by Nora Ephron
MARY: The only one I can think of is a holdover like Lillian Hellman, who I think is tremendously overrated, a bad writer, and dishonest writer, but she really belongs to the past.…
DICK CAVETT: What is dishonest about her?
MARY: Everything. But I said once in some interview that every word she writes is a lie, including “and” and “the.”
A beat.
MARY: Most people outgrow the feuding, don’t you think?
LILLIAN: Well, I never outgrew it.
MARY: Nor I.
LILLIAN: My anger—
MARY: My honesty—
LILLIAN: “You must choose your enemies well.”
MARY: Who said that?
LILLIAN: Goethe. It’s my favorite line from Goethe. I once read a book about two U-boats. It was written with alternating chapters, and the first was about the German U-boat. The captain woke up in the morning and trimmed his mustache and spoke to the cook about sausages. Then came the chapter about the English U-boat, and the captain woke up in the morning and looked at the starboard diesel and spoke to the cook about kippers. This went on throughout the day, day after day, alternating, until the boats finally met up with one another.
MARY: And then what happened? Did they collide?
LILLIAN: They did collide. Shall I begin?
MARY: Why not? You came first.
LILLIAN looks around. We hear music.
Music?
LILLIAN: Why not? We have musicians. [Beat.] I need … a fig tree.
She exits.
Scene 2
Childhood.
We see a big wooden house with a front porch. Next to it is a big fig tree.
The ENSEMBLE does a cakewalk onto the stage as we hear a New Orleans band start to play. Maybe the band comes onto the stage, like a New Orleans parade procession.
Projected on the back of the stage, we see the words “New Orleans” and a picture of baby Lillian.
And the ENSEMBLE starts to sing “The Fig Tree Rag.”
ENSEMBLE:
THERE’S SOMETHIN’ HAPPENIN’ IN DIXIE
I’M FROM DIXIE SO I KNOW
WE GOT A RAG WE CALL “THE FIG TREE”
FOR THAT BIG TREE THAT WE GROW
AND WHEN WE’RE HOPPIN’ ON THE BAYOU
I DEFY YOU TO BE STILL
GET YOU A RAGGY TUNE
GET YOU A CAJUN MOON
GET YOU A JACK OR A JILL
COME ON ALONG
WE’RE GONNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG
YOUR BODY GONNA ZIG AND ZAG
TAKE A LOOK AT
EV’RY CHAP AND EV’RY CHIPPY
ALL ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI
DOIN’ THE DANCE
THEY’RE DANCIN’ TO THE FIG TREE RAG
I WANNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG WITH YOU.
LILLIAN enters. She’s playing herself as a child and wearing a white dress almost identical to the one in the picture. The effect should be half baby, half Baby Snooks. She walks toward the tree.
LILLIAN: I was the sweetest-smelling baby in New Orleans. You probably heard that about me, and it is one hundred percent true. My father was a traveling salesman, so my mother and I lived in the Garden District with my two aunts, Jenny and Hannah, who owned a boardinghouse. I had a Negro nurse named Sophronia, who took care of me until I was six, when we began to spend half the year in New York and the other half back in New Orleans. Behind my aunts’ boardinghouse was a fig tree, an enormous fig tree. It was quite a ways from the house, and it was so leafy you couldn’t be seen. So I rigged up a seat for myself, and a set of pulleys for soda pop and books, and I would sit up there and read and spy on the orphans down the block, who seemed wildly glamorous—
ENSEMBLE:
COME WITH ME
UP IN THE TREE
UP IN THE TREE
ALL OUR TROUBLES ARE FAR AWAY
SWING AND SWAY
UP IN THE TREE
UP IN THE TREE WE’LL STAY
LILLIAN: There was Frances, whose father had been killed by the Mafia, and Louis, who took me to Mass, and Pancho, who once gave me a lock of his hair and then pushed me into the gutter, which was without question the most romantic thing that had ever happened—so romantic that I put the lock of hair into the back of a wristwatch my father had just given me for my birthday. And my watch stopped.
LILLIAN climbs into a seat at the base of the tree and raises herself into it.
