A Difficult Woman

by Alice Kessler-Harris

  Looked at from the perspective of her ample financial resources in the late sixties and seventies, Hellman’s behavior appears to be greedy. But in light of her status as an economically independent woman, the fear evoked by her blacklisting in the fifties, and the new possibilities that her celebrity status suddenly made available to her, Hellman’s behavior deserves a more charitable assessment. Certainly, in the seventies, America shed whatever temptations had drawn it to the idea of cultural revolution, communal living, and a diminished concern for material goods. The New Left’s vision of hippies wandering the world with all their possessions in a knapsack vanished. It was replaced by a new spirit of materialism and a new respect for corporate power. By the late seventies, a new market ideology reigned. Neoliberal ideals that glorified individual achievement and competition floated in the air and would soon replace the spirit of social responsibility that Hellman appreciated about the sixties. Hellman, approaching her seventies and still involved in every detail of her financial affairs, learned to use the market to her benefit. She understood herself as a valuable property whose protection lay primarily in her own hands and who could and should make as much as possible from a market in which she held a valuable position. Her work was, after all, her largest resource. To manage her complicated financial affairs and her literary properties, she relied on the meticulous attention of secretaries, agents, accountants, and lawyers, all of whom worked with each other, as well as with her, to ensure that her rights and interests were appropriately acknowledged and paid for. Unquestionably, she acted the prima donna. She believed in her own value and the value of her work; she expected deference. She wanted immediate attention to her affairs and thoughtful consideration of her desires. She expected accountants and agents alike not only to understand and respect her principles but to honor all her unspoken as well as spoken wishes. For this we might take her to task, but by the seventies these behaviors had become part of a tough persona and a self-protective veneer necessary to living well by her own efforts.

  To guide her, Hellman hired talented literary agents who painstakingly helped her to maximize her income and advised her as to what she might and might not accept by way of remuneration. These relationships inevitably became touchy, with agents consulting with her over even the smallest decisions and eating crow when they overstepped their boundaries. Robby Lantz, who represented her in the sixties and again in the eighties, repeatedly wrote her notes about large and small requests, noting that “I think I know your answer, but don’t want to answer for you.”71 The files of letters to and from Don Congdon, her literary agent in the seventies, contain similar language. After he had represented her for little more than a year, he wrote to explain why he had settled for a relatively small payment for one of Hammett’s stories, apologizing at length for the arrangement. “Ordinarily, I would check any unusual request for permission to quote from Hammett’s work with you,” he wrote. “Because this material was to be used in a ‘scholarly monograph,’ and because it seemed clear that the quotes would be used in a proper fashion, I assumed that it would meet with your approval. If this assumption was incorrect, let me know and I will check all permissions with you in the future.”72 The apology seems to have worked, because Congdon eventually represented Lillian for nearly twelve years. But his deference did not diminish. Years later he continued to ask her approval for trivial decisions. “This,” he would write to her in reference to one request or another, is “something you probably won’t approve, and if that is so, just say the word.”73

  Their relationship could not have been easy. She quibbled about everything, asserting the most irascible side of her personality, as when she refused the author of a book on the early days of the Screen Writers Guild permission to include a photograph of herself.74 She asked Congdon to challenge Little, Brown, publisher of her bestselling memoirs, because a statement covering December royalties did not pay off until March. Though she had signed a contract specifying the schedule, she nevertheless remonstrated: “Why in the name of God should they keep money belonging to writers two months past its proper date?” Only Congdon’s assurance that this was standard in the industry prevented her from protesting “this nasty practice.”75 She made as much fuss over a $30 charge for typing a contract as over a $400 fee for altering galleys. The typing charge drew a particularly vituperative outburst: “I cannot tell you how silly I think it is to send me such a bill,” she wrote to Congdon. “I find that I am totally shocked at this kind of minginess, which I can’t believe is your idea. Is everybody out to annoy everybody else at any cost to themselves?”76

