Jr. “The Theater: Miss Hellman’s Play,” New York Herald Tribune (February 26, 1939): sec. 10, 1.

106 Lillian Hellman, “Author Jabs the Critic,” New York Times (December 15, 1946): 3.

107 Walter Kerr, “Voltaire’s Candide as a Light Opera,” New York Herald Tribune (December 26, 1956): sec. 4, 1.

108 Margaret Harriman, “Miss Lilly of New Orleans,” New Yorker (November 8, 1941): 22.

109 Beebe, “Stage Aside,” in Bryer, ed., Conversations, 10.

110 George Jean Nathan, “Playwrights in Petticoats,” American Mercury (June 1941): 750.

111 Harriman, “Miss Lilly of New Orleans,” 22.

4. Politics Without Fear

1 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

2 This story is drawn from Nancy Lynn Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars (New York: Knopf, 1982), Christopher Dudley Wheaton, “A History of the Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942): The Writers’ Quest for a Freely Negotiated Basic Agreement” (doctoral thesis, University of Southern California, January 1974), and Brian Neve, Film and Politics in America: A Social Tradition (London: Routledge, 1992).

3 Reminiscences of Albert Hackett (1958), on page 26 in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

4 Wheaton, “A History of the Screen Writers’ Guild (1920–1942),” 82.

5 LH to Arthur Kober, June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.

6 Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 280.

7 On the history of the Popular Front, see especially Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1996), 10–12.

8 Hammett to Mary Hammett, September 11, 1936, in Richard Layman, ed., Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921–1960 (Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2001), 107.

9 Ibid., 111.

10 Richard Layman, Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), 171.

11 Betsy Blair, The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris (New York: Knopf, 2003), 195–96.

12 Patrick McGilligan and Ken Mate, “Alvah Bessie,” in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999), 97.

13 Lawson interview in Dan Georgakas and Lenny Rubenstein, The Cineaste Interviews on the Art and Politics of Cinema (Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1983), 197.

14 A. Scott Berg, Goldwyn: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1989), 267

15 This story is fully explored in Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars. See also Ian Hamilton, Writers in Hollywood: 1915–1951 (New York: Carroll and Graf, 1990), chs. 7 and 12.

16 Dan Katz, All Together Different: Yiddish Socialists, Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots of Multiculturalism (New York: New York University Press, 2011).

17 Patrick McGilligan, “Maurice Rapf,” in McGilligan and Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades, 508.

18 This interpretation follows Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 99–103.

19 Philip Dunne interviewed by Douglas Bell, October 29, 1989, 142, Oral History Collection, Margaret Herrick Papers, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA.

20 Ibid.

21 Schwartz, The Hollywood Writers’ Wars, 172. The successful negotiating team included Dore Schary, Boris Ingster, Mary McCall Jr., Charlie Brackett, Ralph Block, and Sheridan Gibney.

22 Reminiscences of Albert Hackett (1958), on page 26, CCOH.

23 Ibid., 27.

24 Patrick McGilligan and Ken Mate, “Allen Boretz,” in McGilligan and Buhle, eds., Tender Comrades, 115.

25 Dalton Trumbo, Time of the Toad: A Study of Inquisition in America (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 7.

26 See especially Gerald Horne, The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), ch. 6.

27 Most elements of the act were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1957. See Yates v. United States, 354 U.S. 298.

28 Larry Ceplair and Steven England, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 257.

29 Hammett to Mary Hammett, September 11, 1936, in Layman, ed., Selected Letters, 109–10.

30 Hellman incorrectly places this showing in March 1938 and recalls it with pleasure in An Unfinished Woman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), 67.

31 Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 82. On Katz, see Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh, Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 1996), 47–48. Katz, probably a lover of Hellman’s, was executed by the Czech Communist regime after the Second World War.

32 Hellman, An Unfinished Woman, 82.

33 Lillian Hellman, “A Bleached Lady,” New Masses (October 11, 1938): 21.

34 Lillian Hellman, “Day in Spain,” New Republic (April 13, 1938): 298.

35 Ibid.

36 Lillian Hellman, “The Word Noble,” The Village Fair Almanac June 28–30, 1938, box 2, folder, 1938, Millen Brand Papers, 1906–1980, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University New York, NY.

37 Lillian Hellman, “Day in Spain,” 298.

38 D. D. Guttenplan, American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 113–14.

39 Lillian Hellman, “The Word Noble.”

40 Lillian Hellman, “The Lyons Den,” New York Post (July 22, 1938): 12. Clip courtesy of Justin Jackson.

41 Edward Barsky, “Typescript: Address of Dr. Edward Barsky: Hotel Astor,” March 22, 1945, Edward Barsky Collection, box 2, folder 37, 1, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University Libraries, New York, NY.

42 Lillian Hellman to Alvah Bessie, July 14, 1952, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Records, ALBA 019, box 12, folder 5, TL.

43 This story is in Chapter 10.

44 Deborah Martinson, Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels (New York: Counterpoint, 2005), 131–32, attributes Hellman’s political commitment and awakening to her fall 1937 trip to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Spain.

45 Milton Meltzer, “Hollywood Does Right by ‘The Little Foxes,’” Sunday Worker (August 24, 1941): 7.

46 Memo submitted by Louis Budenz, no date, Investigative Name Files, box 24, “Lillian Hellman” folder, National Archives and Records Administration, RG233, Records of the House of Representatives House Un-American Activities Committee.

47 Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman, draft, April 28, 1952, 1–2, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1950–57” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, part I, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. The statement was drawn up before Hellman’s 1952 HUAC hearing but was never publicly released.

48 “A Statement by American Progressives,” New Masses (April 3, 1938): 32.

49 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 11, 2009.

50 On the complex motives behind the positions taken by intellectuals to Soviet atrocities, see Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to Soviet Russia, 1921–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

51 Quoted in Guttenplan, American Radical, 108.

52 FBI report, “Lillian Hellman,” June 18, 1941, box 119, folder 1, 1–2, Lillian Hellman Collection. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

53 Sam Jaffe interviewed by Barbara Hall, April 25, 1991, 264–65, Oral History Collection, Margaret Herrick Papers.

54 “Sees Finnish Aid Imperiling Peace,” New York Times (January 21, 1940): 27

55 Hellman’s fullest version of the story is in “An Evening with Lillian Hellman,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 27, no. 7 (April 1974): 19; a slightly different version is in Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 183.

56 Hellman, Pentimento, 184.

57 Typescript, “Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman,” draft, April 14, 1952, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1950–57,” folder, 2. Joseph Rauh Papers, LOC.

58 This story comes from Roy Hoopes, Ralph Ingersoll: A Biography (New York: Atheneum, 1985), 5.

59 Ibid., 401

60 Lillian Hellman, “The Little Men in Philadelphia,” PM (June 25, 1940): 6.

61 Several sets of these files are now located in the archives. The first set collected by Peter Benjaminson is now in box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. The second, collected by Robert Newman, was also donated to Harry Ransom Center. The William Miller Abrahams Papers, Stanford University Libraries, also includes some originals. They differ in minor ways.

62 Hellman, Pentimento, 186.

63 Alvah Bessie, “Watch on the Rhine,” New Masses (April 15, 1941): 26; Ralph Warner, “Watch on the Rhine: Poignant Drama of Anti-Fascist Struggle,” Daily Worker (April 4, 1941): 7.

64 Ibid., 195.

65 These names culled from records of the U.S. House of Representatives, House Un-American Activities Committee, Master Name Index, box 291, NARA, RG233.

66 Memo from special agent in charge (SAC) to director, FBI, December 19, 1951, box 4, folder 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

67 Martin Bauml Duberman, Paul Robeson (New York: Knopf, 1988), ch. 12.

68 This event was sponsored by the women’s division of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee at the Hotel Commodore on December 14, 1943. Apparently a thousand guests lauded her for her aid to the loyalists. FBI report, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

69 FBI files, March 23, 1945, box 4, folder 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

70 FBI report, August 18, 1944, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

71 FBI memo, October 7, 1944, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

72 FBI report, October 14, 1944, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

73 Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” box 103, folder 3, 2–3, 4, 10, 11, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

74 Ibid., 3.

75 Ibid., 10, 11.

76 Lillian Hellman, “I Meet the Front-Line Russians,” Collier’s (March 31, 1945): 68; Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” 6.

77 Raisa Orlova, Memoirs (New York: Random House, 1983), 117.

78 Hellman, “I Meet the Front-Line Russians,” 71. For Hellman’s behavior at the front, see Raisa Orlova, Memoirs, 116–17.

79 Lillian Hellman, “I Meet the Front-Line Russians,” 71. In An Unfinished Woman, 163, the gift is described as “a cigarette lighter made from a gun barrel.”

80 FBI memos, January 2, 1945, February 9, 1945, March 27, 1945, May 17, 1945. Copies of these files are located in box 74, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

81 SAC, New York, to director, FBI, March 17, 1947, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

5. An American Jew

1 On issues of identity, see Judith Smith, Visions of Belonging (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Matthew Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post-Civil Rights America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and especially David Hollinger, Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

2 Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1982), 251.

3 Edmund Wilson, The Thirties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 313.

4 Mary McCarthy, How I Grew (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 45.

5 Ibid., 215. Such examples of the silence of Jews about their backgrounds are not unusual. See, for example, Reminiscences of Kitty Carlisle Hart (November 15, 1978), on page 407, in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

6 Dashiell Hammett to LH, no date, box 75, folder 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

7 Dashiell Hammett to LH, April 5, 1944, box 77, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

8 Dashiell Hammett to LH, February 25, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

9 Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 8, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

10 Dashiell Hammett to LH, July 24, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

11 LH to “Darling Arthur, darling Maggie,” no date, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

12 LH to “Arthur Baby Darling,” August 4, 1948, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

13 Carl Rollyson, Lillian Hellman, Her Legend and Her Legacy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 418

14 Sylvia Drake, “Lillian Hellman As Herself,” in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 29.

15 Mary McCarthy, Intellectual Memoir: New York, 1936–1938 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 60–61.

16 “Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews,” Contemporary Jewish Record 7 (February, 1944): 15. Trilling’s position echoed that of his African-American contemporaries Ralph Ellison and Lorraine Hansberry, who also preferred not to be so identified with their race as to foster expectations that they could or would write only as black people. Thanks to Judith Smith for pointing this out to me.

