PART FIVE
COMMUNISTS, FOXES, AND ARMY, 1936–1946
CHAPTER 12
The world was in a terrible state. Injustice faced Hammett everywhere he looked. In Europe as well as his own country, social forces were becoming markedly right wing. Nazism had grown strong in Germany, which worried him and fellow writers. In 1933, Germany under Chancellor Adolf Hitler had withdrawn from the League of Nations, the organization set up to keep peace after World War I. In 1934, Hitler was awarded dictatorial powers as Führer by the German Reichstag. He had been inspired by the success of Benito Mussolini of Italy, who soon after he became prime minister obtained temporary dictatorial powers from the Italian parliament, making him Il Duce, the supreme leader. In 1935, German Jews were deprived of citizens’ rights by the Nuremberg Laws. Among its repressive policies, the Nazi regime banned political opponents, boycotted Jewish businesses, hounded Communists and Jews from public office, expelled Jewish students from German universities, and forced blacks to be sterilized. They also started to burn “subversive” books, something that keenly worried Hammett and his left-wing and writer friends.
In 1936, the year that Edward VIII abdicated the British throne because of his romance with the American divorcée Wallis Simpson, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany formed an alliance, the Rome-Berlin Axis. German troops occupied the demilitarized Rhineland between Germany and France, an act that violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the treaty that had ended World War I.
Hammett looked at Spain but saw little that gave rise to optimism. Civil war had broken out in 1936 after a military coup overthrew the elected left-wing Popular Front government. General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist forces were locked in struggle against loyalists to the Spanish Republic. Hammett’s circle feared the spread of Fascism that would follow a Nationalist victory.
On the home front, the Roosevelt administration had made some political and social improvements. Unemployment had fallen almost by half, to 13.8 percent of the civilian labor force. Millions of Americans received government checks for working for new agencies like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Without that income, many would have starved. There was now an activist state committed to providing individual citizens with a measure of security against unpredictable market turns. Some African Americans achieved high office: William H. Hastie Jr., for example, appointed by President Roosevelt, became the first African American Federal judge, and Alabama-born Arthur W. Mitchell the first African American elected to the House of Representatives as a Democrat.
However, the United States remained isolated from events in Europe and isolationist in its foreign policy. In September 1938, Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, met with Hitler in Munich to try to avert impending war. Ed Murrow, CBS news chief, coordinated broadcasts from European cities to keep Americans informed on developments across the Atlantic.
Hammett’s life during this period became without focus. He was depressed about social and political events and devastated about his writing. Fiction had given him up. No longer did it lurk at the corners of his mind. Anxiety about its absence filled up the space instead. With Hellman, except when they worked closely together on her plays, he couldn’t seem to get his relationship to flourish as it had done. They loved each other, but that no longer seemed enough. He needed something in which to have faith. Everywhere, he saw social wrongs, and he strongly believed that there had to be a better system to correct them. His interest in Communism sprang from that belief and his earnest desire for social justice.
In 1935, the Hollywood section of the US Communist Party had been founded at the house of screenwriter Martin Berkeley. Berkeley later told the House Un-American Activities Committee the attendees had included Hammett and Hellman. The Hollywood branch was started with the hope that the party could draw on the resources of wealthy, powerful members of the movie industry. Although Hammett later showed Jo his Communist Party membership card, for many celebrities loyal to the party’s goals, membership was not officially recorded in order to protect their privacy. These members, termed “members at large,” did not pay dues but were expected to donate generously. They were not forced to attend public rallies or sell Communist Party publications, either. It was their resources the party expected to tap. Early in 1936, Hammett became a member at large of the party, as did many of his friends, including Lillian Hellman, Edward G. Robinson, and S. J. Perelman.
Hammett participated in several Hollywood Communist Party activities, including the Western Writers Congress and the Anti-Nazi League. He also sent $500 to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and in 1937 asked the Party’s permission to go to Spain. The party decided that Hammett, still famous, was more use to them in America. It was Hellman who went to Spain in October 1937 to make the radical documentary The Spanish Earth, written by Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos. On December 6, 1937, Hammett spoke at the League of American Writers’ symposium on the topic, “Should writers mix in politics?” He was, of course, in favor of writers becoming political. In 1938, he was elected chairman of the Motion Picture Artists Committee, which, though not Communist, raised money for anti-Fascist causes.
