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100-594: As a playwright, Hellman had many successes on Broadway, including The Children's Hour , The Little Foxes and its sequel Another Part of the Forest , Watch on the Rhine , The Autumn Garden , and Toys in the Attic . She adapted her semi-autobiographical play The Little Foxes into a screenplay, which starred Bette Davis . Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett , who also

200-459: A Broadway revival of The Children's Hour , produced by Kermit Bloomgarden and presented December 18, 1952 – May 30, 1953, at the Coronet Theatre . The cast included Kim Hunter as Karen Wright, Patricia Neal as Martha Dobie, Iris Mann as Mary Tilford, and Katherine Emmet reprising her original role as Mrs. Amelia Tilford. The revised stage production was construed as an implied criticism of

300-596: A Nazi student group that advocated "a kind of socialism" until their questioning about her Jewish ties made their antisemitism clear, and she returned immediately to the United States. Years later she wrote, "Then for the first time in my life I thought about being a Jew." Beginning in 1930, for about a year she earned $ 50 a week as a reader for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in Hollywood, writing summaries of novels and periodical literature for potential screenplays. Although she found

400-627: A benefit for the Spanish loyalists fleeing to neighboring France, and the actress and company refused. Bankhead was further incensed by these comments, as she had helped many Spanish Republican fighters and families to flee the Spanish Civil War in 1937, after they had been turned on by Stalinist fighters behind their own Republican lines. Hellman and Bankhead would not speak again until late 1963. Years later, drama critic Joseph Wood Krutch recounted how he and fellow critic George Jean Nathan had shared

500-527: A boarding home run by her aunts, and the other half in New York City. She studied for two years at New York University and then took several courses at Columbia University . On December 31, 1925, Hellman married Arthur Kober , a playwright and press agent, although they often lived apart. In 1929, she traveled around Europe for a time and settled in Bonn to continue her education. She felt an initial attraction to

600-456: A cab with Hellman and Bankhead: Bankhead said: "That's the last time I act in one of your god-damned plays". Miss Hellman responded by slamming her purse against the actress's jaw. ... I decided that no self-respecting Gila monster would have behaved in that manner. On January 9, 1940, viewing the spread of fascism in Europe and fearing similar political developments in the United States, she said at

700-516: A comic operetta with a much more substantial musical component. She wrote the spoken dialogue, which many others then worked on, and wrote some lyrics as well for what became the often-revived, Candide . Hellman hated the collaboration and revisions on deadline that Candide required: "I went to pieces when something had to be done quickly, because someone didn't like something, and there was no proper time to think it out ... I realized that I panicked under conditions I wasn't accustomed to." Toys in

800-596: A defamation suit against McCarthy and Cavett, and during the suit, investigators found errors in Hellman's Pentimento . They said that the "Julia" section of Pentimento , which had been the basis for the Oscar-winning 1977 movie of the same name, was actually based on the life of Muriel Gardiner . Martha Gellhorn , one of the most prominent war correspondents of the twentieth century, as well as Ernest Hemingway 's third wife, said that Hellman's remembrances of Hemingway and

900-506: A false accusation of lesbianism by a schoolgirl against two of her teachers. The falsehood is discovered, but before amends can be made one teacher is rejected by her fiancé and the other commits suicide. Following the success of The Children's Hour , Hellman returned to Hollywood as a screenwriter for Goldwyn Pictures at $ 2,500 a week. She first collaborated on a screenplay for The Dark Angel , an earlier play and silent film. Following that film's successful release in 1935, Goldwyn purchased

1000-563: A goodwill mission as a guest of VOKS , the Soviet agency that handled cultural exchanges. During her visit from November 5, 1944, to January 18, 1945, she began an affair with John F. Melby , a foreign service officer, that continued as an intermittent affair for years and as a friendship for the rest of her life. In May 1946, the National Institute of Arts and Letters made Hellman a member. In November of that year, her play Another Part of

1100-450: A labor dispute in a small Ohio town during which the characters try to balance the competing claims of owners and workers, both represented as valid. Communist publications denounced her failure to take sides. That same month she joined several other literary figures, including Dorothy Parker and Archibald MacLeish , in forming and funding Contemporary Historians, Inc., to back a film project, The Spanish Earth , to demonstrate support for

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1200-575: A layman to understand." Rauh had the letter delivered to the HUAC's chairman Rep. John S. Wood on Monday. In public testimony before HUAC on Tuesday, May 21, 1952, Hellman answered preliminary questions about her background. When asked about attending a specific meeting at the home of Hollywood screenwriter Martin Berkeley , she refused to respond, claiming her rights under the Fifth Amendment and she referred

