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Scoundrel Time
The third volume of memoirs from the National Book Award-winning playwright Lillian Hellman.
In 1952, Hellman joined the ranks of intellectuals and artists called before Congress to testify about political subversion. Terrified yet defiant, Hellman refused to incriminate herself or others, and managed to avoid trial. Nonetheless the experience brought devastating controversy and loss. First published in 1972, her retelling of the time features a remarkable cast of characters, including her lover, novelist Dashiell Hammett, a slew of famous friends and colleagues, and a pack of "scoundrels" -- ruthless, ambitious politicians and the people who complied with their demands.
In 1952, Hellman joined the ranks of intellectuals and artists called before Congress to testify about political subversion. Terrified yet defiant, Hellman refused to incriminate herself or others, and managed to avoid trial. Nonetheless the experience brought devastating controversy and loss. First published in 1972, her retelling of the time features a remarkable cast of characters, including her lover, novelist Dashiell Hammett, a slew of famous friends and colleagues, and a pack of "scoundrels" -- ruthless, ambitious politicians and the people who complied with their demands.
155 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1972
12 people are currently reading
639 people want to read
About the author
Lillian Hellman
79 books208 followersLillian Florence "Lilly" Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American dramatist and screenwriter famously blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns of 1947–52.
Hellman was praised for sacrificing her career by refusing to answer questions by HUAC; but her denial that she had ever belonged to the Communist Party was easily disproved, and her veracity was doubted by many, including war correspondent Martha Gellhorn and literary critic Mary McCarthy.
She adapted her semi-autobiographical play The Little Foxes into a screenplay which received an Academy Award nomination in 1942.
Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett for thirty years until his death.
(from Wikipedia)
Hellman was praised for sacrificing her career by refusing to answer questions by HUAC; but her denial that she had ever belonged to the Communist Party was easily disproved, and her veracity was doubted by many, including war correspondent Martha Gellhorn and literary critic Mary McCarthy.
She adapted her semi-autobiographical play The Little Foxes into a screenplay which received an Academy Award nomination in 1942.
Hellman was romantically involved with fellow writer and political activist Dashiell Hammett for thirty years until his death.
(from Wikipedia)
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November 9, 2025
Lillian Hellman added a new phrase to the English language with this memoir of McCarthyism and Hollywood, "I will not and can not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashion". This sentence alone ranks above her plays, THE LITTLE FOXES, THE CHILDREN'S HOUR and TOYS IN THE ATTIC. Hellman was summoned to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), America's Cold War Inquisition chamber, in 1952 to identify herself and others as suspected Communists. She knew the consequences. The previous year her lover and room mate Dashell Hammett had been summoned to testify on the identities of those who had contributed to a Civil Rights Committee he had formed in the Forties. Hammett lived up to the tough-guy detective role he'd written about in THE MALTESE FALCON and RED HARVEST. His refusal to turn friendly witness for the HUAC landed him over a year in jail and IRS seizure of his assets. This infamy for a man who had fought for America in two world wars. Hellman surmised she was in for similar flagellation. In a letter to HUAC Chairman Wood she agreed to talk of her own politics from the Thirties onward and nobody else's. The scathing reaction of Wood and his political mentors, McCarthy and Nixon, did not astonish her. "These men were incapable of any other behavior. They set out to wreck people's lives". Hellman reserves her wrath for the Hollywood liberals and intellectuals she naively thought would stand up for American principles of free speech and thou shalt not fink on friends and associates. Wrong. No one came to her aid; no "Free Hammett" ads in the NEW YORK TIMES, no Lillian Hellman Legal Defense Fund paid for by her old movie pals. Hellman had once been the most sought-after screenwriter in Hollywood, wooed by L.B. Meyer, Jack Warner and Sam Goldwyn. Now, these moguls were on the other team, forcing their clients to sign loyalty oaths or be fired. Hellman still wouldn't budge. She told her first lawyer, future Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, and his choice for her defense attorney, Joseph Rauh, that she would neither cooperate nor take the Fifth Amendment in front of the HUAC. Both men warned her this was legal suicide. So did Hammett, who counseled her to avoid jail. Finally, Hellman and Rauh hit upon a brilliant scheme; put the burden of bad publicity on the Committee. By releasing to the press Hellman's letter to Wood offering testimony only about herself the other HUAC members would be forced to explain why they had refused her reasonable request. After the perfunctory "Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?' question and a few negative answers from Hellman she was let go. But, not unmolested. She wound up on the Hollywood blacklist of writers, actors and directors not to be further employed, and reemerged in Tinsel Town only after twenty years of forced unemployment. Hellman is right that the HUAC hearings paved the way for the government deceptions of the Vietnam war and Watergate. Those who lie about small things, though the HUAC was not small to its victims, will lie about war and break-ins. Of the Hollywood crowd Hellman sighs, "they showed the courage of mashed potato". It is always scoundrel time when civil liberties are in danger. Those who collaborate by silence in the face of evil are destined to be its next victim.
