A Difficult Woman (65 page)

44
LH to “Maggie darling,” c. 1947, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

45
LH to Maggie Kober, May 10, 1950 and May 22, 1950, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

46
Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2009.

47
LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, August 14, 1941, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

48
LH to “Dear Mr. Kober,” November 12, 1941, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

49
LH to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Kober, telegram, May 29, 1943, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

50
LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, December 18, 1947, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

51
LH to “Arthur Baby Darling,” August 4, 1948, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

52
Ibid.; LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, June 13, 1941, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

53
LH to Arthur Kober, telegram, December 31, 1947, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

54
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Arthur Kober's Funeral,” no date, box 42, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

55
Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 21, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

56
Dashiell Hammett to LH, February 12, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

57
Dashiell Hammett to LH, November 25, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

58
Dashiell Hammett to “Dearest Lily,” September 13, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

59
Dashiell Hammett to “Dearest Lily,” November 5, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

60
Dashiell Hammett to “Dear Lilishka,” October 26, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

61
Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 29, 1943, October 11, 1943, November 16, 1943, December 10, 1943, December 22, 1943, box 77, folder 6, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

62
Dashiell Hammett to Maggie Kober, March 10, 1945, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

63
Dashiell Hammett to “Lily dear,” March 1, 1945, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL. He signed off, “Love and kisses and things,” instead of the usual “much love darling.” Ten days later, Hammett wrote once again to complain of her silence (March 10, 1945); again on March 13, he wrote, “I am doing my best not to attribute it to anything.” Finally, on March 15, he received two letters from her (one dated March 5), and told her “it was awful nice being on your mailing list again.”

64
LH to John Melby, April 17, 1946, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

65
Robert P. Newman,
The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), ch. 12.

66
Letters in Max Hellman file, box 66, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

67
Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
(New York: Basic Books, 1988), ch. 1.

68
Patricia Neal, interview by author, December 15, 2005.

69
Reminiscences of Helen Van dernoot Rosen (1994), on page 44, in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

70
Appointment book, 1960, box 78, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

71
Appointment book, 1960.

72
Johnson, “Obsessed,” 79–81, 116–19.

73
Most of this comes from a typescript written by Blair Clark, box 71, folder 11, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

74
Richard Locke and Wendy Nicholson, interview by author, June 4, 2007.

75
Blair Clark, “Typescript: Lillian Hellman,” box 71, folder 11, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

76
Ibid., 4.

77
Richard Locke and Wendy Nicholson, interview by author, June 4, 2007.

78
Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

79
Stanley Hart, “Lillian Hellman and Others,”
Sewanee Review
107 (Summer 1999): 409.

80
Ibid., 401

81
Ibid., 418

82
Ibid., 408.

83
Edmund Wilson,
The Sixties
, ed. Lewis Dabney (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1993), 547.

84
Norman Podhoretz,
Making It
(New York: Random House, 1967), 117, 118.

85
John Hersey, “Lillian Hellman, Rebel”
New Republic
(September 18, 1976): 26

86
Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

87
Ibid.

88
Richard Locke and Wendy Nicholson, interview by author, June 4, 2007.

89
Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

90
Shirley Hazzard to William Abrahams, February 14, 1970, folder 36, box 77, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

91
LH to Robby Lantz, no date, box 72, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

92
Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

93
Personal communication with Anne Navasky, July 2010.

94
Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, July 21, 2010.

95
Maureen Howard, interview by author, January 27, 2010.

96
John Hersey to Victor Pritchett, January 23, 1986, box 133, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Hersey noted that Dorothy Pritchett, Barbara Hersey, and Annabel Nichols were exceptions.

97
Elizabeth Hardwick, “The Little Foxes Revived,”
New York Review of Books
(December 21, 1967): 4.

98
Bobbie Handman, interview by author, May 31, 2005.

99
Exchange of letters and telegrams can be found in box 77, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

100
Bobbie Handman, interview by author, May 31, 2005.

101
LH and Dina Weinstein correspondence, February 23, 1981, May 11, 1981, and April 29, 1981, box 91, “Dina Weinstein (1981–82)” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

102
Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2009.

103
LH to Ann Tiffany, January 29, 1973, box 3, “January to October 1973” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. (New York, NY) Records, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

104
LH to Lois Fritsch, no date, box 122, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection. Also, LH to William Alfred, May 26, 1961, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn, NY.

