A Difficult Woman

by Alice Kessler-Harris

  A classified advertisement, placed in the New York Times in August 1951, tells the rest of the story. It also suggests how Hellman (and perhaps other victims of McCarthyism) could conflate the events of those years in ways that could be interpreted as untrue. Hellman always claimed that she put the farm up for sale after her HUAC appearance in May 1952, and in consequence of it. The advertisement tells us that the farm appeared on the market nine months before the HUAC hearing, though almost certainly in consequence of tax inquiries that were more than likely inspired by the political witch hunts for suspected communists and sympathizers. The advertisement read: “130 ACRE ESTATE, Comfortable. Homey. Restored colonial in a fairyland setting of winding lawns and wooded glens … As a home this estate is ideal. As an investment for subdivision, it’s terrific. $75,000 firm.”21 In the event, Hardscrabble took almost a year to sell and went for $67,500. Hellman forever associated the loss of the farm with her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In fact, its sale probably resulted from the more general political climate of the decade. But Hellman might be forgiven this conflation. She moved out of the farm shortly after her May 1952 HUAC appearance.

  These postwar years into the early 1950s were surely the most difficult of financial times for Hellman. She made less money and worried about it incessantly. She pawned her jewelry to pay for bail that Hammett would not accept. She tried to make a film in London and refused to understand when her agent told her the deal was off. The unsigned contract in hand, she took off for London in the fall of 1951 and put up at Claridge’s in the expectation that her expenses would be covered. Her agent, Kay Brown of MCA Management, futilely protested that Lillian had misunderstood: “As you will recall, I telephoned you and said that Charney said the deal was off.”22 Lillian, still at Claridge’s, threatened to sue, backing off only when she received a settlement sufficient to cover her expenses. The sense of untouchability spread to the theater, which had no blacklist. To Joseph Losey, who withdrew a tentative offer to revive The Children’s Hour in London, she vented her spleen. “I have just found out this morning that our negotiations with you have fallen through, and I feel that I must say that it’s a little shocking to me that we went to so much trouble and so much talk for nothing. It’s a new experience for me in the theatre, and I don’t like it.”23

  Hellman’s memories of these years tell us as much about her fears as about her financial circumstances. By her own standards she was broke, but, as her friends Morris and Lore Dickstein would put it later, Lillian’s idea of being broke differed from that of ordinary people’s.24 She seems never to have fallen quite as low as her memoirs suggest. Yet she worried incessantly about whether she could continue to support her comfortable lifestyle. To keep body and soul together, she tells us, she turned to Macy’s department store for employment. That story is undoubtedly false—though surely she feared that she might have had to resort to selling lingerie to make a living. Though she sold her beloved farm, she continued to live in her East 82nd Street townhouse, to maintain a staff of helpers there, and to invest in theatrical productions in which she believed. She never stopped contributing small sums to an author’s investment pool, a practice that she began in 1950 and continued for the next decade and a half. Even when she was in the midst of her 1952 HUAC encounter, she invested $2,500 in Arthur Kober’s Wish You Were Here. At the time, she had no ready cash at hand, so she asked Arthur Kober to forward the sum for her. She repaid the entire amount at the end of the year.25 In the fall of 1952, she gave Bloomgarden $1,500 to help finance the Second Play Company production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Small but steady returns from these investments flowed into her coffers for many years. In 1955, she had enough funds to purchase an old house on Martha’s Vineyard. If she was not broke, there is no question that financial worry consumed her, contributing to her irritability.

  In the spring of 1953, bedeviled by the government’s continuing harassment of both Hammett and Melby and fearful that she would be called once again to testify before HUAC, Hellman sought a European passport. She told Ruth Shipley, the passport officer with whom she frequently dealt, that she was badly in need of the employment that was waiting for her there. Shipley, perhaps sympathetic to Hellman’s womanly pleas, acceded. Hellman left in May for what was intended to be a two-month stay during which she meant to complete a film adaptation for Alexander Korda and hoped to sign a contract that would enable her to consult with him about the work. She finished her adaptation in two weeks of relatively relaxed time in Rome, where she “felt the lifting of burdens,” and then headed for London to negotiate with Korda about the film. While she was away, she wrote almost daily letters to her then secretary, Lois Fritsch, and she expected daily responses, though she did not always get them. The letters offer an unusually detailed set of insights into Hellman’s fever-pitch level of anxiety about her personal affairs as well as about money.26 And the two often intermingled to reveal the finicky and particular persona for which she was noted.