17 Lionel Trilling in ibid., 15–16. For more on Trilling’s Jewishness, see Alexander Bloom, Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 22.

18 Muriel Rukeyser in ibid., 6.

19 Delmore Schwartz in ibid., 13.

20 Muriel Rukeyser in ibid., 6.

21 Lillian Hellman, An Unfinished Woman (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 5.

22 Lillian Hellman, “The Lyons Den,” New York Post (July 22, 1938).

23 “Miss Hellman and Miss Ferber discuss Jewish Author’s Plight,” New York Herald Tribune (January 10, 1940): 19.

24 Robert Kall, “Equality Magazine is True Crusader for Jewish Rights,” Jewish Examiner (April 28, 1939): 1.

25 Judith Smith, private communication with author; and Smith, Visions of Belonging, 28–33.

26 FBI confidential report NY 100-25858, undated, 16, 17.

27 Lillian Hellman, The North Star: A Motion Picture About Some Russian People (New York: Viking Press, 1943), 75.

28 Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

29 Ibid., 6.

30 Ibid., 9, 10, 12.

31 Ibid., 12. (Also in the Russian Diaries she noted on January 26 on her way to Cairo, “BOAC manager resented Jews in Palestine,” 12.)

32 These names are culled from the long lists that LH provided to her lawyer, Joseph Rauh, in 1952 just before her HUAC appearance. Untitled list, part 1, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1950–57” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, Part I, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

33 It does not excuse Hellman to say that she was not alone. Paul Robeson, who is said to have met Feffer in Moscow just before his death, also refused to condemn the Soviet regime.

34 Alfred Kazin, New York Jew (New York: Knopf, 1978), 194.

35 Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 155–56.

36 Bloom, Prodigal Sons, 141, 143; Martin Peretz, interview by author, June 22, 2009.

37 Norman Podhoretz, Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsburg, Lionel and Diana Trilling. Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer (New York: Free Press, 1999), 124.

38 Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988).

39 Victor Navasky, Naming Names (New York: Penguin, 1981), 109–11.

40 Ibid., 109.

41 Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope, 198.

42 LH to William Alfred, February 19, 1959, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library.

43 On the question of self-hatred among Jews, see Susan Glenn, “The Vogue of Jewish Self-Hatred in Post-World War II America,” Jewish Social Studies 12 (Spring 2006): 95–136.

44 Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952). This interpretation follows Lawrence Graver, An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), ch. 1.

45 Meyer Levin, The Obsession (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973) 35.

46 Stephen J. Whitfield, In Search of Jewish American Culture (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1999), 173.

47 Saul Bellow, Letters, ed. Benjamin Taylor (New York: Viking, 2010), 196. Thanks to Eugene Goodheart for calling these letters to my attention.

48 Levin, The Obsession, 73. See also 102.

49 Ibid., 65

50 Levin, The Obsession, 72–74. See also Ralph Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank: Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).

51 Levin, The Obsession, 72.

52 This is the argument of, among others, Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank.

53 Kermit Bloomgarden to investors, May 16, 1958, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Statement from Pinto, Winokur and Pagano, Accountants, June 30, 1970, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also box 52, folder 10. The $25,000 figure is my calculation based on the one half of one percent investment that LH made.

54 LH to William Alfred, February 19, 1959, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, BCASC.

55 Ibid.

56 LH to “Dear Joe,” January 22, 1974, box 72, folder 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

57 Quoted from American Masters, “The Lives of Lillian Hellman,” production of PBS, 1998.

58 Martin Peretz, interview by author, June 22, 2009.

59 Podhoretz, Ex-Friends, 124.

60 Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 38–39

61 Ibid., 83.

62 Sidney Hook, “Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time,” Encounter 48 (February 1977): 86.

63 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 24, 1977): 54.

64 Hellman, “East and West: The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South,” New York Times Book Review (November 11, 1973): 421.

65 Hellman, Pentimento, 196.

66 Glenn, “The Vogue of Jewish Self-Hatred,” 95–136.

6. The Writer as Moralist

1 “An Evening with Lillian Hellman,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 27 (April 1974): 19.

2 Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 152.

3 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” Paris Review 33 (Winter/Spring, 1965): 84.

4 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript Prepared for Circle in the Square Talk,” February 8, 1953, box 43, folder 2, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

5 Lillian Hellman, The Collected Plays (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 275.

6 Stark Young, “Watch on the Rhine,” New Republic (April 14, 1941): 499.

7 Wolcott Gibbs, “This Is It,” New Yorker (April 12, 1941): 32.

8 Young, “Watch on the Rhine,” 499.

9 Brooks Atkinson, “Lillian Hellman’s ‘Watch on the Rhine’ Acted with Paul Lukas in the Leading Part,” New York Times (April 2, 1941): 26.

10 Brooks Atkinson, “Hellman’s ‘Watch on the Rhine,’” New York Times (April 13, 1941): sec. 9, 1.

11 George Jean Nathan, “Playwrights in Petticoats,” American Mercury (June, 1941): 752.

12 Morris Frumin to LH, April 5, 1942, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine/Business Correspondence,” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

13 Richard Watts Jr., “The Theaters,” New York Herald Tribune (April 2, 1941): 20.

14 Ralph Warner, “ ‘Watch on the Rhine’ Poignant Drama of Anti Fascist Struggle,” Daily Worker (April 4, 1941): 7; Walter Bernstein, Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000), 138–39.

15 Warner, “Watch on the Rhine,” 7.

16 Albert Maltz, “What Shall We Ask of Writers?” New Masses (February 1946), 19. See also the discussion of this issue in Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism (New York: Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., 1961), 387.

17 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore,” April 6, 1950, box 43, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

18 Dan Georgakas, “The Revisionist Releases of North Star,” Cineaste 22 (April 1996): 46.

19 Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” box 103, folders 1 and 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

20 Theodore Strauss, “Of Lillian Hellman: A Lady of Principle,” New York Times (August 29, 1943): X5.

21 Theodore Strauss, “The Author’s Case: Post Premiere Cogitation of Lillian Hellman on ‘The North Star,’” New York Times (December 19, 1943): X5.

22 Mary McCarthy, “A Filmy Vision of the War,” Town and Country (January 1944): 72.

23 Ted Strauss, “The Author’s Case,” New York Times (December 19, 1943): X5.

24 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 84.

25 Dashiell Hammett to LH, March 21, 1944, and February 9, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

26 Dashiell Hammett to LH, March 10, 1944, box 77, folder 7, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

27 Ibid.

28 Dashiell Hammett to LH, March 15, 1944, box 77, folder 7, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

29 Dashiell Hammett to LH, April 17, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

30 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 84.

31 Hellman, The Searching Wind, in Collected Plays, 337.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid., 334–35.

34 Hellman, The Little Foxes, in Collected Plays, 188.

35 Kappo Phelan, “The Searching Wind,” Commonweal 40 (April 28, 1944): 40.

36 Howard Barnes, “The Searching Wind,” New York Herald Tribune (April 13, 1944): 16.

37 Lewis Nichols, “ ‘The Searching Wind’” New York Times (April 23, 1944): sec. 2, 1.

38 “Hellman’s New Play,” Washington Times Herald (April 21, 1944): 27.

39 Wolcott Gibbs, “Miss Hellman Nods,” New Yorker (April 22, 1944): 42.

40 Ralph Warner, “The New Lillian Hellman Play,” Daily Worker (April 17, 1944).

41 Ralph Warner, “On Broadway,” Daily Worker (April 27, 1944): 8.

42 Burton Rascoe, “Has Miss Hellman Disappointed the Party?” New York World-Telegram (April 22, 1944): 27.

43 Ibid.

44 Stark Young, “Behind the Beyond,” New Republic (May 1, 1944): 604.

45 Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 85

46 Sam Sillen, “Lillian Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest,” Daily Worker (November 25, 1946): 11.

47 Brooks Atkinson, “The Play in Review,” New York Times (November 21, 1946): 42.

48 John Mason Brown, “And Cauldron Bubble,” Saturday Review 29 (December 14, 1946): 21, 23

49 Kappo Phelan, “Another Part of the Forest,” Commonweal 45 (December 6, 1946): 202.

50 Joseph Wood Krutch, “Drama,” Nation 163 (December 7, 1946): 671.

51 John Chapman, “Another Part of the Forest Makes The Little Foxes a Mere Warmup,” New York Daily News (November 21, 1946): 67.

52 LH to Arthur Kober, c. 1935, box 1, folder 2, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

53 Fred Gardner, “An Interview with Lillian Hellman,” in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 119.

54 Richard Watts Jr., “Miss Hellman’s New Play is Fascinating Drama,” New York Post (November 21, 1946): 40.

55 Joseph Wood Krutch, “Drama,” Nation (December 7, 1946): 671.

56 John Chapman, “Another Part of the Forest,” 67.

57 Jacob Adler, Lillian Hellman (Austin, TX: Steck-Vaughn Company, 1969), 42

58 Richard Watts, “Lillian Hellman’s New Play is Fascinating Drama,” 40.

59 Millie Barringer, “Lillian Hellman Standing in the Minefields,” New Orleans Review (Spring 1988): 64.

60 Stephanie de Pue, “Lillian Hellman: She Never Turns Down an Adventure,” in Bryer, ed., Conversations, 186.

61 Kappo Phelan, “Another Part of the Forest,” 201–2.

62 Hardwick, “The Little Foxes Revived,” New York Review of Books (December 21, 1967): 4.

63 Lillian Hellman, “An Interview with Tito,” New York Star (November 8, 1948): 1, 8. Additional pieces in this series appeared on November 4, 5, 7, 9, and 10, 1948.

64 “The Theater: New Play in Manhattan,” Time (November 7, 1949): 37; “‘Mont-serrat’” Adapted from the French of Emmanuel Robles by Lillian Hellman,” New York Times (October 31, 1949): 25; Howard Taubman, “Lillian Hellman Play Revived at the Gate,” New York Times (January 9, 1961): 17.

65 Hellman, Pentimento, 198.

66 “The Autumn Garden,” Commonweal 53 (April 6, 1951): 645.

67 Robert Coleman, “Autumn Garden Harps on Depressing Theme,” Daily Mirror (March 8, 1951): 32.

68 “The First Team Takes Over,” New Yorker (March 17, 1971): 52.

