Perhaps at last there would be peace between them.
By 1943, Dash’s teeth were so infected that the army would not let him go overseas. Immediately, he suggested having every tooth pulled out. Lily’s toothless lover reported in May that he was now completely out of teeth, having given up his jawbone. For three weeks, he would be gumming eggs and soft bread. That weekend, the man with the sunken face, like the face of death, met Lily in the “21” and ordered soft-boiled eggs. Lily screamed.
Later, she told Dash that she and Shumlin had emotionally come to the end. Dash, never jealous of, though sometimes exasperated by, Lily’s affairs, said in a letter to her on February 29, 1944, that he couldn’t help her because he had never understood Lily’s relations with him. But he was intensely interested in how she was managing without his play-doctoring. Lily, anxious about writing her new play, The Searching Wind, without Hammett’s help, leaned on him long-distance.
“I hope the play is coming along better than if I was on hand to get into quarrels with you about it, and that therefor[e] you are devoting to sheer writing those periods you used to take out for sulking because I was hampering your art.” 7
When Dash received his copy of the play, his letter to Lily gently suggested that it was too much like a “polite comedy.” He told her he didn’t think she had made her points. His critique on March 15 came late, for the play opened on April 12. Recognizing this, he said it was in some ways the most interesting play she had done, with “swell stuff.” He also added she was a cutie. He wished her a “long and opulent run.” They both worried until the opening—unnecessarily. The reviews for The Searching Wind were so admiring that it ran opulently for more than three hundred performances.
Dash wrote to her at once. The news about the play was marvelous. It was time she stopped being his pupil. “Let this be a lesson to you, my fine buxom cutie. You are a big girl now and you write your own plays the way you want them and you do not necessarily give a damn for the opinions of Tom, Dick and Dashie unless they happen to coincide with your own.” 8
During 1944, Dashiell’s letters were his most affectionate. Before the army, his love had seemed so changed that their writer friend Jerome Weidman said publicly that Dash no longer loved Lily in the same way because she had outstripped him as a writer. Some friends thought the army was Hammett’s escape from that conflict. The war letters brought them together.
Dash believed nothing essential had altered in their joint lives. Nothing that could not be fixed. But in 1944, something changed. Lillian was invited on a cultural mission to the Soviet Union. She arrived in Moscow after a dangerous two-week journey across Siberia, was ensconced in Spaso House, the residence of the American ambassador, Averell Harriman, where she met a married foreign service officer, John Melby.
Dash encouraged Lily to go to Russia, but once she had embarked he was at a loss. “From now on I’ll be writing to you in a kind of semi-vacuum,” he moped, “not knowing whether you’re yet off to the other side of the world.” 9 Her concealed resentment showed in the fact that she had not given him a return date, nor had she instructed her secretary to inform him where to send his mail. On November 5, he wished he was with her in Moscow, where she was doubtless flirting with handsome colonels in stylish white uniforms. Lily was indeed flirting, but mainly with the dour young second secretary to the embassy, who shared her dinner table at Spaso House on November 11.
Father of two sons in El Paso, Melby was thirty, nine years younger than Lily, with a scar on his partly paralyzed face so that only one side smiled. She found this sophisticated diplomat interesting, but Dash’s recent postal wooing made her ambivalent. Deciding to let events and emotions take their course, she did not write to Hammett. But nor did she tell Melby of Dash’s crucial importance in her life.
By the third week in November, Dash mourned: “This is a long dry spell my darling.” 10
Lily felt more positive about Melby. They walked the wintry Moscow streets, danced together, and trawled shops. By Christmas 1944, Melby had even offered to divorce his wife. Dash steadily kept up his one-sided correspondence!
Though Dash and Lily had not been lovers for a long time, their attachment ran bone deep, and she had grown wary, even weary, of affairs with married men, alert to the way physical attraction could displace judgment.
Melby, whose career took him constantly abroad, would expect her to follow or wait patiently for his return. This would not meet her needs as an independent, successful playwright. Nor would it take into account her unbreakable bond with Dash. Yet, still she did not write to Dash, nor did she mention Dash to Melby.
