The Last Days of Dorothy Parker (14 page)

136
. DP,
Portable
, 558.

137
. LH interview,
New York Times
, September 23, 1973.

138
.
New York Times
, November 14, 1967.

139
. LH,
Three
, 234.

140
. LH to John Melby, May 1946; LH to Oscar Bernstien, February 18, 1964.

141
. DP,
Portable
, 109

142
. LH,
Three
, 237.

143
. Hammett's 1934 novel was adapted for six films as well as a radio series, television series, TV play, and Broadway musical. Hellman was the model for the Nora character, as well as two subsidiary female characters.

144
. LH,
Three
, 276.

145
. In the early 1980s, while researching my biography of Dorothy Parker, I requested an interview of Hellman. When there was no response, my editor suggested trying to influence her by sending my previous biographies. She was not impressed. Still, I succeeded in getting her attention because she began warning certain of Parker's friends (former blacklisted writers) not to talk to me. Those obeying her wishes included Parker's collaborator on
The Ladies of the Corridor
, Arnaud d'Usseau, and also screenwriters Ring Lardner Jr. and Ian McLellan Hunter. Initially, Hunter agreed to see me, but after learning that I had failed to clear our interview with Hellman – and that I had conversed with a writer who had “named names” to HUAC, Budd Schulberg – he physically bundled me out of his apartment and down the hall to the elevator. Left behind was my untouched glass of ice tea.

146
. Norman Mailer interview with Carol Brightman,
Writing Dangerously: Mary McCarthy and Her World
(Clarkson Potter, 1992), 617.

147
. Asked in 2013 about roles she regretted turning down, Barbra Streisand named the Hellman character (portrayed by Jane Fonda) in
Julia
.

148
. S. J. Perelman to Pat Kavanagh, October 18, 1976.

149
. LH,
Three
, 659.

150
. Ibid., 675

151
. Ibid., 609.

152
.
New York Times
, July 30, 1976.

153
.
Spectator
, November 13, 1976.

154
. Hilton Kramer, “The Life and Death of Lillian Hellman,”
New Criterion
, October 1984.

Chapter 8: Baltimore (1977–1988)

155
. www.ontheredcarpet.com, Redgrave's political speech, which included references to “Zionist hoodlums,” was considered inappropriate for the occasion and provoked boos and hissing.

156
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 225.

157
. McCarthy quoted in Carol Brightman,
Writing Dangerous
, 600.

158
. LH,
Paris Review
, Winter-Spring 1965.

159
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 283.

160
. Ibid., 284.

161
. Martha Gellhorn,
Paris Review
, Spring 1981.

162
. Martha Gellhorn to Hortense Flexner, May 14, 1960, in Caroline Moorehead,
Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn
(Holt, 2007), 277.

163
. LH,
Three
, 111.

164
. Martha Gellhorn,
Paris Review
, Spring 1981.

165
. Renata Adler,
Pitch Dark
(Knopf, 1983), 5.

166
. The accepted explanation for Hellman's knowledge of Muriel Gardiner's underground activities involves Wolfgang S. Schwabacher, a prominent attorney and a director of the Viking Press who died in 1951. His wife, Ethel, an abstract expressionist painter, died in 1984, but apparently did not involve herself in the controversy. For ten years the Schwabachers shared a two-family house in Pennington, New Jersey, with Gardiner and her family.

167
.
New York Times
, April 29, 1983.

168
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 308. A memoir by a summer helper, Rosemary Mahoney, confirmed that employment by Hellman was never for the faint of heart. (
A Likely Story: One Summer with Lillian Hellman
, Doubleday, 1998.)

169
. William Styron,
Selected Letters of William Styron
, edited by Rose Styron, with R. Blakeslee Gilpin (Random House, 2012), 556.

170
. LH,
Eating Together
, 76.

171
. Feibleman,
Lilly
, 332.

172
. Ibid., 362.

173
. Paul O'Dwyer conversation with MM, February 1987.

174
.
Schenectady Gazette
, March 21, 1988.

175
. Ibid. The NAACP had moved its headquarters from New York to Baltimore in 1986.

176
.
Rockland County Journal News
, January 23, 1989.

Epitaph: Laughter and Hope and a Sock in the Eye

177
. DP, “Inventory,”
Portable
, 96.

178
. DP,
Portable
, 552.

179
. DP, “Untitled Lament, Circa 1927,”
Portable
, 555.

180
. DP,
Portable
, 552.

181
. Nora Ephron, “Lillian Hellman Walking, Cooking, Writing, Talking,”
New York Times
, September 23, 1973.

182
. Hilary Mills e-mail to MM, March 7, 2013.

183
.
New York Times
, June 21, 2012.

184
. Dorothy Gallagher,
Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life
(Jewish Lives Series, Yale University Press, 2014), 4.

185
. LH,
Three
, 659.

186
. Carl Rollyson e-mail to MM.

187
. LH,
Three
, 651.

188
. DP,
Portable
, 240.

189
. The concluding paragraphs were previously published in “Estate of Mind,” MM,
Bookforum
, April/May 2006, 8.

Appendix: The Hunt for Dorothy Parker's Worldly Goods

190
. Rita Wade phone conversation with MM, April 5, 2005.

191
. Peter Feibleman e-mail to MM, November 19, 2005.

192
. Rita Wade phone conversation with MM, November 22, 2005.