69 John Beaufort, “Openings on Broadway,” Christian Science Monitor (March 17, 1951): 6.

70 Harold Clurman, “Lillian Hellman’s Garden,” New Republic (March 26, 1951): 21–22.

71 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Connecticut College,” January 9, 1952, box 43, folder 1, 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

72 Ibid., 2.

73 Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore.”

74 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Smith/MIT,” April 15, 18, 1955, box 43, folder 1, 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

75 Lillian Hellman, handwritten note on notecard, box 43, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

76 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No 2,” 4.

77 Eric Bentley, “Hellman’s Indignation,” New Republic (January 5, 1953): 31.

78 Hellman, Pentimento, 202.

79 Quoted in Stewart H. Benedict, “Anouilh in America,” Modern Language Journal 45 (December 1961): 342.

80 Lillian Hellman, undated/untitled typescript (probably an early draft of her introduction to The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov), box 43, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

81 Lillian Hellman, ed., The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov (New York Farrar, Straus and Company, 1955), ix.

82 Ibid., xi.

83 Ibid., x.

84 Lillian Hellman, undated early typescript of notes toward an introduction to the letters of Anton Chekhov, box 43, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

85 Robert Lethbridge, “Introduction,” Emile Zola, Germinal (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943), vii.

86 Richard G. Stern, “Lillian Hellman on Her Plays,” Contact 3 (1959): 119.

87 Lillian Hellman, typescript: draft of Candide: “The Inquisition, Part One,” box 9, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

88 Quoted in Arthur Gelb, “Lillian Hellman Has Play Ready,” New York Times (November 9, 1959): 35.

89 Weidman, “Lillian Hellman Reflects upon the Changing Theater,” Dramatists Guild Quarterly 7 (Winter 1970): 22.

90 Mary McCarthy, “The Reform of Dr. Pangloss,” New Republic (December 17, 1956): 30.

91 Hellman, Toys in the Attic in Collected Plays, 758.

92 Jacob Adler, “Miss Hellman’s Two Sisters,” Educational Theatre Journal 15 (May 1963): 117; Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009, confirms this judgment.

93 Walter Kerr, “It’s Gone About as Far as It Can Go,” Los Angeles Times (April 21, 1963): N29.

94 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” 2.

95 Hellman, “Typescript: Connecticut College,” 1.

96 Irving Drutman, “Hellman: A Stranger in the Theater?” New York Times (February 27, 1966): 11.

97 Lillian Hellman, undated note in preparation of publication of The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov.

98 Transcript from interviews by Gary Waldhorn and Robert Murray, “Yale Reports,” June 5, 1966, box 30, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

99 Gelb, “Lillian Hellman Has Play Ready,” 35.

100 Gretchen Cryer, “Where Are the Women Playwrights?” New York Times (May 20, 1973): 129.

101 Lillian Hellman, typescript with handwritten corrections of work that later appeared in Pentimento, no date, box 31, folder 16, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

102 Marilyn Berger, “Profile, Lillian Hellman,” in Bryer, ed., Conversations, 267.

103 Waldhorn and Murray, “Yale Reports.”

104 Thomas Meehan, “Q: Miss Hellman, What’s Wrong with Broadway? A: It’s a Bore,” in Bryer, ed., Conversations, 45–46.

105 Lillian Hellman. “Typescript: Swarthmore.”

106 Gardner, “An Interview with Lillian Hellman,” 115.

107 Stern, “Lillian Hellman on Her Plays,” 119.

108 Adler, “Miss Hellman’s Two Sisters,” 117

109 Walter Kerr, “The Theater of Say It! Show It! What Is It?” New York Times (September 1, 1968): 10.

110 Lillian Hellman, “Scotch on the Rocks,” New York Review of Books (October 17, 1963): 6.

111 Drutman, “Hellman: A Stranger in the Theater?” 11.

112 Hardwick, “The Little Foxes Revived,” 4.

113 “Preserve us all, when friendship tires like this,” wrote Penelope Gilliatt in response. See Penelope Gilliatt, “Lark Pie,” New York Review of Books (February 1, 1968): 9. For other examples of this exchange, see Edmund Wilson, “An open letter to Mike Nichols,” New York Review of Books (January 4, 1968); Richard Poirier, “To the Editor,” New York Review of Books (January 18, 1968); Felicia Montealegre, “Raising Hellman,” New York Review of Books (January 18, 1968).

7. A Self-Made Woman

1 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

2 Ibid.

3 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

4 Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 164–65.

5 Lucius Beebe, “An Adult’s Hour is Miss Hellman’s Next Effort,” New York Herald Tribune (December 13, 1936): 2.

6 LH to Arthur Kober, no date, box 73, folder 2, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

7 She paid off the mortgage in January 1942.

8 Stanley Isaacs to LH, March 2, 1945, box 66, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. The initial rent on the apartment was $4,000 a month, a hefty sum in 1945 and one that the Office of Price Administration initially contested (Irving Schwartzkopf to Office of Price Administration, September 11, 1945, box 66 folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC).

9 LH to Rabbi Feibelman, November 13, 1941, and Julian Feibelman to LH, November 5, 1941, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

10 LH to Jack Warner, March 9, 1943, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

11 This and the following quotes are from Jack Warner to LH, March 12, 1943, and LH to Jack Warner, March 24, 1943, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

12 LH to Audio Subscriptions, Inc., July 19, 1942, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine/Correspondence and Statements” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

13 LH to Bennett Cerf, July 5, 1944, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine/Correspondence and Statements” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

14 LH to Hal Keith, August 27, 1946, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine/Correspondence and Statements” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

15 LH to Bennett Cerf, November 8, 1943, “Watch on the Rhine/Correspondence and Statements” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

16 LH to Mr. Jelinek, July 12, 1947, “Watch on the Rhine/Correspondence and Statements” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

17 William Abrahams, notes, box 77, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

18 Lillian Hellman, schedule of securities, December 31, 1944, box 103, folder 9, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

19 Dashiell Hammett to LH, April 5, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL. See also Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 8, 1944, box 77, folder 8 and Dashiell Hammett to Nancy Bragdon, June 4, 1944, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

20 Edith Kean to LH, March 24, 1951, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine (Tax matters, 1951)” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

21 Copy of the ad from the New York Times, August 1951, box 65, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

22 Katherine Brown to LH, August 23, 1951, box 53, folder 52, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Letters that follow are September 1, 1951, and October 12, 1951, box 53, folder 52, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

23 LH to Losey, February 5, 1953, box 5, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Losey apparently held no grudge. Twenty years later, he asked Hellman to write a script from Conrad’s The Secret Sharer. Hellman was intrigued but ultimately refused. Joe Losey to LH, June 30, 1972, and LH to Joseph Losey, July 18, 1972, box 3, “June–November, 1972” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. (New York, NY) Records, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

24 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

25 Letters between LH and Arthur Kober, box 71, folders 2–9, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

26 Letters from LH to Lois Fritsch, typed or handwritten on stationery from the Eden Hotel-Roma or the Hotel Dorchester in London, undated, box 122, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

27 Ibid.

28 LH to Lois Fritsch from Eden Hotel-Roma, undated, box 122, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

29 LH to Lois Fritsch from the Dorchester, London, undated, box 122, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

30 Hellman, Pentimento, 200.

31 Jan Van Loewen to LH, March 1953, box 72, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

32 LH to Kermit Bloomgarden, February 26, 1954, box 72, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

33 LH to Jean Anouilh, April 13, 1954, April 23, 1954, and May 10, 1954, box 72, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

34 Kay Brown to Jean Anouilh, May 12, 1954, and Jean Anouilh to Kay Brown, May 19, 1954, box 72, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

35 Jan Van Loewen to Kay Brown, December 13, 1955, and Kay Brown to Jan Van Loewen, December 15, 1955, box 72, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

36 Stewart Benedict, “Anouilh in America,” Modern Language Journal 45 (December 1961): 342.

37 Jan Van Loewen to LH, January 18, 1974, box 72, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

38 Maurice Peress interview with Gordon Davidson, August 17, 2010, unpublished, Los Angeles, CA. I am grateful to Maurice Peress for providing this material and the insights that follow from it.

39 Maurice Peress, interview by author, August 19, 2010.

40 LH to Robby Lantz, February 8, 1966, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

41 LH to Leonard Bernstein, November 22, 1971, box 122, folder 16, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

42 Selma Wolfman to Arthur Richenthal, December 13, 1962, box 70, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

43 These claims are in box 68, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

44 Hellman’s secretary detailed the history of these insurance company cancellations and refusals over a five-year period to her lawyer, Oscar Bernstein, concluding, “Since December 15, 1962, Kermit Bloomgarden’s agent, an agent from Arthur Richenthal and a third agent have all tried to get a policy but without success.” Selma Wolfman to Oscar Bernstein, May 17, 1963, box 70, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

45 Philip Stern to LH, May 31, 1963, box 70, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

46 LH to Calvin Siegel, February 27, 1964, box 70, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

47 LH to Kurtis Sameth Hill, Inc., July 29, 1968, box 70, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

48 Draft typescript, “Deposition by Lillian Hellman, June 1962”; O’Dwyer and Bernstein to Mrs. Josephine Marshall, March 19, 1963; box 56, unfiled materials, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

49 LH to Ronald Bernstien, August 29, 1969, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

50 Donald Condon to Norman Swallow, May 10, 1978, Hellman/Hammett Estate Files, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

51 LH to Oscar Bernstein, January 14, 1965, box 54, “Hammett Estate” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

52 LH to Oscar Bernstein, May 24, 1965, box 54, “Hammett Estate” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

53 Hellman, Pentimento, 258.

54 Lillian Hellman, “Comments,” spring 1963, box 40, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. These were frivolous short pieces that smacked of selling one’s soul for money.

