Lillian Hellman Biography

Fast Facts

• Attended New York University and studied Journalism at Columbia University
• Got her first job as a manuscript reader for the Boni & Liveright publishing house, which she found while cutting classes and wandering around Greenwich Village, in 1924
• The Children's Hour became her first play to be produced after she showed it to producer Herman Shumlin, whom she was working for at the time
• Some her early jobs included writing book reviews and short stories and reading scripts for MGM
• Quote: "(On being asked to testify against her friends to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947): "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions․""
• Quote: "(On her "melodramatic" plots): "If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy․․․if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama․""
• Best known as a dramatist and screenwriter who wrote "The Children's Hour" and "The Little Foxes․"
• After being blacklisted by Hollywood, she struggled financially for several years, having to sell her farm and work as a department store salesclerk until "Toys in the Attic" premiered in 1960
• A quote from "The Little Foxes," "So you've got spirit after all․ Most of the rest of them are made of sugar water," was actually said by her uncle in response to her confession that she had pawned a birthday gift from him to buy more books