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.
70 Lillian Hellman, Scoundrel Time (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), 53.
71 Joseph Rauh to Lillian Hellman, July 6, 1976, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1974–76” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, Part I, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
72 Rauh to LH, April 30, 1952, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1974–76” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers.
73 Rauh to Andrew Caploe, December 2, 1977, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1974–76” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, LOC.
74 Ibid.
75 Daniel Pollitt, interview by author, February 6, 2007.
76 Joseph Rauh, memo, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.
77 Rauh to LH, April 30, 1952, box 124, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
78 Lillian Hellman, Typescript, “Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman (Draft),” April 28, 1952, box 124, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
79 Don Irwin, “Lillian Hellman Refuses to Say if She Was Red,” New York Herald Tribune (May 22, 1952): 1.
80 “Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives,” 82nd Congress, 2nd session, May 21, 1952 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1952), 3545.
81 Daniel Pollitt, interview by author, February 6, 2007.
82 “Hearings Before the Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives,” 82nd Congress, 2nd session, May 21, 1952 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1952), 3546.
83 “Lillian Hellman Balks House Unit,” New York Times (May 22, 1952): 15.
84 Murray Kempton, “Portrait of a Lady,” New York Post (May 26, 1952): 17.
85 Brooks Atkinson to LH, May 27, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.
86 LH to Bill Alfred, May 23, 1952, box 20, Papers of William Alfred, Brooklyn College Archives & Special Collections, Brooklyn College Library.
87 LH to John Melby, c. May 26, 1952, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
88 LH to Joe Rauh, May 29, 1952, box 72, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.
89 LH to Melby, c. May 1952, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
90 Ibid.
91 LH to Melby, c. August 1952, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
92 Reminiscences of Helen Van dernoot Rosen (1994), CCOH.
93 Newman, The Cold War Romance, 181–82, 209.
9. The Most Dangerous Hours
1 Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009.
2 LH to McGeorge Bundy, June 7, 1960, box 65, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.
3 Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
4 Irving Howe, A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Biography (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982), 309–11.
5 Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), 311.
6 LH, Typescript, “Madison Square Garden McCarthy Rally,” box 42, folder 17, 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
7 Hellman commencement address, Mount Holyoke College, May 30, 1976, box 42, folder 9, 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
8 Typescript notes, no date, box 42, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
9 Notebook titled “Notes for Sophronia’s Grandson,” box 42, folder 2, 2, 4–5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
10 Lillian Hellman, “Sophronia’s Grandson Goes to Washington,” Ladies’ Home Journal (December 1963): 80; “Complaint, Dewey P. Colvard v The Curtis Publishing Company … and Lillian Hellman,” box 109, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
11 Roy McCord’s letter of December 18, 1963, the journal’s retraction, and Hellman’s statement are all in Ladies’ Home Journal (March 1964): 82.
12 “Mrs. Cabell Outlaw of Mobile Alabama to Dear Editor,” Ladies Home Journal (February 24, 1964), clipping in box 72, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
13 Unknown lawyer to LH, March 13, 1964, box 109, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. See also letter from Mrs. Mary Hartay of Austin, Texas, Ladies’ Home Journal (December 5, 1963).
14 Notes of interview with Senator Sparkman, no date, box 42, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
15 Typescript notes, untitled, no date, box 42, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
16 Seeger interviewed on the Tavis Smiley Show, WNYC, February 19, 2010. Thanks to Shayna Kessler for calling this to my attention.
17 Fred Gardner, interview by author, May 27, 2010.
18 Typescript, “Madison Square Garden McCarthy Rally.”
19 Hellman speech to the National Book Awards in 1970 for An Unfinished Woman. As quoted in Publishers Weekly (March 23, 1970): 1.
20 Typescript, “Madison Square Garden McCarthy Rally.”
21 The notion of a “moral beacon” comes from Wald, The New York Intellectuals, 311.
22 Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 19, 2010.
23 Untitled typescript, c. May 1967, box 43, folder 3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
24 Martin Arnold, “Lillian Hellman Says She Found Ferment Among Soviet Writers,” New York Times (May 31, 1967): 11.
25 Lillian Hellman, “The Baggage of a Political Exile,” New York Times (August 23, 1969): 26.
26 “A Letter to Anatoly Kuznetsov,” Time (December 5, 1969): 49; “Talk of the Town,” New Yorker (September 13, 1969): 21.
27 LH to William Shawn, September 16, 1969, box 42, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
28 Robert Lantz to Andrew Heiskell, December 8, 1969, box 42, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
29 LH to Charles Friedman, August 23, 1969, box 42, folder 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
30 Anne Peretz, conversation with author, June 25, 2010.
31 Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,” Rolling Stone (February 24, 1977): 54.
