Lillian Hellman: An Imperious Life

Selectively culling from extensive secondary sources for details of personal, social, political, and literary elements in Lillian Hellman's life, Gallagher (Hannah's Daughters; All the Right Enemies) emphasizes less admirable aspects of her subject, shading this little biography on the dark side, as Hellman's excessive drinking, angry and duplicitous actions, and "frenetic sexual activity" end in mental and physical deterioration. The author seems to think that Hellman's family origins in the American South in the 1840s disadvantage her by making her unable to identify with the later immigrant Jewish experience. She finds Hellman's dramas The Little Foxes and Another Part of the Forest to be autobiographical revelations of her strong ambivalence about money: desiring it herself, despising its power in others. Hellman's testimony at the McCarthy hearings is presented as more self-preserving than principled. Her longtime significant other Dashiell Hammett gets credit for her crafting of The Children's Hour. Hellman's advice on the scripting of the play The Diary of Anne Frank is credited with creating its universality but changing its meaning, thereby spoiling its Jewishness.