From 1938 to 1940, Hammett was associated with two important political journals. The first was Equality, which defended democratic rights and fought anti-Semitism and racism. It was published by the organization Equality Publishers, which was headed by Hammett. Equality’s inaugural issue, in May 1939, contained an open letter to America’s Catholic hierarchy warning them about spreading prejudice against Jews. Being Jewish was becoming increasingly perilous. At an authors’ luncheon on January 9, 1941, at the Hotel Astor, Hellman would later identify herself as a Jew and writer: “I am a writer and also a Jew. I want to be sure I can continue to say what I wish without being branded by the malice of people making a living by that malice.”
In 1938, Hammett also participated in the early planning of Ralph Ingersoll’s New York newspaper, PM, which would begin publication in 1940. FBI agents watching Hammett noted that Hellman and Kober sat on the PM board, while Hammett was hiring Communist or suspected Communist writers.
What the Communist Party meant to Lily and Dash at that point was not what was later understood by party membership. It did not necessarily include any desire or obligation to overthrow the US government or to practice acts of subversion as it had in the twenties. By the late thirties, the Communist international policy-making body had started an initiative called the Popular Front, which focused on civil rights issues, women’s rights issues, equal rights for minorities, and causes for well-known individuals who had been wronged politically. This attracted liberals into the party, as did the enthusiasm for the cause of republican Spain. Franco, of course, was supported by Fascists in Germany and Italy. Hammett and other liberal celebrities were seduced to the cause of anti-Fascism.
Politics did not motivate him to write. During winter 1936–1937, while Dash remained blocked, Lily adapted Sidney Kingsley’s 1935 Broadway hit Dead End for a third hit screenplay at Goldwyn. She received virtually unanimous critical accolades. The movie was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. That same year, to Dash and Lily’s delight, Kober’s hit play Having Wonderful Time opened at Broadway’s Lyceum Theatre. After the first night, Dash wrote to Lily: “I love you and miss you. . . . I had a couple of drinks with Ralph [Ingersoll]. . . . A sweet guy, I think, but dull.” 1 On May 5, 1937, Kober heard his play, which was later awarded the Roi Cooper Megrue prize, was runner-up for the Pulitzer. The movie version of Having Wonderful Time, starring Ginger Rogers and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was soon being shot.
After Princeton, in mid-March, Hollywood had beckoned, and Hammett went back again. Goldwyn wanted him to write an “original.” William Randolph Hearst offered him $50,000 to write a story for Marion Davies. When MGM suggested a third Thin Man movie for producer Hunt Stromberg, Hammett decided to sell MGM perpetual rights in Nick, Nora, and their dog Asta for $40,000.
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br /> Lily joined Dash in Hollywood from April till August, where they took over the six-bedroom Royal Siamese Suite at the Beverly Wilshire. Lily tried to emulate with Dash the familiar, relaxed intimacy she had with Arthur. Dash and Lily often dined together at Kober’s with Scott Fitzgerald and Dot Parker and her husband, Alan Campbell. All of them were deeply shocked when, on July 11, 1937, George Gershwin, only thirty-eight, died a “terrible death” after having a tumor removed from his brain. At Gershwin’s memorial service on Thursday, July 15, Dash, Lily, and Arthur mourned together. When Arthur remarked that Dash and Lily were acting like “quarreling married people,” Lily confessed Dash had had a “change of feelings.”
Despite being on the wagon since March, despite Lily’s presence, despite their reawakened sexual life, Dash continued to frequent chippies. Lily tried to persuade herself it didn’t matter because she was with him publicly. Once again, they discussed marriage and even set a wedding day. But when the day approached, Hammett fled town with another woman. Before Lily had recovered from his betrayal, she had become pregnant with Dash’s baby. He told her he was delighted. He wanted the child. He wanted to be a father. He wanted them to be a family. He even said he would ask Jose for a divorce. 2 But he did not say he would change his behavior.