1300-489: A little pro-Nazi Republic to me." Bankhead, who hated Nazism and had become a strong critic of Communism since the mid 1930s Great Purge and for what she saw as a communist betrayal of the Second Spanish Republic , was outraged by Hellman's actions and thought Hellman a moral hypocrite. Hellman had never been to Finland. Bankhead and the cast suspected that Hellman's refusal was motivated by her fanatical devotion to

1400-487: A luncheon of the American Booksellers Association : I am a writer and I am also a Jew. I want to be quite sure that I can continue to be a writer and if I want to say that greed is bad or persecution is worse, I can do so without being branded by the malice of people who make a living by that malice. I also want to be able to go on saying that I am a Jew without being afraid of being called names or end in

1500-579: A member of the Communist Party," based on testimony from unidentified informants. When Melby appeared before the department's Loyalty Security Board , he was not allowed to contest Hellman's Communist Party affiliation or learn who informed against her, but only to present his understanding of her politics and the nature of his relationship with her, including the occasional renewal of their physical relationship. He said he had no plans to renew their friendship, but never promised to avoid contact with her. In

1600-648: A prison camp or be forbidden to walk the street at night. Her play Watch on the Rhine opened on Broadway on April 1, 1941, and ran for 378 performances. It won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. She wrote the play in 1940, when its call for a united international alliance against Hitler directly contradicted the Communist position at the time, following the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of August 1939. Early in 1942, Hellman accompanied

1700-473: A room talking of current events or discussing the books they had read. I drifted away from the Communist Party because I seemed to be in the wrong place. My own maverick nature was no more suitable to the political left than it had been to the conservative background from which I came." Her play The Little Foxes opened on Broadway on February 13, 1939, and ran for 410 performances. The play starred Tallulah Bankhead as Regina, and after its success on Broadway

1800-564: A sexual relationship, but in the Scottish case, they eventually won their suit, although that did not change the devastation wrought on their lives. At the time of the play's premiere (1934) the mention of homosexuality on stage was illegal in New York State , but authorities chose to overlook its subject matter when the Broadway production was acclaimed by the critics. Lillian Hellman directed

1900-490: A single line or word of Communism in any American picture at any time. There has never or seldom been ideas of any kind. Naturally, men scared to make pictures about the American Negro, men who only in the last year have allowed the word Jew to be spoken in a picture, men who took more than ten years to make an anti-Fascist picture, those are frightened men and you pick frightened men to frighten first. Judas goats; they'll lead

2000-402: A statement that said her two-year membership in the Communist Party had ended in 1940, but she did not condemn the party nor express regret for her participation in it. Her attorney, Joseph Rauh , opposed her admission of membership on technical grounds because she had attended meetings, but never formally become a party member. He warned that the committee and the public would expect her to take

2100-440: A statement that she had never been a member of the Communist Party and would not associate with radicals or subversives, which would have required her to end her life with Hammett. Shortly thereafter, William Wyler told her he was unable to hire her to work on a film because she was blacklisted. In November 1947, the leaders of the motion picture industry decided to deny employment to anyone who refused to answer questions posed by

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2200-404: A strong anti-communist stand to atone for her political past, but she refused to apologize or denounce the party. Faced with Hellman's position, Rauh devised a strategy that produced favorable press coverage and allowed her to avoid the stigma of being labeled a "Fifth Amendment Communist". On May 19, 1952, Hellman authored a letter to HUAC that one historian has described as "written not to persuade

2300-640: A village festival into "an extended opera bouffe peopled by musical comedy characters", but still told The New York Times that it was "a valuable and true picture which tells a good deal of the truth about fascism". To establish the difference between her screenplay and the film, Hellman published her screenplay in the fall of 1943. British historian Robert Conquest wrote that it was "a travesty greater than could have been shown on Soviet screens to audiences used to lies, but experienced in collective-farm conditions." In April 1944, Hellman's The Searching Wind opened on Broadway. Her third World War II project, it tells

2400-549: Is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and, to avoid being sent back, tells her grandmother that the two headmistresses are having a lesbian affair. The accusation proceeds to destroy the women's careers, relationships, and lives. The play was first staged on Broadway at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in 1934, produced and directed by Herman Shumlin . In 1936, it

2500-458: Is being examined by Dr. Joe Cardin, a physician who is Mary's cousin and also Karen's fiancé, Martha asks Lily whether she would like to go back to traveling to the places she misses, now that they can afford it. Lily becomes angry and starts shouting about how, whenever Joe is around, Martha becomes irritable, unreasonable, and jealous, taking her jealousy of Joe out on her. Two of Mary's schoolmates, Peggy Rogers and Evelyn Munn, who were listening at