55 Selma Wolfman to “Dear Mr. Lantz,” October 28, 1963, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

56 LH to Robby Lantz, January 20, 1964, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

57 LH to Robby Lantz, February 12, 1964, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

58 LH to Robby Lantz, November 6, 1963, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

59 Robby Lantz to Caskie Stinnett, August 7, 1963, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

60 Don Congdon to LH, June 13, 1977, and LH to Don Congdon, June 15, 1977, box 3, “Feb-June, 1977” folder; Heather Hirson to Don Congdon, November 16, 1977, box 3, “July-Dec, 1977” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

61 LH to Don Congdon, June 16, 1971, box 51, folder 12, Lillian Hellman Collection. She used the phrase again in LH to Don Congdon, August 17, 1971, box 3, “June-Nov, 1971” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

62 Don Congdon to Viera Dinkova, October 29, 1971, box 48, “Lillian Hellman, ’71” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

63 Patricia Naggiar to LH, July 19, 1977, box 3, “July-December” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

64 Rita Wade to Ephraim London, February 9, 1976, and Ephraim London to Rita Wade, February 10, 1976, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

65 Nancy Troland to LH, January 17, 1977, and Don Congdon to LH, November 23, 1976, box 52, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

66 Don Congdon to Nancy Troland, January 21, 1977, box 52, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

67 Don Congdon to Antonia Handler Chayes, March 4, 1977, uncatalogued papers, “Hellman: Hammett Estate, 1977” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

68 Don Congdon to Flora Roberts, December 4, 1973, box 48, “Hellman/Hammett Jan-June” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

69 Don Congdon to LH, with handwritten LH note, May 13, 1977, box 3, “Feb-June, 1977” folder, and Don Congdon to Ruzica Vlaskalin, June 14, 1977, uncatalogued papers, “Hellman: Hammett Estate, 1977” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

70 Don Congdon to Helen Harvey, September 15, 1976, box 49, unfiled papers, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

71 This went on until her death. See Robby Lantz to LH, March 6, 1984, box 72, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

72 Don Congdon to LH, December 17, 1974, box 3, “Feb-Nov, 1974” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

73 Don Congdon to LH, October 26, 1977, box 3, “July-Dec, 1977” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

74 Exchange of letters with Vicky Wilson of Alfred Knopf, December 1980, box 72, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

75 LH to Don Congdon, April 5, 1977, and Don Congdon to LH, April 11, 1977, box 3, “Feb-June, 1977” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

76 LH to Don Congdon, January 19, 1976, Don Congdon to LH, January 26, 1976, box 3, “Jan-Dec, 1976” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

77 Robby Lantz to Lillian Hellman, June 29, 1971, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

78 LH to Robby Lantz, July 15, 1971, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

79 LH to Donald Oresman, July 16, 1974, box 3, “July to December, 1974” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records.

80 LH to Don Congdon, August 16, 1977. See also exchange of letters with Congdon over a contract with ICM, August 2, 1977, August 5, 1977, and August 12, 1977, box 3, “July-December, 1977” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML.

81 Don Congdon to LH, September 23, 1983, box 52, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

82 Robby Lantz to LH, January 9, 1984, and February 6, 1984, box 72, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

83 LH to Robby Lantz, July 7, 1969, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

84 For example, see LH to Lantz, July 15, 1971, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

85 LH to Robby Lantz, June 11, 1964, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

86 LH to Robby Lantz, February 8, 1966, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

87 LH to Herman Shumlin, August 13 and 15, 1969, box 73, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

88 Donald Oresman to Jack Klein, November 11, 1977, box 52, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

89 LH to Donald Oresman, December 28, 1978, box 52, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

90 Donald Oresman to Lillian Hellman, January 17, 1979, box 52, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

91 In New York lingo, that meant a twenty-four-hour doorman, an on-site superintendent, a handyman, elevator operators, and janitorial service.

92 The offer she turned down was from Douglas Elliman. She bought the house in 1944 for $48,000.

93 Theodore Zimmerman to LH, May 23, 1969, box 66, folder 8. See also letters and memos from LH to Zimmerman, May 29, 1969, September 17, 1969, November 6, 1969, box 66, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

94 LH to Joyce Hartman, August 20, 1969, box 66, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

95 LH to Joan Zimmerman, October 13, 1970, box 66, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

96 LH to Theodore Zimmerman, October 6, 1972, box 66, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

97 LH to Paul O’Dwyer, May 8, 1973; see also letters of October 3, 1973, October 12, 1973, October 17, 1973, January 14, 1974, box 66, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

98 Hellman closed on apartment 10A on June 23, 1970, and the move, supervised by Mrs. Loftus, took place on July 25–27. Hellman returned from the Vineyard to the completed apartment in September.

99 LH to William Michael, December 14, 1970, box 66, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

100 LH to Mildred Loftus, August 10, 1970, box 66, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

101 Ibid.

102 LH to Selma Wolfman, handwritten note, 1958, box 68, folder 4, and LH to Mr. Barton, November 8, 1961, box 68, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

103 Lillian Hellman, typescript, “Things to Do,” April 10, 1973, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

104 LH to Miss Jovic, April 6, 1979, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

105 Rosemary Mahoney, A Likely Story: One Summer with Lillian Hellman (New York: Doubleday, 1998).

106 Per author conversation with Rose Styron, who tells of walking toward Hellman’s Martha’s Vineyard home one afternoon and turning back in embarrassment after she heard Hellman loudly berating her helper.

107 LH to “Dear Amy,” June 8, 1980, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

108 Ming Hu to LH, September 29, 1980, November 25, 1980, December 25, 1980, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

109 LH to Mercedes Tello, December 31, 1980, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

110 LH to Nell Mohn, May 16, 1980, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

111 LH to “Whom it may concern,” October 6, 1980, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

112 Typescript, untitled statements, April 8, 1981, and April 10, 1981, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

113 Letter (name changed to protect the writer) to Rita Wade, May 21, 1981, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

114 LH to “Linda,” September 21, 1981, box 67, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

115 LH to Paul O’Dwyer, July 5, 1972, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

116 Nancy Bragdon to Stanley Isaacs, June 25, 1946, box 87, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

117 Arthur Cowan to LH, December 23, 1957, box 89, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

118 Florence Newhouse to LH, May 27, 1960, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

119 LH to Florence Newhouse, June 13, 1960, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

120 LH to Paul O’Dwyer, July 5, 1972, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

121 Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

122 Florence Newhouse to LH, c. 1968, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

123 LH to Paul O’Dwyer, December 6, 1973, box 90, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

124 LH to Paul O’Dwyer, July 5, 1972; see also O’Dwyer to LH, June 27, 1972, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

125 LH to Donald Oresman, May 1, 1979, box 52, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection.

126 Jack Klein, Lillian Hellman estate statements, box 29, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

8. A Known Communist

1 Winston Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace,” March 5, 1946, Fulton, Missouri.

2 Harry Truman, “‘Word Has Just Been Received’: Truman Speaks on the Railroad Strike,” May 24, 1946, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5137/.

3 LH to John Melby, c. May 28, 1946, box 81, folder 7/8, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ranson Center, University of Texas at Austin.

4 Studs Terkel, “The Wiretap This Time,” New York Times (October 29, 2007): A19.

5 Lillian Hellman, “From America,” in Daniel S. Gillmor, ed., Speaking of Peace (New York: National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, 1949), 122; see also FBI case file, New York Section, April 9, 1951, file no: 100-2858 EXM, box 74, folder 5, 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA. The FBI, keeping track of Harry Hopkins, thought Hellman, “an alleged communist,” might have had an affair with Hopkins, whom it described as “very pro Russian and pro Communist.”

6 The clearest exposition of this phenomenon is in Richard Pells, The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 284–85.

7 Ibid., 285.

8 Clifton Brock, Americans for Democratic Action (New York: Public Affairs Press, 1962), 52.

9 Pells, Liberal Mind, 285: the fundamental argument was between the belief of many liberals (including liberal intellectuals like Schlesinger, Hook, and Philip Rahv) in what Richard Pells calls “the continuing danger of traitors and spies in high places, the necessity of security checks and legislative restraints to safeguard democracy, the tendency of Communists on trial to dissemble and deceive, the definition of Communism itself as a foreign conspiracy, and the need for intellectuals to acknowledge their moral guilt and cast off their political innocence.”

10 Marilyn Berger, “Profile, Lillian Hellman,” in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 251–252.

11 Richard Parker, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 261.

12 Pells, Liberal, 265. Here Hellman is placed among a handful of intellectuals who refused to “serve the State.” He includes among these Dwight MacDonald, Henry Steele Commager, I. F. Stone, Mary McCarthy, Arthur Miller, and Michael Harrington.

13 LH to Muriel Rukeyser, February 8, 1945, box 41, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

14 LH to John Melby, c. May 28, 1946, box 81, folder 7/8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

15 Daily Worker, “Women Ask for Peace” (March 8, 1946): 9. Other equally respectable signatories included Mrs. Henry Wallace, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (Richard Nixon’s first political victim), Helen Hayes, Katherine Lenroot, chief of the U.S. Children’s Bureau, Mrs. David de Sola Pool, and Mrs. La Fell Dickinson, president of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs.

16 Lillian Hellman, “From America,” 22.

17 Draft typescript, “Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman,” April 14, 1952, and revised statement, April 28, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

18 Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1955), chapter 24.

19 FBI reports, October 26, 1947, and March 1948, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

20 Many conservative historians agree that communists did not run the campaign. See William L. O’Neill, A Better World: The Great Schism, Stalinism and the American Intellectuals (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 147–48.

21 Reminiscences of Michael Straight (1982), on page 226 in the Columbia Center for Oral History.

22 Call for “Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace,” Daily Worker (January 10, 1949).

23 Reminiscences of Thomas Emerson (1955), vol. 5, part I, on page 1889, CCOH.

24 Call for “Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace,” box 10c, Harlow Shapley Papers, Harvard University Library.

25 John Rossi, “Farewell to Fellow Traveling: The Waldorf Peace Conference of March, 1949,” Continuity 10 (Spring 1985): 1.

26 “From America” speech typescript, March 1949, box 42, folder 11, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

27 Ralph Chapman, “Rally’s Leaders Challenged by Counter-Group,” New York Herald Tribune (March 24, 1949): 12.

28 Hellman, “From America.”

29 Reminiscences of Thomas Emerson (1955), vol. 5, part I, on page 1889, CCOH. For an analysis of the event, see Neil Jumonville, Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), ch. 1.

30 See account of this in Michael Wreszin, A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight MacDonald (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 214–20; Rossi, “Farewell,” 21.

31 Reminiscences of Virginia Durr (July 14, 1975), on pages 214–15, CCOH.

32 “Red Visitors Cause Rumpus,” Life (April 4, 1949): 42–43. Thanks to Judith Friedlander for calling this to my attention.

33 Arthur Miller, Timebends: A Life (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 235.

34 John Patrick Diggins, “The -Ism that Failed,” American Prospect (December 1, 2003): 78.

35 Arien Mack, conversation with author, June 2010.

36 The FBI took Hellman off its internal security index in 1945 after she returned from the Soviet Union but after the Waldorf conference decided once again to keep her under surveillance.