One afternoon, exultant and happy, Lily rushed back to the hotel, holding a celebratory bouquet of flowers. In their bed, she saw Dash with a chippy. She understood the symbolism: They were lovers; she was pregnant; he wanted their child; but he would not become sexually faithful. Nothing, Lily decided, would make her go through the public humiliation of sharing their baby’s father sexually with other women. She went to Europe; she entered a hospital, as she had done several times before, and aborted their baby. Though she had terminated several earlier fetuses, this abortion was not merely one more in a series. In 1925, she had aborted Kober’s baby, for she could not marry a Jewish man while pregnant. In 1937, she could marry a non-Jewish man even though pregnant, but only if he were exclusively hers. Did Dash know exactly what he was doing to their relationship, or was he so careless of other people’s feelings that he simply acted without thought?
Lily finished a first version of her new play, The Little Foxes, in August 1937 then escaped Dash and left for Europe to visit Paris, Spain, and then Moscow. In her absence, Hammett felt abandoned. The doctors labeled his lungs fragile; he stayed off drink, but his health worsened. Would a divorce help? On August 26, 1937, Dash and Jose got a Mexican divorce. It was not recognized under US law, and neither Jose nor Hammett ever took it seriously. They continued to think of themselves as a long-distance married couple.
But Hammett felt he had tried, and he wanted Lily to know. He telegrammed her from Los Angeles on September 7: “HAVE DIVORCE AND FLU STOP REMAINING HERE UNTIL TWENTIETH STOP MUCH LOVE= DASH.” Two days later he wrote again: “Dear Lilishka, There’s a lot of missing of you going on round here, personally speaking.” He repeated: “I was divorced in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, on the 26th of last month. . . . I hope and imagine you had a swell time in Russia.” Again, she did not answer. Hammett, a strange, reserved man, was sometimes able in letters to release his feelings. So throughout October, November, and December he plied her with love letters.
The day after Christmas, he wrote from the Beverly Wilshire: “The youngsters came in for lunch to bring me their presents: otherwise I saw nobody.” He was still reworking changes on his “charming fable of how Nick loved Nora and Nora loved Nick and everything was just one great big laugh. . .” But as he wrote, “wish you were here,” he was not laughing. By January 15, 1938, he recorded his tenth month without drink. “Lilishka may be generous in most things, but she’s a postage-stamp miser.” 3
After returning to the States from her trip to Spain, France, and Moscow, Lily stayed with Kober for Christmas, dined with him on New Year’s Eve, and saw him almost daily in 1938. By May 15, Lily suggested they consider remarriage.
Lily visited Max in New Orleans in February 1938. Hammett sent her a wire: “It is raining here but only on the streets where they don’t know you are coming.”
Then Dash, worn through with fatigue, having lost more than twenty-five pounds, stopped writing his weekly letters to Jo. “Your father the Ex-King” has abdicated, he said. Though his untitled novel remained untouched, he was more scared by sexual impotence. Unable to leave his bed, he saw Jose but felt useless. The hotel bill rose and was unpaid. He wrote cheerful notes to Lily, who had no idea of his condition. On May 14, after fourteen months of being sober, suddenly he sent down to the hotel pharmacy for alcohol. He drank and drank. His cry of despair to Lily told her he was drinking.
Frances Goodrich arrived at the hotel and found him pale gray, half-dead. She and her husband, Albert Hackett, knew he must be hospitalized at once, but the hotel would not let him leave till the $8,000 bill was settled. The Hacketts decided to airmail him to Lillian. After a doctor agreed to sign a paper saying Hammett was fit to fly to New York, they sneaked out his belongings and supported him through the lobby as he struggled, sipping whisky. Hammett had never felt so sick, so low, so helpless. Hellman had never felt so frightened for him. She had an ambulance pick him up at the airport. On May 31, 1938, she checked him into Lenox Hill, where his doctor, Irwin Sobel, recorded three months’ loss of weight (he had lost twenty-five pounds), premature emaciation, low basal metabolism, low blood sugar, small heart, suspected adrenal, thyroid, and pituitary hypofunction, pyorrhea, impotence, a raging fear of insanity, and a range of neuroses comprising a severe nervous breakdown. His teeth were also infected. Hammett remained in bed, his teeth and diseased body cared for. Slowly, he regained his spirits. Within weeks, he put on weight. On his discharge in mid-June 1938, Lily rescued him and took him to Tavern Island to recover. When better, he helped her with Foxes.