2600-444: Is my belief that you will agree with these simple rules of human decency and will not expect me to violate the good American tradition from which they spring. I would therefore like to come before you and speak of myself. Reaction divided along political lines. Murray Kempton , a longtime critic of her support for communist causes, praised her: "It is enough that she has reached into her conscience for an act based on something more than

2700-621: Is one principle that I do understand. I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive. I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had ever seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions, even though I long ago came to

2800-409: Is too late: Mary's lies, together with the community's willingness to believe and spread malicious gossip, have destroyed three innocent lives. After graduating from New York University, Hellman was a play reader in the office of theatrical producer Herman Shumlin . In May 1934, she asked Shumlin to read a play of her own—the sixth draft of The Children's Hour . He read it as she waited. After he read

2900-548: Is vulnerable, Mary blackmails her into corroborating everything she says. When Karen and Martha realize why all their pupils were pulled out of their school in a single night, they go to Mrs. Tilford's residence to confront her. Amelia tells Mary to repeat her story. When Karen points out an inconsistency, Mary pretends to have been covering for Rosalie, who reluctantly corroborates Mary's story for fear of being exposed herself. Resolving to take Amelia to court, Martha and Karen leave. Seven months later, after Martha and Karen have lost

3000-609: The House Un-American Activities Committee . In 2008, Sarah Frankcom directed a production at the Royal Exchange in Manchester . It starred Maxine Peake (who won a MEN Award ) as Karen Wright, Charlotte Emmerson as Martha Dobie, Kate O'Flynn (who won a TMA Award ) as Mary Tilford and Milo Twomey as Dr Joseph Cardin. A revival starring Keira Knightley and Elisabeth Moss , directed by Ian Rickson ,

3100-568: The House Un-American Activities Committee . Following the Hollywood Ten 's defiance of the committee, Hellman wrote an editorial in the December issue of Screen Writer , the publication of the Screen Writers Guild. Titled "The Judas Goats", it mocked the committee and derided producers for allowing themselves to be intimidated. It said in part: It was a week of turning the head in shame; of

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3200-814: The Open Letter called for a united front against fascism, which, in their view, required uncritical support of the Soviet Union. In October 1937, Hellman spent a few weeks in Spain to lend her support, as other writers had, to the International Brigades of non-Spaniards who had joined the anti-Franco side in the Spanish Civil War. As bombs fell on Madrid, she broadcast a report to the U.S. on Madrid Radio. In 1989, journalist and Ernest Hemingway 's third wife, Martha Gellhorn , herself in Spain at that period, disputed

3300-684: The Shubert Organization in the U.S. and abroad. Goldwyn began looking to follow other film companies, like Loews Theaters / Metro Pictures and First National , into vertical integration. Goldwyn and the company backers were looking at renting the Astor Theatre for movie premiers. Instead, with the Capitol Theatre 's financial problems in May 1920, the backer purchased a controlling interest in that theater. Shubert and Godsol, however, did not want

3400-437: The Spanish Civil War were wrong. McCarthy, Gellhorn and others accused Hellman of lying about her membership in the Communist Party and of being a committed Stalinist . The defamation suit was unresolved at the time of Hellman's death in 1984; her executors eventually withdrew the complaint. Hellman's modern-day literary reputation rests largely on the plays and screenplays from the first three decades of her career, and not on

3500-574: The Stalinist regime in Soviet Russia. Hellman and Bankhead became adversaries as a result of the feud, not speaking to each other for a quarter of a century afterwards. Hellman had aggravated the matter further by claiming that the real reason for turning down the benefit was because when the Spanish Republican government fell to Franco's fascists, Hellman and Shumlin requested that Bankhead put on

3600-477: The Attic opened on Broadway on February 25, 1960, and ran for 464 performances. It received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play. In this family drama set in New Orleans, money, marital infidelity, and revenge end in a woman's disfigurement. Hellman had no hand in the screenplay, which altered the drama's tone and exaggerated the characterizations, and the resulting film received bad reviews. Later that year she

3700-527: The Committee, but to shape press coverage." In it she explained her willingness to testify only about herself and that she did not want to claim her rights under the Fifth Amendment –"I am ready and willing to testify before the representatives of our Government as to my own actions, regardless of any risks or consequences to myself." She wrote that she found the legal requirement that she testify about others if she wanted to speak about her own actions "difficult for

3800-511: The Forest premiered, directed by Hellman. It presented the same characters twenty years younger than they had appeared in The Little Foxes . A film version to which Hellman did not contribute followed in 1948. In 1947, Columbia Pictures offered Hellman a multi-year contract, which she refused because the contract included a loyalty clause that she viewed as an infringement on her rights of free speech and association. It required her to sign

