A Difficult Woman

by Alice Kessler-Harris

  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.