ENSEMBLE:
SO IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR A HAVEN
WITH A CRAVIN’ TO FULFILL
I’LL SHOW YOU WHAT HEAVEN MEANS
MEET ME IN NEW ORLEANS
I’LL KEEP ON HUMMIN’ UNTIL
YA GET HERE
COME ON ALONG
WE’RE GONNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG
YOUR BODY GONNA ZIG AND ZAG
YA GOT ME THINKIN’
THIS IS WHERE IT ALL WAS LEADIN’
IN THE GARDEN KNOWN AS EDEN
ADAM AND EVE
WERE TRYIN’ OUT THE FIG TREE RAG
I WANNA DO THE FIG TREE RAG WITH YOU
WITH YOU
WE’RE CRANKIN’ LIKE A HURDY GURDY
LILLIAN:
FLAPPIN’ LIKE A PERDY BIRDY
ENSEMBLE:
DOIN’ THE FIG TREE RAG
LILLIAN: From the tree I could also watch the people who lived in the boardinghouse—Mrs. Stillman, who was crazy, and Carrie, the cook, who plucked chickens in the yard, and Sarah and Fizzy, two dizzy sisters who were always picking on me and giggling over nothing. “She’s so wiiiiild and willful,” they’d say, and just stand there together and giggle.
FIZZY comes out of the boardinghouse and sits down on the porch.
That’s Fizzy. Giggle for everyone, Fizzy.
FIZZY giggles. FIZZY takes out a fan and fans herself in a kind of exaggerated southern way. MAX HELLMAN, Lillian’s father, comes from around the back of the house and looks at FIZZY as she sits there.
And that’s my father.
LILLIAN hides behind some leaves, and we don’t see her in the tree. FIZZY turns and sees MAX HELLMAN.
FIZZY: Max! What a surprise. When did you get back?
MAX HELLMAN: Train just got in. Beautiful morning, isn’t it? Even prettier now that I see you.
FIZZY: [Giggles again.] Oh, Max!
The leaves in the tree rustle wildly, but FIZZY and MAX HELLMAN don’t seem to notice.
MAX HELLMAN: What were you thinking about?
FIZZY: Just now? Summertime, and my mama’s hummingbird garden. Sarah and I used to sit still as statues on the stone bench and see if we could get the birds to buzz around our heads. Once I put a piece of honeysuckle in my mouth—
MAX HELLMAN suddenly kisses FIZZY, a long, passionate kiss. LILLIAN spreads the branches of the tree just a little and peeks out wide-eyed at what’s happening. Then she closes them over herself again.
MAX HELLMAN: I missed you so much. [Beat.] Can I see you this afternoon?
FIZZY: Two o’clock.
MAX HELLMAN: Corner of Jackson Street.
FIZZY rushes into the house and closes the door. MAX HELLMAN walks off. A long beat. LILLIAN falls from the fig tree. Splat. A horrible noise. She lies face down on the ground. And now we see the real LILLIAN walk onstage and pick up the LILLIAN that fell from the tree—which turns out to be a large stuffed doll of LILLIAN. She carries it to the front porch, where she sits. She puts her hand melodramatically over her nose.
LILLIAN: I broke my nose. So I went running off to find my old nurse, Sophronia. I told her I’d seen Fizzy and my father kissing each other, and I decided to kill myself. Sophronia bandaged me up and told me that I must never ever tell anyone about Fizzy. I promised her I never would. A few minutes later, as she walked me home, she said, “Don’t go through life making trouble for people.” I said, “If I tell you I won’t tell anyone about Fizzy, I won’t.” [LILLIAN stands up, carrying the doll. Then she walks into the house and closes the door.]
The words “New Orleans” vanish from
the scrim and are replaced with “Seattle,” and some sort of music begins. The baby picture of LILLIAN changes to one of MARY MCCARTHY. MARY comes onstage carrying a large doll of herself dressed like the little girl in the picture. She walks over to the musicians and looks at them.
MARY: [To the musicians.] Please don’t. [They stop playing.] My father was a lawyer, although he never really practiced law. He was sick and home most of the time, and he read me stories in the daytime, and once, when we were together, we heard a nightingale sing, I remember that. My mother was beautiful, and she had three more children, my brothers, and one day when I was six years old, we all got on the train to go to Minneapolis to visit my father’s parents, who were rich. It was during the influenza pandemic, and we all caught it on the train, and my parents died.
The word on the scrim changes to “Minneapolis.”