3900-751: The Fort Lee studio for release in September. The company purchased the Triangle Studios in Culver City in 1918. Goldfish then headed west to Culver City, California in 1918; opening operations there also caused an increase in film expenses. Seeing an opportunity in December, Samuel Goldfish then had his name legally changed to Samuel Goldwyn . In 1919, Frank Joseph "Joe" Godsol became an investor in Goldwyn Pictures. Since 1912 Godsol had been making deals for

4000-476: The Maxine Elliott Theatre, at a rehearsal. Shumlin faced Shubert down and barked, "That girl, as you call her, is the author of the play." Hellman had written The Children's Hour as an exercise, to teach herself how to write a play after writing one unsuccessful play with Louis Kronenberger . Believing that she would do better to find a subject based in fact, Dashiell Hammett suggested the idea for

4100-558: The Motion Picture Production Code, the lead characters (played by Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine) were explicitly accused of lesbianism. In 1961, Brandeis University awarded her its Creative Arts Medal for outstanding lifetime achievement and the women's division of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University gave her its Achievement Award. The following year, in December 1962, Hellman

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4200-615: The New York production encouraged Shumlin to present The Children's Hour in other cities. In December 1935, authorities in Boston declared that the play did not meet the standards of the Watch and Ward Society and that it could not be performed there the following month as scheduled. Shumlin filed a $ 250,000 suit for damages, but in February 1936 a Federal judge refused to prevent the city from interfering in

4300-546: The Soviet Union and said the Soviet Union "should be left to protect itself against treasonable plots as it saw fit." It asked U.S. liberals and progressives to unite with the Soviet Union against the growing threat of fascism and avoid an investigation that would only fuel "the reactionary sections of the press and public" in the United States. Endorsing this view, the editors of the New Republic wrote that "there are more important questions than Trotsky's guilt." Those who signed

4400-700: The account of this trip in Hellman's memoirs and claimed that Hellman waited until all the witnesses were dead before describing events that never occurred. Nevertheless, Hellman had documented her trip in the New Republic in April 1938 as "A Day in Spain." Langston Hughes wrote admiringly of the radio broadcast in 1956. Hellman was a member of the Communist Party from 1938 to 1940, by her own account written in 1952, "a most casual member. I attended very few meetings and saw and heard nothing more than people sitting around

4500-457: The anti-Franco forces in the Spanish Civil War . In March 1937, Hellman joined a group of 88 U.S. public figures in signing "An Open Letter to American Liberals" that protested an effort headed by John Dewey to examine Leon Trotsky 's defense against his 1936 condemnation by the Soviet Union. The letter has been viewed by some critics as a defense of Stalin's Moscow Purge Trials . It charged some of Trotsky's defenders with aiming to destabilize

4600-635: The award because it was based on a court case and was therefore not an original drama. Critics responded that since The Old Maid was based on a novella by Edith Wharton, it also should have been deemed ineligible. Angered by the Pulitzer Prize decision, the New York Drama Critics' Circle began awarding its own annual prize for drama the following year. Hellman's play was inspired by the 1810 true story of two Scottish school teachers, Miss Marianne Woods and Miss Jane Pirie , whose lives were destroyed when one of their students accused them of engaging in

4700-611: The boarding school. Within days the school was deserted and the two women had lost their livelihood. Pirie and Woods sued and eventually won, both in court and on appeal, but given the damage done to their lives, their victory was considered hollow. Produced and directed by Herman Shumlin, The Children's Hour opened November 20, 1934, at the Maxine Elliott Theatre in New York City. The settings by Aline Bernstein were executed by Sointu Syrjala. The three-act drama closed in July 1936 after 691 performances. The financial and critical success of

4800-804: The case, everyone still believes they were lovers. When Lily returns from abroad to take care of her niece, the women are angry with her for not staying in the country to testify to their innocence. Meanwhile, Joe, who has remained loyal throughout, has found a job in a distant location. He tries to convince Karen and Martha to come with him and start over. As Martha goes to cook dinner, Joe continues his attempts to persuade Karen, who now believes that she has ruined his life and destroyed everything she and Martha had worked so hard to achieve. At Karen's insistence, Joe reluctantly asks her whether she and Martha had ever been lovers. When Karen says that they were not, he readily believes her. Nevertheless, Karen decides that she and Joe must part. She explains that things can never be

4900-499: The committee to her letter by way of explanation. The Committee responded that it had considered and rejected her request to be allowed to testify only about herself and entered her letter into the record. Hellman answered only one additional question: she denied she had ever belonged to the Communist Party. She cited the Fifth Amendment in response to several more questions and the committee dismissed her. Historian John Earl Haynes credits both Rauh's "clever tactics" and Hellman's "sense of