37 FBI case statement, New York Office, April 9, 1951, box 74, folder 5, 13, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

38 Robert Newman, The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 329.

39 Christopher Lasch, The Agony of the American Left (New York: Vintage, 1969), 82.

40 Joseph Rauh, “Draft Statement,” April 28, 1952, box 72, folder 9, 5, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

41 Freda Kirchwey, “How Free Is Free? Nation (June 28, 1952): 616.

42 Reminiscences of Leonard Boudin (1983), on page 199, CCOH.

43 Stefan Kanfer, Journal of the Plague Years (New York: Atheneum, 1973), 77. For the emergence of the Hollywood blacklist see Paul Buhle, Mari Jo Buhle, and Dan Georgakas, Encyclopedia of the American Left (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), and Larry Ceplair and Stephen Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

44 Hellman “The Judas Goats,” Screen Writer (December 1947): 7.

45 Hellman notes called “The Picture Finished,” typescript in Harvard Lectures folder, box 44, folder 6, 7–8, Lillian Hellman Collection, and Ceplair and Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood, suggest that Hellman was part of a group that tried to head off the blacklist.

46 LH to William and Talli Tyler, September 15, 1975, box 32, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Stefan Kanfer has a different account of this story in Journal of the Plague Years, 139.

47 Hellman, “The Picture Finished,” 7–8.

48 Typescript, “Lillian Hellman, Playwright,” box 28, folders 14–177, Counterattack Papers, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University Libraries, New York, NY.

49 Reminiscences of Leonard Boudin (1983), on page 197, CCOH.

50 Walter Metzger, “The McCarthy Era,” Academe 75 (May–June 1989): 27. See also Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 93–94, which describes the policy as effectively protecting only those who had never lied about Communist Party affiliation, thus leaving exposed those who had never been asked about or openly admitted such affiliation in the past.

51 Russell Porter, “Colleges Vote Freedom Code Banning Reds from Faculties,” New York Times (March 31, 1953): 1.

52 Untitled typescript, box 28, folder 14–177, 11, 12, 22, 24, Counterattack Papers, TL.

53 FBI report, April 9, 1951, box 119, folder 1, 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

54 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman, April 28, 1952 (Draft),” April 14, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

55 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 2,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

56 Oscar Hammerstein to LH, April 13, 1950; LH to Oscar Hammerstein, April 20, 1950, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. The signed affidavit was later returned to her after the labor board decided that council members of the Authors’ League need not sign them. See Louise Sillcox to LH, June 7, 1950, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

57 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore,” April 6, 1950, box 43, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. She repeated that theme a few years later, telling students at Smith and MIT that “We have lived through a period of great economic security, great social fear in which many of the values we relied on seem to melt before us. Fears began to show: fear of other countries fear of ourselves and our neighbors, and the discomforts and shame that comes with fears and the displacement of ordinary middle class values.” (Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Smith/MIT,” April 15 and 18, 1955, box 43, folder 1, 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.)

58 FBI memo, undated, box 132, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

59 Ring Lardner Jr., I’d Hate Myself in the Morning: A Memoir (New York: Nation Books, 2000), 140.

60 LH to Ruth Shipley, July 13, 1951, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

61 LH to Henry Beeson, August 16, 1951, box 133, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

62 Charlie Schwartz to LH, telegraph, August 15, 15 1951, box 53, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

63 Katherine Brown to LH, August 23, 1951, box 53, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

64 Elia Kazan, Elia Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), 460.

65 Ted O. Thackrey, “Miss Hellman’s Answer,” New York Compass (May 1952): 10.

66 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 9, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

67 Ibid., 9–10.

68 Lillian Hellman, random notes found in box 43, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

69 Typescript: FBI document, February 23, 1966, box 132, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

70 Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 53.

71 Joseph Rauh to Lillian Hellman, July 6, 1976, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1974–76” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, Part I, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

72 Rauh to LH, April 30, 1952, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1974–76” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers.

73 Rauh to Andrew Caploe, December 2, 1977, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1974–76” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, LOC.

74 Ibid.

75 Daniel Pollitt, interview by author, February 6, 2007.

76 Joseph Rauh, memo, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

77 Rauh to LH, April 30, 1952, box 124, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

78 Lillian Hellman, Typescript, “Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman (Draft),” April 28, 1952, box 124, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

79 Don Irwin, “Lillian Hellman Refuses to Say if She Was Red,” New York Herald Tribune (May 22, 1952): 1.

80 “Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives,” 82nd Congress, 2nd session, May 21, 1952 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1952), 3545.

81 Daniel Pollitt, interview by author, February 6, 2007.

82 “Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives,” 82nd Congress, 2nd session, May 21, 1952 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1952), 3546.

83 “Lillian Hellman Balks House Unit,” New York Times (May 22, 1952): 15.

84 Murray Kempton, “Portrait of a Lady,” New York Post (May 26, 1952): 17.

85 Brooks Atkinson to LH, May 27, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

86 LH to Bill Alfred, May 23, 1952, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library.

87 LH to John Melby, c. May 26, 1952, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

88 LH to Joe Rauh, May 29, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

89 LH to Melby, c. May 1952, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

90 Ibid.

91 LH to Melby, c. August 1952, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

92 Reminiscences of Helen Van dernoot Rosen (1994), CCOH.

93 Newman, The Cold War Romance, 181–82, 209.

9. The Most Dangerous Hours

1 Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009.

2 LH to McGeorge Bundy, June 7, 1960, box 65, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

3 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

4 Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 309–11.

5 Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 311.

6 LH, Typescript, “Madison Square Garden McCarthy Rally,” box 42, folder 17, 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

7 Hellman commencement address, Mount Holyoke College, May 30, 1976, box 42, folder 9, 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

8 Typescript notes, no date, box 42, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

9 Notebook titled “Notes for Sophronia’s Grandson,” box 42, folder 2, 2, 4–5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

10 Lillian Hellman, “Sophronia’s Grandson Goes to Washington,” Ladies’ Home Journal (December 1963): 80; “Complaint, Dewey P. Colvard v The Curtis Publishing Company … and Lillian Hellman,” box 109, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

11 Roy McCord’s letter of December 18, 1963, the journal’s retraction, and Hellman’s statement are all in Ladies’ Home Journal (March 1964): 82.

12 “Mrs. Cabell Outlaw of Mobile Alabama to Dear Editor,” Ladies Home Journal (February 24, 1964), clipping in box 72, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

13 Unknown lawyer to LH, March 13, 1964, box 109, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also letter from Mrs. Mary Hartay of Austin, Texas, Ladies’ Home Journal (December 5, 1963).

14 Notes of interview with Senator Sparkman, no date, box 42, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

15 Typescript notes, untitled, no date, box 42, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

16 Seeger interviewed on the Tavis Smiley Show, WNYC, February 19, 2010. Thanks to Shayna Kessler for calling this to my attention.

17 Fred Gardner, interview by author, May 27, 2010.

18 Typescript, “Madison Square Garden McCarthy Rally.”

19 Hellman speech to the National Book Awards in 1970 for An Unfinished Woman. As quoted in Publishers Weekly (March 23, 1970): 1.

20 Typescript, “Madison Square Garden McCarthy Rally.”

21 The notion of a “moral beacon” comes from Wald, The New York Intellectuals, 311.

22 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2010.

23 Untitled typescript, c. May 1967, box 43, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

24 Martin Arnold, “Lillian Hellman Says She Found Ferment Among Soviet Writers,” New York Times (May 31, 1967): 11.

25 Lillian Hellman, “The Baggage of a Political Exile,” New York Times (August 23, 1969): 26.

26 “A Letter to Anatoly Kuznetsov,” Time (December 5, 1969): 49; “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker (September 13, 1969): 21.

27 LH to William Shawn, September 16, 1969, box 42, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

28 Robert Lantz to Andrew Heiskell, December 8, 1969, box 42, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

29 LH to Charles Friedman, August 23, 1969, box 42, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

30 Anne Peretz, conversation with author, June 25, 2010.

31 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 24, 1977): 54.

32 Lillian Hellman, Introduction to The Big Knockover (New York: Random House, 1966), 5.

33 Reminiscences of Donald Angus Cameron (1977), on page 534 in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

34 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 53.

35 William Abrahams to Arthur Thornhill Sr., March 17, 1969, box 50, folder 30, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Standford, CA.

36 Philip French, “A Difficult Woman,” New Statesman (October 24, 1969): 580.

37 Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Experience as Drama,” Commentary 48 (December 1969): 95.

38 Michaela Williams, “Miss Hellman’s Personal Fragments Merge into Personality of Beauty,” National Observer (July 14, 1969): 91.

39 Robert Kotlowitz, “The Rebel as Writer,” Harper’s (June 1969): 92.

40 Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “The Incompleat Lillian Hellman,” New York Times (June 30, 1969): 37.

41 Stanley Young, “An Unfinished Woman” New York Times Book Review (June 29, 1969): 8. V. S. Pritchett, “Stern Self-Portait of a Lady,” Life (June 27, 1969): 12.

42 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

43 Hellman made these comments in early 1947 on the note cards she prepared for a lecture. In her own hand, she expressed her disappointment at “what the emancipation of woman has done to women.” 1947, box 43, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

44 Lillian Hellman, “An Address by Lillian Hellman to the Women of America,” February 10, 1948, pamphlet printed and distributed by the Wallace Campaign for President, box 43, folder 4, 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

45 Note cards, box 46, folder 2, 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

46 Irving Wardle, “On Not Falling Sadly Apart,” The Times Saturday Review (October 18, 1969): 4.

47 Nora Ephron, “Lillian Hellman Walking, Cooking, Writing, Talking,” in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 136.

48 Katherine Brown, “Talking with Lillian Hellman,” Family Circle (April 1976): 24.

49 Hiram Haydn to LH, April 27, 1972, box 46, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection. HRC. Other participants included Ann Birstein, Nancy Wilson Ross, Norma Rosen, Renata Adler, Carolyn Heilbrun, Alice Walker, and Elizabeth Janeway.

50 American Scholar Forum, American Scholar 41 (Autumn 1972): 600, 601, 612, 614. On race differences, she added, “The upper-class lady, or the middle-class lady, has made out very well as the weaker and the more fragile of the pair, husband and wife. The lower-class lady—particularly American blacks, had to earn a living,” 603.