No one told us they’d died. We got off the train in Minneapolis, and there were nurses and ambulances waiting, and I woke up weeks later and everything was different. We were orphans. Not that we’d ever heard the word, and not that anyone had to tell us, really, because they told us in every way—there was to be no jam for the toast, and why anyone had ever let us have it in the first place no one knew, and “Sit up straight” and “Right this minute” and “Children should be seen but not heard,” especially spoiled children —that was the problem, you see, we were spoiled, like food that had been left out too long. Something would have to be done with us, but what? And then, finally, a solution—a great-aunt had just married, to everyone’s enormous relief, for she was old and plain as a wet sidewalk, and she and her new husband, Myers, were given a small house to live in, and the four of us wretched children. And still no one told us our parents were dead. No one ever told us. For a while they said Mommy and Daddy had gone to get well in the hospital. And then they stopped saying things like that, and it was assumed we all knew, even though we’d never been told.
UNCLE MYERS walks out of the house.
That’s Uncle Myers.
UNCLE MYERS takes out a leather razor strop and flicks it against the porch railing with a sharp snap.
And that’s his razor strop.
UNCLE MYERS: Mary—
MARY: Yes, Uncle—
UNCLE MYERS: I gave your brother a tin butterfly several days ago.
MARY: I know. From a Cracker Jack box. Will you get me one? Please? I would love one so much.
UNCLE MYERS: He can’t find it. Have you seen it anywhere?
MARY: No. So it’s lost?
UNCLE MYERS: Well, that all depends, doesn’t it … [UNCLE MYERS flicks his strop against the railing again. Then he walks into the house.]
MARY: The last thing I remember about my father was that I was sitting with him on the train.
We hear the sound of a train.
Everyone else is sick, tossing in their sleeping berths, but we’re not, we’re sitting there together, and I feel so proud of my father—the conductor tried to throw us off the train because so many of us are sick, but my father had a gun and wouldn’t let him. Now we’re riding through the Rockies, and he’s saying that sometimes there are boulders that tumble down and crush the train and kill all the passengers. I remember it so clearly—the moment my father lifts me up so I’m standing on the seat, looking out the window as the mountains rush past. My heart is absolutely filled with fear that we’ll all be squashed flat, but I feel completely safe because I’m in his arms—
The sound of the train dies away.
But it never happened. My father was sick long before we rode through the Rockies, and he couldn’t possibly have told me anything about boulders. And no one tried to throw us off the train, and my father didn’t have a gun, and there are no nightingales in North America.
UNCLE MYERS comes out of the house again with the strop.
UNCLE MYERS: Mary—
He hits the strop against the railing with a sharp snap.
BLACKOUT.
Scene 3
A nightclub.
Two bars onstage, each with a BARTENDER mixing martinis. We’re in a wonderful nightclub. The BARTENDERS are wearing white jackets that exactly match what the bartenders wear in an early scene from The Thin Man.
On the scrim are the words “New York.”
And now we see LILLIAN and MARY, both in their late twenties and chic in simple black dresses, sitting on bar stools at their respective bars, as the BARTENDERS pour their perfect drinks into stemmed glasses.
LILLIAN and MARY each light a cigarette and blow smoke.
The BARTENDERS sing “A Smoke, A Drink, and You.”
BARTENDERS:
A SMOKE, A DRINK, AND YOU
A HAUNTING BEGUINE
AT THE START OF A SCENE FOR TWO
YOU OFFER A LIGHT RIGHT ON CUE
A SMOKE, A DRINK, AND YOU
WE JOKE, WE WINK, WE WOO
THE UNIVERSE SPINS
AS A CORKSCREW BEGINS TO SCREW
THE BARTENDERS FADE OUT OF VIEW
A SMOKE, A DRINK, AND YOU
COCKTAILS ARE FLOWING
AND SMOKE RINGS ARE BLOWING
AND SOMEHOW YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO
I’M HIGH AS THE MOON IS
AND EVEN THE TUNE IS ASCENDING
YOU STIR ME AND SHAKE ME
THE HEIGHTS THAT YOU TAKE ME
ARE SO VERY NEW
AND THEN YOU SHOW ME A VIEW
WITHOUT ENDING
Music continues. The BARTENDERS pour another drink into MARY’s and LILLIAN’s glasses, and each lights another cigarette.
MARY: Vassar.
LILLIAN: NYU.
MARY: Graduated.
LILLIAN: Dropped out.
MARY: Married.
LILLIAN: Married.
BARTENDERS:
THEY’LL BE ETERNALLY TRUE
MARY: Divorced.
LILLIAN: Divorced.