5000-609: The company with Loew's Metro Pictures. Loew agreed to the merger. Louis B. Mayer heard about the pending merger and contacted Loew and Godsol, about adding his Louis B. Mayer Productions into the post merger company, which became the blockbuster Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . A 1965 fire in an MGM storage facility destroyed many negatives and prints, including the best-quality copies of every Goldwyn picture produced prior to 1924; over half of MGM's feature films from before 1930 are completely lost . On March 25, 1986, Ted Turner and his Turner Broadcasting System company purchased

5100-400: The company's second costly loss, Goldfish decreased film budgets partly by not using theater divas to cross over to film and reducing design driven films. Instead, he relied on comedies starring Madge Kennedy and Mabel Normand . In August 1918, Goldwyn Pictures signed Will Rogers , at that time a Broadway Follies favorite, to star in a Rex Beach production, Laughing Bill Hyde , filmed at

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5200-643: The company. Samuel Goldfish had left Lasky's Feature Play Company , of which he was a co-founder, in 1916 when Feature Play merged with Famous Players. Margaret Mayo , Edgar Selwyn's wife and play writer, and Arthur Hopkins , a Broadway producer, joined the trio as writer and director general. At the beginning, Goldwyn Pictures rented production facilities from Solax Studios when it and many other early film studios in America's first motion picture industry were based in Fort Lee, New Jersey . The company's first release

5300-504: The company. The studio proved moderately successful, but became most famous due to its iconic Leo the Lion trademark. Although Metro was the nominal survivor, the merged studio inherited Goldwyn's old facility in Culver City, California , where it would remain until 1986. The merged studio also retained Goldwyn's Leo the Lion logo. Lee Shubert of The Shubert Organization was an investor in

5400-464: The complete innocence of and the complete morality, if I may say so, of people who were once in love and who have come out with respect and devotion to one another. The State Department dismissed Melby on April 22, 1953. As was its practice, the board gave no reason for its decision. In 1954, Hellman declined when asked to adapt Anne Frank 's The Diary of a Young Girl (1952) for the stage. According to writer and director Garson Kanin , she said that

5500-428: The conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group. I was raised in an old-fashioned American tradition and there were certain homely things that were taught to me: to try to tell the truth, not to bear false witness, not to harm my neighbour, to be loyal to my country, and so on. In general, I respected these ideals of Christian honor and did as well as I knew how. It

5600-577: The course of a series of appeals, Hellman testified before the Loyalty Security Board on his behalf. She offered to answer questions about her political views and associations, but the board only allowed her to describe her relationship with Melby. She testified that she had many longstanding friendships with people of different political views and that political sympathy was not a part of those relationships. She described how her relationship with Melby changed over time and how their sexual relationship

5700-402: The diary was "a great historical work which will probably live forever, but I couldn't be more wrong as the adapter. If I did this it would run one night because it would be deeply depressing. You need someone who has a much lighter touch" and recommended her friends, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett . Hellman made an English-language adaption of Jean Anouilh 's play L'Alouette , based on

5800-426: The door trying to discover Mary's condition, overhear Lily's outburst. Mary is found healthy and is sent to her room. She squeezes the information out of Peggy and Evelyn. Mary plans to ask her grandmother, Amelia Tilford—who not only indulges her but also helps Karen and Martha a great deal in setting up the school—to allow her not to return. When Amelia refuses, Mary cleverly twists what the girls have overheard. With

5900-429: The dramatic" for what followed the conclusion of Hellman's testimony. As the committee moved on to other business, Rauh released to the press copies of her letter to HUAC. Committee members, unprepared for close questioning about Hellman's stance, offered only offhand comments. The press reported Hellman's statement at length, its language crafted to overshadow the comments of the HUAC members. She wrote in part: But there

6000-402: The films so as to be able to show advanced footage to the theaters. Goldfish also associated the company with Columbia University via Professor Victor Freeburg's Photoplay Writing class in 1917 to increase the company's artistic standings. The company also released other production companies films with Marie Dressler 's Dressler Producing Corporation film, The Scrub Lady , in 1917. The company

6100-438: The first act Shumlin said, "Swell". After reading the second act he said, "I hope it keeps up". After reading the third act he said, "I'll produce it." Shumlin and Hellman worked through the details of the production together over the next months. Shumlin felt the title of the play was misleading and wanted Hellman to change it, but Hellman loved it and refused. Hellman recalled being rudely treated by Lee Shubert , then-owner of

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6200-556: The first appearance of the Dead End Kids and premiered in 1937. On May 1, 1935, Hellman joined the League of American Writers (1935–1943), whose members included Dashiell Hammett , Alexander Trachtenberg of International Publishers , Frank Folsom , Louis Untermeyer , I.F. Stone , Myra Page , Millen Brand , and Arthur Miller . (Members were largely either Communist Party members or fellow travelers .) Also in 1935, Hellman joined

