Biography
Born on 20 June 1905 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and passing away on 30 June 1984 in Tisbury, Massachusetts, Lillian Hellman studied at New York University and Columbia University in New York. Her reputation as a playwright of distinction grew through numerous Broadway productions, several of which reached the screen. In Hollywood she contributed screenplays, sometimes reworking her own stage material and at other times creating entirely new scripts. From 1925 to 1932 she was married to writer Arthur Kober, after which she maintained an extended personal association with writer Dashiell Hammett. Her political engagement shaped much of her writing, particularly its focus on the character and abuse of authority. Summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee, she declined to cooperate and later recounted the episode in Scoundrel Time.
Stage pieces from the 1930s and 1940s encompass The Children’s Hour (1934), Days To Come (1936), The Little Foxes (1939), Watch On The Rhine (1941), The Searching Wind (1944), and Another Part Of The Forest (1949), the last serving as a prequel to The Little Foxes. Screen versions drawn from these plays, with Hellman credited for the screenplay unless otherwise noted, include These Three (1936, drawn from The Children’s Hour), The Little Foxes (1941, which received Academy Award nominations for both screenplay and picture), Watch On The Rhine (1943, with Dashiell Hammett supplying the screenplay that earned an Oscar nomination along with the film itself), The Searching Wind (1946), Another Part Of The Forest (1948, scripted by Vladimir Posner), and The Children’s Hour (1962, released in the UK as The Loudest Whisper), the last co-written with John Michael Hayes.
Subsequent stage works comprise The Autumn Garden (1951) and Toys In The Attic (1960). In 1949 Marc Blitzstein composed both libretto and score for Regina, an operatic treatment of The Little Foxes. Hellman herself entered the Broadway musical arena by supplying the book for Candide, whose music was by Leonard Bernstein and whose lyrics were contributed by Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, and Dorothy Parker; despite its distinguished contributors, the production failed. The 1977 motion picture Julia drew upon a section of her memoir Pentimento and featured Jane Fonda portraying the writer.
Intellectually rigorous and pointed in its political and social critiques, Hellman’s writing addressed lesbianism in The Children’s Hour, corporate avarice in The Little Foxes, and acutely fraught family dynamics in both that play and Toys In The Attic. When adapted for the screen, these uncompromising subjects were routinely softened.
Stage pieces from the 1930s and 1940s encompass The Children’s Hour (1934), Days To Come (1936), The Little Foxes (1939), Watch On The Rhine (1941), The Searching Wind (1944), and Another Part Of The Forest (1949), the last serving as a prequel to The Little Foxes. Screen versions drawn from these plays, with Hellman credited for the screenplay unless otherwise noted, include These Three (1936, drawn from The Children’s Hour), The Little Foxes (1941, which received Academy Award nominations for both screenplay and picture), Watch On The Rhine (1943, with Dashiell Hammett supplying the screenplay that earned an Oscar nomination along with the film itself), The Searching Wind (1946), Another Part Of The Forest (1948, scripted by Vladimir Posner), and The Children’s Hour (1962, released in the UK as The Loudest Whisper), the last co-written with John Michael Hayes.
Subsequent stage works comprise The Autumn Garden (1951) and Toys In The Attic (1960). In 1949 Marc Blitzstein composed both libretto and score for Regina, an operatic treatment of The Little Foxes. Hellman herself entered the Broadway musical arena by supplying the book for Candide, whose music was by Leonard Bernstein and whose lyrics were contributed by Richard Wilbur, John Latouche, and Dorothy Parker; despite its distinguished contributors, the production failed. The 1977 motion picture Julia drew upon a section of her memoir Pentimento and featured Jane Fonda portraying the writer.
Intellectually rigorous and pointed in its political and social critiques, Hellman’s writing addressed lesbianism in The Children’s Hour, corporate avarice in The Little Foxes, and acutely fraught family dynamics in both that play and Toys In The Attic. When adapted for the screen, these uncompromising subjects were routinely softened.