“Success isn't everything but..." - Lillian Hellman

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December 24, 2015 9:08 PM

Lillian Florence "Lilly" Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway

Lillian Hellman

“Success isn't everything but it makes a man stand straight.” – Lillian Hellman.

Lillian Florence "Lilly" Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway, as well as her left-wing sympathies and political activism.

She famously was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–52. Although she continued to work on Broadway in the 1950s, her blacklisting by the American film industry caused a precipitous decline in her income during which time she had to work outside her chosen profession.

Hellman was praised by many for refusing to answer questions by HUAC; however, her denial that she had ever belonged to the Communist Party was doubted by many, including war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, former wife of Ernest Hemingway and literary critic and Hellman rival Mary McCarthy.

READ: “The man who has done his level best..." B. C. Forbes

Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett, author of the classic detective novels The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, who also was blacklisted for 10 years until his death in 1961.

The couple never married, as Hammett already had a wife. As a playwright, Hellman had many successes on Broadway, including Watch on the Rhine, The Autumn Garden, Toys in the Attic, Another Part of the Forest, The Children's Hour and The Little Foxes.

She adapted her semi-autobiographical play The Little Foxes into a screenplay, starring Bette Davis, which received an Academy Award nomination in 1942.

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