Hellman suddenly, desperately needed Hammett’s help with the play, which rested on Hellman’s family history and was her most difficult one to write. More than her other plays, Foxes owed most to Hammett’s editorial brilliance, which tamed her angry talents. Unruly himself, he rigorously insisted on Hellman’s absolute discipline. Her genuine appreciation evoked a witty response: “You’re practically breaking my heart with letters about the play. I think we’re going to have to make a rule that you’re not to tackle any work when I’m not around to spur, quiet, goad, pacify and tease you.” 4
The play was set in the living room of Regina and Horace Giddens’s house in a small Alabama town in 1900, and there were strict instructions in the script that all accents be Southern. Hammett’s teasing began when he read an early version in bed one night. The next morning, Lily found a note under her door:
“Missy write blackamoor chit-chat. Missy better stop writing blackamoor chit-chat.” Hammett said it would be a good play someday, but for now, she should tear it up and start again. 5 She restarted and rewrote the black servants’ dialogue.
Hellman, relying on historical truth (her maternal grandmother was the model for Regina), wanted her heroine to ride around the town on a horse while husband Horace died at the end of act three. Hammett objected that the sound of horses’ hooves would make audiences laugh. Hellman said it was true to life. Hammett said truth and artistic truth differ. She changed the end. Horace, dying, begs Regina to get his medicine. She stands still, silently watching him. She does nothing, and he dies, with no extraneous clatter, no cacophony. A restrained, calculated murder.
Drafts and notebooks in the Hellman archives are filled with Hammett’s revisions. She rewrites nine drafts. He scrutinizes, vandalizes, authorizes every phrase. Each change improves her script.
Lily said later that Dash was generous with anybody who asked for help. He felt it was wrong to lie about writing. Lily believed his toughness came from a mixture of dedication, generosity, and a ruthless honesty. When finally she thought she had got the script right, she put it outside his door. She hoped this version would satisfy him. It satisfied everyone.
On January 9, 1939, rehearsa
ls began. The cast was led by Tallulah Bankhead whose scarlet reputation for temper tantrums matched Lillian’s. Called an elegant tramp by Tennessee Williams, Bankhead was a “total bitch” to everyone except the director, Herman Shumlin, with whom she was sleeping. 6 Dash observed Lillian and Tallulah fighting frequently.
After the February 2 Baltimore opening, attended by Dash, Lily, Max, Dot, Alan Campbell, and Sara and Gerald Murphy, Hellman threatened to leave the company when Bankhead was too wildly praised, and she had to be calmed by Hammett. But the show opened to rave reviews February 15, 1939, at New York’s National Theatre, ran for 410 performances on Broadway until February 3, 1940, then toured for two years. Hammett’s efforts ensured that it became an American classic. The rights were bought by Goldwyn for another hit movie, which was nominated for nine Oscars.
Hammett was proud of Lily, but her success on two coasts overwhelmed her. Two weeks after the play’s opening, she fled to an isolated village in Cuba, away from critics praising her, reporters besieging her, and her own drunken, “wasteful, ridiculous depression.” She had shrunk from Dash’s reckless drinking; now she feared for her own stability. She knew something was wrong when having the biggest hit on Broadway made her a miserable drunk. Unlike Dash, she determined to do something about it—for both their futures. In 1940, she consulted psychiatrist Gregory Zilboorg, who told her he wouldn’t analyze an alcoholic. She managed to quit drinking and was virtually abstinent for six years before becoming a moderate drinker. This new regime enabled her to help Dash, too.
In 1939, using money earned from The Little Foxes, she had purchased in her name, as a joint investment for her and Hammett, Hardscrabble Farm in Mount Pleasant, Westchester County, New York. This rural retreat, where she would write five plays, allowed Hellman and Hammett an almost idyllic life for two years, their happiest time together. The property included a farm, stables, bridle paths, woodlands, fields, meadows, an eight-acre lake, guesthouses, and an exquisite white clapboard house. She learned to farm. They raised and sold poodles until they made enough to buy chickens, cows, and three thousand asparagus plants. They reared crossbred ducks, stocked the lake with bass and pickerel, raised pigs and young lambs, grew giant tomatoes. They were peaceful and productive together. Dash and Lily sometimes had separate lovers, but they shared a base. He felt at home here and at ease with Lily. Only his writing block caused him anguish.
Dashiell Hammett Page 14