by Nora Ephron
1932-34
Hellman and Hammett live together at the Sutton Hotel, managed by Nathanael West. Hammett writes his last novel, The Thin Man, and suggests to Hellman that she become a playwright. He gives her a story about two Scottish teachers who sued a student for libel, and it becomes the basis of The Children’s Hour. The play is a huge hit. Hellman is twenty-nine. She begins to write screenplays for MGM.
1936
McCarthy, now a book critic for The Nation, travels to Nevada to divorce Harold Johnsrud; on the train, she meets and beds a plumbing-company executive from Pittsburgh. Upon her return, she moves to Greenwich Village and becomes a Trotskyite. “I saw all sorts of men that winter,” McCarthy later writes. “I realized one day that in twenty-four hours I had slept with three.…” Robert Misch, a wealthy young man who became the prototype of “The Genial Host” in one of McCarthy’s stories, often invited McCarthy to his dinner parties: “The guests at those little dinners were mostly Stalinists, which was what smart, successful people in that New York world were. And they were mostly Jewish; as was often pointed out to me, with gentle amusement. I was the only non-Jewish person in the room. It was at Misch’s that I first met Lillian Hellman.… But I may mix her up with another Stalinist, by the name of Leane Zugsmith.”
1937
Hellman travels to Paris, Moscow, and Spain during the Spanish civil war. Many years later she writes that on her way to Moscow, she secretly stopped in Berlin to deliver $50,000 to a childhood friend she calls Julia, who was involved in the anti-Nazi underground.
1937
McCarthy falls in love and moves in with Philip Rahv, a Russian immigrant and writer. Along with Dwight Macdonald and William Phillips, Rahv revives Partisan Review, and McCarthy becomes the drama critic of the publication. Rahv takes McCarthy and several other PR staff members to a lunch with the eminent critic Edmund Wilson, who is known as Bunny. “Bunny,” one of his friends once asked him, “how do you get all these dames into bed?” “I talk them into it, of course,” Wilson replied.
1938
McCarthy marries Edmund Wilson. The marriage is stormy from the beginning. In June, after a night of drinking and physical violence on both sides, Wilson commits McCarthy to Payne Whitney Clinic for psychiatric observation. She is discharged after three weeks. Six months later, on Christmas Day, McCarthy and Wilson’s son, Reuel, is born.
1939
Hellman’s play The Little Foxes opens on Broadway. She buys a large estate in Westchester County and turns it into a farm.
1941
Hellman’s play Watch on the Rhine opens on Broadway. Among other things, it’s about an American woman married to a man who was active in the anti-Nazi underground.
1941
McCarthy publishes a short story, “The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt,” in Partisan Review. It’s about a young woman named Meg Sargent who has an affair on a train with a steel-company executive from Cleveland. The story is a sensation. Delmore Schwartz calls it “Tidings from a Whore.” McCarthy is twenty-nine.
1942
Although he is forty-six and well past draft age, Hammett enlists in the American army and is stationed in New Jersey. He spends weekends with Hellman at the farm. From Diane Johnson’s Dashiell Hammett: A Life: “One night, as Lillian was driving into town, Hammett was plastered as usual and it all seemed too much to her. He was a disgusting drunk, pawing her and leering, and when he suggested making love, something borne of her deep exasperation, of her sense of his waste of his time, of his life, of the stupidity of all this, made her say no, she wouldn’t sleep with him when he was like this. She had never said no before to any of his demands or sexual whims. Tonight, simply, no. This surprised him, sobered him, shocked him. That was it, then. He loved Lily, would always love her. But he decided he would never make love to her again, and he never did.…”
1942
McCarthy’s first book, The Company She Keeps, a collection of stories about Meg Sargent, is published as a novel.
1943
Technical Sergeant Dashiell Hammett is sent to the Aleutian Islands, where he spends the rest of the war working on an army newspaper. He writes letters to his “Darling Lilishka”: “A goodly batch of mail came today … but … there … was … nothing … from … a … slightly … Jewish … she … playwright who forgets that Vice President Wallace said in Los Angeles, no further back than February 4, “The common man means to get what he is entitled to.” And there is no commoner man than me, and I know what I am entitled to. Think that over, sister. Meanwhile, much love.”
1944
Lillian Hellman goes to Moscow on a cultural mission. She begins an affair with a young American diplomat named John Melby.
1945
McCarthy and Edmund Wilson are divorced. McCarthy testifies that Wilson abused her throughout the marriage. Wilson testifies that McCarthy attacked him constantly and tried to set fire to his office: “She would confuse me with the uncle she’d been sent to live with after her parents’ death. She was under the impression—which must have been exaggerated—that her uncle had beaten her every day.”
1946
McCarthy marries Bowden Broadwater and continues to write theater reviews. Reviewing Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh, she writes: “To audiences accustomed to the oily virtuosity of George Kaufman, George Abbott, Lillian Hellman, Odets, Saroyan, the return of a playwright who—to be frank—cannot write is a solemn and sentimental occasion.”
1948
While teaching at Sarah Lawrence, McCarthy goes to hear Hellman speak. They have a fight.