September 2, 2013
In Lillian Hellman’s memoir entitled Scoundrel Time, the renowned playwright addresses the subject of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and its investigations into alleged Communist infiltration of the entertainment industry in the 1940s and 50s from the perspective of her own personal experience as a subpoenaed witness. Hellman opens with a brief summation of the anti-Communist hysteria of the period – which began in earnest after the end of World War II with increasing tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and gained momentum with the rise of publicity-seeking, red-baiting Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy – as well as the progressive movement and her involvement in it, including some of the events that likely contributed to the Committee’s interest in her. She relates having attended a couple of Communist Party meetings with her long-term partner, mystery writer Dashiell Hammett (who actually became a member), as well as her involvement in various progressive causes from loyalist support in the Spanish Civil War to the civil rights movement. In 1952, shortly after the Committee (usually referred by the acronym HUAC) begins their show business hearings, Hellman is visited in her New York City townhouse by a process server with an order to appear before them to give testimony regarding her affiliations with the Party and its members. Following a period of uncertainty, not only about what she will or will not say in court, but regarding her continuing ability to make a living as a writer at a time when blacklisting is commonplace, Hellman posts a letter to the chairman of the Committee two days before she is scheduled to appear. In it, she states flatly that she is willing to answer any questions about herself but will say nothing about others. The hearing itself, after a nail-biting buildup, turns out to be anticlimactic as she is dismissed after little more than an hour for no apparent reason, although her attorney suggests that the Committee made a legal error by reading her letter into the record. Hellman closes by illustrating how, though she was not prosecuted, the event impacted her career and finances, forcing her to sell her beloved farm and making employment difficult to find for the next several years.
Lillian Hellman describes her perceptions of and interaction with HUAC in terms which may be characterized as direct and to the point. The Committee itself is dismissed as nothing more than the latest in a long, historical line of “cheap baddies who, upon hearing a few bars of popular notes, made them into an opera of public disorder, staged and sung, as much of the congressional testimony shows, in the wards of an insane asylum.” The actual Communists she has known impress her as people who want to make the world a better place, although “many of them were silly . . . and a few of them were genuine nuts,” adding quickly that “that doesn't make for denunciation or furnish enough reason for turning them over for punishment to men who wanted nothing more than newspaper headlines that could help their own careers.” She asserts her disinclination to write about her own “historical conclusions” in telling her story, but goes on to enunciate her overriding take on the whole HUAC experience and the aspect of it that affected her most profoundly in witnessing the many instances of fellow artists who, when faced with “the loss of a swimming pool, a tennis court, a picture collection, future deprivation,” caved in to the red-hunters: that, when forced into a corner by circumstances, intellectuals and progressives are no more likely than anyone else to “do the right thing” if it means having to sacrifice their livelihood. “Simply, then and now,” she says, “I feel betrayed by the nonsense I had believed. I had no right to think that American intellectuals were people who would fight for anything if doing so would injure them; they have very little history that would lead to that conclusion.” The realization exacts a heavy toll for Hellman as she loses faith in liberalism, concluding that the people with whom she’d always identified and who she’d imagined to operate above the fray are just people, with the same fears and foibles as everyone else.