  Not infrequently, Hellman overrode the authority of her agents, producing irritation and conflicting messages. After she fell out with Robby Lantz, he volunteered to give up half of his commission on the three-book contract with Little, Brown (of which An Unfinished Woman had been published and Pentimento was then under contract).77 She insisted that she had negotiated this contract directly with Little, Brown’s president, Arthur Thornhill, but agreed that he should have half of it. “I do not wish to renew the mess between you and me that need never have happened, and for which I will always feel bewildered and pained. Therefore, I agree to your proposal of one half of your commission, and to hell with all the sad mangling that goes on in this world.”78 She asked her lawyers to negotiate the rights to a piece of Hammett’s for which she had previously asked Don Congdon to be responsible. Congdon, confused, complained to the lawyer, but Lillian simply dismissed the agent’s concern. “Don’t worry about Congdon …” she told her lawyer. “You and I were quite justified and no explanation need go beyond that.”79 Sometimes she simply circumvented the agent’s authority by going directly to the individual with whom she was negotiating. Challenged, she resorted to stubborn language. “It does seem to me my right to insist upon certain measures that have to do with me,” she wrote to Don Congdon on one occasion.80 Congdon eventually severed their relationship, telling her, “We have come to a parting of the ways—I no longer want to represent your account.”81 Robby Lantz, who then returned to her service, reacted more generously. When, shortly before her death, she tried to find her way around him, Lantz gently took her to task. “I think it would be best if only one of us negotiates at a time … You pay your agent to do the agenting … I love you but you shouldn’t burden yourself with these matters.” Lillian didn’t let up, and a month later he wrote again: “I beg you on bended knee to prevent people from duplicating and counter-moving on anything one has to do. It only creates major suspicion … and frankly serves no useful purpose.”82

  For all of her acerbic style and quarrelsome nature, this impossible woman managed to retain the services of talented literary agents, lawyers, and financial accountants, establishing with them long and loyal working relationships. Her gender served her well in this respect, for she could not only be charming and lovable, she could and did present herself as a helpless, confused woman when she wanted to garner the protection of the generally male guardians of her affairs. “I honestly believe that I do not ask very much,” she wrote to Robby Lantz when he once failed her, “and when I am in trouble and need help I should get it as fast as possible.”83 When she wrote seeking explanations for some large or small confusion, she described herself, tongue in cheek, as “bewildered,” “misunderstood,” and pained. Occasionally she pursued answers by claiming to be an ignorant woman who needed itemized explanations of complicated statements and clarification of questionable decisions.84 Generally, she ended these letters with declarations of love and loyalty. With astonishing frequency, she claimed to lose statements she did not understand, checks she did not wish to cash, and reports that she wanted to dismiss. When things went well, she offered expressions of warm affection, invitations to dinner, and the loan of her Vineyard house. “Helen will take good care of you,” she wrote to Lantz, who borrowed the house for five days, “and please tell Shirley to let her know what you prefer in the way of food.”85

  The measure of her concern
with money—and its relationship to her ability to live the good life she had carved out for herself—emerges in her relationships with accountants and lawyers as well as with literary agents. Hellman created an interlocking structure in which one checked the other and each responded to advice from as many people as she could consult. In an effort to keep track of her money, she asked Robby Lantz to forward contracts to her accountant, Ted Present, because she was “asking Present to make up a list of when and how much monies are due me, feast or famine lady that I am.”86 As her financial resources stabilized and she became more comfortable, her affairs became more complex and she, in turn, more dependent on the accountants and lawyers who served her. She checked with them and they checked with each other about the tax implication of royalties, property sales, and trust redemptions. By the seventies, her accountant, Jack Klein, was paying her bills. When she had a problem with a department store or a telephone company, she, her secretary, and the accountant all consulted over how it should be handled.

