Lillian Hellman: Her Life and Legend

by Carl Rollyson

Through diaries, letters, government files, and interviews Carl Rollyson draws a vital and vibrant portrait of the life, the work, and the legend of Lillian Hellman, America's most controversial radical playwright.

Rollyson explores the sources and backgrounds of her best-selling memoirs, the development of her politics, her successful screenwriting career, and her famous appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He provides entertaining and informative accounts of her feud with Mary McCarthy, her many love affairs and surprising friendships.

Lilian Hellman is a provocative and compelling portrayal of this complex and brilliant woman, who was called everything from a "viper", "a goddam liar" to "an empathetic genius with a highly original and penetrating mind." Near death, Hellman spoke of being blocked; this biography will show what got in her way.

‘Meticulous narrative’ - New York Times Book Review

‘Recommended for both lay readers and scholars’ - Library Journal

Carl Rollyson is a writer whose biographies include Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn and Marie Curie: Honesty in Science. A well-known scholar of biography, he has also published Reading Biography, Essays in Biography, Lives of the Novelists, and British Biography: A Reader.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History

544 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Carl Rollyson, Professor of Journalism at Baruch College, The City University of New York, has published more than forty books ranging in subject matter from biographies of Marilyn Monroe, Lillian Hellman, Martha Gellhorn, Norman Mailer, Rebecca West, Susan Sontag, and Jill Craigie to studies of American culture, genealogy, children’s biography, film, and literary criticism. He has authored more than 500 articles on American and European literature and history. His work has been reviewed in newspapers such as The New York Times and the London Sunday Telegraph and in journals such as American Literature and the Dictionary of Literary Biography. For four years (2003-2007) he wrote a weekly column, "On Biography," for The New York Sun and was President of the Rebecca West Society (2003-2007). His play, THAT WOMAN: REBECCA WEST REMEMBERS, has been produced at Theatresource in New York City. Rollyson is currently researching a biography of Amy Lowell (awarded a "We the People" NEH grant). "Hollywood Enigma: Dana Andrews, a biography of Dana Andrews is forthcoming in September from University Press of Mississippi. His biography, "American Isis: The Life and Death of Sylvia Plath" will be published in February 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of her death. His reviews of biography appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal, The Minneapolis Star Tribune, The Raleigh News & Observer, The Kansas City Star, and The New Criterion. He is currently advisory editor for the Hollywood Legends series published by the University Press of Mississippi. He welcomes queries from those interested in contributing to the series. Read his column, "Biographology," that appears every two weeks at bibliobuffet.com

Reviews

[Jeff Bursey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of information about Lillian Hellman, but much too much about her looks and the denigration of them. Hellman deserves criticism for her pro-Stalinist position, selective memories, and other characteristics, but criticizing her because of a broken nose is low, and taking her to task for being aggressive when roughly contemporary male novelists are out stabbing their wives or having multiple wives and/or lovers (Mailer, Bellow, Heller, Cheever, etc.) suggests a bias. I wonder if the biographer took sufficiently into account the attitudes (about looks, for instance) and struggles a female artist, or any woman, had to face from 1905 to, say, 1975, especially one in the theatre and who worked in hollywood.

The writing style breaks down now and then when Carl Rollyson can't make sentences and resorts to dateline entries, and he even uses an exclamation mark. (There's the pedant in me.) The antagonism he feels towards his subject -- he does say that the biography will be critical -- might have interfered with his thinking at times. It surely doesn't help his style.

A number of minor players are given good treatment but there are gaps in the narration where parts of Hellman's life are missing. The plays, screenplays, and memoirs are provided in full, for the most part, to just the right length.