Lillian Hellman

Biography

Hellman's most famous plays include The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), and Toys in the Attic (1959), in which she displayed a witty and passionate style.

The Oscar-winning film Julia was claimed to be based on the friendship between Hellman and the title character. Upon the film's release, in 1977, New York psychiatrist Muriel Gardiner claimed that she was "Julia" and that she had never known Hellman. Hellman replied that the person upon whom the character was based was not Gardiner. However, the fact that Hellman and Gardiner had the same lawyer (Wolf Schwabacher), that the lawyer had been privy to Gardiner's memoirs, and that the events in the film conform to those in the memoirs, have led some to conclude that they had been appropriated by Hellman without attribution from Gardiner.

Source:
Wikipedia contributors, "Lillian Hellman," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lillian Hellman&oldid=106365561 (accessed February 13, 2007). [Read More...]

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