  If she couldn’t understand what her financial advisers and lawyers were doing, or felt impatient with an explanation or a strategy, she exploded in frustration. On one such occasion, she disagreed with her former producer Herman Shumlin over how to disburse the funds that came in from the film Spanish Earth. For years, Shumlin had channeled Lillian’s share of the money (about $200 a year) to Spanish Refugee Aid—a tax-exempt organization. In the summer of 1969, Hellman learned that the film’s producer, Joris Ivens, was ill and destitute. She wanted her share of the income sent directly to him. Shumlin resisted—sending the money to Ivens would create tax problems. He asked Hellman to send the money herself. Hellman stubbornly refused, claiming that she would then have to pay tax on the money she received.87 The dispute went on for weeks until Shumlin caved.

  Sharp-tongued she was, but apparently effective. One lawyer, who had served her well, inquired of her accountant how much he could charge her. He had, he said, accrued some $10,000 in billable hours but could not imagine billing her for much more than the $4,000 he had charged her the previous year.88 His caution was clearly warranted. A year later, Hellman wrote to him to complain, “I really see nothing that warrants what seems to me as large a bill as this,” and asked him to return her papers to her.89 The firm backed off—sending Lillian a conciliatory letter in which they agreed “to treat the check you sent … as a credit against further services.”90

  Twice—once with Lantz, and once with Congdon—she broke off a decade-long relationship, each time because she became convinced that the agent did not have her best interests at heart. With Lantz, the break came around the 1971 revival of Candide, which her partner and coauthor, composer Leonard Bernstein, badly wanted to do and which she desperately did not. Lantz, who then represented both Hellman and Bernstein, was caught in the middle. Hellman, convinced that he had encouraged her to agree to the revival out of loyalty to Bernstein, became incensed when she discovered that he was taking a commission on a work she hadn’t approved. Not wanting to quarrel with Bernstein (whose wife, Felicia, was a close friend), she severed her relationship with Lantz and, after declaring that she hated the 1971 production, agreed to pull out of the Candide partnership permanently, pending a new treatment that utilized none of her ideas. This proved, in the end, to be impossible, so she continued to receive royalties from subsequent productions from which her name disappeared. But she had been fond of Lantz, and, in a final bow to friendship, she agreed to let him keep half of the commission on the royalties of her old projects, channeling the rest to her new agent, Don Congdon.

  Prosperity, not desperation, encouraged her to put her townhouse on the market in February 1969. She wasn’t getting along with her tenants, she was tired of running the property, and the New York real estate market offered an opportunity to trade for a smaller yet fully serviced apartment.91 She turned down an initial offer of $285,000 and sold 63 East 82nd Street in September 1969 to Theodore Zimmerman for $310,000.92 This turned out to be a shrewd move. A couple of years later, the New York housing market declined as the city went into an economic tailspin. With the profits she reaped, Hellman was able to add to her nest egg. She agreed to hold a short-term second mortgage on the property ($220,100) at 7 percent interest, and she retained an option to live in the upstairs apartment for up to two years at a reasonable rent of $1,000 a month.

  The negotiations and the move reveal Lillian’s endless capacity to attend to the details of financial transactions and once again suggest her attention to the deliberations. She consulted accountants and lawyers about the best route to go with regard to taxes, the timing of new purchases, the place to put the funds released from the house, the advisability of financing a second mortgage for the buyer. She dictated notes to her secretary and wrote in her own hand on scraps of paper to remind herself about what had been agreed and what still remained to be negotiated. Her reminders overflowed the boundaries of file folders and touched the smallest details. “We have agreed that I keep storage space in the cellar, and that I keep space for the wood. If I wish to keep my washing machine downstairs in the cellar, I may do so,” she wrote in a note to herself. She wanted to be sure that there would be room for her maid as long as she stayed there; she wanted the contract to indicate that her rent included gas and electricity; and she asked (and got) the new owner to paint the sixth-floor maid’s bathroom as well as the live-in superintendent’s apartment.93 She carefully listed the items she would take (the sconces in her study but not the ones in the living room; the mantel in the living room, rather than the one in the hallway) and those she was willing to leave. She could part with the eighteenth-century wall panels, the ceiling fixtures in some rooms, the upstairs washer and dryer, which, however, she might use until she left. Inevitably, after the house sale was concluded, she came to dispute such issues as exactly which room the maid would occupy, where the caretaker would live, what changes should be made at Hellman’s expense and which at that of the new owners. Following the negotiations and while workmen occupied the house and moved furniture, Hellman stayed in the Vineyard or traveled to California, the physical arrangements and the move itself taken care of by her secretary and helpers hired for the purpose.