51 Ibid., 617.

52 Anthony Gornall to Don Congdon, June 13, 1977, box 52, folder 1; Congdon to LH, July 22, 1982, box 52, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

53 Mount Holyoke College commencement address, 14–15.

54 Lillian Hellman, “For Truth, Justice and the American Way,” New York Times (June 4, 1975): 39.

55 Gloria Emerson, “Lillian Hellman: At 66, She’s Still Restless,” New York Times (September 7, 1973): 24.

56 Lillian Hellman, interview by Barbara Walters, “Not for Women Only,” NBC, April 1, 1976 box 31, folder 1, 2–3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

57 Ibid., 10

58 Lillian Hellman, interview by National Educational Television, April 9, 1974, box 31, folder 2, 9, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

59 Ibid., 9.

60 Brown, “Talking with Lillian Hellman,” 24.

61 See, for example, Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Cold War of the 1960s, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).

62 Robert Silvers, speech, October 22, 1978, box 42, folder 19, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

63 LH to Telford Taylor, April 30, 1970, Telford Taylor Papers, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University, NY (TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108).

64 Roger Wilkins, “To Fight for Freedom” New York Times (December 22, 1970): 33.

65 Burke Marshall to “Dear Friend,” May 25, 1970, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.

66 Typescript, “Statement of Purpose of Citizen Group,” TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.

67 By the early 1970s, the letterhead carried such names as labor leaders Leonard Woodcock, Moe Foner, and Adam Yarmolinsky; social and natural scientists C. Vann Woodward, Robert Coles, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Barry Commoner, and James Watson; military experts General David Schoup and George Kistiaskowsky; businessman Harold Willens; Mrs. Marshall (Ruth) Field; and department-store heiress Elinor Gimbel.

68 Leon Friedman, interview by author, June 3, 2007.

69 Telford Taylor to Thomas Eliot, Dec 23, 1970, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.

70 Stephen Gillers, interview by author, October 12, 2007.

71 Norman Dorsen and Roger Wilkins, “Memorandum,” June 19, 1970, TTPCLS: 11-0-8-108.

72 LH to Telford Taylor, June 23, 1970, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.

73 Frances X. Clines, “F.B.I. Head Scored by Ramsey Clark,” New York Times (November 18, 1970): 48. Clark had previously published a book in which he described FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as having “a self-centered concern for his own reputation.”

74 Karl Meyer, “Clark Scores FBI Over ‘Ideology,’ Lack of Diversity,” Washington Post (November 18, 1970): A3.

75 M.A. Jones to Mr. Bishop, FBI memorandum, “Members of the Committee for Public Justice,” November 19, 1970, box 75, folder 2, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL. Guilt by association still remained a key tool in the FBI’s arsenal. Jerome Wiesner, for example, was acknowledged to be an “internationally known scientist,” but the file noted among other things that “Several of his associates at MIT were publicly identified as having been affiliated with the CP.” Harold Willins was said to have signed a petition “appealing for executive clemency for Morris U. Schappes, Communist party member convicted of perjury.” That all these people were associated with Hellman in the CPJ was, of course, another mark against them.

76 Ibid.

77 “Panel Announces Inquiry into FBI,” Chicago Tribune (April 28, 1971): 6.

78 Robert M. Smith, “Hoover, in an Unusual Letter, Defends Operation of F.B.I.,” New York Times (Oct 17, 1971): 1.

79 J. Edgar Hoover to Duane Lockard, October 7, 1971, as reproduced in Pat Watters and Stephen Gillers, eds., Investigating the FBI: A Tough, Fair Look at the Powerful Bureau, Its Present and Its Future (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1973), 466–67. The press summarized the FBI’s stance as dismissive, repeating Hoover’s position that “If the FBI responded every time it was attacked somewhere, it would not have time to go about its normal business.” See “Hoover Defends FBI in a Letter,” Chicago Tribune (October 17, 1971): 9.

80 Tom Wicker, Introduction to Watters and Gillers, eds., Investigating the FBI, xiv.

81 Watters and Gillers, Investigating the FBI, 477.

82 Allan C. Brownfield, “F.B.I. Under Increasing Attack,” Roll Call (November 18, 1971). Brownfield suggested that the conference’s bias was illustrated by its effort to disguise the true identities of participants. The executive council of the CPJ, he reported, consisted of people like Ramsey Clark, known for his longstanding hostility to Hoover, Lillian Hellman, “who has for years refused to answer questions about her involvement with the Communist Party,” and Burke Marshall, “who was one of the first to rush to Chappaquiddick in an effort to assist his old friend, Edward Kennedy.” Martin Peretz, Brownfield pointed out, was a member of the CPJ to be sure, but he had also served on the executive board of the National Conference for New Politics … which collaborated with the Communist Party, U.S.A. (Peretz subsequently became owner of the New Republic, and much more conservative) in a 1967 Chicago convention. Brownfield sent the piece to Hoover, who consulted with advisers as to whether to respond. They advised against it after investigating his background. See G.E. Malmfeldt to Mr. Bishop, November 26, 1971, microfilm, FBI file on the CPJ (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1984). Thanks to Leon Friedman, for providing much of this information.

83 Jack Nelson and Bryce Nelson, “Zimbalist, Two Others Open Drive to Back FBI,” Los Angeles Times (June 15, 1971): 17. See also Robert M. Smith, “Friends of FBI in a Fund Appeal,” New York Times (July 21, 1971): 20.

84 This material provided by Leon Friedman and acknowledged with thanks.

85 Ken W. Clawson, “Monetary Support Is Abundant,” Washington Post and Times Herald (October 30, 1971): A2.

86 “Speakers Hit Bureau’s Power” Washington Post and Times Herald (October 30, 1971): A2.

87 Robert Smith, “The FBI Agrees to Hear Its Chief Critic,” New York Times (June 7, 1972): 17.

88 Tom Wicker, “A Battle Congress Could Win,” New York Times (April 5, 1973): 45.

89 Typescript, “Grand Jury Project,” December 10, 1971, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.

90 Lesley Oelsner, “Grand Jury System Is Assailed Here,” New York Times (May 1, 1972): 23.

91 New York (October 22, 1973): 36–37.

92 “Lillian Hellman Keynotes CIA meeting,” CPJ Newsletter, June 1975, box 51, folder 11, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Early in 1975, Senator Frank Church launched a series of senatorial investigations into the domestic activities of the CIA. Arguable the CPJ catalyzed these.

93 Typescript of call for funds, February 8, 1978, courtesy of Leon Friedman, private collection.

94 “Bill to Bar FBI Wiretaps, Curb Probes Unveiled,” Los Angeles Times (February 15, 1977): A2.

95 James Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” Washington Post (July 1, 1984): 67.

96 See for example, “Lillian Hellman—Above the Fuss,” San Francisco Chronicle (November 14, 1975): 37.

97 Leon Friedman and Stephen Gillers, executive directors of the CPJ, agree on this point, as does chair of the Executive Council, Norman Dorsen. See interviews of Leon Friedman, Norman Dorsen, and Stephen Gillers by author.

98 William Wright, Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 339.

10. Liar, Liar

1 Lillian Hellman, Pentimento (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 23.

2 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1, Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

3 Typescript of reading, University of Michigan, April 1960, box 43, folder 2, 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

4 Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1, Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 2–3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

5 Dan Rather, “An Interview with Lillian Hellman” in Jackson Breyer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 298.

6 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 27, 1977): 55.

7 LH to Diane Johnson, October 11, 1978, box 72, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

8 Hellman, “Typescript, Harvard Lecture No. 1,” box 44, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

9 Lillian Hellman, “The Time of the Foxes,” New York Times (October 22, 1967): 117.

10 James Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” Washington Post (July 1, 1984): 67.

11 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55.

12 Doris Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949 (New York: Harper Collins, 1994).

13 Lillian Hellman to William Abrahams, June 30, 1971, box 51, folder 12, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

14 Hellman, Pentimento, 3.

15 LH to Donald Erickson, May 23, 1973, box 124, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

16 Hellman, Pentimento, 10

17 Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” 67.

18 Mark Schorer, “Pentimento,” New York Times Book Review (September 23, 1973): 1. The word honest comes from James Walt, “An Honest Memoir,” New Republic (October 20, 1973): 27.

19 John Leonard, “1973: An Apology and 38 Consolations,” New York Times Book Review (December 2, 1973,): 2; Peter Prescott, “Leftover Life,” Newsweek (October 1, 1973): 95.

20 Edward Grossman, “Pentimento by Lillian Hellman,” Commentary 57 (1974): 88.

21 Martha Duffy, “Half-Told Tales,” Time (October 1, 1973): 116.

22 Hellman, Pentimento, 153

23 Ibid., 225

24 Schorer, “Pentimento,” 1.

25 Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “Seeing Others to See Oneself,” New York Times (September 17, 1973): 31L.

26 Muriel Haynes, “More on the Unfinished Woman,” Ms. (January 1974): 33.

27 Louise Knight, “Sibling Rivalry: History and Memoir,” Women’s Review of Books 24 (July/August 2007): 12–13.

28 Richard Eder, “Down the Rabbit Hole in a Story Book Memoir,” New York Times (December 12, 2006).

29 Joel Agee, “A Lie that Tells the Truth,” Harper’s (November 2007): 53, 57. Daniel Kornstein put it this way: “The facts could be lies, but the book could be true. Truth can emerge from a context of untruths, just as it does in fiction.” Daniel J. Kornstein, “The Case Against Lillian Hellman: A Literary/Legal Defense,” Fordham Law Review 57 (April 1989): 692.

30 John Simon, “Pentimental Journey,” Hudson Review 26 (Winter 1974): 748. At the end of the piece, Simon reveals that he had an axe to grind, concerning a brief unpleasant encounter he had had with Hellman when he was still a student.

31 Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” 67.

32 Bill Moyers, “Lillian Hellman: The Great Playwright Candidly Reflects on a Long Rich Life,” in Bryer, ed., Conversations, 154.

33 Hellman, Pentimento, 224–5.

34 Nora Ephron, “Walking, Cooking,” Writing, Talking,” New York Times Book Review (September 23, 1973): 2.

35 Hellman, Pentimento, 225.

36 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

37 Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 39.