6300-422: The help of several well-crafted lies and a book that the girls have been reading in secret, Mary convinces her grandmother that Karen and Martha are having a lesbian affair. On hearing this, Amelia Tilford begins contacting the parents of Mary's classmates. Shortly, most of Mary's schoolmates have been pulled out of school. Rosalie Wells, a student whose mother is abroad, stays with Mary. On discovering that Rosalie

6400-497: The horror of seeing politicians make the honorable institution of Congress into a honky tonk show; of listening to craven men lie and tattle, pushing each other in their efforts to lick the boots of their vilifiers; publicly trying to wreck the lives, not of strangers, mind you, but of men with whom they have worked and eaten and played, and made millions. ... But why this particular industry, these particular people? Has it anything to do with Communism? Of course not. There has never been

6500-648: The job rather dull, it created many opportunities for her to meet a greater range of creative people while she became involved in more political and artistic scenes during that time. While there she met and fell in love with mystery writer Dashiell Hammett . She divorced Kober and returned to New York City in 1932. When she met Hammett in a Hollywood restaurant, she was 24 and he was 36. They maintained their relationship off and on until his death in January 1961. Hellman's drama The Children's Hour premiered on Broadway on November 24, 1934, and ran for 691 performances. It depicts

6600-538: The material or the tactical ... she has chosen to act like a lady." The FBI increased its surveillance of her travel and her mail. In the early 1950s, at the height of anti-communist fervor in the United States, the State Department investigated whether Melby posed a security risk. In April 1952, the department stated its one formal charge against him: "that during the period 1945 to date, you have maintained an association with one, Lillian Hellman, reliably reported to be

6700-500: The memoirs published later in her life. Lillian Florence Hellman was born 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

6800-547: The morning and wants her to come with her. Martha says it's impossible for them to live comfortably again and eventually admits her feelings for Karen. Karen responds dismissively, saying that they never felt this way for each other. Martha continues, but Karen tells Martha that she is tired and they can talk about it in the morning. As Karen sits in her room, she hears a shot. Martha has killed herself. Shortly after, Amelia Tilford arrives to beg Karen's forgiveness, since Mary's lies have now been uncovered. Karen explains to her that it

6900-450: The most carefully structured plays ever written, and learned play structure in his youth by copying in longhand the entire script. Some readers and critics perceived the work as a " melodrama " with each character being a completely good one or a completely bad one, with a 1942 preface talking about "goodness" and "badness" used as evidence; Hellman responded in a 1965 interview that none of her characters were completely good or bad and that

7000-454: The others, maybe, to the slaughter for you. ... They frighten mighty easy, and they talk mighty bad. ... I suggest the rest of us don't frighten so easy. It's still not un-American to fight the enemies of one's country. Let's fight. Melby and Hellman corresponded regularly in the years following World War II while he held State Department assignments overseas. Their political views diverged as he came to advocate containment of communism while she

7100-448: The peoples in the world, I think, we should be the last to hold back help, on any grounds, from those who fought for us." In 1942, Hellman received an Academy Award nomination for her screenplay for the film version of The Little Foxes . Two years later, she received another nomination for her screenplay for The North Star , the only original screenplay of her career. She objected to the film's production numbers that, she said, turned

7200-517: The play to Hellman after he read a book titled Bad Companions (1930), a true-crime anthology by William Roughead . It related an incident that took place in 1810 at a school in Edinburgh, Scotland. A student named Jane Cumming accused her schoolmistresses, Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods , of having an affair in the presence of their pupils. Dame Cumming Gordon, the accuser's influential grandmother, advised her friends to remove their daughters from

7300-448: The play toured extensively in the United States. The play was Hellman's personal favorite, and by far the most commercially and critically successful play she originated. However, a feud developed between the two when Bankhead wanted to perform for a benefit for Finnish Relief, as the USSR had recently invaded Finland . Without thinking Hellman's approval was necessary, Bankhead and the cast told

7400-558: The play was negative. Hellman's applications for a passport to travel to England in April 1943 and May 1944 were both denied because government authorities considered her "an active Communist", although in 1944 the head of the Passport Division of the Department of State, Ruth Shipley , cited "the present military situation" as the reason. In August 1944, she received a passport, indicative of government approval, for travel to Russia on

7500-531: The play was presented in its entirety on November 12, 1936, at a private performance at the Gate Theatre Studio in London, managed by Norman Marshall . Philip M. Armato, an assistant professor of Northern Illinois University , argued that while members of the public perceived Karen and Martha as overall good characters, he felt they overlooked the two treating Mary Tilford and Lily Mortar without mercy, before

