by Sam Toperoff
“Nothing can be done ’bout that now, Mr. Rab-nowitz. Maybe we can correct that after the morning session.”
Rabinowitz said, “I really must object, Mr. Chairman. These conditions are impossible and unfair to the witness, sir.”
“Overruled. Please state your full name and—”
“Samuel Dashiell Hammett. Katonah, New York. I am a writer.” Few people in the room had ever heard his voice, sweet and Southern and, today, strong.
“Mr. Hammett, are you now or have you ever been a member of the Comm-a-nist Party?”
“If, Mr. Chairman, your question is intended to determine if I am totally loyal to the United States of America, I welcome it because it allows me to speak of my proven participation. Even though the lighting does not permit me to see you all with absolute clarity, I can see that almost every member of the Committee is wearing a small American flag pin on the lapel of his jacket. It is a way, I assume, of professing the type of Americanism you would like to see on everyone who comes before you …”
“Mr. Hammett, you can speechify after you answer my question. Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Comm-a-nist Party?”
“Mr. Chairman, believe me, my speechifying days are long over. I was simply trying to assure you of how pure my Americanism is.”
“Are you now or have you ever been—”
“Mr. Wood, I can assure you I will respond if you simply let me finish what I intended to say about our lapels. On yours I see our flag. If you”—here he addressed the cameramen—“shine your light on my lapel, you’ll see four ribbons.” He pointed them out. “Honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, World War I, and honorable discharge, World War II, Pacific Theater ribbon, and Sharpshooter’s medal.” He fingered the latter. “I’m particularly proud of this one. I was almost fifty years old when I qualified …” He paused while the room murmured. “I’ve taken the liberty to ascertain the military service of the Committee members.” The murmur became a buzz again. “You, Mr. Chairman, did not serve at all. As is true of five of your eight colleagues. Two members did serve, one in the Procurement Office of the War Department in Washington, the other in a Coast Guard recruitment office in his hometown. So my question to you, Mr. Chairman, is how do you determine someone’s patriotism? Is it by a lapel flag or is it by actual military service to that flag?”
There was some applause followed by a very firm series of raps from Mr. Wood’s gavel.
Hammett testified for two and a half hours before the chairman announced a lunch break. When the hearing resumed, the lights had not been moved. Questioning continued until almost five o’clock, when the Committee huddled to decide whether to ask Hammett to return tomorrow. There was more, it turned out, they wished to ask him, even though he had already invoked the Fifth Amendment forty-one times. Most witnesses who did not recognize the Committee’s constitutional authority invoked the Fifth as follows: “I refuse to answer on the grounds that my answer might tend to incriminate me.” Hammett’s lawyer preferred he answer this way: “Mr. Chairman, I choose to decline to respond to your question because I do not believe you have the legal standing to question me and because any answer I give may tend to incriminate me.” Hammett had to answer in precisely that manner after a brief discussion with Rabinowitz. Every time. This process took a very long while.
Although Hammett the Pinkerton man knew his way around a courtroom—he had testified at dozens of trials—he had never been a defendant before, nor were the rules of testimony here as fair. So when he was asked by the Committee lawyers if he knew or had ever met Charles Chaplin, that prompted a long discussion with his lawyer, who advised him to invoke the Fifth. Same with Walter Huston, Hazel Scott, Paul Muni, Sylvia Sidney, Paul Robeson, Lew Ayres, Dalton Trumbo, and dozens of others. Hammett knew that many of those people had already been blacklisted in Hollywood. He took the Fifth because admitting even to knowing them opened the way to questions about conversations he had with them, political and personal, which if he then refused to answer could open him to a charge of “contempt of Congress.” Better to shut off the line of questioning early. Late with these guys meant “too late,” especially when you didn’t know what they knew or what other witnesses were likely to say about you.
By the end of the second day Hammett’s Fifth Amendment total was well over seventy, prompting Chairman Wood to call him “the least cooperative witness ever to have come before me, sir.”
“Did you ever consider the fact that your unconstitutional bullying might be the problem?”
“Is this how you have decided to show your so-called patriotism for this country?”
“Mr. Wood, I choose to decline to answer that question because my answer would bewilder a Yahoo like yourself …”
LILLIAN’S TRIAL BY INNUENDO occurred months later. Same place, same general cast of characters. Hammett had already heard from the Internal Revenue Service, the Committee’s and the FBI’s backdoor muscle. Starting back in 1937, Hammett’s accountant, now deceased, claimed writing losses and expenses against profits of about $5,000 a year. Now, with interest and penalties, the IRS claimed Hammett owed $106,000. He could, of course, contest. Lillian’s accountant told him he could never win—maybe settle for a bit less, but never win. Her accountant, in fact, was more concerned about what the IRS was going to try to get from Lillian. The IRS took possession of all rights to Hammett’s work, past, present, and future. The government had kidnapped Spade, Nick Charles, and the Op. Hammett could not make a penny as a writer again.