  Lillian’s tenancy in the upstairs apartment at 63 East 82nd Street did not last very long. She found, as she wrote to a former occupant of the house, “something vaguely disturbing about living in a house you once owned and with people who have no experience in running such a house.”94 She compromised by spending as much time as she could out of town. When she moved out in October 1970, she was still perseverating over small details. She missed an English Sheraton chair that had been in a hallway, she said. It was newly upholstered. She wanted it back.95

  The saga of the house on East 82nd Street did not end there. Hellman, having taken a second mortgage on the house, became entangled in the new owner’s financial problems. For several years he paid her irregularly and occasionally skipped a payment or requested a postponement on a payment due. Hellman took all this badly, complaining that it was “embarrassing and a nuisance, and asking him not to do it again.”96 To her lawyers, she expressed concern that the house might be abandoned; she feared, she wrote them in May 1973, that “I will not have a good year next year, and I certainly cannot afford to be burdened with a house whose present condition I know nothing about and whose leases I know nothing about.”97 In fact, 1973, the year that Pentimento was published, turned out to be a good financial year for Lillian. But her worries persisted until January 1976, when the house was resold and the remaining loan ($83,305) repaid to her.

  She quickly settled on a new apartment in one of the city’s elegant buildings, at 630 Park Avenue.98 She had sold her house for $310,000 and bought the new place for $112,650, so she could afford to renovate it to her liking. And she did, turning a traditional three-bedroom Park Avenue apartment into an elegant living space for one, with a large master bedroom and a comfortable library. The apartment also came with a second-floor room for a liv
e-in helper. To prepare the new quarters, she left careful instructions for the carpenter who undertook to renovate the new apartment—along with the price for each job. He was to remove the sliding doors in the maid’s room closets, install an electrical outlet, hang pegboard on the north wall of the kitchen, and so on. Each job had a price attached, the most expensive being the installation of a marble fireplace in the living room at a cost of between $250 and $300. After it was all done, she quibbled about small costs: why the additional $10 for a window repair, she asked. Because he had added a screen, replied contractor John Michael. Months later she was still quibbling. She could not, she said, distinguish between the front and back doorbells, and she did not understand why it had taken so long (and cost so much) to put up a shower curtain rod. If he would correct these things, she would pay his bill.99

  To prepare for moving, Hellman hired Mildred Loftus, who also took charge of the unpacking. Together the two decided what was to be brought from the old house, what needed cleaning, what should be sold, which bookcases would need to be cut and how, which chairs to recover at what cost. But it was Loftus who got the jobs done. Hellman continued to provide detailed instructions on issues such as which books would go where, which dishes in what cabinet. Hellman thought Mildred a life-saver, calling her “the best friend I have” and complimenting her on her arrangement of the dishes, on finding lost attachments for the shelves of the china closet, and on replacing the dining room curtains.100 She also praised Rita Wade, who took charge of the bills and the billing, typing confirmations of all the instructions and keeping meticulous track of what was done and the cost of everything. An endless array of contractors, “rug men,” and workmen handled the work itself. But Hellman was tired. From the Vineyard, she wrote her gratitude to Mildred Loftus, adding that “the weight of what I’ve done has been a stone around my neck and all I can do is hope that the stone will soon disappear.”101 By September, when Lillian returned from the Vineyard, the apartment was ready for her.