38 Rex Reed, Valentines and Vitriol (New York: Delacorte Press, 1977), 104–05.

39 Mel Gussow, “For Lillian Hellman, More Honors and a New Book,” New York Times (November 7, 1975): 28.

40 Hellman, Pentimento, 225.

41 Ephron, “Walking, Cooking,” 2.

42 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 35, 38, 39, 82, 149.

43 Paul Gray, “An Unfinished Woman,” Time (May 10, 1976): 83.

44 Robert Coles, “The Literary Scene,” Washington Post Book World (May 17, 1966): 32.

45 Typescript of BBC interview with Philip French, “Critics Forum,” Radio 3, June 11, 1976, box 19, folder 2, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

46 Murray Kempton, “Witnesses,” New York Review of Books (June 10, 1976): 22–25.

47 Exchange of letters, LH to Ephraim London, May 3, 1976; LH to Joseph Consolino, May 5, 1976, both in box 32, folder 6; Ephraim London to Joseph Consolino, May 10, 1976, box 32, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

48 William F. Buckley Jr., “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” National Review (January 21, 1977): 105

49 I am indebted to Bert Silverman for these insights. On the seventies, see also Judith Stein, Pivotal Decade, How the U.S. Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies (New Haven, CT: Yale, 2010); Jefferson Cowie, Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class (New York: New Press, 2010); Natasha Zaretsky, No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

50 Nathan Glazer, “An Answer to Lillian Hellman,” Commentary (June 1976): 36–39.

51 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2010.

52 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 150.

53 Sidney Hook, “Lillian Hellman’s Scoundrel Time,” Encounter 48 (February 1977): 86, 82–91.

54 Ibid., 88.

55 William Appleman Williams, The Shaping of American Diplomacy: Readings and Documents in American Foreign Relations (New York: Rand McNally, 1956); Lloyd Gardner, The Origins of the Cold War (Waltham, MA: Ginn-Baisdell, 1970); Gabriel Kolko, The Roots of American Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Power and Purpose (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969).

56 Nathan Glazer, “An Answer to Lillian Hellman,” 36–39.

57 Richard A. Falk, “Comment: Scoundrel Time,” Performing Arts Journal 1 (Winter 1977): 97.

58 Hilton Kramer, “The Blacklist and the Cold War,” New York Times (October 3, 1976): 1, 16, 17. Kramer preceded this comment with one that declared Scoundrel Time “as much a part of this re-examination of the 1960s … as they are an attempt to redraw the history of an earlier era along lines—often alas, fictional lines—that are sympathetic to the present climate of liberal opinion.”

59 Arthur M. Schlesinger’s letter appeared among others from Alfred Kazin, Eric Foner, Bruce Cook, and Michael Meeropol, New York Times (October 17, 1977): 12.

60 LH to Arthur Schlesinger Jr., no date, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, the New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Schlesinger’s reply, dated October 20, 1976, acknowledges their political differences and claims that they have never mattered because they are “such an inferior part of life that the more important things survive political disagreements.” He continues, “Though you may now hate me, I will continue to regard you with unrelenting affection and admiration for your charm, wit, inexorable human dignity and the passion that has produced so much including, I suppose, your letter to me.”

61 Arthur Schlesinger to Joseph Rauh, October 22, 1976, box 72, folder 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

62 These arguments were well captured and expressed by Melvin J. Lasky, “Left-Wing America’s Martyr-in-Waiting,” Encounter (June 11, 1976): 56.

63 Ibid.

64 Sidney Hook to Norman Podhoretz, May 5, 1976, box 78, folder 19, Sidney Hook Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

65 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” 105.

66 William Phillips, A Partisan View: Five Decades of the Literary Life (New York: Stein and Day, 1983), 174–75.

67 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of them All?” 104.

68 Walter Goodman, “Fair Game” New Leader 59 (May 24, 1976): 10. See also Walter Goodman, The Committee (New York: Farrar, Straus, 1968)

69 Kempton, “Witnesses,” 22.

70 William F. Buckley Jr., “Night of the Cuckoo with Fonda, Hellman,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat (April 4, 1977): 11.

71 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 81. A lengthy correspondence between the Trillings and Lillian extending from the mid-sixties to the mid-seventies testifies to the friendship. See also Lionel Trilling Papers, box 3, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

72 Diana Trilling, We Must March, My Darlings: A Critical Decade (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 41.

73 Diana Trilling to LH, October 8, 1976, box 32, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

74 Robert McFadden, “Diana Trilling Book Is Canceled,” New York Times (September 28, 1976): 1; Little, Brown’s executive director, Arthur Thornhill, confirms the story—taking full responsibility for the decision to ask Trilling to withdraw the offending words. See Roger Donald to Lillian Hellman, December 10, 1976, box 32, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

75 Michiko Kakutani, “Diana Trilling: Pathfinder in Morality,” New York Times (November 16, 1981): C13.

76 Rose Styron, interview by author, August 17, 2010; Annabel Davis-Goff, interview by author, September 2, 2010.

77 Greil Marcus, “Undercover: Remembering the Witch Hunts,” Rolling Stone (May 20, 1976): 97.

78 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” 101.

79 Alfred Kazin, “The Legend of Lillian Hellman,” Esquire 88 (August 1977): 28.

80 Buckley, “Who Is the Ugliest of Them All?” 101.

81 Lasky, “Left-Wing America’s Martyr-in-Waiting.”

82 Kempton, “Witnesses,” 2.

83 Walter Goodman, “Fair Game,” New Leader 59 (May 24, 1976): 10.

84 Kazin, New York Jew (New York: Knopf, 1978), 30.

85 Hellman, Scoundrel Time, 39

86 Mary Geisheker, “The Worst of Times,” Baltimore Sun (April 25, 1976): D1.

87 LH to William Schmick Jr., May 7, 1976, box 124, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

88 LH to George Will, April 18, 1978, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

89 Lillian Hellman, “On Reading Again,” in Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 9.

90 Ibid., 9.

91 Lillian Hellman, Maybe: A Story (New York: Little, Brown, 1980), 51.

92 This story comes from Dick Cavett, “Lillian, Mary, and Me,” New Yorker (December 16, 2002): 35.

93 Transcript of interview with Dick Cavett, October 17 and 18, 1979, box 258, 50, Mary McCarthy Collection, Vassar College Library.

94 Cavett, “Lillian, Mary, and Me,” 36.

95 Ann Terry, typescript “notes and comments,” October 16, 1979, box 258, Cavett folder, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL. McCarthy, at her deposition, testified that she could, “not recall having agreed to respond to this question.” Deposition of Defendant Mary McCarthy West, August 12, 1981, Hellman v McCarthy et al., Supreme Court of the State of New York, Index # 16834/80, 12.

96 Nan Robertson, “McCarthy Mellows as an Expatriate in Paris,” New York Times (July 31, 1979): C5.

97 Each also had a somewhat complicated relationship to their Jewish heritage. McCarthy’s grandmother on her mother’s side was born Jewish, a fact that McCarthy only belatedly and uncomfortably acknowledged. Note the number of references to Jews in McCarthy’s How I Grew (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 45; On the Contrary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1951), 66–67; and Intellectual Memoirs: New York, 1936–1938 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1992), 60.

98 Mary McCarthy, How I Grew, 1; Nan Robertson, “McCarthy Mellows,” C5.

99 Richard Poirier, interview by author, May 24, 2005.

100 Mary McCarthy on North Star in Town and Country (April 1944): 72, 12; Mary McCarthy, “The Reform of Dr. Pangloss,” New Republic (December 17, 1956): 30–31.

101 Mary McCarthy review of O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh in Partisan Review (November/December 1946): 577.

102 Mary McCarthy, Intellectual Memoirs, 60; Typescript, “Lillian Hellman’s Comments on Mary McCarthy’s Answers to Plaintiff’s First Interrogatories,” December 8, 1980, box 78, folder 4/5, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

103 McCarthy’s version of this story is in Joan Dupont, “Mary McCarthy: Portrait of a Lady,” Paris Metro (February 15, 1978): 15–16.

104 Typescript, “Lillian Hellman’s Comments on Mary McCarthy’s Answers,” 8.

105 Stephen Spender to LH, September 15, 1983, box 259, Spender file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

106 LH to William Alfred, August 19, 1963, The Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library.

107 Dupont, “Mary McCarthy: Portrait of a Lady,” 16.

108 LH to Ephraim London, December 10, 1980, box 78, folder 4/5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

109 Hellman never much liked Hardwick, referring to her as “Madam” in her letters to Lowell.

110 Arien Mack, interview by author, June 10, 2010.

111 Typescript, “Lillian Hellman’s Comments on Mary McCarthy’s Answers,” 10.

112 This history is recounted by Javsicas in a letter to Mary McCarthy, October 28, 1979, just a few days after she taped the Cavett interview. It is one of a long series of letters, all of them in the Javsicas file, folder 203.7, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

113 Gabriel Javsicas to Nancy MacDonald (punctuation and spelling corrected), November 10, 1978, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University Libraries, New York, NY. The reference to censorship concerns the Diana Trilling controversy.

114 Nancy MacDonald to Dearest Gabriel, November 4, 1978, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

115 Mary McCarthy to Nancy MacDonald, Nov 28, 1978, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

116 Gabriel Javsicas to Nancy MacDonald, June 26, 1979, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

117 Mary McCarthy to Javsicas, October 10, 1979, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

118 Mary McCarthy to Javsicas, December 18, 1979, Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, TL.

119 Mary McCarthy to Carol Gelderman, November 12, 1980, box 259, Gelderman file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

120 Lardner, “Lillian Hellman, Writer,” 67.

121 Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, August 23, 1980, box 259, O’Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

122 Mary McCarthy to Carol Gelderman, November 12, 1980, box 259, Gelderman file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

123 These and more details in Carol Gelderman to Mary McCarthy, February 6, 1981, Box 259, Gelderman file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

124 Carol Gelderman to Mary McCarthy, February 6, 1981, box 259, Gelderman File, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

125 Mary McCarthy, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood (New York: Harvest Books, 1972), 11

126 Mary McCarthy to Mrs. Hale, August 18, 1980, Hale file, box 259, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

127 William F. Buckley Jr., “The Honor of Lillian Hellman and her pro-Stalin Past,” New York Post (May 22, 1980).

128 Mary McCarthy to Cleo Paturis, June 19, 1981, box 259, Paturis file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

129 Lillian Hellman, “Baggage of a Political Exile,” New York Times (August 23, 1969): 26.

130 Mary McCarthy to Walter Goldwater, August 7, 1980, Goldwater file, box 259, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL. Mary McCarthy made inquiries to this effect to James Angleton, a former CIA agent. Angleton had no information that would confrm her suspicions. Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, box 259, O’Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

131 Robert M. Kaus, “The Plaintiff’s Hour,” Harper’s (March 1983): 14.

132 Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, August 23, 1980, box 259, O’Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

133 Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, November 29, 1980, box 259, O’Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

134 Diana Trilling to Bill Jovanovich, November 16, 1980, box 259, O’Sullivan files, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

135 Cleo Paturis to Mary McCarthy, c. June, 1981, and Mary McCarthy reply, June 19, 1981, box 259, Paturis file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL. Paturis was the wife of James Farrell.