Hellman’s greatest eloquence in Scoundrel Time may be seen in the reproduction of her letter to HUAC, the one which may have resulted in her exoneration and in which she expresses her abhorrence regarding what the Committee might expect from her, reading in part:
"But I am advised by counsel that if I answer the Committee’s questions about myself, I must also answer questions about other people and that if I refuse to do so, I can be cited for contempt. My counsel tells me that if I answer questions about myself, I will have waived my rights under the Fifth Amendment and could be forced legally to answer questions about others. This is very difficult for a layman to understand. But there is one principal that I do understand: I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive. I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had every seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions…"
Although Hellman’s primary goal in writing Scoundrel Time appears to have been the deflation of the myth of liberal superiority, to which she once subscribed, this letter stands as a testament to the potential for heroism that transcends the circumstances of the particular moment in history in which one happens to find one’s self – and even of one’s own personal history and prior beliefs. It emphasizes the underlying nobility of man and the importance of his retrieving it from within himself when it becomes incumbent upon him to do so.
Scoundrel Time is an important work that reflects the nation’s experience of McCarthyism, the anti-Communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s, even though it is quite uncomplicated in its approach and viewed from such an individual perspective. Lillian Hellman does not speak for everyone in her story, but only for herself, as a witness to the time, and in doing so provides a very human angle on a period fraught with weighty historical significance, and an extremely inspirational perspective on a dark and disheartening era in American history. While some have questioned the veracity of Hellman’s approach to autobiography, including novelist Mary McCarthy, who famously said of Hellman when interviewed on television in 1980 that “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’,” it may be observed that the greatest and most compelling truth in Hellman’s narrative lies not in adherence to precise historical detail, but in the spirit of what she has to relate to the reader.
Lillian Hellman describes her perceptions of and interaction with HUAC in terms which may be characterized as direct and to the point. The Committee itself is dismissed as nothing more than the latest in a long, historical line of “cheap baddies who, upon hearing a few bars of popular notes, made them into an opera of public disorder, staged and sung, as much of the congressional testimony shows, in the wards of an insane asylum.” The actual Communists she has known impress her as people who want to make the world a better place, although “many of them were silly . . . and a few of them were genuine nuts,” adding quickly that “that doesn't make for denunciation or furnish enough reason for turning them over for punishment to men who wanted nothing more than newspaper headlines that could help their own careers.” She asserts her disinclination to write about her own “historical conclusions” in telling her story, but goes on to enunciate her overriding take on the whole HUAC experience and the aspect of it that affected her most profoundly in witnessing the many instances of fellow artists who, when faced with “the loss of a swimming pool, a tennis court, a picture collection, future deprivation,” caved in to the red-hunters: that, when forced into a corner by circumstances, intellectuals and progressives are no more likely than anyone else to “do the right thing” if it means having to sacrifice their livelihood. “Simply, then and now,” she says, “I feel betrayed by the nonsense I had believed. I had no right to think that American intellectuals were people who would fight for anything if doing so would injure them; they have very little history that would lead to that conclusion.” The realization exacts a heavy toll for Hellman as she loses faith in liberalism, concluding that the people with whom she’d always identified and who she’d imagined to operate above the fray are just people, with the same fears and foibles as everyone else.
Hellman’s greatest eloquence in Scoundrel Time may be seen in the reproduction of her letter to HUAC, the one which may have resulted in her exoneration and in which she expresses her abhorrence regarding what the Committee might expect from her, reading in part:
"But I am advised by counsel that if I answer the Committee’s questions about myself, I must also answer questions about other people and that if I refuse to do so, I can be cited for contempt. My counsel tells me that if I answer questions about myself, I will have waived my rights under the Fifth Amendment and could be forced legally to answer questions about others. This is very difficult for a layman to understand. But there is one principal that I do understand: I am not willing, now or in the future, to bring bad trouble to people who, in my past association with them, were completely innocent of any talk or any action that was disloyal or subversive. I do not like subversion or disloyalty in any form and if I had every seen any I would have considered it my duty to have reported it to the proper authorities. But to hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions…"
Although Hellman’s primary goal in writing Scoundrel Time appears to have been the deflation of the myth of liberal superiority, to which she once subscribed, this letter stands as a testament to the potential for heroism that transcends the circumstances of the particular moment in history in which one happens to find one’s self – and even of one’s own personal history and prior beliefs. It emphasizes the underlying nobility of man and the importance of his retrieving it from within himself when it becomes incumbent upon him to do so.
