A Difficult Woman (68 page)

8
Dashiell Hammett to LH, February 25, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

9
Dashiell Hammett to LH, January 8, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

10
Dashiell Hammett to LH, July 24, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

11
LH to “Darling Arthur, darling Maggie,” no date, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

12
LH to “Arthur Baby Darling,” August 4, 1948, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

13
Carl Rollyson, Lillian Hellman,
Her Legend and Her Legacy
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 418

14
Sylvia Drake, “Lillian Hellman As Herself,” in Jackson Bryer, ed.,
Conversations with Lillian Hellman
(Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 29.

15
Mary McCarthy,
Intellectual Memoir: New York, 1936–1938
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 60–61.

16
“Under Forty: A Symposium on American Literature and the Younger Generation of American Jews,”
Contemporary Jewish Record
7 (February, 1944): 15. Trilling's position echoed that of his African-American contemporaries Ralph Ellison and Lorraine Hansberry, who also preferred not to
be so identified with their race as to foster expectations that they could or would write only as black people. Thanks to Judith Smith for pointing this out to me.

17
Lionel Trilling in ibid., 15–16. For more on Trilling's Jewishness, see Alexander Bloom,
Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 22.

18
Muriel Rukeyser in ibid., 6.

19
Delmore Schwartz in ibid., 13.

20
Muriel Rukeyser in ibid., 6.

21
Lillian Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 5.

22
Lillian Hellman, “The Lyons Den,”
New York Post
(July 22, 1938).

23
“Miss Hellman and Miss Ferber discuss Jewish Author's Plight,”
New York Herald Tribune
(January 10, 1940): 19.

24
Robert Kall, “Equality Magazine is True Crusader for Jewish Rights,”
Jewish Examiner
(April 28, 1939): 1.

25
Judith Smith, private communication with author; and Smith,
Visions of Belonging
, 28–33.

26
FBI confidential report NY 100-25858, undated, 16, 17.

27
Lillian Hellman,
The North Star: A Motion Picture About Some Russian People
(New York: Viking Press, 1943), 75.

28
Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

29
Ibid., 6.

30
Ibid., 9, 10, 12.

31
Ibid., 12. (Also in the Russian Diaries she noted on January 26 on her way to Cairo, “BOAC manager resented Jews in Palestine,” 12.)

32
These names are culled from the long lists that LH provided to her lawyer, Joseph Rauh, in 1952 just before her HUAC appearance. Untitled list, part 1, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1950–57” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, Part I, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.

33
It does not excuse Hellman to say that she was not alone. Paul Robeson, who is said to have met Feffer in Moscow just before his death, also refused to condemn the Soviet regime.

34
Alfred Kazin,
New York Jew
(New York: Knopf, 1978), 194.

35
Arthur Miller,
Timebends: A Life
(New York: Grove Press, 1987), 155–56.

36
Bloom,
Prodigal Sons
, 141, 143; Martin Peretz, interview by author, June 22, 2009.

37
Norman Podhoretz,
Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsburg, Lionel
and Diana Trilling. Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer
(New York: Free Press, 1999), 124.

38
Elaine Tyler May,
Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era
(New York: Basic Books, 1988).

39
Victor Navasky,
Naming Names
(New York: Penguin, 1981), 109–11.

40
Ibid., 109.

41
Irving Howe,
A Margin of Hope
, 198.

42
LH to William Alfred, February 19, 1959, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library.

43
On the question of self-hatred among Jews, see Susan Glenn, “The Vogue of Jewish Self-Hatred in Post-World War II America,”
Jewish Social Studies
12 (Spring 2006): 95–136.

44
Anne Frank,
The Diary of a Young Girl
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1952). This interpretation follows Lawrence Graver,
An Obsession with Anne Frank: Meyer Levin and the Diary
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995), ch. 1.

45
Meyer Levin,
The Obsession
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973) 35.

46
Stephen J. Whitfield,
In Search of Jewish American Culture
(Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 1999), 173.

47
Saul Bellow,
Letters
, ed. Benjamin Taylor (New York: Viking, 2010), 196. Thanks to Eugene Goodheart for calling these letters to my attention.

48
Levin,
The Obsession
, 73. See also 102.

49
Ibid., 65

50
Levin,
The Obsession
, 72–74. See also Ralph Melnick,
The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank: Meyer Levin, Lillian Hellman, and the Staging of the Diary
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997).

51
Levin,
The Obsession
, 72.

52
This is the argument of, among others, Melnick,
The Stolen Legacy of Anne Frank.

53
Kermit Bloomgarden to investors, May 16, 1958, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Statement from Pinto, Winokur and Pagano, Accountants, June 30, 1970, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also box 52, folder 10. The $25,000 figure is my calculation based on the one half of one percent investment that LH made.

