Lillian Hellman: The Image, the Woman

by William Wright

This portrait traces the controversial life of the successful playwright, including her relationship with Dashiell Hammett and details her active role in ideological battles and her celebrated feuds with everyone from Tallulah Bankhead to Mary McCarthy

Genres: Biography, Americana

512 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1986

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

This is William Wright (1930-2016).

Reviews

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Famous quote re Lillian Hellman
was from another American Woman and Writer, Mary McCarthy:

"Everything she says is a Lie, including 'and' and 'the'".

Very witty, very quotable............ BUT IS IT TRUE ???!!!!!

Firstly, I begin to seek out my Mind's Archives with the Leading Question :
How Did I Ever Come To Be Obsessed With LILLIAN HELLMAN ???

I had begun reading her three volumes of autobiography in 1978.
BUT first there came in 1977/78 the very successful Movie "Julia", a chapter extracted from her second volume, "Pentimento", with Jane Fonda as Lillian, Jason Robarbs as Dashiell Hammett and Vanessa Redgrave as Julia.
It was this film that started it ALL.
Loved the film so I bought the book that had the Julia Chapter.
Next I bought the other two volumes. and only became MORE interested/obsessed??
- An Unfinished Woman / Pentimento / Scoundrel Time - these were ALL wonderful reads.
(Lillian had finally dropped her play writing career and became a best selling writer of books instead!!)

BUT later... came the Scandal !!!!!
A woman's published memoirs made no mention of Lillian...and this woman was Julia.
She never knew Lillian.
Nor did Lillian know HER !!
The likelihood of there being TWO Julias with a very similar history was practically impossible.
Her veracity again came into question with the McCarthy Communist/Witch Hunt,and one burning question was Lillian's membership of the Communist party...was she or was she not a Member??? This third and final volume, "Scoundrel Time", also became a Best Seller.

Wright presents Lillian, talents, charm and faults in a true stew.
He deals with the accusations of being 'a liar' with a calm and sense that they have been denied. It is refreshing to be with a writer who is not out for blood. He is absorbed, fascinated, curious to know.He seeks to explain and understand rather than to condemn.
We are informed and entertained...easy when we are exposed to the Creme de la Creme of theatre, film, society and the politics of several decades with a Woman of Character as our Touchstone.
This is a Real Feast
Is it any wonder, that Lillian, being an effortless larger than life character, should draw attention; only her plays, along with those of Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill of her period, are revived as frequently. The 1930's saw a flourishing of Women Playwrights but their fare were light comedies or romances, none undertaking the tough, serious themes that Hellman and male playwrights took on.
She stood out without having to try. She collected friends and comment. She wrote with panache.

She is returning to Broadway this year of 2017...but pipped at the post in Sydney...naturally.
Sydney Suburbs, what's more; an amateur group with 19 showings during this February and March.
Just last week I went to see my FIRST viewing of this renowned play
- "The Little Foxes",
and ended up seeing it twice, within a week, having learned that there are mostly GAINS from revisiting anything...a book, a place, a person, a movie and so on.
A former teaching colleague was playing Birdie,a major supporting role, a character both tragic and amusing...only to find oneself laughing while simultaneously empathising with her . Was it the way Lillian had written it or a combination of the talent of the actress as well ?

This will be my second read of William Wright's since the first of 2007 or 2008.
Most seems Familiar even though I am most forgetful of any Content from the Past.
I'm enjoying Every Sentence of Lillian's World; even those arguments that reveal her faults do so within a context of understanding; and the strong possibility of "lying" is not denied but again
made more fascinating when set within the passionate and honest program that was Hellman's daily fare.

[Guilie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For a woman who lived in the public eye for a good fifty years, and who wrote three (some say four) memoirs of her own, Lillian Hellman remains mysterious and incomprehensible in many ways. Mr. Wright does a fantastic job of shining light--objective light--on some of the mysteries, the doubts, the inconsistencies, the straight-out contradictions. And, as promised, the portrait that emerges is enthralling. Hellman might not have been perfect, or morally upstanding, or possessed of much integrity when it came to facts, but--really, who is? For those who live in the spotlight, the public persona tends to be a carefully designed and polished thing. But we are all human, we are all full of good and bad--loyalty, cruelty, pettiness, hubris, generosity... We are complex, us humans, and to pretend otherwise is the road to delusion. Mr. Wright's portrait of Hellman is a beautiful snapshot of an era, impeccably researched and carried onto the page; it is a riveting read at many levels: 20th-century stage and film history, the McCarthy era, WWII, the literary world of Hemingway and Mailer and Tennessee Williams. But above all, at least for me, it is a votive candle lit at the altar of humanity's fallibility--and the beauty therein. What I take away from this book, aside from the marvelous anecdotes of and insights to an era my father spoke of often, is that the search for perfection, whether in art or in life, and mostly in image, although it might seem a worthy pursuit, is really a red herring for whatever talents we have.