136 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, August 15, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

137 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, August 30, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

138 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, September 25, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

139 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, May 29, 1981, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

140 Raisa Orlova, Memoirs (New York: Random House, 1983), 117.

141 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, August 30, 1980, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

142 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, May 29, 1981, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

143 Mary McCarthy to Robert Silvers, February 27, 1981, box 259, Silvers file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

144 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, May 29, 1981, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

145 Stephen Spender, “Stephen Spender Replies,” Paris Review 79 (1981): 304–7.

146 Stephen Spender, Journals 1939–1983, ed. John Goldsmith (New York: Random House, 1986), 482–83. On the subject of both McCarthy and Hellman lying see Timothy Dow Adams, Telling Lies in Modern American Autobiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), chs. 5 and 6.

147 Mary McCarthy to Walter Goldwater, August 7, 1980, box 259, Goldwater file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

148 Mary McCarthy to Charles Collingwood, September 20, 1980, box 259, Collingwood file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

149 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, May 29, 1981, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

150 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55. In an odd coincidence, Gardiner was married for many years to Joseph Buttinger, a leader of the Austrian socialists and a generous funder of Irving Howe’s Dissent magazine. Presumably, Howe did not need another reason to dislike Hellman, but his relationship with the Buttingers surely provided one. See Irving Howe, Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 235.

151 Marilyn Berger, “Profile: Lillian Hellman,” in Breyer, ed., Conversations, 238.

152 Mary McCarthy to Walter Goldwater, August 7, 1980, box 259, Goldwater file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

153 Muriel Gardiner, Code Name “Mary”: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), xv.

154 LH to George Gero, May 4, 1983, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

155 LH to George Gero, May 27, 1983, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

156 LH to Ephraim London, May 27, 1983, box 77, folder 77, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Anne Peretz, interview by author, August 31, 2010.

157 Alex Szogyi, “Lillian,” Hunter College Magazine (July 1985): 27.

158 Sam Jaffe to LH, August 12, 1980, box 78, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

159 Norman Mailer to Richard Poirier, June 16, 1980; copied to McCarthy, Locke, William Phillips, Silvers, and Steven Marcus, among others, box 78, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

160 LH to Norman Mailer, July 5, 1980, box 78, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

161 Barbara Epstein to LH, December 1, 1980, box 78, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

162 LH to Mrs. Victor Pritchett, September 14, 1981, box 132, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

163 Robert Silvers to Mary McCarthy, March 10, 1981, box 259, Silvers File, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

164 Elizabeth Hardwick to Mary McCarthy, September 5, 1980, box 259, Hardwick folder, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

165 Bill Alfred to LH, October 8, 1980, box 78, folder 4/5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

166 LH to Bill Alfred, November 3, 1980, Papers of William Alfred, BCASC.

167 William Styron to LH, April 2, 1980; LH to William Styron, April 9, 1980, box 78, folder 4/5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

168 Cavett, “Lillian, Mary, and Me,” 36.

169 LH to Bill Alfred, November 3, 1980, Papers of William Alfred, BCASC.

170 Mary McCarthy to Ben O’Sullivan, July 13, 1982, box 259, O’Sullivan file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

171 George Trow to “Dear Lillie pie,” no date, box 78, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

172 LH to Ephraim London, November 5, 1981, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

173 Martha Gellhorn to Mary McCarthy, May 29, 1981, box 259, Gellhorn file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

174 LH to Stephen Spender, August 4, 1983, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

175 Stephen Spender to LH, August 19, 1983, and September 15, 1983, box 259, Spender file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

176 Charles Collingwood to Mary McCarthy, September 26, 1980, box 259, Collingwood file, Mary McCarthy Collection, VCL.

177 Burke Marshall to LH, August 18, 1983, box 77, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

178 Marcia Chambers, “Lillian Hellman Wins Round in Suit,” New York Times (May 11, 1984): C3.

179 Deposition of Defendant Mary McCarthy West, 42–43.

180 Chambers, “Lillian Hellman Wins,” C3.

11. Life After Death

1 Hellman diaries, box 115, “California, 1980, Feb 1–March” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

2 Kristin von Kreisler-Bomben, “Lillian Hellman: from Sickbed to Center Stage,” San Rafael Independent (February 25, 1980): 1.

3 Lillian Hellman, Three: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), 724–26

4 Kay Boyle to Jessica Mitford, February 24, 1980; and Kay Boyle to William Abrahams, February 24, 1980, both in box 17:1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

5 Annabel Davis-Goff, interview by author, September 2, 2010.

6 Robin to Rita Wade, January 27, 1982; Maryellen to Rita, January 14, 1983; box 47:10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

7 Robert Brustein, “Epilogue to Anger: Lillian Hellman’s” (August 13, 1984): 23.

8 Peter Feibleman, funeral speech, “Lillian Hellman, 1905–1984,” box 5, folder 12, Arthur Thornhill Collection, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University.

9 Robert Brustein, “Epilogue to Anger,” 23.

10 John Hersey, funeral speech, “Lillian Hellman, 1905–1984,” box 5, folder 12, Arthur Thornhill Collection, SML.

11 Rose Styron, interview by author, August 17, 2010.

12 William Styron, funeral speech, in “Lillian Hellman, 1905–1984,” box 5, folder 12, Arthur Thornhill Collection, SML.

13 Ibid.

14 Alex Szogyi, “Lillian,” Hunter College Magazine (July 1985): 27.

15 Helen Dudar, “Shaping a Portrait of a Playwright,” New York Times (January 24, 1986): Arts Section, 1.

16 Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

17 Undated and unnamed lists, box 47, folder 10; Maryellen to Rita Wade, January 14, 1983, box 47, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

18 Patricia Neal, funeral speech, “Lillian Hellman, 1905–1984,” box 5, folder 12, Arthur Thornhill Collection, SML.

19 William Styron, funeral speech.

20 Peter Feibleman, funeral speech.

21 Leo O’Neill to William Abrahams, June 25, 1984, box 71, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

22 Warren Fugitt to William Abrahams, June 27, 1984, box 71:6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

23 Walter Sheldon to William Abrahams, June 25, 1984, box 71, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SLU.

24 Samuel McCracken, “‘Julia’ and Other Fictions by Lillian Hellman,” Commentary (June 1984): 35–43.

25 Christopher Hitchens, “American Notes,” Times Literary Suplement (July 6, 1984): 754.

26 Richard Bernstein, “Critics Notebook: An Unfinished Reputation: Reassessing Lillian Hellman,” New York Times (November 12, 1998): sec. E, 2.

27 Herbie French to Sidney Hook, July 1, 1984, box 174, folder 17, Sidney Hook Collection, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

28 See, for example, Ralph Melnick, The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank: Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman and the Staging of the Diary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997), 34; Frances Kiernan, “New York Observed; In the Court of Memory,” New York Times (November 24, 2002). See also George Shadroui, “Are the National Book Awards Biased in Favor of Liberals?” Front Page Mag.com (March 5, 2004), which simply attaches the adjective communist to Hellman’s name.

29 A 2011 production of the story of Meyer Levin and The Diary of Anne Frank makes exactly this point. See Rinne Groff, Compulsion, mounted at the Public Theater, New York, February 17, 2011.

30 Carl Rollyson, “The Lives and Lies of Lillian Hellman,” New York Sun (November 25, 2005): 5.

31 “Last Will and Testament of Lillian Hellman,” 13, provided by Peter Stansky.

32 Michael Davies, “The Life and Lies of Lillian Hellman,” Observer (October 26, 1986): 64.

33 William F. Buckley Jr., “Viewpoints,” Dallas Morning News (October 19, 1992): 17A.

34 Elia Kazan, Elia Kazan: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), 460

35 William Wright, “Stage View,” New York Times (November 3, 1996): sec H, 9.

36 Phyllis Jacobson, “Two Invented Lives: Hellman and Hammett by Joan Mellen,” New Politics 6 (Summer 1997).

37 Kazan, A Life, 462.

38 Wright, “Stage View.”

39 Kazan, A Life, 324–25.

40 Ibid., 382.

41 Stanley Hart, “Lillian Hellman and Others,” Sewanee Review 107 (Summer 1999): 402.

42 William E. Sarmento, “ ‘Lillian’ Is a Tour de force,” Lowell Sun (January 31, 1986): 4.

43 Kazan, A Life, 382.

44 Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

45 Letters (October 29, 1985, November 11, 1985, February 19, 1986, October 30, 1986) from the private collection of Zoe Caldwell Whitehead; names withheld.

46 David Kaufman, “What Became a Legend Most?” Chronicles (April 1986): 46.

47 Sarmento, “ ‘Lillian’ Is a Tour De force,” 4.

48 Kaufman, “What Became a Legend Most?” 46.

49 Richard Dodds, “Hellman Wrote All the Rules for ‘Lillian,’ “ New Orleans Times Picayune (February 21, 1997): L21.

50 Gregory Speck, “Lillian Hellman’s Notoriety Well Reflected in Play,” New York City Tribune (January 28, 1986): 5.

51 Frank Rich, “The Stage: Zoe Caldwell as Hellman in ‘Lillian,’ “ New York Times (January 17, 1986): sec. C, 3.

52 Davies, “The Life and Lies of Lillian Hellman,” 64.

53 Gordon Osmond, “A Curtain Up California Review: Imaginary Friends,” http://curtainup.com/imaginaryfriends.com.

54 Ben Brantley, “Literary Lions, Claws Bared,” New York Times (December 13, 2002).

55 Bernstein, “Critics Notebook.”

56 Rollyson, “The Lives and Lies of Lillian Hellman,” 5.