Writer: Lillian Hellman

Let me start by saying this is all I really missed of the internet while in prison: information.

I knew Hellman was a playwright. I saw Julia. But mostly I knew her through Dashiell Hammett.

Then I read her plays. I wondered about her current status. Seems she is not quite as forgotten ad I might have thought. Do some links for her:

• The scandalous Lillian Hellman
• Notes on Lillian Hellman
  
• Formative Influences on Lillian Hellman
  
• Why It's Time to Appreciate Lillian Hellman Again
  
• Critical Insights: Lillian HellmanCritical Insights: Lillian Hellman
• Authors: Lillian Hellman (Had a bibliography of books by and about).
  

I liked most of what I read in these articles. Now I need finish her plays.

sch 4/12/22

Hellman seems to have been overshadowed by male playwrights. One being Arthur Miller. For an appreciation of Miller, check out  ARTHUR MILLER, ELIA KAZAN, & THE BLACKLIST: NONE WITHOUT SIN.

sch 4/30/22

Since I have not yet finished her Complete Plays, I have rescheduled this post, again. This also allows me to add these excerpts from That’s (Serious) Entertainment: Lillian Hellman’s Bargain With Audiences, which from my reading so far seem to hit the mark:

Lillian Hellman aspired to be that rare thing, even in her time: a serious Broadway playwright. From the beginning she wanted to move beyond the domestic dramas typical of women in her day and write plays that spoke to prevailing issues of values and political life. And she wanted her words to reach Broadway audiences—popular audiences—who sought entertainment rather than education. These two seemingly irreconcilable goals explain both her spectacular success and her failure to achieve greatness.

*** 

But to attract audiences, she resorted to the kinds of tactics that could make critics shudder: the unlikely plot twist, the sharp-tongued and shrill character, and especially the melodramatic turn. Together these provided the spice that led to Broadway success but ultimately undermined her larger goals.

***

 While she could and did resort to artifice to raise her voice above the competition, she insisted that her voice remain true to her principles. If she reached audiences with theatrical devices that stirred their imaginations, she never backed off her goal of writing plays designed to illuminate the issues and problems that troubled her world. When her ideas no longer resonated, she stopped writing plays, and turned instead to essays and memoirs, in which her ideas needed no improbable twists to come across.

sch 5/14/22 

Hilton Als wrote this in his 2014 review A FAMILY AFFAIR:

...Although Hellman based the character of Lily’s mother, Albertine (Joanne Camp), and her relationship with a black servant named Henry (Robert Colston) on certain details from her own past, the dramatization of their illicit connection is pure Williams—“Desire and the Black Masseur” meets “The Rose Tattoo.” In a sense, “Toys in the Attic” is Hellman’s Tennessee Williams play, right down to the setting in his beloved adopted city.

But New Orleans was her hometown. She wrote before Tennessee Williams. Is not Als putting cart before horse? Could it not be that Hellman is asserting her influence on Williams?

Check out the woman herself: Lillian Hellman, The Art of Theater No. 1.

sch 6/8/22