Hammett’s letters from Alaska increased. Though he lacked everything he thought he valued—Lily, Jo, Mary, Jose, floozies, fame, smart society—he was entirely happy. He told Lily he had fallen in love with Adak’s mountains, lakes, and austerity. Again, he was drawn to the isolation of islands, the feeling of not being trapped. As a writer, he regained some measure of self-esteem from editing The Adakian, the daily newspaper for the troops, and writing The Battle of the Aleutians, with coauthor Robert Colodny. Although he was able to write this kind of journalism, he was unable, drunk or sober, to dredge up even one fictional paragraph, despite constant efforts throughout his war service.
Writing had once given Hammett a defense against the inanity of meaninglessness, which his rational self knew was what everybody faced. Politics had been helpful to his problem over writing, but in the company of other activist writers, he felt shamed. He had returned the $5,000 advance for a new novel to Bennett Cerf, saying he was scared he would never write it.
In 1945, when Hellman returned to New York, she resumed writing. Hammett, who received two notes from her on March 15, sarcastically responded that it was “awful nice” being on her mailing list again.
On April 15, Melby returned, met Lillian, and they slept that night at her house. When he left, they restarted writing. Lily, corresponding with both men, told neither about the other. Dash told Lily he was restarting a book. It was about a man who came home from war and did not like his family. The tentative title was The Valley Sheep Are Fatter. When Melby came back to New York, Lillian took him to Hardscrabble, where he met the Kobers and Dash and Lily’s circle. Melby wanted Lily to accompany him to China, but Dash had told her he would join a training unit at Fort Richardson in April for the final five and a half months. Then he would be home. He would want her to be there when he arrived.
In January 1945, MGM had released the movie The Thin Man Goes Home, and seven months later, on August 28, the Thin Man himself left Fort Richardson to go home. On September 6, 1945, Sergeant Sam Hammett was honorably discharged at Fort Dix Separation Center. Ironically, he gave Hardscrabble as his address.
In New York, he hastened to Lily’s house. In the hallway, he spotted a man with a facial scar. The scarred man’s books were strewn around. The scarred man’s clothes took up Hammett’s space. Dash had not been warned. Awkwardly, Lily asked Melby to move out to the Plaza for a few days. When Melby returned, confused, realizing he had not taken into account the importance of this thin man, this thin man had disappeared. The word “betrayal” hung in the air. First, Hammett checked into the Hotel Roosevelt, then he lived briefly at 15 East 66th Street before moving to 28 West 10th Street. He bought Jose a house in West Los Angeles with a primrose kitchen. She liked that. Hammett liked nothing about his old life. He did not much like Lillian either, anymore. Hammett would not acknowledge he felt rejected, but Lily’s treatment of him precipitated a descent into an alcoholic binge.
In 1946, Hammett began teaching courses in mystery writing at the Jefferson School of Social Science, which was established in Lower Manhattan by the US Communist Party in 1944 to teach Marxism to the working classes. He also served on the school’s Board of Trustees, which he continued to do until 1956.
In January 1946, an Oppish radio serial, The Fat Man, started and would run until 1950. On July 12, another radio serial, The Adventures of Sam Spade, b
egan. This run would continue until 1951. Versions of his old work haunted him. Money rolled in and he wrote nothing.
In 1945, at fifty-one, Hammett the ex-soldier wanted to hole up at Hardscrabble. But Lily entertained visitors whom Hammett called “grotesques.” Melby would not be at Hardscrabble long. Nor would he last much longer in Lily’s life. But Dash was not yet sure about that. Dash had Lily’s ring, but he was not sure he had Lily.
PART SIX
POLITICS, AUTUMN GARDEN, AND JAIL, 1946–1952
CHAPTER 14
Between 1945 and 1948, Dash’s drinking grew wilder. There came a “lost, thoughtless quality,” which Lily and their friends had not seen before. Dash was not at ease with anyone. Angry that Lily was finding her own way writing Another Part of the Forest. Angry that he could not see his way, could not write fiction at all, angry at his truncated homecoming, for which he blamed Lily. Dash suspected that, underneath, Lily had not entirely given up on him. But underneath was a complex country for which he had no passport.
