A Difficult Woman (71 page)

118
Florence Newhouse to LH, May 27, 1960, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

119
LH to Florence Newhouse, June 13, 1960, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

120
LH to Paul O'Dwyer, July 5, 1972, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

121
Morris and Lore Dickstein, interview by author, March 24, 2005.

122
Florence Newhouse to LH, c. 1968, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

123
LH to Paul O'Dwyer, December 6, 1973, box 90, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

124
LH to Paul O'Dwyer, July 5, 1972; see also O'Dwyer to LH, June 27, 1972, box 89, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

125
LH to Donald Oresman, May 1, 1979, box 52, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection.

126
Jack Klein, Lillian Hellman estate statements, box 29, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

1
Winston Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace,” March 5, 1946, Fulton, Missouri.

2
Harry Truman, “‘Word Has Just Been Received': Truman Speaks on the Railroad Strike,” May 24, 1946,
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5137/
.

3
LH to John Melby, c. May 28, 1946, box 81, folder 7/8, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ranson Center, University of Texas at Austin.

4
Studs Terkel, “The Wiretap This Time,” New York
Times
(October 29, 2007): A19.

5
Lillian Hellman, “From America,” in Daniel S. Gillmor, ed.,
Speaking of Peace
(New York: National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions, 1949), 122; see also FBI case file, New York Section, April 9, 1951, file no: 100-2858 EXM, box 74, folder 5, 10, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA. The FBI, keeping track of Harry Hopkins, thought Hellman, “an alleged communist,” might have had an affair with Hopkins, whom it described as “very pro Russian and pro Communist.”

6
The clearest exposition of this phenomenon is in Richard Pells,
The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s
(New York: Harper and Row, 1985), 284–85.

7
Ibid., 285.

8
Clifton Brock,
Americans for Democratic Action
(New York: Public Affairs Press, 1962), 52.

9
Pells,
Liberal Mind
, 285: the fundamental argument was between the belief of many liberals (including liberal intellectuals like Schlesinger, Hook, and Philip Rahv) in what Richard Pells calls “the continuing danger of traitors and spies in high places, the necessity of security checks and legislative restraints to safeguard democracy, the tendency of Communists on trial to dissemble and deceive, the definition of Communism itself as a foreign conspiracy, and the need for intellectuals to acknowledge their moral guilt and cast off their political innocence.”

10
Marilyn Berger, “Profile, Lillian Hellman,” in Jackson Bryer, ed.,
Conversations with Lillian Hellman
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 251–252.

11
Richard Parker,
John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), 261.

12
Pells,
Liberal
, 265. Here Hellman is placed among a handful of intellectuals who refused to “serve the State.” He includes among these Dwight MacDonald, Henry Steele Commager, I. F. Stone, Mary McCarthy, Arthur Miller, and Michael Harrington.

13
LH to Muriel Rukeyser, February 8, 1945, box 41, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

14
LH to John Melby, c. May 28, 1946, box 81, folder 7/8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

15
Daily Worker
, “Women Ask for Peace” (March 8, 1946): 9. Other equally respectable signatories included Mrs. Henry Wallace, Mrs. J. Borden Harriman, Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (Richard Nixon's first political victim), Helen Hayes, Katherine Lenroot, chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau, Mrs. David de Sola Pool, and Mrs. La Fell Dickinson, president of the General Federation of Women's Clubs.

16
Lillian Hellman, “From America,” 22.

17
Draft typescript, “Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman,” April 14, 1952, and revised statement, April 28, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

18
Sidney Hook,
Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th Century
(New York: Harper and Row, 1955), chapter 24.

19
FBI reports, October 26, 1947, and March 1948, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

20
Many conservative historians agree that communists did not run the campaign. See William L. O'Neill,
A Better World: The Great Schism, Stalinism and the American Intellectuals
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 147–48.

21
Reminiscences of Michael Straight (1982), on page 226 in the Columbia Center for Oral History.

22
Call for “Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace,”
Daily Worker
(January 10, 1949).

23
Reminiscences of Thomas Emerson (1955), vol. 5, part I, on page 1889, CCOH.

24
Call for “Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace,” box 10c, Harlow Shapley Papers, Harvard University Library.

25
John Rossi, “Farewell to Fellow Traveling: The Waldorf Peace Conference of March, 1949,”
Continuity
10 (Spring 1985): 1.

26
“From America” speech typescript, March 1949, box 42, folder 11, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

27
Ralph Chapman, “Rally's Leaders Challenged by Counter-Group,”
New York Herald Tribune
(March 24, 1949): 12.

28
Hellman, “From America.”

29
Reminiscences of Thomas Emerson (1955), vol. 5, part I, on page 1889, CCOH. For an analysis of the event, see Neil Jumonville,
Critical Crossings: The New
York Intellectuals in Postwar America
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), ch. 1.