  Send the wool dresses to the cleaners, she instructed Fritsch, but not to the most expensive cleaners “because they are not new. Try asking around for another medium price cleaner.”27 “Those wool dresses may look clean,” she reminded Fritsch, “but they are not and shouldn’t be put away until they have been cleaned.” Her “favorite purple wool coat” could go to the expensive cleaner, and “the tan fur coat hat and muff to Bergdorf.” Through Fritsch, Hellman conveyed orders to her housekeeper, Helen, instructing her about every detail of home care while she was gone. She should not wash “the frill around my dressing table … It should be cleaned.” But she could do the washable blouses herself, rather than send them out, and, by the way, she should not forget to clean all the shoes and pocketbooks as well. Inquiries about money permeated the letters, along with household concerns. “Have we had any money deposited?” she asked in the same breath as she wondered whether Helen had cleaned the servants’ rooms and done the necessary repairs of buttons on the clothing left in the closets. “And please send promptly the box office receipts in gross dollars and our royalties.”28

  Concern about money sometimes took the form of inquiries about royalties paid or to be paid and sometimes of queries about deals under discussion or about to be consummated. These sometimes involved productions like The Children’s Hour, then on Broadway, and sometimes advice about whether she could afford to take another mortgage. Sometimes she asked if there was any income tax news, and sometimes she complained that the income tax people were holding up payments to her accounts for reasons she did not understand. She expressed relief when the money finally did come through, and then concern about whether the political situation would interfere with her capacity to earn money. “I hope nothing happens now. My movie contract could be spoiled and money is needed now for a few new reasons.”

  And she worried about expenses. While she waited in Rome for Korda to invite her to London and provide a place for her to stay, she commented on how expensive Rome was and speculated about moving to a cheaper hotel, determined to live on her expense money and to learn “to take buses, which is an experience.” She checked over lists of bills to be paid as Lois sent them to her, indicating which were correct and which she wanted to protest. She berated Lois for allowing her car to remain in an expensive garage instead of driving it up to the home of friends where Dash was then living. “I have seldom felt money so foolishly thrown out as the garage bill,” she wrote to her. And, finally, she asked Lois to explain to Helen that she was forced to cut back her hours because “I cannot afford to keep her all summer.” Maybe, Hellman suggested to Lois, Helen “would like to come in once a week to clean, overlook apartment.” Hellman would certainly want her back in September.29

  Back home, Hellman turned to earning more of her living from the theater. Adaptations of successful existing plays seemed a promising route, and to them she now turned. Her friend (and the producer of Montserrat and The Autumn Garden) Kermit Bloomgarden owned the rights
to produce an English-language version of The Lark, a play by Jean Anouilh based on the life of Joan of Arc. Would she, Bloomgarden asked, write an English-language adaptation for the American stage? Hellman balked. She badly needed the money, yet there were obstacles. An English adaptation already existed—made by Christopher Fry and performed without great success in London. Bloomgarden disliked the Fry version, as did Lillian when she saw it in London. Three earlier plays of Anouilh’s had been presented in New York since 1950, all to mixed reviews and none of them a financial success. If she were to make a success of this one, she would need control over its content. In need of money at the time, Hellman tells us in Pentimento that she encouraged Bloomgarden to see if he could work out an arrangement for a new translation that she would then adapt to the American stage.30

  Bloomgarden got to work. Anouilh’s agent, Jan Van Loewen, balked at the idea of having such a famous person do the translation, fearing that his client would lose control of the piece. He proposed that the two writers work together.31 Hellman backed off a bit. She wrote to Bloomgarden that she feared the idea of working together: “I would rather like to spare myself the problems of arguing with a man about his own play, and I have a suspicion that we would spend more time in being tactful than we would in managing any work.”32 When Bloomgarden persisted, she continued to raise problems, including the rights of the first English translator and who would have final authority over the content. She also demanded a fifty-fifty split of the proceeds and a share of the movie rights should the play be sold to the film industry. Van Loewen balked at these terms—citing, among other things, the question of whether Hellman was “politically acceptable in Hollywood.” Lillian reared up in anger, insisting that “this kind of ugliness has not previously happened to me in the theatre.”33 She wrote directly to Anouilh and solicited from him an explanation and something of an apology.