Scoundrel Time is an important work that reflects the nation’s experience of McCarthyism, the anti-Communist “witch hunts” of the 1950s, even though it is quite uncomplicated in its approach and viewed from such an individual perspective. Lillian Hellman does not speak for everyone in her story, but only for herself, as a witness to the time, and in doing so provides a very human angle on a period fraught with weighty historical significance, and an extremely inspirational perspective on a dark and disheartening era in American history. While some have questioned the veracity of Hellman’s approach to autobiography, including novelist Mary McCarthy, who famously said of Hellman when interviewed on television in 1980 that “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’,” it may be observed that the greatest and most compelling truth in Hellman’s narrative lies not in adherence to precise historical detail, but in the spirit of what she has to relate to the reader.
May 4, 2009
This book by Lillian Hellman is a scathing indictment of the House Un American Activities Committee. The book recounts the sorted history of HUAC and how she prepared for her one day testimony with the leftist attorney, Joseph Rauh. Rauh devised a unique defense: Hellman would openly talk about herself and her own experiences. However, she would take the fifth amendment if HUAC wanted her to comment about so called Communist affiliations for people she knew. Rauh and Hellman’s strategy worked well. The book also mentions her difficult relationship with Dashiell Hammett who was the love of her life. Frequently, Hellman wonders why so many intellectuals in the late 40’s and early 50’s caved into HUAC.
February 9, 2008
A readable and engaging account of what it was like to be an artist during the "Communist Scare" and subsequent Senator McCarthy witchhunt during the 1950's. Friends ratted on each other to cover their own self-interests and guilt by association ruled the day. Not for Ms. Hellman however. Unintimidated she stood for what she believed in and that reputation is as much a part of her memory, as are her fine works. Worth reading if you are interested in that period or in her particularly. Reading this book followed by Arthur Miller's "The Crucible" is an education into a regrettable time in American history.
September 30, 2014
Looking back on the Mary McCarthy/Hellman feud one is left to say, (1) Hellman was a playwright for decades before she wrote her "Memoirs." Why would anyone look to a brilliant literary artist for factual truth??? And, 2) WHO CARES if the Memoirs are factually correct? They are BRILLIANT stories!!!
December 16, 2012
Lil never let honesty or a fact trouble her dementia. In the 17thcentury, she'd have been burned as a witch.
September 20, 2013
Desensitized for a long time to the stressful pain of the infamous McCarthy period, Scoundrel Time must have been a most cathartic memoir for Lillian Hellman to write; it is, of the autobiographical trilogy, the most unfeigned and succinct of the three books. Her voice resonates, echoes, and behind hers, the voices of other 'Red Scare' victims closely follow. This is not her book alone; it is a book belonging to a past, present and future generation of people who were, are, and regrettably will be, victims of slanderous tales and virulent gossip. Scoundrel Time searchingly delves into a dark time in our country when Freedom of Speech, Religion, Press, Assembly and Petitioning of government was on a gossamer threshold to nonexistence. This memoir was also clearly the most difficult one for Lillian Hellman to write, for as she herself says, "...I had a strange hangups and they are always hard to explain. Now I tell myself that if I can force them, maybe I can manage. The prevailing eccentricity was and is my inability to feel much against the leading figures of the period, the men who punished me. Senators McCarthy and McCarran, Representatives Nixon, Walter and Wood, all of them, were what they were: men who invented when necessary, maligned even when it wasn't necessary. I do not think they believed much, if anything, of what they said: the time was ripe for a new wave in America, and they seized their political chance to lead it along each day's opportunity, spit-balling whatever and with whoever came into view." (P.37) That 'new wave' hurt a lot of innocent people, human beings who were not spared the iniquitous rod of economic, career and social deprivation all because they, like Hellman, would not name names, who would not cede their code of conviction, honor and belief(s). The irony of this period is a true slap-in-the-face, for the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the most revered parchments of this country were verbally shaken into dust by those who wanted to shout and search out communistic evils where none existed in the first place. Like the Civil War of 1861 - the period of McCarthyism, name dropping, The House Un-American Activities, The Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, it turned brother against brother, friend into foe (Elia Kazan and Clifford Odets are perfect examples), rich people into poor. And in the end - the true tragedy is - nothing came out of the whole mess except a lot of miserable people who, by not subscribing to Truman's loyalty program or proposition of Americanism, sacrificed either their material luxury or worse, their character and integrity. Should a horrid 'craze' of this political and social nature (which really was a political subterfuge) ever arise in this land of republicism/democracy, I would subscribe to the very wise words of Lillian Hellman, "I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions." (P.30)
April 7, 2024
That’s my girl right there. She is my DOG I ride for Lillian and have since day 1.
