A Difficult Woman
Page 53
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.
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.
Bibliographical Guide
Archival Sources
The main source for this book has been the marvelous Lillian Hellman Collection at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. The papers there are rich in manuscript materials and contain as well a plethora of records having to do with Hellman’s business and financial interests, and some very good correspondence from Dashiell Hammett and to John Melby. To supplement these papers I have drawn extensively on a variety of other archival collections. The most important of these is the William M. Abrahams Collection in the Cecil Green Library at Stanford University. Hellman designated Abrahams, her friend and editor for many years, her official biographer. To fill this mandate, he collected a great deal of information that has now been made available to researchers. I made good use as well of additional collections, which i
n alphabetical order include the papers of:
William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives and Special Collections
Leonard Bernstein, Library of Congress
Millen Brand, Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Blair Clark, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University
Samuel Goldwyn, Margaret Herrick Library of the American Motion Picture Academy
Sidney Hook, Hoover Institution Archives
Arthur Kober, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin
Dwight MacDonald, Beinecke Library, Yale University
Mary McCarthy, Vassar College
Eve Merriam, Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College
Joseph Rauh, Library of Congress
Arthur Schlesinger, New York Public Library
Harlow Shapley, Houghton Library, Harvard University
Herman Shumlin, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin
Telford Taylor, Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Arthur Thornhill, Seeley Mudd Library, Princeton University
Lionel Trilling, Columbia Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Additional papers include:
Counterattack Collection, Tamiment Library, New York University
House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Name Files, National Archives
Little, Brown papers, Widener Library, Harvard University
Harold Matson Papers, Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Spanish Refugee Aid Collection, Tamiment Library, New York University
Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Tamiment Library, New York University
Interviews and Conversations
Hellman had an enormous number of friends and acquaintances. I benefited from speaking with a few, some at length and others more briefly. Crucial insights and information came from:
Robert Brustein
Zoe Caldwell-Whitehead
Annabel Davis-Goff
Morris and Lore Dickstein
Norman Dorsen