A Difficult Woman (64 page)

1
Carl Rollyson,
Lillian Hellman, Her Legend and Her Legacy
(New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988); Deborah Martinson,
Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels
(New York: Counterpoint, 2005).

2
This information has been assembled with the generous help of Richard Workman, archivist at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

3
Annabel Davis-Goff, interview by author, September 2, 2010.

4
LH to Diane Johnson, September 13, 1978, box 62, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TK.

5
Carol Kolmerten, “Writing Modern Women's Lives,”
American Quarterly
50:4 (1998): 849–59.

6
LH to Donald Erickson, May 23, 1973, box 124, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

7
See especially William Wright,
Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986) and Joan Mellen,
Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett
(New York: Harper Collins, 1996).

8
Pete Seeger is a case in point. See Daniel Wakin, “This Just In: Pete Seeger Denounced Stalin over a Decade Ago,”
New York Times
(September 1, 2007).

9
Robert Newman,
The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), Appendix I.

10
Patricia Meyer Spacks,
The Female Imagination
(New York: Knopf, 1975), 306, 309.

11
David Denby, “Escape Artist: The Case for Joan Crawford,”
New Yorker
(January 3, 2011), 65.

12
Charles McGrath, “Muriel Spark: Playing God”
New York Times Book Review
(April 25, 2010).

1
U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1900 Census of Population and Housing
, Cincinnati Ward 2, Hamilton, Ohio, roll T623 1274, p. 3A.

2
Wedding guestbook, box 119, Folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

3
Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

4
LH to Diane Johnson, September 13, 1982, box 62, folder 4, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

5
Bertram Wallace Korn,
The Early Jews of New Orleans
(Waltham, MA: American Jewish Historical Society, 1969), 22.

6
Julian Beck Feibelman, “A Social and Economic Study of the New Orleans Jewish Community” (doctoral thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1941), 134.

7
Ibid., 3. See also Leo Shpall,
The Jews in Louisiana
(New Orleans: Steeg Printing and Publishing Co., 1936), and Lillian Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir
, 1st Back Bay paperback ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1999).

8
Feibelman, “A Social and Economic Study,” 134, 3.

9
Korn,
The Early Jews of New Orleans
, 228.

10
James Kern Feibleman,
The Way of a Man: An Autobiography
(New York: Horizon Press, 1969), 66.

11
Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,”
Rolling Stone
(February 24, 1977): 54.

12
Leonard Reissman, “The New Orleans Jewish Community,” in Leonard Dinnerstein and Mary Dale Palsson, eds.,
Jews in the South
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 288.

13
Alfred O. Hero Jr.,
The Southerner and World Affairs
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965), 481.

14
Eli Evans,
The Provincials
:
A Personal History of Jews in the South
(Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)

15
Ronald Bern,
The Legacy
(New York: Mason Charter, 1975), ch. 8.

16
W. J. Cash,
The Mind of the South
(1941; repr., New York: Vintage, 1991), 332–33.

17
Feibelman, “A Social and Economic Study,” 134.

18
Lillian Hellman, “East and West:
The Provincials
:
A Personal History of Jews in the South by Eli Evans
,”
New York Times Book Review
(November 11, 1973), 421.

19
Ibid.

20
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 2,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, p. 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

21
Lillian Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1969), 12.

22
Lillian Hellman, “Typescript: Harvard Lecture No. 1,” Spring 1961, box 44, folder 6, p. 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

23
Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
, 15.

24
Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

25
Lillian Hellman,
The Little Foxes,
in
The Collected Plays
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1971), 145.

26
Ibid., 188.

27
Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
, 32. See also Peter Adam, “Unfinished Woman,” in Jackson Bryer, ed.,
Conversations with Lillian Hellman
(Jackson, University of Mississippi Press, 1986), 230.

28
Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
, 15.