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July 10, 2018All my books were done and I stole this from the beach house I been staying at for a bus ride to a plane (I already had a book for the plane, but heaven forbid I spend an hour not looking at printed text.) Anyway it’s fine, I’m not sure why I read it really or why anyone else would either. Hellman is interesting and upright in her refusal to cowtow to McCarthy etc but this isn’t particularly riveting or, really, that detailed.
March 22, 2024
interessant, subjektiv (aber es ist schließlich autobiografisch), ich weiß wirklich wenig über die McCarthy-Zeit
August 24, 2008
Scoundrel Time is a gripping read. There is no plot, really; it’s simply a non-fiction account by Lillian Hellman of the McCarthy era and its consequences — mostly its consequences for Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, with whom she was romantically involved for thirty years.
For those who don’t know, Lillian Hellman was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, in part, it seems, because they knew that Hammett had been a member of the Communist Party. Instead of testifying against anyone, instead of naming names, Hellman read a statement: “To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.” A pretty famous moment in HUAC history.
Hellman was then blacklisted — and remained so for years.
In Scoundrel Time, Hellman reveals what was going through her head before she went before the HUAC, discusses how she came to decide not to testify against anyone, discusses moving away to Rome for a while, discusses her relationship with Hammett — particularly interesting to me, both because they had a unique relationship and because Red Harvest and others by Hammett are great — and sort of dissects the period itself.
It was originally published in 1972, twenty years after the events, but it still gives you a sense of the times, the paranoia, and stands out, I think, as a remarkable first-hand account of an important moment not only in Hollywood history, but in American history.
For those who don’t know, Lillian Hellman was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, in part, it seems, because they knew that Hammett had been a member of the Communist Party. Instead of testifying against anyone, instead of naming names, Hellman read a statement: “To hurt innocent people whom I knew many years ago in order to save myself is, to me, inhuman and indecent and dishonorable. I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions, even though I long ago came to the conclusion that I was not a political person and could have no comfortable place in any political group.” A pretty famous moment in HUAC history.
Hellman was then blacklisted — and remained so for years.
In Scoundrel Time, Hellman reveals what was going through her head before she went before the HUAC, discusses how she came to decide not to testify against anyone, discusses moving away to Rome for a while, discusses her relationship with Hammett — particularly interesting to me, both because they had a unique relationship and because Red Harvest and others by Hammett are great — and sort of dissects the period itself.
It was originally published in 1972, twenty years after the events, but it still gives you a sense of the times, the paranoia, and stands out, I think, as a remarkable first-hand account of an important moment not only in Hollywood history, but in American history.
March 3, 2014
This was the second time I read this book. The first time was right after it was published, more than 30 years ago. The book was a great read that time, but this time it was a profound one. Written by one of America's premier female playwrights about her experience as an 'unfriendly' witness during the McCarthy hearings, I kept thinking that history continues to repeat itself in many ways. She had such insight into the climate of American politics, history and culture for the time, but would never have realized that all these years after, so much of what she said still resonates as truth. A truly fabulous read!
August 23, 2007
This is the memoir about Hellman's experiences during the McCarthy era. Her significant other, Dashiell Hammett is imprisoned and she is forced to testify in front of the House UnAmerican Actvities Commission. Here is the famous quote: "I will not cut my conscience to fit this year's fashions."
June 16, 2007
ye dastane jaleb az hamsare dashil hamet (ke ghablan moarefish kardam).filmesham kheili ma'roofe.
September 1, 2008
This book, along with Nonconformity gave me an insight into the McCarthy trials. Hellman's stand and her lines about freedom and justice is awesome!
August 1, 2009
Lillian Hellman writes about her appearance before the McCarthy Committee and provides a unique view into that destructive time in America's history.