32 Lillian Hellman, Introduction to The Big Knockover (New York: Random House, 1966), 5.
33 Reminiscences of Donald Angus Cameron (1977), on page 534 in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.
34 Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 53.
35 William Abrahams to Arthur Thornhill Sr., March 17, 1969, box 50, folder 30, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Standford, CA.
36 Philip French, “A Difficult Woman,” New Statesman (October 24, 1969): 580.
37 Dorothy Rabinowitz, “Experience as Drama,” Commentary 48 (December 1969): 95.
38 Michaela Williams, “Miss Hellman’s Personal Fragments Merge into Personality of Beauty,” National Observer (July 14, 1969): 91.
39 Robert Kotlowitz, “The Rebel as Writer,” Harper’s (June 1969): 92.
40 Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, “The Incompleat Lillian Hellman,” New York Times (June 30, 1969): 37.
41 Stanley Young, “An Unfinished Woman” New York Times Book Review (June 29, 1969): 8. V. S. Pritchett, “Stern Self-Portait of a Lady,” Life (June 27, 1969): 12.
42 Peter Feibleman, interview by author, August 4, 2002.
43 Hellman made these comments in early 1947 on the note cards she prepared for a lecture. In her own hand, she expressed her disappointment at “what the emancipation of woman has done to women.” 1947, box 43, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
44 Lillian Hellman, “An Address by Lillian Hellman to the Women of America,” February 10, 1948, pamphlet printed and distributed by the Wallace Campaign for President, box 43, folder 4, 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
45 Note cards, box 46, folder 2, 6, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
46 Irving Wardle, “On Not Falling Sadly Apart,” The Times Saturday Review (October 18, 1969): 4.
47 Nora Ephron, “Lillian Hellman Walking, Cooking, Writing, Talking,” in Jackson Bryer, ed., Conversations with Lillian Hellman (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986), 136.
48 Katherine Brown, “Talking with Lillian Hellman,” Family Circle (April 1976): 24.
49 Hiram Haydn to LH, April 27, 1972, box 46, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection. HRC. Other participants included Ann Birstein, Nancy Wilson Ross, Norma Rosen, Renata Adler, Carolyn Heilbrun, Alice Walker, and Elizabeth Janeway.
50 American Scholar Forum, American Scholar 41 (Autumn 1972): 600, 601, 612, 614. O
n race differences, she added, “The upper-class lady, or the middle-class lady, has made out very well as the weaker and the more fragile of the pair, husband and wife. The lower-class lady—particularly American blacks, had to earn a living,” 603.
51 Ibid., 617.
52 Anthony Gornall to Don Congdon, June 13, 1977, box 52, folder 1; Congdon to LH, July 22, 1982, box 52, folder 2, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
53 Mount Holyoke College commencement address, 14–15.
54 Lillian Hellman, “For Truth, Justice and the American Way,” New York Times (June 4, 1975): 39.
55 Gloria Emerson, “Lillian Hellman: At 66, She’s Still Restless,” New York Times (September 7, 1973): 24.
56 Lillian Hellman, interview by Barbara Walters, “Not for Women Only,” NBC, April 1, 1976 box 31, folder 1, 2–3, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
57 Ibid., 10
58 Lillian Hellman, interview by National Educational Television, April 9, 1974, box 31, folder 2, 9, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
59 Ibid., 9.
60 Brown, “Talking with Lillian Hellman,” 24.
61 See, for example, Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden: American Culture in the Sixties (New York: Basic Books, 1977); Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Cold War of the 1960s, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
62 Robert Silvers, speech, October 22, 1978, box 42, folder 19, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.
63 LH to Telford Taylor, April 30, 1970, Telford Taylor Papers, Arthur W. Diamond Law Library, Columbia University, NY (TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108).
64 Roger Wilkins, “To Fight for Freedom” New York Times (December 22, 1970): 33.
65 Burke Marshall to “Dear Friend,” May 25, 1970, TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.
66 Typescript, “Statement of Purpose of Citizen Group,” TTP-CLS: 11-0-8-108.
67 By the early 1970s, the letterhead carried such names as labor leaders Leonard Woodcock, Moe Foner, and Adam Yarmolinsky; social and natural scientists C. Vann Woodward, Robert Coles, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Barry Commoner, and James Watson; military experts General David Schoup and George Kistiaskowsky; businessman Harold Willens; Mrs. Marshall (Ruth) Field; and department-store heiress Elinor Gimbel.
A Difficult Woman Page 51