Hammett was correct: Hellman was a far bigger deal, at least in New York, where Another Part of the Forest was still running on Broadway. Most observers were positive she would give up no one, but would she take them on directly and risk contempt? Would she denounce the Committee? Denounce the Weasels who had in their testimony already denounced her? Play it safe and take the Fifth? Or some combination of each? Drama was expected at the Foley Square courthouse.
Her lawyer, Joseph Rauh, had been in negotiations with Committee lawyers for weeks hoping to get a private hearing or at least some line on their approach to questioning. He told them his client was not now and never had been a member of the Communist Party but that she could not in good conscience so testify because she believed all political beliefs were protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Rauh came away from the meeting with a sense that Committee members intended to rough up Lillian Hellman, or to try.
She wore her hair short that day, permanent-waved with golden highlights, a small rust-colored beret sat rakishly on her head. She wore an elegantly tailored tan suit and carried a brown purse and a legal pad. Costume, she knew, was always important. She stopped and talked to no one, she smiled at no one. She was here for a fight. Although she was a frightened woman, there was no indication that she was a frightened woman.
Lillian had met privately before entering the hearing room—Rauh encouraged the meeting—with one of the Committee lawyers, Eric Weissen, in a witness room in the bowels of the building. Weissen told her how much he admired her work. “I studied you in college.”
“Oh, God, son, you’ve got to do better than that.”
“No, no, that’s not what I mean. Actually, I took my parents to see The Little Foxes for their wedding anniversary. They were big fans too, admirers actually, so I wondered if you could …” Young Weissen produced a slim volume of Foxes. Lillian stood. “Did you enjoy the play, Mr. Weissner, young as you must have been?”
“It’s Weissen. Yes, very much.”
“And you say you studied it. So does this ring a bell? ‘There are people who eat the earth and all the people on it like in the Bible with the locusts. And other people who stand around and watch them …’ ”
Weissen said, “That’s Uncle Horace. Act two, I think.”
“Close. Alexandra at the end of the play. Sweet as you appear to be, dear boy, I think you’re one of the locusts. And I won’t stand around and watch. We are not playing a game here. You want to send me
to prison for something I think. You want to take away my livelihood for something I believe. And not just me but so many of my friends. So for Christ’s sake, kid, stop trying to schmooze me.”
The young man put her book to his chest as though thoroughly offended. She had, he said, a completely wrong understanding of his position. The Committee already knew she had not been a member of the Party. Her political zeal was for the most part far more antifascist than it was pro-Communist and he planned to establish that in his questioning. But there were, he said, members of the Committee who simply believed her antifascist zeal to have been premature.
“How the—” Lillian caught herself before she said fuck. “How in the world do you determine just when is the perfect moment to begin to fight fascism, the most appropriate moment to act? After ten Jews are incinerated? Or is the proper number five hundred? Ten thousand? Three million? Premature? Think what you’re saying, Weissner. It’s insane. Call me overzealous, call me a rabid dog on the subject, but since everything I warned about since ’35 has come true—and cost the lives of so many millions—call me premature publicly at your own peril. Shame on you and on your family if you believe that. And I can only conjecture you must have had family in Europe.”
Invoking a sense of shame was a tactic that would have had no effect on any of the Congressmen on the Committee. They had parted with shame years ago. It might have had a slight effect on Weissen, but probably not. Have you no shame? was a question that always ought to be asked again and again in public of shameless men.
After swearing her in and having her state her full name, address, and occupation, the chairman asked the leading question. Lillian said, “Mr. Chairman, at the request of a member of this Committee I have composed in one of the Committee offices just a short while ago a statement in which I try to set straight my political history and clarify my position on testifying before this Committee.”
“Does it respond to my question?”
“Directly, sir. I gave it to Mr. Weissner to be read aloud.”
“Do you have this letter, Mr. Weissner?”
“Yes, sir, I do.” Weissen began reading from the top. The chairman was distracted by a photographer who approached Lillian after all photos had been ordered terminated. Weissen read on in monotone. It was he who read into the record what might be the most enduring lines Lillian Hellman would ever write: “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 the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.”
Once her statement had been completely read into the record, Joe Rauh had two young assistants begin to distribute copies of it to the press and to other members of the Committee. Congressman Wood rapped for order. “No Comm-a-nist is going to give out their propaganda at my hearings.” Bam. Bam. Bam. “Take your seats. De-sist!”
They did not de-sist. Rauh was on the microphone: “Mr. Chairman, Mr. Chairman, once my client’s statement was read aloud by the Committee’s own counsel, it became part of the public record and as such can be publicly distributed. We are well within our rights here to—”
Bam. Bam. Bam. “Sergeant at arms. Sergeant at arms.” But no sergeant at arms appeared. Lillian’s statement was papering the room. Wood said to the absent sergeant at arms, “I want these people removed from my hearing room.”
Rauh turned quickly to Lillian: “That’s it. They just screwed themselves. Let’s get the hell out of here, tout de suite.”
They didn’t quite run. But they weren’t walking either. They didn’t stop until they ordered drinks at the Mayflower Hotel bar.
THE AFTERMATH OF THEIR HEARINGS was dreadful, but dreadful in very different ways.
