Hayao Miyazaki
Japanese animator, film director, and mangaka (born 1941)
Lillian Hellman was an acclaimed American playwright, author, and political activist. She was known for her success on Broadway, her communist views, and her turbulent personal life, including a long-term relationship with fellow writer Dashiell Hammett. Hellman’s memoirs were later criticized for factual inaccuracies, leading to a high-profile defamation lawsuit.
Table of Contents
About the Lillian Hellman
Lillian Florence Hellmanwas an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist views and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activitiesat the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947-1952. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a drop in her income. Many praised Hellman for refusing to answer questions by HUAC, but others believed, despite her denial, that she had belonged to the Communist Party.
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 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 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 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 the memoirs published later in her life.
Frequently Asked Questions
Lillian Hellman was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist, and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway as well as her communist views and political activism.
Lillian 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.
Lillian Hellman was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–1952, as she was believed to have belonged to the Communist Party.
Lillian Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett, who also was blacklisted for 10 years; the couple never married.
Hellman’s accuracy was challenged in 1979 when Mary McCarthy claimed that ,every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’., Investigators also found errors in Hellman’s Pentimento, including the ,Julia, section being based on the life of Muriel Gardiner.
Hellman’s modern-day literary reputation rests largely on the plays and screenplays from the first three decades of her career, and not on the memoirs published later in her life.
The defamation suit against Mary McCarthy and Dick Cavett was unresolved at the time of Hellman’s death in 1984; her executors eventually withdrew the complaint.
26 Quotes by Lillian Hellman
- 1.
Failure in the theater is more dramatic and uglier than any other form of writing. It costs so much, you feel so guilty.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 2.
What a word is truth. Slippery, tricky, unreliable. I tried in these books to tell the truth.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 3.
Since when do we have to agree with people to defend them from injustice?
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 4.
If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody’s mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 5.
Belief is a moral act for which the believer is to be held responsible.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 6.
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 7.
It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 8.
Nobody outside of a baby carriage or a judge’s chamber believes in an unprejudiced point of view.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 9.
God forgives those who invent what they need.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 10.
I like people who refuse to speak until they are ready to speak.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 11.
We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell on them.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 12.
Things start out as hopes and end up as habits.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 13.
They’re fancy talkers about themselves, writers. If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 14.
Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 15.
Unjust. How many times I’ve used that word, scolded myself with it. All I mean by it now is that I don’t have the final courage to say that I refuse to preside over violations against myself, and to hell with justice.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 16.
It is a mark of many famous people that they cannot part with their brightest hour.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 17.
I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashion.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 18.
Nothing you write, if you hope to be good, will ever come out as you first hoped.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 19.
People change and forget to tell each other.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 20.
If I had to give young writers advice, I would say don’t listen to writers talking about writing or themselves.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 21.
My father was often angry when I was most like him.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 22.
It is not good to see people who have been pretending strength all their lives lose it even for a minute.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 23.
You lose your manners when you are poor.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 24.
Success isn’t everything but it makes a man stand straight.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 25.
Lonely people, in talking to each other, can make each other lonelier.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)
- 26.
There are people who eat the earth and eat all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them eat.
Lillian HellmanAmerican dramatist and screenwriter (1905-1984)