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Lillian Hellman
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Lillian Hellman was one of the more popular and influential playwrights of the '30s and '40s. Her dramas were often politically oriented or socially conscious, and frequently centered on taboo subjects such as lesbianism, as in The Children's Hour, or getting away with murder, as in Little Foxes. Later she became a screenwriter, and not only adapted a few of her own plays to film, but ... the work of others such as her distinguished screen version of Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play Dead End. In the early '50s, Hellman was called to testify to the House Un-American Activities Committee, but she refused to testify saying "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." As a result she was blacklisted. Later in life she began writing autobiographies.
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Lillian Hellman was one of the most influential and successful playwrights of her time. Throughout her professional life she has expanded her writing into different genres, as well as being a playwright she was a screenwriter during a popular time in Hollywood and later in her life she wrote many popular memoirs reviewing her life. Hellman was gripped with many obstacles in her career and personal life, including a torrid love affair with writer Dashiell Hammett, having to testify in front of the house on un-American activities and being a female in a male dominated profession. Julia Newhouse and Max Bernard Hellman had only one child, Lillian Florence Hellman, born June 20th 1905 in New Orleans. Growing up she would spend her time between New York where her parents lived in New Orleans. Lillian stayed with her two aunts in a bed and breakfast they owned in the French Quarter.
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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.
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Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1905, Lillian Hellman saw her young life populated by eccentric and avaricious relatives, who later appeared only thinly disguised in her plays. Moving back and forth between New Orleans and New York as a child, Hellman witnessed the diverse cultures within her national borders. After graduating from high school, she briefly attended both Columbia University and New York University. Leaving school, she found a job at a publishing house, where she got her first glimpse of the bohemian lifestyle of the 1920s writer and artist. She married one of these young writers, Arthur Kober, and with him moved to Hollywood.
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Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans to Julia (Newhouse) Hellman, who came from Alabama, and Max B. Hellman, from New Orleans. She moved with her family to New York at the age of five, and while still a child spent half of every year in New York City and the other half back in Louisiana at a boarding house run by her aunts. Hellman studied at New York University (1922-24) and Columbia University (1924) without completing a degree. She began her writing career by reviewing books for the New York Herald Tribune (1925-1928) and published short stories in the magazine The Paris Comet. From 1930 she read scripts for MGM in Hollywood. Her marriage (1925-32) with the playwright and press agent Arthur Kober ended in divorce, and she returned to New York.
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From the writing of her first play, The Children's Hour (1934), to the time of her death fifty years later, Lillian Hellman's career was engulfed in controversy. During that time she wrote eight original plays, four adaptations for the Broadway stage, three memoirs, and a novella. She ... wrote and adapted screenplays and contributed to numerous other literary activities. This volume is a comprehensive reference guide to her dramatic works. The book includes a brief critical biography and a chronology; plot summaries, production histories, and critical overviews for her plays; and extensive bibliographical material. For the student unacquainted with Hellman's works, the plot synopses and critical commentaries provide helpful information.
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Lillian Hellman