54
LH to William Alfred, February 19, 1959, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, BCASC.

55
Ibid.

56
LH to “Dear Joe,” January 22, 1974, box 72, folder 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

57
Quoted from American Masters, “The Lives of Lillian Hellman,” production of PBS, 1998.

58
Martin Peretz, interview by author, June 22, 2009.

59
Podhoretz,
Ex-Friends
, 124.

60
Lillian Hellman,
Scoundrel Time
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 38–39

61
Ibid., 83.

62
Sidney Hook, “Lillian Hellman's Scoundrel Time,”
Encounter
48 (February 1977): 86.

63
Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,”
Rolling Stone
(February 24, 1977): 54.

64
Hellman, “East and West:
The Provincials
:
A Personal History of Jews in the South
,”
New York Times Book Review
(November 11, 1973): 421.

65
Hellman,
Pentimento
, 196.

66
Glenn, “The Vogue of Jewish Self-Hatred,” 95–136.

1
“An Evening with Lillian Hellman,”
Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
27 (April 1974): 19.

2
Lillian Hellman,
Pentimento
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 152.

3
Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,”
Paris Review
33 (Winter/Spring, 1965): 84.

4
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript Prepared for Circle in the Square Talk,” February 8, 1953, box 43, folder 2, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

5
Lillian Hellman,
The Collected Plays
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 275.

6
Stark Young, “Watch on the Rhine,”
New Republic
(April 14, 1941): 499.

7
Wolcott Gibbs, “This Is It,”
New Yorker
(April 12, 1941): 32.

8
Young, “Watch on the Rhine,” 499.

9
Brooks Atkinson, “Lillian Hellman's ‘Watch on the Rhine' Acted with Paul Lukas in the Leading Part,”
New York Times
(April 2, 1941): 26.

10
Brooks Atkinson, “Hellman's ‘Watch on the Rhine,'”
New York Times
(April 13, 1941): sec. 9, 1.

11
George Jean Nathan, “Playwrights in Petticoats,”
American Mercury
(June, 1941): 752.

12
Morris Frumin to LH, April 5, 1942, box 91, “Watch on the Rhine/Business Correspondence,” folder, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

13
Richard Watts Jr., “The Theaters,”
New York Herald Tribune
(April 2, 1941): 20.

14
Ralph Warner, “ ‘Watch on the Rhine' Poignant Drama of Anti Fascist Struggle,”
Daily Worker
(April 4, 1941): 7; Walter Bernstein,
Inside Out: A Memoir of the Blacklist
(Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2000), 138–39.

15
Warner, “Watch on the Rhine,” 7.

16
Albert Maltz, “What Shall We Ask of Writers?”
New Masses
(February 1946), 19. See also the discussion of this issue in Daniel Aaron,
Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism
(New York: Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., 1961), 387.

17
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore,” April 6, 1950, box 43, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

18
Dan Georgakas, “The Revisionist Releases of North Star,”
Cineaste
22 (April 1996): 46.

19
Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” box 103, folders 1 and 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

20
Theodore Strauss, “Of Lillian Hellman: A Lady of Principle,”
New York Times
(August 29, 1943): X5.

21
Theodore Strauss, “The Author's Case: Post Premiere Cogitation of Lillian Hellman on ‘The North Star,'”
New York Times
(December 19, 1943): X5.

22
Mary McCarthy, “A Filmy Vision of the War,”
Town and Country
(January 1944): 72.

23
Ted Strauss, “The Author's Case,”
New York Times
(December 19, 1943): X5.

24
Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 84.

25
Dashiell Hammett to LH, March 21, 1944, and February 9, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

26
Dashiell Hammett to LH, March 10, 1944, box 77, folder 7, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

27
Ibid.

28
Dashiell Hammett to LH, March 15, 1944, box 77, folder 7, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

29
Dashiell Hammett to LH, April 17, 1944, box 77, folder 8, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

30
Hellman, “The Art of the Theater I,” 84.

31
Hellman,
The Searching Wind
, in
Collected Plays
, 337.

32
Ibid.

33
Ibid., 334–35.

34
Hellman,
The Little Foxes
, in
Collected Plays
, 188.

35
Kappo Phelan, “The Searching Wind,”
Commonweal
40 (April 28, 1944): 40.

36
Howard Barnes, “The Searching Wind,”
New York Herald Tribune
(April 13, 1944): 16.

37
Lewis Nichols, “ ‘The Searching Wind'”
New York Times
(April 23, 1944): sec. 2, 1.

38
“Hellman's New Play,”
Washington Times Herald
(April 21, 1944): 27.

39
Wolcott Gibbs, “Miss Hellman Nods,”
New Yorker
(April 22, 1944): 42.

40
Ralph Warner, “The New Lillian Hellman Play,”
Daily Worker
(April 17, 1944).