1949
The Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace, known as the Waldorf Conference, is held in New York. A parade of Soviet artists, including Dmitry Shostakovich, appear to testify to Joseph Stalin’s benevolence. Lillian Hellman sits on the dais and is identified in newspapers as pro-communist; Mary McCarthy is in the audience with her friends Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, as anti-communists.
1949
McCarthy publishes a new novel, The Oasis, about a group of intellectuals in a utopian community, and Philip Rahv threatens to sue her.
1951
Blacklisted in Hollywood, her income greatly reduced, Hellman sells her farm in Westchester County. Hammett serves six months in federal prison for refusing to name the financial contributors to the Civil Rights Congress.
1952
Hellman appears before the House Un-American Activities Committee and refuses to name names. In a letter to the committee read by her lawyer Joseph Rauh, she writes: “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” She takes the Fifth Amendment when asked if she was ever a member of the Communist Party.
1954-57
McCarthy publishes A Charmed Life, Venice Observed, and The Stones of Florence. She writes a critically acclaimed memoir, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, and her uncle Harry threatens to sue her.
1960
Traveling through Europe for the State Department, McCarthy meets American diplomat James West. Both are married. “My love for Jim is increasing ’till I am quite dizzy,” she writes to her closest friend, Hannah Arendt. To Bowden Broadwater she writes: “You will not believe how painfully sorry I am that I have done this to you. Can’t you, can’t you fall in love with someone else and remember me as I remember you?” Within a year McCarthy and West divorce their spouses and marry in Paris.
1961
Hammett dies in Hellman’s Manhattan town house, where he has lived for three years.
1961
McCarthy publishes The Group, a novel about eight Vassar graduates. It receives a mixed critical reaction and is savaged in a New York Review of Books parody written pseudonymously by McCarthy’s friend Elizabeth Hardwick. The novel is a huge bestseller and becomes a movie directed by Sidney Lumet. Several of McCarthy’s classmates threaten to sue her.
1964
From Lillian Hellman’s Paris Review interview: “[Mary McCarthy] has accuse
d you, among other things, of a certain ‘lubricity,’ of an overfacility in answering complex questions. Being too facile, relying on contrivance.” Hellman: “I don’t like to defend myself against Miss McCarthy’s opinions, or anybody else’s. I think Miss McCarthy is often brilliant and sometimes even sound. But in fiction, she is a lady writer, a lady magazine writer. Of course, that doesn’t mean she isn’t right about me. But if I thought she was, I’d quit.”
1969
Hellman’s memoir An Unfinished Woman is published. It’s a critical success and a best-seller.
1967-73
McCarthy and James West live in Paris. McCarthy covers the Vietnam War and the Watergate hearings as a journalist and publishes Birds of America.
1973-74
Hellman’s memoir Pentimento is published. It, too, is a best-seller. The rights to one of the chapters, “Julia,” are sold to MGM. Jane Fonda is cast as Hellman and Vanessa Redgrave as Hellman’s childhood friend Julia. Lillian Hellman receives honorary degrees from Smith, Yale, and NYU.
1976
The third volume of Hellman’s memoirs, Scoundrel Time, about the McCarthy period, is published and is a best-seller. Lillian poses for the “What Becomes a Legend Most?” Blackglama mink ad.
1977
Julia is released. Lillian appears onstage at the Academy Awards and receives a standing ovation.
1980
Appearing on The Dick Cavett Show to promote Cannibals and Missionaries, McCarthy calls Lillian Hellman a liar. “Everything she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the,’” she says. Hellman sues McCarthy, Cavett, and WNET and asks for $2.25 million in damages. Joseph Rauh warns Hellman against suing: “If this ever got to court, they could bring up every word you ever wrote or said and examine it for its truthfulness. Do you really want that?”
1983
Muriel Gardiner’s book, Code Name Mary, is published.
1984
McCarthy asks Judge Harold Baer to issue an order of summary judgment dismissing the suit on the grounds that Lillian Hellman is a public figure. Baer refuses, instead ruling that Hellman is not a public figure and that in any case, McCarthy’s remark “seems to fall on the actionable side of the line, outside what has come to be known as the ‘marketplace of ideas.’” Less than two months later, before the suit comes to trial, Hellman dies. In September, before receiving the MacDowell Colony medal, McCarthy tells The New York Times: “If someone had told me, ‘Don’t say anything about Lillian Hellman because she’ll sue you,’ it wouldn’t have stopped me. It might have spurred me on.… I didn’t want her to die. I wanted her to lose in court. I wanted her around for that.”
1989
McCarthy dies.
A VINTAGE ORIGINAL, APRIL 2003
Copyright © 2003 by Heartburn Enterprises
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
All inquiries concerning performance rights in the work appearing herein should be addressed to the author’s agent, International Creative Management, Inc., Attn: Sam Cohn, 40 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019.
Lyrics by Craig Carnelia
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ephron, Nora.
Imaginary friends / Nora Ephron.
p. cm.
“A Vintage original”—T.p. verso.
eISBN: 978-0-307-48620-2
1. Hellman, Lillian, 1906—Drama. 2. McCarthy, Mary, 1912—
Drama. 3. Libel and slander—Drama. 4. Literary quarrels—Drama.
5. Women authors—Drama. I. Title.
PS3555.P5I45 2003
812′.54—dc21
2002041171
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