MARY: New York.
LILLIAN: New York.
MARY: I slept with Philip Rahv.
LILLIAN: I slept with Philip Rahv.
BARTENDERS:
THEY SLEPT WITH PHILIP RAHV
MARY: You did not sleep with Philip Rahv—
LILLIAN: Once. Once was enough.
BARTENDERS:
A SMOKE, A DRINK, AND YOU
LILLIAN and MARY drain their drinks. The BARTENDERS pour each of them another.
MARY: I was very beautiful.
LILLIAN: I was not.
MARY: And very smart.
LILLIAN: Whip-smart.
MARY: Cold eye.
LILLIAN: Sharp tongue.
MARY: Sharp tongue.
LILLIAN: Cold eye.
MARY: Loved danger.
LILLIAN: Loved trouble.
MARY: Loved fights.
LILLIAN: Loved fights.
MARY: Quick.
LILLIAN: Just as quick.
MARY: And very beautiful.
LILLIAN: I wish I’d been beautiful.
MARY: I wish I’d been rich.
LILLIAN: But if I’d been beautiful, would any of it have happened?
MARY: And if I’d been rich—
LILLIAN: You’d have been sued many more times than you were. Philip Rahv wanted to sue you and so did Edmund Wilson and so did all those girls you went to Vassar with. Even your own uncle wanted to sue you.
MARY: You wanted to sue me.
LILLIAN: And I did sue you. That’s where all this is leading.
MARY: And I didn’t have enough money to defend myself.
LILLIAN: But people gave it to you. People felt sorry for you and gave it to you. People who hated me gave it to you. People who hated you gave it to you because they hated me more. And you took the money—
MARY: For my lawyers.
LILLIAN: Hmmph.
A beat.
MARY: I was very beautiful.
LILLIAN: And I was not. But I had something.
A tall man walks up to the bar, and a BARTENDER starts to mix him a drink. This is DASHIELL H
AMMETT.
DASHIELL HAMMETT:
A MAN APPEARS ON CUE
BARTENDERS:
A HANDSOME THIN MAN APPEARS
A NICK FOR A NORA
FOR WHOM WE MIGHT POUR A FEW
DASHIELL HAMMETT:
QUITE A FEW
BARTENDERS:
A CATCH OF A CATCH, SUCH A COUP
DASHIELL HAMMETT:
WE SPOKE
DASHIELL HAMMETT AND LILLIAN:
WE DRANK, WE KNEW
BARTENDER: The usual, Mr. Hammett?
DASHIELL HAMMETT: [Quoting lines from The Thin Man.] “You know, Vic, the important thing is rhythm. You always have rhythm in your shaking. A Manhattan you shake to a foxtrot. A Rob Roy you shake to two-step time. A dry martini you always shake to waltz time.” [To LILLIAN.] Say, how many drinks have you had?
LILLIAN: This will make five martinis.
DASHIELL HAMMETT: All right, will you bring me four more martinis, Leo? Line them up right here. [DASHIELL HAMMETT starts to drink the martinis, one by one.]
LILLIAN: After he wrote The Thin Man, he told me I was Nora, and I was very pleased, and then he told me I was also the silly girl in it, and the villainess, too. And he wrote me poetry, and he was so handsome, and he called me “My darling Lilishka.” Didn’t you, Dash? Dash?
DASHIELL HAMMETT, apparently drunk, falls off the bar stool onto the floor.
I met Hammett—Dashiell Hammett—in Musso and Frank’s Restaurant in Los Angeles in 1930. He’d written The Maltese Falcon and The Dain Curse. He was the hottest thing in town. When I met Hammett, I was a reader at MGM and didn’t have a political bone in my body or a nickel to my name. When he got done with me, I was Lillian Hellman.
On-screen we see the scene from Julia in which Jane Fonda, playing LILLIAN, is living with Jason Robards, playing DASHIELL HAMMETT. She’s trying to write. She types a few words on a piece of paper and then crumples it up. She tries again and crumples another piece of paper. Then she throws the typewriter out the window.
That never happened.
MARY: Thank you. Almost none of it happened. Hammett—you and Hammett—you rarely slept together, he was drunk most of the time, and he had the longest writer’s block in living memory.
LILLIAN: He loved me and only me.
MARY: I’m sure he did. But this romantic thin man who rode into your life and turned you into a femme fatale was a figment of your imagination. He was just a story.