105
Dabney,
Edmund Wilson
, p. 506. Note that Dabney remembers this apartment as being on 5th Avenue. In fact, it was on Park Avenue.

106
LH to William Alfred, March 29, 1971, box 51, folder 12; LH to William Alfred, January 5, 1972, box 51, folder 26; William Alfred to Richard de Combray, March 28, 1978, box 53, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, SUL.

107
LH to Arthur Thornhill, April 12, 1976, box 3, “January to December, 1976” folder, Harold Matson Company, Inc. Records, RBML; LH to Don Congdon, early February 1982, box 47, folder 10, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also reply, Alice Wexler to LH, February 9, 1982, box 47, folder 10; Margaret Mills to LH, June 16, 1982, box 45, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

108
Lillian Hellman, memo, May 24, 1978, box 41, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

109
Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

110
Howard Kissel, “Lillian Hellman: Survival and the McCarthy Era,”
Women's Wear Daily
(November 5, 1976): 28; Austin Pendleton interview by author for Bernstein story.

111
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript Lists: Europe Trip, April 1950,” box 102, folder 6; Lillian Hellman, “European Trip 1951,” box 102, folder 7; Lillian Hellman, “European Trip, 1968,” box 102, folder 8; Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

112
Leonard Bernstein to LH, c. 1956, box 4, folder 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

113
According to Peter Feibleman, after Christina Stead died, Hellman anonymously contributed $10,000 to Stead's estate to benefit Stead's surviving father. Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

114
Felicia Geffen to LH, July 8, 1963, box 45, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

115
Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

116
Quoted in Jack Kroll, “Hollywood's New Heroines,”
Newsweek
(October 10, 1977): 79

117
Richard Stern to William Abrahams, July 22, 1984, box 71, folder 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

118
Robby Lantz to LH, September 29, 1965, box 29, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

119
LH to “Dearest Billy,” September 22, 1970 box 50, folder 36, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

1
William Alfred, “Typescript of Alfred's Introduction to Hellman's Harvard Lectures,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

2
Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 6A, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

3
Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 2,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 2–3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

4
Lillian Hellman,
Four Plays by Lillian Hellman
(New York: Modern Library, 1942), vii.

5
The film, produced by Irving Thalberg and released in 1932, starred Greta Garbo, John Barrymore, Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery, and Lionel Barrymore. It won an Academy Award for Best Picture.

6
Lillian Hellman, “Light Reading Good of Its Kind,”
New York Herald Tribune Books
(November 28, 1926); Lillian Hellman, “A Moral Immorality,”
New York Herald Tribune Books
(December 4, 1927).

7
Lillian Hellman, “Futile Souls Adrift on a Yacht,”
New York Herald Tribune Books
(June 19, 1927).

8
Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.

9
LH interview with Harry Gilroy, “The Bigger the Lie,”
New York Times
(December 14, 1952): sec. 2, 3. Hellman was never happy with
Dear Queen
and only halfheartedly tried to get it produced. “We are absolutely cold on the damn play and I doubt whether we do much good by it,” she wrote to Arthur Kober after tinkering with it for years. LH to Arthur Kober, June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

10
Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” 10.

11
Gilbert W. Gabriel, “ ‘The Children's Hour,'”
New York American
(November 21, 1934): 13.

12
Ibid.

13
Robert Benchley, “Good News,”
New Yorker
(December 1, 1934): 34.

14
George Jean Nathan, “The Theatre,”
Vanity Fair
(February 1935): 37.

15
Brooks Atkinson, “Children's Hour,”
New York Times
(December 2, 1934): sec. 10, 1.

16
Brooks Atkinson, “ ‘The Children's Hour,' Being a Tragedy of Life in a Girls' Boarding House,”
New York Times
(November 21, 1934): 23.

17
Percy Hammond, “The Theatres,”
New York Herald Tribune
(December 9, 1934): 5.

18
Robert Garland, “ ‘Children's Hour': A Moving Tragedy,”
New York World Telegram
(November 21, 1934): 16; Benchley, “Good News,” 34.

19
Typescript: Yiddish-to-English translation of critique by N. Solovey,
Daily Forward
(November 24, 1934), box 50, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

20
Percy Hammond, “ ‘The Children's Hour': A Good Play About a Verboten Subject,”
New York Herald Tribune
(November 21, 1934): 16.