A Difficult Woman (67 page)

4
Wheaton, “A History of the Screen Writers' Guild (1920–1942),” 82.

5
LH to Arthur Kober, June 1934, box 1, folder 20, Arthur Kober Papers, Wisconsin Historical Society.

6
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson,
The Soviet World of American Communism
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 280.

7
On the history of the Popular Front, see especially Michael Denning,
The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century
(London: Verso, 1996), 10–12.

8
Hammett to Mary Hammett, September 11, 1936, in Richard Layman, ed.,
Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett, 1921–1960
(Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 2001), 107.

9
Ibid., 111.

10
Richard Layman,
Shadow Man: The Life of Dashiell Hammett
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1981), 171.

11
Betsy Blair,
The Memory of All That: Love and Politics in New York, Hollywood, and Paris
(New York: Knopf, 2003), 195–96.

12
Patrick McGilligan and Ken Mate, “Alvah Bessie,” in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, eds.,
Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist
(New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999), 97.

13
Lawson interview in Dan Georgakas and Lenny Rubenstein,
The Cineaste Interviews on the Art and Politics of Cinema
(Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1983), 197.

14
A. Scott Berg,
Goldwyn: A Biography
(New York: Knopf, 1989), 267

15
This story is fully explored in Schwartz,
The Hollywood Writers' Wars
. See also Ian Hamilton,
Writers in Hollywood: 1915–1951
(New York: Carroll and Graf, 1990), chs. 7 and 12.

16
Dan Katz,
All Together Different: Yiddish Socialists, Garment Workers, and the Labor Roots of Multiculturalism
(New York: New York University Press, 2011).

17
Patrick McGilligan, “Maurice Rapf,” in McGilligan and Buhle, eds.,
Tender Comrades
, 508.

18
This interpretation follows Schwartz,
The Hollywood Writers' Wars
, 99–103.

19
Philip Dunne interviewed by Douglas Bell, October 29, 1989, 142, Oral History Collection, Margaret Herrick Papers, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, CA.

20
Ibid.

21
Schwartz,
The Hollywood Writers' Wars
, 172. The successful negotiating team included Dore Schary, Boris Ingster, Mary McCall Jr., Charlie Brackett, Ralph Block, and Sheridan Gibney.

22
Reminiscences of Albert Hackett (1958), on page 26, CCOH.

23
Ibid., 27.

24
Patrick McGilligan and Ken Mate, “Allen Boretz,” in McGilligan and Buhle, eds.,
Tender Comrades
, 115.

25
Dalton Trumbo,
Time of the Toad: A Study of Inquisition in America
(New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 7.

26
See especially Gerald Horne,
The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), ch. 6.

27
Most elements of the act were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1957. See
Yates v. United States
, 354 U.S. 298.

28
Larry Ceplair and Steven England,
The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960
(Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 257.

29
Hammett to Mary Hammett, September 11, 1936, in Layman, ed.,
Selected Letters
, 109–10.

30
Hellman incorrectly places this showing in March 1938 and recalls it with pleasure in
An Unfinished Woman
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), 67.

31
Lillian Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
, 82. On Katz, see Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh,
Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony's Long Romance with the Left
(San Francisco: Encounter Books, 1996), 47–48. Katz, probably a lover of Hellman's, was executed by the Czech Communist regime after the Second World War.

32
Hellman,
An Unfinished Woman
, 82.

33
Lillian Hellman, “A Bleached Lady,”
New Masses
(October 11, 1938): 21.

34
Lillian Hellman, “Day in Spain,”
New Republic
(April 13, 1938): 298.

35
Ibid.

36
Lillian Hellman, “The Word Noble,”
The Village Fair Almanac
June 28–30, 1938, box 2, folder, 1938, Millen Brand Papers, 1906–1980, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Columbia University New York, NY.

37
Lillian Hellman, “Day in Spain,” 298.

38
D. D. Guttenplan,
American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009), 113–14.

39
Lillian Hellman, “The Word Noble.”

40
Lillian Hellman, “The Lyons Den,”
New York Post
(July 22, 1938): 12. Clip courtesy of Justin Jackson.

41
Edward Barsky, “Typescript: Address of Dr. Edward Barsky: Hotel Astor,” March 22, 1945, Edward Barsky Collection, box 2, folder 37, 1, Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, New York University Libraries, New York, NY.

42
Lillian Hellman to Alvah Bessie, July 14, 1952, Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Records, ALBA 019, box 12, folder 5, TL.

43
This story is in
Chapter 10
.

44
Deborah Martinson,
Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels
(New York: Counterpoint, 2005), 131–32, attributes Hellman's political commitment and awakening to her fall 1937 trip to Paris, Berlin, Moscow, and Spain.

45
Milton Meltzer, “Hollywood Does Right by ‘The Little Foxes,'”
Sunday Worker
(August 24, 1941): 7.

46
Memo submitted by Louis Budenz, no date, Investigative Name Files, box
24, “Lillian Hellman” folder, National Archives and Records Administration, RG233, Records of the House of Representatives House Un-American Activities Committee.