Hellman broke through their mutual distrust by discussing with Dash her idea that, through Forest, a Southern father’s struggle against unhealthy lust for his daughter, Regina (played by the beautiful Patricia Neal), Lily might now confront her crushing childhood. Hammett, pleased to be play consultant again, delighted in the Forest rehearsals. The couple was back on track. The cast noticed that, when Hammett arrived, Hellman flowered. Hammett, still depressed, remarked soberly he would commit suicide if it weren’t for the trouble it would cause Lily. “Oh, don’t let that stop you,” she retaliated wittily. “I’ve had troubles before!” 1 Cast members also noticed Dash couldn’t take his eyes off Pat Neal, who treated him as an amusing, affectionate uncle.
As postwar anxiety about the threat of Communist subversion worsened, Hammett’s pro-Communist participation increased. According to FBI records at the time, he was New York State president of the Civil Rights Congress, which was labeled as subversive by the attorney general. In that capacity, Hammett asked the New York City mayor to stop police brutalities toward blacks. He was named as a Communist in September 1946 by a State Department adjutant. In the same year, Hammett spoke at another organization, the New York State American Youth for Democracy Convention, which was also labeled subversive by the attorney general, as was the Tenth Anniversary Dinner of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, at which Hammett spoke. On February 28, 1947, he signed a petition that appeared in the Daily Worker, condemning “the shameful persecution of German anti-Fascist refugee Gerhardt Eisler and calling for abolition of the Un-American House Committee.” He was also named as a Communist by an anti-Communist group within Actors’ Equity Association. 2
This FBI record shows the extent of his influence among liberal groups. It also helps to explain his political reputation. Hammett’s political standing with left-wing liberals was so high that he became an even more prominent target for those who would investigate him.
Like Hammett, other liberals and radicals were forced to choose between loyalty to the causes of labor and civil rights (Hammett’s original partisanship) and loyalty to the Hollywood branch of the Communist Party, which had been formed by the Conference of Studio Unions, who cared little for the plight of American workers.
The “Un-American House Committee,” better known as the House Un-American Activities Committee, or HUAC, was an investigative committee of the House of Representatives, created in 1938 to investigate alleged disloyalty or subversive activities by private citizens or public employees or any organizations suspected of having Communist ties. In 1945, it was made a permanent committee. About this time, HUAC decided to track down Karl Marx’s footprints by investigating Hollywood. The committee saw subversive propaganda everywhere. The FBI believed that the hidden purpose of Lily’s play, Another Part of the Forest, was to reveal Communist ideas. Hammett and Hellman came under greater surveillance.
Hammett stumbled through the start of a book about Helm, an artist who had been drunk since his discharge from the army. He gave up and began another about two men recently discharged, one of whom wanted his friend to marry his sister so that the two men could still hang out together. He thought a lot about men in groups, men in company, the company of men. He had felt at home with army fellows.
Max’s wild tempers and paranoia, exacerbated by his dementia, finally led Lily to place him, against his will, in a mental sanatorium. When Max was lucid, he blamed her for jailing him as a punishment. Lily, desperate, needed Dash’s advice. Did Dash also blame her? Before they could talk, Max died, on August 4, 1947. Lily immediately phoned Dash at his West 10th Street apartment so that together they could bury Max in the same cemetery as Julia. Dash managed to accompany Lily to Martha’s Vineyard to help her recover.
Dash, the absentee father, was finally called upon to get help for his drug-addicted daughter, Mary, in 1946, for Jose was desperate over her “bad, bad state.” Dash must take her away.
Jo had tried to help her sister.
But even as a toddler she caused terrible trouble. She went to a Catholic school and slugged a nun. She played truant. [Uncontrollable] she shoplifted. . . . By fourteen, she drank all the time. By sixteen, she was without doubt an alcoholic and she took . . . drugs. Mama couldn’t bear it, and she wouldn’t tell Papa the truth. Mama went on praying, Mary went right on drinking, and then there were the men. She got into sex at thirteen. We couldn’t even talk about that. Papa got a glimpse when we went East to see him in summer 1941. I think he was frightened for her, or maybe for himself.
Dash went west immediately. He could get Mary good care in New York.
Jo said: “I don’t think he wanted to take her. . . . I said her brain was twisted. She didn’t think like other people, she never thought about other people. . . . No shrink, nothing could help her, but I wanted her to go. Mama needed space, peace, so did I. I wanted Papa to take her.”
