(These six plays span nearly twenty years of theatre and d...)
These six plays span nearly twenty years of theatre and display the range of Lillian Hellman's dramatic gifts. The Children's Hour (1934), her first play, was considered shocking at the time; it concerns the devastating effects of a child's malicious charge of lesbianism against two of her teachers. Days to Come (1936) is about the tragic consequences of strike-breaking in a small Midwestern community. The Little Foxes (1939) and Another Part of the Forest (1946) together constitute a chilling study of the financial and psychological conflicts within the Hubbards, a wealthy and rapacious Southern family. Watch on the Rhine (1941), the story of how fascism affects an American family and the refugees they harbor, won the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The Autumn Garden (1951) is a poignant yet humorous drama set at a summer resort near New Orleans.
(Paperback with 245 pages. A Memoir of her life that inclu...)
Paperback with 245 pages. A Memoir of her life that includes Hollywood in the Days of Sam Goldwyn, New York during the glittering times of Dorothy Parker and Tallulah Bankhead, a 30-year Love Affair with writer Dashiell Hammett, and much more.
Caustic, brilliant, uncompromising, accomplished, Lillian Hellman, one writer noted, can "take the tops off bottles with her teeth". Her career as a playwright began in 1938 with The Children's Hour, the first of seven plays that would bring her international attention and praise. Thirty years later, Hellman unleashed her peerless wit and candor on the subject she knew best: herself. An Unfinished Woman is a rich, surprising, emotionally charged portrait of a bygone world -- and of an independent-minded woman coming into her own. Wendy Wasserstein's introduction to this new edition provides a fascinating literary and historical context for reexamining Lillian Hellman's life and achievement.
(A study of Lillian Hellman separates fact from fiction to...)
A study of Lillian Hellman separates fact from fiction to reveal the story of her brief marriage to Arnold Kober, her love affairs, her lawsuit against Mary McCarthy, her politics, and her literary works
(Cast 2 men, 12 women. One of the great successes of this ...)
Cast 2 men, 12 women. One of the great successes of this distinguished writer. A serious and adult play about two women who run a school for girls. After a malicious youngster starts a rumor about the two women, the rumor soon turns to scandal. As the young girl comes to understand the power she wields, she sticks by her story, which precipitates tragedy for the women. It is later discovered that the gossip was pure invention, but it is too late. Irreparable damage has been done.
(In 1952, Hellman joined the ranks of intellectuals and ar...)
In 1952, Hellman joined the ranks of intellectuals and artists called before Congress to testify about political subversion. Terrified yet defiant, Hellman refused to incriminate herself or others, and managed to avoid trial. Nonetheless the experience brought devastating controversy and loss. First published in 1972, her retelling of the time features a remarkable cast of characters, including her lover, novelist Dashiell Hammett, a slew of famous friends and colleagues, and a pack of "scoundrels" -- ruthless, ambitious politicians and the people who complied with their demands.
Lillian Florence Hellman was an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway, as well as her left-wing sympathies and political activism.
Background
Lillian Florence Hellman was born on June 20, 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana, into a Jewish family. Her mother was Julia Newhouse of Demopolis, Alabama, and her father was Max Hellman, a New Orleans shoe salesman. Julia Newhouse's parents were Sophie Marx, from a successful banking family, and Leonard Newhouse, a Demopolis liquor dealer. During most of her childhood she spent half of each year in New Orleans, in a boarding home run by her aunts, and the other half in New York City.
Education
In 1910 her family moved to New York City, where she attended public schools.
She received her education at New York University and Columbia University.
After several years in publishing, playreading, and book reviewing, she turned to writing for the theater and in 1934 completed her first play, The Children's Hour, which concerns a neurotically vindictive student in a girl's school who ferrets out and partially invents an unnatural affection between two schoolmistresses.
Career
Hellman worked as a manuscript reader for Liveright Publishers before becoming main play reader for producer Herman Shumlin.
After a "year and a half of stumbling stubbornness, " Hellman finished "The Children's Hour" (1934), based on an actual incident in Scotland.
The play reveals Hellman's sharp characterizations and clear, moral comment on a theme considered dramatically untouchable at the time.
"In Days to Come" (1936), a play of a crumbling family as well as of the struggle between union (an organization that fights for workers' rights) and management, Hellman's dramatic touch faltered.
Set in the South, it depicts a family almost completely engulfed by greed and hate. During World War II (1939–45; a war in which France, Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union fought against Germany, Italy, and Japan), Hellman wrote two plays.
In "Another Part of the Forest" (1946), Hellman again portrayed the Hubbard family of "The Little Foxes"; she also directed the play.
"Autumn Garden" (1951) lacked the usual passion of her dramas but was a touchingand revealing insight into a southern boardinghouse.
"Toys in the Attic" (1960), a devastating portrait of possessive love set in New Orleans, won her another New York Critics Circle Award.
Hellman demonstrated her versatility as an author with a witty book for the musical "Candide" (1956); adaptations of two plays, "Montserrat" (1949) and Jean Anouilh's "The Lark" (1956); and her departure from realism (realistic pieces) in the humorous play of Jewish family life, "My Mother, My Father and Me" (1963).
She also edited The Letters of Anton Chekhov in 1955.
Hellman published three memoirs (personal writings) dealing with her career, personal relationships, and political activities: An Unfinished Woman (1969), Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973), and Scoundrel Time (1976).
These works included her sharp criticism of the House Unamerican Activities Committee headed by Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957), which accused hundreds of politicians, artists, and other Americans of being communists, the political design where goods and services are owned and distributed by the government.
There was much discussion at the time about whether the content of these memoirs was greatly enhanced by Hellman.
(Cast 2 men, 12 women. One of the great successes of this ...)
Politics
McCarthy, Gellhorn and others accused Hellman of lying about her membership in the Communist Party and being an unrepentant Stalinist.
Views
Quotations:
In an interview at the time, Hellman described the difficulty of writing about the 1950s:
"I wasn't as shocked by McCarthy as by all the people who took no stand at all. .. .I don't remember one large figure coming to anybody's aid. It's funny. Bitter funny. Black funny. And so often something else–in the case of Clifford Odets, for example, heart-breaking funny. I suppose I've come out frightened, thoroughly frightened of liberals. Most radicals of the time were comic but the liberals were frightening. "
Membership
In December 1962, Hellman was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
In 1979, on The Dick Cavett Show, McCarthy said that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'. "
Connections
Her marriage to Arthur Kober in 1925, who was a writer for the New Yorker, helped Hellman get various jobs around New York City, including reading scripts for studios and working as a book reviewer for the New York Herald Tribune.
The marriage ended in 1932.
The action of the play is triggered by a child's accusation of sexual relations against two female teachers, which leads to one woman's suicide (where a person takes his or her own life).
Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett, author of the classic detective novels The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, who also was blacklisted for 10 years until his death in 1961. The couple never married.