29
Ibid., 13.

30
Ibid., 3–4.

31
Ibid., 5.

32
Lillian Hellman, diary, c. 1923, box 97, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

1
Lillian Hellman, untitled and unpaginated typescript in response to an advertising agency's request to prepare five one-hundred-word comments on women's dress and style, spring 1963, box 40, folder 5, Lillian Hellman Collection, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

2
Ann Scott, “After Suffrage: Southern Women in the Twenties,”
The Journal of Southern History
30 (August 1943): 298–318.

3
Lillian Hellman,
Pentimento
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 46–47.

4
Susan Ware, “Unlocking the Porter-Dewson Partnership,” in Sarah Alpern et al.,
The Challenge of Feminist Biography
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992), 63

5
Ibid. See also Susan Cahn,
Sexual Reckonings: Southern Girls in a Troubling Age
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

6
Otto Weininger,
Sex and Character: An Investigation of Fundamental Principles
(Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2005).

7
Lillian Hellman, diaries, November 28, 1922, box 97, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

8
Lillian Hellman Kober, “Perberty in Los Angeles,”
American Spectator
3 (January 1934): 4.

9
Lillian Hellman Kober, “I Call Her Mama,”
American Spectator
2 (September 1933): 2.

10
Lillian Hellman, diaries, April 22, 1924, box 97, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

11
An Unfinished Woman
, 33. “I have often asked myself whether I understood the damage that so loveless an arrangement made on my future,” she wrote in
An Unfinished Woman
, 32. These questions are raised as well in
Maybe
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), the last of her autobiographical volumes.

12
Ibid., 36.

13
Ibid., 41

14
Muriel Gardiner,
Code Name “Mary”: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), 33.

15
LH to “Baby,” c. early 1930, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, WI.

16
LH to Arthur Kober, c. June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

17
LH to “Dear Babe,” c. summer 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

18
An Unfinished Woman
, 32;
Pentimento
, 43.

19
Lewis M. Dabney,
Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), 271.

20
Margaret Harriman, “Miss Lily of New Orleans,”
New Yorker
(November 8, 1941): 22.

21
Elia Kazan,
Elia Kazan: A Life
(New York: Knopf, 1988), 324.

22
Christine Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman: A Conversation with Lillian Hellman,”
Rolling Stone
(February 24, 1977): 55.

23
Lucius Beebe, “An Adult's Hour Is Miss Hellman's Next Effort,”
New York Herald Tribune
(December 13, 1936): 2.

24
Harriman, “Miss Lily of New Orleans,” 22.

25
Fern Maja, “A Clearing in the Forest,”
New York Post
(March 6, 1960), M2.

26
Ernestine Carter, “Lillian Hellman,”
Sunday Times
(October 19, 1969), 55.

27
LH to John Melby, December 30, 1945, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

28
LH to William Abrahams, box 21, folder 5, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

29
LH to “Dear Babe,” c. fall 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

30
LH to Arthur Kober, June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

31
LH to “Dear Babe,” c. fall 1934, Box 1, Folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, WHS.

32
Austin Pendleton, interview by author, December 12, 2009. See also Diane Johnson, “Obsessed,”
Vanity Fair
(May 1985): 79. For a different version of the story, see Peter Feibleman,
Lilly: Reminiscences of Lillian Hellman
(New York: William Morrow, 1988), 168.

33
Johnson, “Obsessed,” 79.

34
David Denby, “Escape Artist: The Case for Joan Crawford,”
New Yorker
(January 3, 2011): 65–69.

35
Zoe Caldwell, interview by author, September 24, 2010.

36
Patricia Meyer Spacks,
The Female Imagination
(New York: Knopf, 1975), 306.

37
This story is pieced together from Hellman,
Pentimento
, 13–14, and Richard Layman,
Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), 166–67.

38
Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55.

39
Lillian Hellman, Typescript: “I was speaking of Hannah Weinstein,” box 41,
folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. Patricia Neal, interview by author, August 26, 2010.

40
Lillian Hellman, typescript, box 77, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

41
Doudna, “A Still Unfinished Woman,” 55.

42
LH to John Melby, spring 1946, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

43
LH to John Melby, c. August 1946, box 81, folder 7, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.