Lillian’s IRS punishment was a major one, over $160,000 for back taxes and fines. There was no way she could even begin to pay it without losing Hardscrabble. She sold the farm for $67,000, a ridiculously low price for 140 acres in Pleasantville, New York, but all potential buyers knew of her need. It was the best she could do. In essence she was selling her farm to the government at bargain prices. She might have stayed in Katonah or on the Upper West Side with Hammett, if Hammett had been a free man.
Dashiell Hammett had been a member of the board of the American Civil Rights Bail Fund, a very left-wing organization that raised bail money for political activists—primarily union organizers—convicted of Smith Act violations. Four such men jumped bail and the government hauled Hammett into federal court to testify as to their whereabouts, which he did not know, and also to give the names of the contributors to the bail fund, which he refused to do. His sentence for contempt of court, of which he possessed a great deal, was six months in the federal penitentiary at Morgantown, West Virginia.
He wouldn’t be doing hard time, Hammett assured Lillian, because he knew Morgantown, and it wasn’t that sort of place. The only difficult thing would be not being able to help Lilly. Unlike the three war years, this absence wasn’t of his choosing, and she had been badly damaged herself and could have used his help. The world still saw a surprisingly strong woman, a fierce battler for her beliefs. He saw her pride and confidence undermined by public insult and more so by the theft of her wealth. Money was about much more than money; and she had lost much more than money.
Hardscrabble was the symbol of everything she had made of herself—her plays and movies, her political commitments, her material and psychological freedom, her stature in the world. All was taken away, and this strong woman punished like a child, unfairly she thought, and sent off to bed without any supper. Her sweet corn nevermore to be sold down by the road. How stupid not to have known something like this could happen. She was forty-six years old.
Hammett had been wounded less and in those painful days helped her as much as he could. He was fifty-eight and looked seventy. His best advice, counsel he could not take himself, was for her to write her way out of this. But how the hell could she?
Lillian found good work for Zenia with friends of the Knopfs. Zenia’s son Gilbert joined the U.S. Marines. She could not believe he was no longer a boy. Although Cedric Childs felt uncomfortable with the idea, Lillian talked him into making a legal claim for her farm equipment, charging it was his and that she had never paid him for it. “Think of it this way,” she said. “You’ll be storing it for me. Yes, it’s stealing, but it’s stealing from thieves, you goddamned dope.” She shipped three tractors, a reaper, a dump truck, and a pickup loaded with seed and fertilizer to Childs’s farm. The cheat gave her a measure of satisfaction.
One night in the New York apartment just before the government was to ship Hammett off to prison, the two, each looking particularly haggard, totaled up their recent losses. It was clear to them Lillian was the big loser, because prison for Hammett would be another escape, a refuge. It was a vodka night and they were in their pajamas sitting on opposite ends of a new sofa Hellman hadn’t paid for yet.
“If they had to lock me up, I’m glad it’s with crooks and not cops.”
“To crime.” Lillian leaned across and tapped his glass.
“Morgantown is full of my kind of guys—bank robbers, forgers, Ponzi schemers, kidnappers. Guys you can turn your back on, guys you can trust.”
“Didn’t Raymond Chandler once do time there?”
“That daisy? Come on. Hammett will be running the place in two weeks.” The joke fell flat. If they were lucky, it would be six months before there could be another night like this.
“At least you’ll come out sober.”
“Violently so, as if that matters.”
“Does to me. I want you to live forever.”
“Hah.”
They listened to boat horns for a while. Hammett said, “Go to Europe. They’ve shamed you here.”
“No, they haven’t. They’ve shamed themselves.”
“Both things are true.” After
a while he said, “There was an empress of China, Tin Tang, a very wise and beautiful woman …”
“A lot like me, I’ll bet.”
“Very much so, but with slant eyes. She wrote remarkable poetry …”
“Not true. She wasn’t beautiful.”
“She was. Very. Her jealous uncle created a scandal about her that the people believed. They said her poetry was not remarkable poetry but poor poetry. So many people said her poetry was poor that she was ashamed to have written it …”
“But it was still good poetry.”
“Not if her uncle and his falsehoods and the people who believed the falsehoods made her think about them and not about her poetry.”
“So what did she do, this wise, beautiful Chinese empress?”
“She went to where her uncle and these unworthy people were not. She went to England.”
“England?”
“They know you there, Lilly. They respect you there, Lilly. They love theater and they find you honorable. And they still speak a sort of English.”
They each wanted to make love one last time. Each was too tired, too used.
The U.S. government shipped Samuel Dashiell Hammett to the Federal Correctional Facility at Morgantown, West Virginia. Soon after, Lillian Florence Hellman put herself on the Queen Mary bound for Southampton.
Dear Lillushka—
I’ve opted not to take the mysterious kishka approach. If the censor doesn’t like what I say, let him pick up his scissors and earn his money.
I can do six months here standing on my head, holding my breath, juggling with my feet. I would not have said that three weeks ago. I craved a drink so badly I was biting my tongue, pounding my now-collapsed chest, and imagining my tears tasted like Beefeaters. My craving subsided because it had to, which is about the same as saying I willed it to. These months will be a good thing for me—if not for us.