30
See account of this in Michael Wreszin,
A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight MacDonald
(New York: Basic Books, 1994), 214–20; Rossi, “Farewell,” 21.

31
Reminiscences of Virginia Durr (July 14, 1975), on pages 214–15, CCOH.

32
“Red Visitors Cause Rumpus,”
Life
(April 4, 1949): 42–43. Thanks to Judith Friedlander for calling this to my attention.

33
Arthur Miller,
Timebends: A Life
(New York: Grove Press, 1987), 235.

34
John Patrick Diggins, “The -Ism that Failed,”
American Prospect
(December 1, 2003): 78.

35
Arien Mack, conversation with author, June 2010.

36
The FBI took Hellman off its internal security index in 1945 after she returned from the Soviet Union but after the Waldorf conference decided once again to keep her under surveillance.

37
FBI case statement, New York Office, April 9, 1951, box 74, folder 5, 13, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

38
Robert Newman,
The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 329.

39
Christopher Lasch,
The Agony of the American Left
(New York: Vintage, 1969), 82.

40
Joseph Rauh, “Draft Statement,” April 28, 1952, box 72, folder 9, 5, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

41
Freda Kirchwey, “How Free Is Free?
Nation
(June 28, 1952): 616.

42
Reminiscences of Leonard Boudin (1983), on page 199, CCOH.

43
Stefan Kanfer,
Journal of the Plague Years
(New York: Atheneum, 1973), 77. For the emergence of the Hollywood blacklist see Paul Buhle, Mari Jo Buhle, and Dan Georgakas,
Encyclopedia of the American Left
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), and Larry Ceplair and Stephen Englund,
The Inquisition in Hollywood
:
Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003).

44
Hellman “The Judas Goats,”
Screen Writer
(December 1947): 7.

45
Hellman notes called “The Picture Finished,” typescript in Harvard Lectures folder, box 44, folder 6, 7–8, Lillian Hellman Collection, and Ceplair and Englund,
The Inquisition in Hollywood
, suggest that Hellman was part of a group that tried to head off the blacklist.

46
LH to William and Talli Tyler, September 15, 1975, box 32, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Stefan Kanfer has a different account of this story in
Journal of the Plague Years
, 139.

47
Hellman, “The Picture Finished,” 7–8.

48
Typescript, “Lillian Hellman, Playwright,” box 28, folders 14–177, Counterattack Papers, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University Libraries, New York, NY.

49
Reminiscences of Leonard Boudin (1983), on page 197, CCOH.

50
Walter Metzger, “The McCarthy Era,”
Academe
75 (May–June 1989): 27. See also Ellen Schrecker,
No Ivory Tower
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 93–94, which describes the policy as effectively protecting only those who had never lied about Communist Party affiliation, thus leaving exposed those who had never been asked about or openly admitted such affiliation in the past.

51
Russell Porter, “Colleges Vote Freedom Code Banning Reds from Faculties,”
New York Times
(March 31, 1953): 1.

52
Untitled typescript, box 28, folder 14–177, 11, 12, 22, 24, Counterattack Papers, TL.

53
FBI report, April 9, 1951, box 119, folder 1, 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

54
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman, April 28, 1952 (Draft),” April 14, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

55
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 2,” spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

56
Oscar Hammerstein to LH, April 13, 1950; LH to Oscar Hammerstein, April 20, 1950, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. The signed affidavit was later returned to her after the labor board decided that council members of the Authors' League need not sign them. See Louise Sillcox to LH, June 7, 1950, box 53, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

57
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Swarthmore,” April 6, 1950, box 43, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. She repeated that theme a few years later, telling students at Smith and MIT that “We have lived through a period of great economic security, great social fear in which many of the values we relied on seem to melt before us. Fears began to show: fear of other countries fear of ourselves and our neighbors, and the discomforts and shame that comes with fears and the displacement of ordinary middle class values.” (Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Smith/MIT,” April 15 and 18, 1955, box 43, folder 1, 8, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.)

58
FBI memo, undated, box 132, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

59
Ring Lardner Jr.,
I'd Hate Myself in the Morning: A Memoir
(New York: Nation Books, 2000), 140.

60
LH to Ruth Shipley, July 13, 1951, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

61
LH to Henry Beeson, August 16, 1951, box 133, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

62
Charlie Schwartz to LH, telegraph, August 15, 15 1951, box 53, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

63
Katherine Brown to LH, August 23, 1951, box 53, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

64
Elia Kazan,
Elia Kazan: A Life
(New York: Knopf, 1988), 460.

65
Ted O. Thackrey, “Miss Hellman's Answer,”
New York Compass
(May 1952): 10.

66
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, 9, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

67
Ibid., 9–10.

68
Lillian Hellman, random notes found in box 43, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

69
Typescript: FBI document, February 23, 1966, box 132, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.