April 7, 2020
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” — attributed to Mark Twain
At this moment when our reality is being warped by rabid demagogues, right wing media, and corrupt politicians, it is worth revisiting an equally troubling time in which those same actors starred. The introduction sets the stage in which an America, transformed by WWII which brought it out of the Great Depression, is searching for a new war. Joe McCarthy, an unremarkable Republican senator, takes the national stage by creating a war on American loyalty, perhaps to distract from his own closet full of skeletons. All he had to do was keep lying to keep the cameras on him and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC); everyone was guilty by association and anything could be used against you. The media boiled over with dramatic headlines and televised courtroom reveals, giving legitimacy to what we now know was a wholly manufactured crisis. Neither President Truman, nor the media, nor the public, tried to stop this runaway train, which destroyed the lives of countless Americans. Speaking out against it would put your own loyalty in question.
Lillian Hellman, a renowned playwright, looked back at her own life during this time and the destruction that those baseless accusations had on her and those around her. Rather than fold under pressure to implicate others in this Ponzi scheme of recriminations, Hellman took the stand and refused to name names. This hour long trial had consequences for her finances, her career, as well as on her relationship with Dashiell Hammett, who had been jailed in this fiasco and was blacklisted for the remainder of his life. This brief book blends diary entries, memoir, and news, at turns introspective, optimistic, and melancholy. One scene that stands out is their last night on the farm that they were forced to sell. They watch a herd of deer graze on their property. That she was able to find beauty and magic during a moment of crisis reminds us that life goes on.
At this moment when our reality is being warped by rabid demagogues, right wing media, and corrupt politicians, it is worth revisiting an equally troubling time in which those same actors starred. The introduction sets the stage in which an America, transformed by WWII which brought it out of the Great Depression, is searching for a new war. Joe McCarthy, an unremarkable Republican senator, takes the national stage by creating a war on American loyalty, perhaps to distract from his own closet full of skeletons. All he had to do was keep lying to keep the cameras on him and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC); everyone was guilty by association and anything could be used against you. The media boiled over with dramatic headlines and televised courtroom reveals, giving legitimacy to what we now know was a wholly manufactured crisis. Neither President Truman, nor the media, nor the public, tried to stop this runaway train, which destroyed the lives of countless Americans. Speaking out against it would put your own loyalty in question.
Lillian Hellman, a renowned playwright, looked back at her own life during this time and the destruction that those baseless accusations had on her and those around her. Rather than fold under pressure to implicate others in this Ponzi scheme of recriminations, Hellman took the stand and refused to name names. This hour long trial had consequences for her finances, her career, as well as on her relationship with Dashiell Hammett, who had been jailed in this fiasco and was blacklisted for the remainder of his life. This brief book blends diary entries, memoir, and news, at turns introspective, optimistic, and melancholy. One scene that stands out is their last night on the farm that they were forced to sell. They watch a herd of deer graze on their property. That she was able to find beauty and magic during a moment of crisis reminds us that life goes on.
August 20, 2025
The renowned playwright of “The Little Foxes” and “The Children’s Hour,” Hellman’s third memoir, originally published in 1972, recounts her experience being called before the House Un-American Activities congressional committee and the aftermath of her testimony. Created in 1938 to investigate ideological disloyalty and political subversion, HUAC became known for their efforts to target intellectuals and artists by the 1950s. Hellman, who had limited to no ties to ideological radicals, appealed directly to the committee that she would testify as to her own actions but would refuse to incriminate others, something others claimed they would do but would ultimately become “friendly witnesses” when the moment arrived, leaving Hellman to be one of only a few to maintain integrity in the face of personal and professional upheaval. Like many others, Hellman’s career opportunities would dry up, and she would be forced to sell her property and live on meager means as the committee members wreaked havoc, and would also later be targeted by the CIA while trying to make ends meet in Rome. Eventually HUAC dissolved, but its effects would have a reverberating impact on many for years after. While HUAC is usually linked with Senator Joseph McCarthy’s efforts to root out Communists, Hellman, as well as the introduction penned by author and journalist Gary Wills, place HUAC in its proper context as being a venue for President Harry Truman to repurpose America’s need for a collective enemy after World War II by shifting from the Nazis to Communists. Hellman’s memoir is a testament to integrity with valuable insight.