  Bloomgarden did not give up. Communicating now directly with Anouilh, he begged for a resolution to the problem, to which Anouilh finally conceded. “I am not opposed to the choice of Miss Hellman for the adaptation,” he wrote to Bloomgarden, attributing the discord to his agent’s political fears, the origins of which lay “in the working of American film producers.” Still, he insisted, in the absence of any knowledge of Lillian Hellman’s “style,” and without having seen the adaptation, he would not guarantee her share of the movie rights. Finally he offered to return to Bloomgarden the $3,000 paid to option the play for America.34 Bloomgarden declined the offer to withdraw, and the two compromised by agreeing to give Hellman a share of the movie rights if the play ran for twenty-five days or more on Broadway. Now there were more objections. Anouilh did not want to allow Hellman to publish her adaptation with Random House, claiming that she had agreed to too small an advance ($500 to be split with Anouilh) without informing Anouilh. Belatedly, he disclosed that he had already contracted to publish the Fry version in the United States.35 Hellman now erupted in anger at Anouilh’s bad faith, though she continued to work on the adaptation.

  The production that emerged should have satisfied everyone. It earned accolades from reviewers for turning what some thought the weakest of Anouilh’s works into a “beautiful production of a thoroughly vigorous play.”36 But the tension around Hellman’s English-language version of The Lark outlived the aesthetic value of the play that appeared on Broadway. In 1966, a decade after the successful opening of Hellman’s translation, Van Loewen gave permission to perform the Fry version; Hellman insisted that only her version could be performed in the United States and declined an offer of compensation. Nothing would persuade her to concede her rights to control the American production. The coup de grâce came nearly twenty years later. Hellman published her account of the episode in Pentimento, excoriating Van Loewen and Anouilh for their failure to acknowledge the artistic and financial success she had achieved in adapting The Lark to the American stage. Her play, she insisted, had been a critical success in the United States following five failed attempts by Anouilh to crack the American audience. It had made Anouilh a significant sum of money, for which she had received neither thanks nor appreciation. In response, Van Loewen penned a letter that illuminates the gender tensions that had permeated his earlier relations with Hellman. Angry that she was unwilling to acknowledge the defects of her version of The Lark, he wrote, “now you force me to a real spanking,” and then went on to disavow any need to appreciate an adaptor whose translation was, in his view, inadequate, and who had “mutilated and amputated” a play that “but for its indestructible quality, the brilliance of the production, and of Julie Harris’s performance … might well have been a failure.” Acknowledging that vanity was endemic in writers, he concluded, with a flourish, he had “never encountered such hurt vanity as in your case.”37

  While negotiations proceeded around The Lark, Hellman was working on Candide, where, once again, she ran into problems of control and remuneration. After Candide closed its three-month run, Hellman insisted for artistic reasons that it not be mounted again. She didn’t want to work on it anymore and she didn’t want anyone else to do so either. But some of the music was magical, and in the world of musicians, Leonard Bernstein’s achievement remained alive. Occasionally a two-piano concert version went out—four people sitting on stools, telling the story and singing the score. A decade later, Gordon Davidson, inspired by Maurice Peress, a friend and former assistant conductor of Bernstein’s, asked if they might approach Bernstein about doing a version of Candide to launch a new theater in Los Angeles.38 They wanted, Davidson says, to find simple ways to tell stories with good music. Candide fit the bill perfectly. Peress brought Davidson to meet Bernstein, and the three agreed to mount a twelve-performance run of the show. With extended narration that was simpler than Hellman’s original, this would be not quite a full-scale production yet not exactly a concert version. Bernstein agreed to let them search through his “Pandora’s box” of music omitted from the original production. “Don’t tell Uncle Lillian,” he warned his collaborators, fearing that Hellman would quash the effort.