7600-517: The play was produced for the radio by the BBC in its Saturday Night Theatre series starring Jill Bennett and Prunella Scales. In 1994, the play was again produced for the radio by the BBC in its Monday Play series, starring Clare Holman, Buffy Davis, Miriam Margolyes and Margaret Robertson. In October 2021, it was reported that Anonymous Content would be adapting the play into a television series. Goldwyn Pictures Goldwyn Pictures Corporation

7700-482: The play's original dialogue, and was satisfied with the result, saying the play's central theme of gossip was unaffected by the changes. In 1961, the play was adapted, with its lesbian theme intact, for the film The Children's Hour , also directed by Wyler and starring Audrey Hepburn , Shirley MacLaine , and James Garner . In the UK, New Zealand, and Australia it was released under the title The Loudest Whisper . In 1971,

7800-401: The politics of any members of the committee and there is nobody who can with honesty vouch for anybody but themselves." She assured him the funds raised would be used as promised and later provided him with a detailed accounting. The next month she wrote him: "I am sure it will make you sad and ashamed as it did me to know that, of the seven resignations out of 147 sponsors, five were Jews. Of all

7900-513: The preface was misinterpreted. The Children's Hour was in serious consideration for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for 1934–35. The award was presented instead to Zoë Akins ' play The Old Maid . Accused of rejecting Hellman's play because of its controversial subject—one of the Pulitzer judges had refused to see it—the selection committee replied that The Children's Hour was not eligible for

8000-769: The presentation of the play. In January 1936, a municipal censorship ordinance was used to decline granting a performance permit for The Children's Hour in Chicago. Les Innocentes , André Bernheim's French-language translation of The Children's Hour , was first presented April 21, 1936, at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris. Although the Lord Chamberlain banned the public performance of The Children's Hour in Great Britain in March 1935,

8100-565: The press the news of the benefit. They were shocked when Hellman and Shumlin declined to give permission for the benefit performance, citing non-intervention and anti-militarism. Bankhead told reporters, "I've adopted Spanish Loyalist orphans and sent money to China, causes for which both Mr. Shumlin and Miss Hellman were strenuous proponents ... why should [they] suddenly become so insular?" Hellman countered her star: "I don't believe in that fine, lovable little Republic of Finland that everyone gets so weepy about. I've been there and it seems like

8200-584: The production to Washington, D.C., for a benefit performance where she spoke with President Roosevelt. Hammett wrote the screenplay for the movie version that appeared in 1943. In October 1941, Hellman and Ernest Hemingway co-hosted a dinner to raise money for anti-Nazi activists imprisoned in France. New York Governor Herbert Lehman agreed to participate, but withdrew because some of the sponsoring organizations, he wrote, "have long been connected with Communist activities." Hellman replied: "I do not and I did not ask

8300-506: The rights to The Children's Hour for $ 35,000 while it still was running on Broadway. Hellman rewrote the play to conform to the standards of the Motion Picture Production Code , under which any mention of lesbianism was impossible. Instead, one schoolteacher is accused of having sex with the other's fiancé. It appeared in 1936 under the title, These Three . She next wrote the screenplay for Dead End (1937), which featured

8400-461: The same between them after all that they have been through. She asks Joe to leave and he refuses. He agrees to leave if Karen will think things through before finalizing the break-up. When Martha returns and finds out from Karen what has happened, she is consumed with guilt. Her discovery that she might indeed have feelings for Karen overwhelms and terrifies her. Before Martha tells Karen how she feels, Karen tells Martha that she would like to relocate in

8500-481: The spreading of the rumors. He argued that when Karen forgives Amelia Tilford, this breaks a cycle of vengeance that occurs between those characters. Tanfer Amin Tunc wrote that because Mary Tilford spread the rumor to deliberately attack the teachers, many reviewers had perceived Mary as "a corrupt and immoral child or adolescent". Screenwriter and playwright Paddy Chayefsky considered The Children's Hour to be one of

8600-417: The story of an ambassador whose indecisive relations with his wife and mistress mirror the vacillation and appeasement of his professional life. She wrote the screenplay for the film version that appeared two years later. Both versions depicted the ambassador's feckless response to anti-Semitism. The conservative press noted that the play reflected none of Hellman's pro-Soviet views, and the communist response to

8700-564: The struggling Screen Writers Guild , devoted herself to recruiting new members, and proved one of its most aggressive advocates. One of its key issues was the dictatorial way producers credited writers for their work, known as "screen credit." Hellman had received no recognition for some of her earlier projects, although she was the principal author of The Westerner (1934) and a principal contributor to The Melody Lingers On (1935). In December 1936, her play Days to Come closed its Broadway run after just seven performances. In it, she portrayed