June 20, 2018
This is a memoir worth reading. Hellman's dry humor and understatement are effective at capturing the politically-engaged writer caught in crooked times. She writes deftly about America: its short memory, its thirst for belief, and its compromised intellectuals. She concludes with a perfect line: "I, and many like me, took too long to see what was going on in the Soviet Union. But whatever our mistakes, I do not believe we did our country any harm. And I think they did. " The "scoundrels" were often honest men but there were others who "turned down a dark road for dark reasons" and led the county into the Vietnam War, apologized for Nixon, and helped defile the institutions that Americans had, for better or worse, trusted to ensure the public good. Her memoir is about the collapse of belief--in liberalism and then radicalism--but also the climbers and opportunists who fill the vacuum, the materialist emptiness of postwar America. Now, in a time of Presidential thuggery, when tenth-rate liars fill the airwaves and stand in the halls of power with drivel gushing from their lips, it is appropriate to read a post-Red Scare and post-Watergate memoir that demonstrates how swiftly America is willing to defile its supposed decency and so-called values. Why? The same comfort and conformity have given some intellectual succor, but our times resemble what Hellman did not live to see clearly: a wised-up futility that leaves power in place for the consoling distractions of a still-forgetful country.
December 10, 2024
I read this with full awareness that some of Lillian Hellman's autobiographical writing came under suspicion in the wake of the Oscar campaign around the film Julia, which had a lot of eyeballs on it due to Vanessa Redgrave's activism. However, most everything in this book about her experiences during the McCarthyist witch hunts and the Hollywood blacklist is pretty much historical record, sprinkled with anecdotes about her day-to-day life during the 1950s that, while engaging, feel too ordinary to be lies... with one exception. I admit that the section about the CIA tailing her around her London hotel and spreading false rumors that she'd been subpoenaed sound a little far-fetched, but I wouldn't necessarily put it past the U.S. to do something that unbelievably petty to a playwright who showed some vaguely leftist sympathies at some point. The book is brief and highly personal, which makes it extremely valuable as an insight into the human cost of the Blacklist, and it's one of the few places where you can read firsthand about the financial toll it took on people (which did extend well outside the entertainment industry -- she mentions having to use connections to get a grocery store gig, and I believe her). Whatever color she may have added to the story, at bottom she has good perspective on it, and the modern reader will have little trouble applying her insights to the modern political situation.
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September 5, 2021Amerikalılar, 20. Yüzyıl'da dramlar, trajediler yaşadılar! Bir yandan da, sinema, tiyatro, müzik gibi sanatlarda dünyanın en çok sanat üreten ülkelerinden biri Amerika idi, 20. Yüzyıl süresince. Hollywood, dünyanın bir sinema merkezidir, Broadway, dünya tiyatrolarının bir merkezidir. İkinci Dünya Savaşı sonrası, NATO'nun kuruluşu ardından sosyalist ülkelerle bir "soğuk savaş" başlatan Amerikan yöneticileri, 1950'lerde, Senatör McCarthy'nin "Soruşturma Komisyonları"nda binlerce Amerikalı'yı "ideolojik" bir "soruşturma" ile yormuşlardı. Lillian Hellman'ın "Şarlatanlar Dönemi"nde, anlattığı "soruşturma"larla ilgili, Hollywood'da, Broadway'de, sinema ile, tiyatro ile uğraşan sanatçılara karşı "ideolojik bir şiddet" yapıldığını kanıtlayıcı belgeler de var. Amerika'nın 20. Yüzyıl'daki sosyal, politik, kültürel tarihini anlamak yönünde Lillian Hellman'ın kitabı "birincil bir kaynak" eserdir, çünkü Lillian Hellman da bir tiyatro yazarı olarak "ideolojik bir baskı" ile karşılaşmış, "trajik" durumların çevresinde sanat üretmişti!
March 12, 2020
Since I was born just as the McCarthy era was revving up, I have always been curious about that period of time. I had always intended to read Lillian Hellman's account of her own experience testifying before the HUAAC, but never got around to doing so - until now. I guess I didn't get enough information about the ERA to satisfy me, although Hellman's account - and Gary Wills' explanatory introduction - gave me a bit of information I didn't know. Wills' account was referential - and did not provide me with the context I needed. (It might have been great for someone already familiar with the period). And Hellman's account was just that - her account. Again, it didn't provide much context beyond details of her own life, which were interesting, but not, I guess, what I was looking for. Regardless, I admire Hellman - and I value her courage as she walked through this horrific period and served as a model for so many others who followed her.