At sixteen, Mary had told Jo she had never had one happy day in her life. At twenty-four, she went with Dash back to New York, ostensibly to get orthodontic help. She slept with the orthodontist, became pregnant by another man, asked Dash to arrange an abortion, injected drugs, drank more than Dash, battled with him. He told Jo, “Your sister is a whore.” Hammett’s feelings for Mary were strange and violent. Because she seemed both frail and tough, he wanted to help her, but at times he almost wanted to kill her. 3 The tension escalated. Living together in Dash’s small apartment, they lashed out in frightening intimacy and abused each other publicly.
When Dash brought Mary to Hardscrabble, she arrived with dark bruises around her eyes. Father and daughter fought, kissed, and hated each other, and it seemed to Lily and their friends that they were mutually attracted. Lily could not bear to contemplate a possible meaning of what she witnessed. She begged Dash to stop drinking in front of Mary, insisted he get Mary her own apartment. But still Mary ruled Dash’s life. She liked Rose Evans, Hammett’s black housekeeper, disliked Marge May, her father’s secretary. Hammett fired Marge. Mary opened Hammett’s mail, found a telegram from Aunt Reba saying Dash’s father was dead. Was Dash going to the funeral? “No, I’m paying for it,” he quipped, “let somebody else do the crying.” 4 But he had been in touch with his father and bought him an artificial leg when his own was amputated. Aunt Reba, who came to visit, begged Mary to return with her, but Mary would not leave Dash. Later, psychiatrist Joseph Teicher said Mary was fixated on Hammett. Finally, they found a place in New York for Mary to live until 1951, but, sadly, she remained promiscuous.
On July 6, 1948, Dash and Mary went west to attend Jo’s wedding to Loyd Marshall. Lillian sent Jo a blue cloisonné locket, but, diplomatically, Jo wore Jose’s pearls. “Papa was cold stone sober when we walked down the aisle, but after our honeymoon, he was much worse.”
Dash, constantly drunk, provoked Lily so much she wanted to sever all ties with him, but psychiatrist Zilboorg said Dash needed her. She would not abandon him, but as long as he drank, she kept an icy distance. She fea
red he would drink till he died.
But she was wrong.
Rose Evans saved him. Lillian had refused to see him. Dash stayed in bed drinking, mainly beer. Rose got very frightened when he could hardly make it to the bathroom, wouldn’t stop drinking, and didn’t move. She panicked. “Don’t call Lillian,” Dash said weakly. But Rose told Lily’s secretary: “Please come down here and see to Mr. Hammett because I think he’s going to die.” Reluctantly, Lily headed for West 10th Street. Hammett, shaking and screaming with DTs, could hardly lift his arms or legs, but by 3:00 a.m. he was in Lenox Hill Hospital, where he spent Christmas 1948. Dr. Abe Abeloff told him that if did not stop drinking he would be dead within six weeks. Hammett gave his word that he would stop.
To everyone’s amazement, he stopped drinking completely. Six years later, Lily told Dash the doctors did not believe he would stay on the wagon. He looked puzzled. “But I gave my word that day,” he said. 5
In January 1949, he was allowed out of the hospital, broken but sober. Where should he convalesce?
Hardscrabble Farm, of course, Lily said briskly.
Hardscrabble Farm, of course, Hammett said calmly, is the place “where I belong.” It is the place “where all sensible people are whenever possible.” 6
Sensible was a new word in his vocabulary. Dash knew the synonyms. Level-headed, sagacious, sane, shrewd, rational, reasonable, wise. He tried them out. He had not been known for those cautious epithets. What he had been known for—wildness, weakness, and drunken disorder—had not served him well. Resolutely, he began his physical and spiritual recovery. He and Lily had come through a shabby time. They needed serenity and peace. They needed to share it. No fights, no bickering. No drink. They settled into something resembling an idyll, even better than their previous time at Hardscrabble. For two years, a blue haze drifted over the farm, completing their dreams of companionship. Hammett grew fat, suntanned, and contented; together they bred poodles, even owned fifteen dogs. Hammett bought them a television. They watched old movies like a happy married couple.
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