8800-457: The theater to rely only on Goldwyn films and operated it separately from the company. By 1920 in addition owning its Culver City studio, Goldwyn Pictures was renting two New York studios and operations in Fort Lee. After personality clashes, Samuel Goldwyn left the company in 1922. Godsol became chairman of the board and President of Goldwyn Pictures in 1922. In 1923 Lee Shubert of The Shubert Organization contacted Marcus Loew about merging

8900-461: The trial of Joan of Arc , called The Lark . Leonard Bernstein composed incidental music for the first production, which opened on Broadway on November 17, 1955. Hellman edited a collection of Chekhov's correspondence that appeared in 1955 as The Selected Letters of Anton Chekhov . Following the success of The Lark , Hellman conceived of another play with incidental music, based on Voltaire 's Candide . Bernstein convinced her to develop it as

9000-566: Was Polly of the Circus , an adaptation of Mayo's 1907 play of the same name , released in September 1917 and starting Mae Marsh . By April 1917, Goldwyn Pictures agreed to rent the Universal Pictures studios in Fort Lee, then having the second largest stage, and had two film companies operating at the time with plans for more production companies. The company management planned on having 12 films done by September 1, 1917, without distributing

9100-448: Was an American motion picture production company that operated from 1916 to 1924 when it was merged with two other production companies to form the major studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer . It was founded on November 19, 1916, by Samuel Goldfish (who later changed his name to Goldwyn), an executive at Lasky's Feature Play Company , and Broadway producer brothers Edgar and Archibald Selwyn , using an amalgamation of both last names to name

9200-412: Was blacklisted for 10 years; the couple never married. Beginning in the late 1960s, and continuing through to her death, Hellman turned to writing a series of popular memoirs of her colorful life and acquaintances. Hellman's accuracy was challenged in 1979 on The Dick Cavett Show , when Mary McCarthy said of her memoirs that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Hellman brought

9300-615: Was briefly renewed in 1950 after a long hiatus: "The relationship obviously at this point was neither one thing nor the other: it was neither over nor was it not over." She said that: ... to make it black and white would be the lie it never has been, nor do I think many other relations ever are. I don't think it is as much a mystery as perhaps it looks. It has been a ... completely personal relationship of two people who once past being in love also happen to be very devoted to each other and very respectful of one another, and who I think in any other time besides our own would not be open to question of

9400-475: Was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . A second film version of The Children's Hour , less successful both with critics and at the box office, appeared in 1961 under that title , but Hellman played no role in the screenplay, having withdrawn from the project following Hammett's death in 1961. In the 1961 version of The Children's Hour , however, despite the continued existence of

9500-413: Was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and inducted at a May 1963 ceremony. Another play, My Mother, My Father, and Me , proved unsuccessful when it was staged in March 1963. It closed after 17 performances. Hellman adapted it from Burt Blechman's novel How Much? The Children%27s Hour (play) The Children's Hour is a 1934 American play by Lillian Hellman . It

9600-726: Was forced in October 1917 to switch out The Eternal Magalene for Fighting Odds , both starring Maxine Elliott , after the National Board of Review cleared the Magalene movie while censors in Pennsylvania state and Chicago city did not approve the film. Thais starring Mary Garden was released in late 1917 which was a costly loss. In January 1918, Goldfish signed director Raoul Walsh and prematurely announced it as there were two years left on Walsh's contract with Fox. With Thais being

9700-481: Was presented at London's Harold Pinter Theatre January 22 – May 7, 2011. In 1936, the play was made into a film directed by William Wyler . However, because of the Production Code , the story was adapted into a heterosexual love triangle, the controversial name of the play was changed, and the movie was eventually released as These Three . Hellman reportedly worked on the screenplay, keeping virtually all of

9800-432: Was presented in Paris and at London's Gate Theatre Studio . Two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie, have worked hard to build a girls' boarding school in a refurbished farmhouse. They run and teach the school with the somewhat unwelcome help of Lily Mortar, Martha's aunt. One pupil, Mary Tilford, is mischievous, disobedient, and untruthful, and often leads the other girls into trouble. One day, when Mary feigns illness and

9900-420: Was revived again in 1961. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions... The play that is recognized by critics and judged by Hellman as her best, The Autumn Garden , premiered in 1951. In 1952, Hellman was called to testify before House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), which had heard testimony that she had attended Communist Party meetings in 1937. She initially drafted

10000-404: Was unwilling to hear criticism of the Soviet Union. They became, in one historian's view, "political strangers, occasional lovers, and mostly friends." Melby particularly objected to her support for Henry Wallace in the 1948 presidential election. In 1949, she adapted Emmanuel Roblès ' French-language play, Montserrat , for Broadway, where it opened on October 29. Again, Hellman directed it. It

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