August 25, 2023
Lillian Hellman can do no wrong. This brief but poignant memoir details Hellman’s set-to with HUAC in the 1950s. Because of the committee’s obsession with Communism at the time, Hellman and her partner, Dashiell Hammett, another prominent writer, are reduced to being paupers because they are unable to sell their wares to Hollywood or any other place after the “questioning” is all over. Hellman details all of this, once again, by way of a graceful wending back and forth from place to place (ah, including Rome) and time to time. Yet, when the book is done, there is only one clear message: Scoundrels (whether members HUAC or Watergate plumbers) will be scoundrels. Rings some bells with regard to our present situation, as well. Could Gen Z please purge us of men (and they are primarily men) like these scoundrels! Our country needs to quit repeating this paranoid pattern of always finding an “enemy” to focus on.
June 21, 2022
A friend loaned me this book which is about the writer, Lillian Hellman's testimony before the Committee on Unamerican Activities in the 1950's. It is a first hand account of the time leading up to the testimony and about the behind-the-scenes actions of others who also were required to testify before the committee. It was difficult, at times, to follow Ms. Hellman's narrative (which has made me want to read some of her famous writing for a baseline). However, what came through was just how life altering this time was for people targeted by this immoral committee and how this committee's actions should have led to the impossibility that R.M. Nixon could ever be elected to a Presidency. However, just like what we have gone through (and continue to go through) with D.R. Trump...we don't retain our lessons...something that Ms. Hellman stated eloquently in this book.
October 11, 2020
Garry Wills provides an insightful introduction to this book, and then it’s mostly downhill from there. Hellman’s story is important, especially in this time of divisive politics and fear mongering, but she was not the best person to write her memoir. Given that the limited scope of this book — her entanglement in the Joseph McCarthy hearings — she stays to the general timeline but wanders about in her telling of the story. Even if it’s all tangentially related, I feel whatever points she was trying to make were muddled. While that may be an accurate reflection of her life, it did not make for engaging reading.
July 3, 2023
"Supongo que bebí demasiada cerveza o lo que fuera, porque no hubo razón alguna para que súbitamente me cortara la mano derecha con el cuchillo, a menos que lo hiciera adrede. Todavía hoy no estoy segura de si lo dije en voz alta o sólo lo pensé, pero estaba convencida de que la mala suerte había estado sentada a mi lado durante tanto tiempo que, si no cortaba por lo sano para librarme de ella lo antes posible, pronto me integraría a ese ejército de gentes derrotadas que, hagan lo que hagan, todo les sale mal, y, dándose finalmente por vencidos, optan por no hacer nada, o por hacer lo que no deberían hacer."
August 27, 2017
We should never forget the scoundrels of the 1950s, and reading the third of Lillian Hellman's memoirs is worth the time. I expect to take a look at the other books in her memoir oeuvre in addition to some of her plays, most notably The Little Foxes.
Quotations:
"Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels" (85).
"We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell upon them" (152).
Quotations:
"Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels" (85).
"We are a people who do not want to keep much of the past in our heads. It is considered unhealthy in America to remember mistakes, neurotic to think about them, psychotic to dwell upon them" (152).
November 14, 2020
I'm very torn about this book. I'd be just as happy having read the intro and skipped Hellman's account. She was all over the place, sometimes I had trouble following her train of thought because it was almost as if she sat down with a tape recorder, thought about her experiences with HUAC and the people around her, then just typed it up, without any editing. There are probably better memoirs of this scary part of our history, but where else can you learn about how disorganized she was and her shopping addiction?
April 26, 2018
This is a book that tells one person's story of a very turbulent time in our collective American past which should be anachronistic but is, unfortunately, a bit too like our current milieu to be avoided. quick and very interesting read for anyone with the common sense to recognize that the times we are living in are creeping up to an "Un-American" committee being formed again.
July 31, 2018
This is the first time reading anything by Ms. Hellman, and I found it to be an entertaining read on a rather unfunny subject. Who knows how much of it is true (the dinner with Clifford Odets was particularly unbelievable and felt like something out of a Coen Brothers movie) but, as the old adage goes, never let the truth ruin a good story.
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