47
Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman, draft, April 28, 1952, 1–2, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1950–57” folder, Joseph Rauh Papers, part I, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress. The statement was drawn up before Hellman's 1952 HUAC hearing but was never publicly released.

48
“A Statement by American Progressives,”
New Masses
(April 3, 1938): 32.

49
Catherine Kober Zeller, interview by author, November 11, 2009.

50
On the complex motives behind the positions taken by intellectuals to Soviet atrocities, see Michael David-Fox,
Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to Soviet Russia, 1921–1941
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

51
Quoted in Guttenplan,
American Radical
, 108.

52
FBI report, “Lillian Hellman,” June 18, 1941, box 119, folder 1, 1–2, Lillian Hellman Collection. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin.

53
Sam Jaffe interviewed by Barbara Hall, April 25, 1991, 264–65, Oral History Collection, Margaret Herrick Papers.

54
“Sees Finnish Aid Imperiling Peace,”
New York Times
(January 21, 1940): 27

55
Hellman's fullest version of the story is in “An Evening with Lillian Hellman,”
Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
27, no. 7 (April 1974): 19; a slightly different version is in Lillian Hellman,
Pentimento
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 183.

56
Hellman,
Pentimento
, 184.

57
Typescript, “Statement by Miss Lillian Hellman,” draft, April 14, 1952, box 71, “Lillian Hellman, 1950–57,” folder, 2. Joseph Rauh Papers, LOC.

58
This story comes from Roy Hoopes,
Ralph Ingersoll: A Biography
(New York: Atheneum, 1985), 5.

59
Ibid., 401

60
Lillian Hellman, “The Little Men in Philadelphia,”
PM
(June 25, 1940): 6.

61
Several sets of these files are now located in the archives. The first set collected by Peter Benjaminson is now in box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC. The second, collected by Robert Newman, was also donated to Harry Ransom Center. The William Miller Abrahams Papers, Stanford University Libraries, also includes some originals. They differ in minor ways.

62
Hellman,
Pentimento
, 186.

63
Alvah Bessie, “Watch on the Rhine,”
New Masses
(April 15, 1941): 26; Ralph Warner, “Watch on the Rhine: Poignant Drama of Anti-Fascist Struggle,”
Daily Worker
(April 4, 1941): 7.

64
Ibid., 195.

65
These names culled from records of the U.S. House of Representatives, House Un-American Activities Committee, Master Name Index, box 291, NARA, RG233.

66
Memo from special agent in charge (SAC) to director, FBI, December 19, 1951, box 4, folder 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

67
Martin Bauml Duberman,
Paul Robeson
(New York: Knopf, 1988), ch. 12.

68
This event was sponsored by the women's division of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee at the Hotel Commodore on December 14, 1943. Apparently a thousand guests lauded her for her aid to the loyalists. FBI report, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

69
FBI files, March 23, 1945, box 4, folder 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

70
FBI report, August 18, 1944, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

71
FBI memo, October 7, 1944, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

72
FBI report, October 14, 1944, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

73
Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” box 103, folder 3, 2–3, 4, 10, 11, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

74
Ibid., 3.

75
Ibid., 10, 11.

76
Lillian Hellman, “I Meet the Front-Line Russians,”
Collier's
(March 31, 1945): 68; Lillian Hellman, “Russian Diaries,” 6.

77
Raisa Orlova,
Memoirs
(New York: Random House, 1983), 117.

78
Hellman, “I Meet the Front-Line Russians,” 71. For Hellman's behavior at the front, see Raisa Orlova,
Memoirs
, 116–17.

79
Lillian Hellman, “I Meet the Front-Line Russians,” 71. In
An Unfinished Woman
, 163, the gift is described as “a cigarette lighter made from a gun barrel.”

80
FBI memos, January 2, 1945, February 9, 1945, March 27, 1945, May 17, 1945. Copies of these files are located in box 74, folder 1, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.

81
SAC, New York, to director, FBI, March 17, 1947, box 119, folder 1, Lillian Hellman Collection, HRC.

1
On issues of identity, see Judith Smith,
Visions of Belonging
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Matthew Jacobson,
Roots Too: White Ethnic
Revival in Post-Civil Rights America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008); and especially David Hollinger,
Cosmopolitanism and Solidarity: Studies in Ethnoracial, Religious, and Professional Affiliation in the United States
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

2
Irving Howe,
A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography
(New York: Harcourt Brace, 1982), 251.

3
Edmund Wilson,
The Thirties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980), 313.

4
Mary McCarthy,
How I Grew
(New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 45.

5
Ibid., 215. Such examples of the silence of Jews about their backgrounds are not unusual. See, for example, Reminiscences of Kitty Carlisle Hart (November 15, 1978), on page 407, in the Columbia University Center for Oral History Collection.

6
Dashiell Hammett to LH, no date, box 75, folder 3, William Miller Abrahams Papers, M1125, Department of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, CA.

7
Dashiell Hammett to LH, April 5, 1944, box 77, folder 9, William Miller Abrahams Papers, SUL.