  The modified production that opened for a short run in 1966 was wildly successful. A new song was added strengthening Candide’s character; the production caught some of the irony of Voltaire’s novel and allowed the music to breathe, turning it, as Davidson says, “into a joyous beggar’s opera.” Hellman caught wind of it a few months after the event. She wrote asking Gordon Davidson for the script, which, with some trepidation, he sent. He received her answer weeks later. It was not as bad as he had feared. Acknowledging Davidson’s talent as director and the success of the production, it went on to declare unequivocally her horror at what had been done to her work. “No-one,” she wrote to Davidson, “I repeat, no-one ever changes a word that Lillian Hellman writes.”39

  The incident reveals the stubborn belief that Hellman maintained in herself and in her work. It also suggests her conception of writing as remunerative work on which she depended. Afterward, she tried to work out a way to prevent such changes from ever happening again, or at least from occurring without her knowledge. If Candide were to be revived, she told her agent, then not only should “Lennie, Wilbur and myself” have approval of all changes, but “if I disagree with the adaptation of the book, and Lennie should happen to agree … that my disagreement will have to stand—or vice versa of course.”40 Bernstein, equally stubborn, refused to give up on his music. He produced another modified version of Candide that was performed in Los Angeles in 1971 and then in San Francisco and at the Kennedy Center. This time, Lillian’s fury knew no bounds. She had lost control and finally had little choice but to concede that Bernstein’s music had a life of its own. He commissioned a new book, by Hugh Wheeler, and she agreed to take her name off any production based on that book. The struggle for control cost her the services of Robby Lantz, her devoted agent for more than a decade, who disagreed with her position in the matter. Surprisingly, it did not cost her the friendship of Leonard Bernstein and his wife, Felicia.41
>
  By the late 1950s, Hellman had recouped her financial position. At various times she bought or held mortgages on rental properties in Manhattan (at 77 East 80th Street and 920 Park Avenue as well as 208 West 96th Street) and in Sunnyside, Queens. In addition to her homes in Manhattan and on Martha’s Vineyard, she owned stocks and bonds worth around $200,000. She also possessed a considerable amount of expensive jewelry that she kept carefully insured: diamond pins and bracelets, antique necklaces and gold watches, several fur coats and jackets. She valued these at around $20,000.42 Her home furnishings included expensive antiques and some valuable art objects, paintings, and prints. Together these added up to a reasonable fortune in 1960.

  And yet Hellman remained worried about money and alert to opportunities to maximize both wealth and income. This mixture did not produce the best of behavior. She solicited advice from friends like Arthur Cowan, responding gratefully when he extended good advice and irritably when something went wrong. She expressed a sense of entitlement and a willingness to fight for her due, whether it was over a lost will that she was sure should have included her or the right to control Hammett’s property because she believed only she could make it profitable. When she feared losing something valuable, she expressed her vulnerability peremptorily, demanding explanations, answers, and detailed accountings about everything.

  Some of the most illuminating insights into Hellman’s feelings of vulnerability with respect to her possessions come from her dealings with insurance companies. In the late 1950s, as her prosperity mounted, Hellman filed claims for small and large amounts: in 1958, a bathroom leak that damaged a new fur jacket in the closet below; a stolen purse, taken from an L.A. hotel room while she slept. The purse contained a diamond-studded gold powder case, a gold cigarette case, credit cards, and $640 in cash. Detectives found the purse but not the cash. She bought an expensive mink coat in January 1960 that she wanted insured; she lost a diamond pin that spring. Selma Wolfman reported that the pin turned up safely that August. She claimed a loss of several hundred dollars for household items missing, and apparently stolen, from her Vineyard house in the fall of 1961. The lost items included four Wedgwood plates, a rare old platter, six bottles of perfume, two umbrellas, a nutria fur hat, and a blanket. The total amounted to a little more than $500. In April 1962, a branch fell on the house, damaging the heating system; in August an expensive watch, left in full view on the beach when she went swimming, disappeared. Surely the police could be more careful about who they allowed on the beach, she wrote to the town authorities. In September she filed a claim for damages to goods left in storage when she moved from the Mill house to a smaller house on the Vineyard.43