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Parents
In 1911, when Max’s shoe business failed, the Hellmans left New Orleans and moved to New York City. From the time Lillian Hellman was eleven until she was sixteen, the family divided its time between New Orleans and New York City -
Born June 20,1905
Born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1905, Hellman saw her young life populated by eccentric and avaricious relatives, who later appeared only thinly disguised in her plays. Her parents, Max and Julia Hellman, were both German-American Jews. -
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Political involvement
Throughout Hellman’s career as a playwright, her “offstage” life was lively and dramatic as well. During the 1920s and 1930s, she took a number of trips to Europe—trips which raised her political awareness. -
Education
Moving back and forth between New Orleans and New York as a child, Hellman witnessed the diverse cultures within her national borders. After graduating from high school, she briefly attended both Columbia University and New York University. -
First legal Marriage
She married the writer Arthur Kober. Five years later, they moved to Hollywood, where Kober was employed as a screenwriter. Hellman also found work in the fledgling sound film industry, working first as a reader and later as a writer for the legendary mogul Sam Goldwyn. -
First jobs
Leaving school, she found a job at a publishing house, where she got her first glimpse of the bohemian lifestyle of the 1920s writer and artist. By the early 1930s, Hellman had found a job as a reader for MGM. Though she found the work dull, it provided her the opportunity to meet a wider range of creative people and to become involved in the artistic and political scene of the times. An ardent leftist, Hellman organized her fellow readers into a union. -
Judaism in Hellman’s Life
The importance of Judaism and Jewish culture in Hellman’s life is ambiguous. In her memoirs, she addresses her Jewish heritage as part of a cultural background. Being a woman and being a southerner seemed more important texts of identity for Hellman than being Jewish. In interviews, she remarked that southern Jews tended to downplay their Jewishness. While her memoirs do address this part of her identity, it is clear that Jewish life was not central to her sense of self. -
Relationship with Dashiell Hammett
By 1932 Hellman was already divorced, and her new relationship with Hammett was well under way. Though often rocky, Hellman and Hammett’s relationship remained close until Hammett’s death in 1961. -
"The Children's Hour"
Hellman took her first leap into professional writing with a play about two teachers accused of being lesbians by a privileged student. Overwhelmed by the accusation, one teacher kills herself. “The Children’s Hour,” was a gripping emotional tale about the abuse of power and its effects. The play was an enormous hit on Broadway, running for more than seven hundred performances, and brought the young playwright instant recognition. -
"The Little Foxes"
“The Little Foxes” was a story about three siblings struggling for control over a family business. Primarily an indictment of capitalist motives, it was also a telling story of three individuals, and an investigation of their inner lives. This ability to blend strong politics with humane (though not sentimental) stories of individual struggles was one of Hellman’s great achievements. -
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World War 2
World War 2 took place during the life of Lillian Hellman. She proudly shared her political views and expressed in her work. -
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Plays regarding politics
Throughout the 1940s and 1950s she continued to write plays and increase her political activism. Her anti-fascist works “Watch the Rhine” (1941) and “The Searching Wind” (1944) directly criticized America’s failures to address and fight Hitler and Mussolini in their early years. Blacklisted in the 1950s for her leftist activism, Hellman continued to write and to speak out against the injustices around her. -
"Watch on the Rhine"
Watch on the Rhine, drama in three acts by Lillian Hellman, published and produced in 1941. Performed just eight months before the United States entered World War II, Hellman’s play exposed the dangers of fascism in America, asserting that tyranny can also be battled on the home front. -
"The Searching Wind"
A bewildered diplomat, stationed in Europe to report the significance of changing events to the US State Dept, who fails to see importance of a Fascist takeover in Italy, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the Munich agreement. His wife is mixing socially with the wrong people, the smug, satisfied, set who are pulling the strings for these events, unaware of the cataclysmic results. Hellman's play debuted on Broadway in 1944 and ran for 318 performances. -
A new path
Hellman was understandably galled in later life by an article declaring that Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee were America's three greatest living playwrights, given that each of them could well be said to owe a debt to Hellman's own, much earlier, plays. Her popularity as a dramatist in decline, Hellman began writing what would become four volumes of legendarily unreliable memoirs -
Teaching
Excited over recent student activism, Hellman began teaching. Throughout the rest of her life she would teach at a number of colleges, including both Harvard and Yale. As a teacher and scholar she was well respected, and her political involvement was integral in the fight against fascism at home and abroad. -
"Toys in the Attic"
Toys in the Attic is one of Lillian Hellman's workmanlike psychological geographies. Set in New Orleans following the Great Depression, the play focuses on the Berniers sisters, two middle-aged spinsters who have sacrificed their own ambitions to look after their ne'er-do-well younger brother Julian, whose grandiose dreams repeatedly lead to financial disasters. -
"An Unfinished Woman"
In 1969 Hellman published AN UNFINISHED WOMAN, the first of three memoirs that dealt with her social, political, and artistic life. All four were critical and commercial successes, An Unfinished Woman winning the National Book award in 1969. Hellman unleashed her peerless wit and candor on the subject she knew best: herself. An Unfinished Woman is a rich, surprising, emotionally charged portrait of a bygone world — and of an independent-minded woman coming into her own. -
PENTIMENTO: A BOOK OF PORTRAITS and SCOUNDREL TIME
Four years later, PENTIMENTO: A BOOK OF PORTRAITS and in 1976 by SCOUNDREL TIME, these books were a moving investigation of the life of a successful woman. The life of a woman who stood against an unjust government and was able to maintain her dignity and artistic vision. Though criticized for inaccuracies, these books were influential not only for their depiction of an exceptional and exciting artistic time, but for their tone, many associated with the beginnings of the feminist movement. -
Awards
Among the many honors she received were two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, a Gold Medal from the Academy of Arts and Letters for Distinguished Achievement in the Theater, and a National Book Award for AN UNFINISHED WOMAN. -
The death of Lillian Hellman
On June 30, 1984 Lillian Hellman died in Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts at the age of seventy-nine. -
Reference page
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Watch-on-the-Rhine-play
https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/hellman-lillian
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/lillian-hellman-about-lillian-hellman/628/
https://variety.com/1945/film/reviews/the-searching-wind-1200414662/
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/jan/22/lillian-hellman-childrens-hour-sarah-churchwell