Lillian Hellman--Rare 1973 TV Interview

Playwright Lillian Hellman discuss her life and career, which included such classic plays as "The Children's Hour," "Watch on the Rhine," and "The Little Foxes," and her long relationship with mystery writer Dashiell Hammett, in this rare TV interview from 1973.

[@JSB1882]

I started to realize the reason Cavett, Snyder, Paar were such great interviewers is because they talked to interesting people. That can't happen anymore.

[@robsantucci557]

You are right about it but also they let their guests speak and did not interrupted them every 5 mn like they do now so you never hear he full comment of the guest.

[@constantreader7944]

There didn’t overstructure or script the conversation. They let people talk and have a real conversation. Lovely. Everything today is just canned.

[@Omnicient.]

There's always interesting people but everything depends on the times we're in; in the last 10/15 years chat shows have become more and more about humour/comedy and that rubs off on all of them.

[@pianomanhere]

This is so true. I'm old enough to have seen the long-term decline, and the gulf from the time of Cavett to the present is staggering.

[@charleswinokoor6023]

Interesting people are no longer allowed on TV.

[@granthayter-menzies8602]

My late godfather, William Luce, worked with her on a one woman play on her life, LILLIAN, which was later taken to Broadway by Zoe Caldwell. Hellman was elderly, ill, mostly blind, but she trusted Bill, having admired his 1976 Broadway success THE BELLE OF AMHERST, and having called Julie Harris, star of BELLE, for a ‘character reference’. After the finished play was read to her, Hellman called him and said, ‘It’s my voice. Thank you.’ As Bill’s literary executor and an admirer of LILLIAN, I keep hoping for a new production.

[@bduhe219]

i can't stop watching these. i'm on my 15th one in a row, and i am addicted. i love Dick's shows, and he was always a great host, and such diverse guest, so intelligent. we need more of this today.

[@davidbonfiglio5163]

These vidios are national treasures, thank you so much for posting them!

[@krys5978]

Absolutely

[@spanikopitas]

One word- Fabulous. Just fabulous.

[@himsyambrose]

she was and is a fascinating woman.

[@user-vq6iw5vl8o]

what a brilliant writer Mrs. Hellman was :) my favorite work of hers is The Little Foxes, I have seen the film with Bette Davis 3 times

[@dharmaofdog7676]

"The Little Foxes" at least 8 x's! same for "Children's Hour" (other Film version, "These Three") & still SO many others I can't wait to watch. She really understood subliminal drives of humans and create compelling stories around them. Brilliant.

[@DeepScreenAnalysis]

Bette Davis was not Lillian’s preference for Regina, she thought Tallulah Bankhead embodied her better on stage.

[@jubalcalif9100]

Holy Underwear, Batman ! Wonderful interview ! The late great Ms Hellman was a true American original ! Such a gifted writer ! And she seemed to have a marvelous sense of humor ! THANK YOU so much for uploading ! :-)

[@08CARIB]

Even knowing the troubled history of Lilian and her writing, she comes off really well in this interview. I especially like the bit at 18:18 and her caution to not over romanticize the past writers/intellectuals 18:40

[@michaelneel4828]

She was truly a smart woman !

[@zacktong8105]

Lillian Hellman also granted an interview on PBS with Harvard somewhat later that was absolutely fascinating one I shall never forget by which time she had become somewhat less guarded.

[@katieohara3222]

Love her Work!

[@captlarry-3525]

One of the most preposterous things I was ever told, was by a young college student in her mid 20's who hailed from the lofty heights of suburban Van Nuys. In 1977, only 3 years after Hellman had published her memoirs, she had written to Lillian Helman offering to write her Biography ! Hellman wrote back saying " I certainly don't need any help writing my Biography." Got Chjutpah ?

[@XX-gy7ue]

she wrote some of the most brilliant plays ever written !

[@Rufus..Calhoun]

we love u ms hellman, ICON

[@frederickcombs8661]

her book, Scoundrel Time is one of the best tellings of the blacklist period. Lee Grant's as well.

[@loveoldmovies2249]

wonderful interview... thanks

[@romanclay1913]

JULIA (1977) with Jane Fonda is my favorite film. But Vanessa Redgrave's performance as Julia shines in a film filled with great performances. Set in the 1930's, the themes of anti-fascism and friendship, art and theater are blended to perfection. It captures the plight of a writer, Lillian Hellman/Fonda, as she struggles with her first play. We see Hellman walking on the beach and in the background the turbulent ocean waves are churning like the thoughts in her head. The apogee is the fraught scene between Hellman and Julia in a Berlin tavern as Hellman smuggles in cash for anti-Nazi activities, and while Fonda is excellent, Fonda herself said Redgrave's performance was on an entirely elevated level.

[@sharksport01]

she made the best mayonaise

[@James_Bowie]

"Hellman's accuracy was challenged in 1979 on The Dick Cavett Show, when Mary McCarthy said of her memoirs that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'." Hellman brought a defamation suit against McCarthy and Cavett, and during the suit, investigators found errors in Hellman's Pentimento. They said that the "Julia" section of Pentimento, which had been the basis for the Oscar-winning 1977 movie of the same name, was actually based on the life of Muriel Gardiner. Martha Gellhorn, one of the most prominent war correspondents of the twentieth century, as well as Ernest Hemingway's third wife, said that Hellman's remembrances of Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War were wrong. McCarthy, Gellhorn and others accused Hellman of lying about her membership in the Communist Party and of being an unrepentant Stalinist."

[@psychokarloff]

Very true. And it's now stone cold fact that she stole Muriel Gardiner's life and passed it off as her own experience with "Julia." Gardiner tried to call Hellman and ask her about this misappropriation of her life, but her calls went unanswered. McCarthy was correct. Hellman was a brazen liar.

[@michaelwalsh1035]

Lil was a slavish Stalinist of the worst sort.

[@teresal5174]

Dick Cavett apparently detested her after her libel lawsuit against McCarthy, Cavett & the NY PBS station-- based on his comments on a Theater Talk video on here on KZbin from 2014 : the interview on the play, "Hellman v McCarthy" with the two actresses in it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a4DJfHigdqd6fbs

[@dorianphilotheates3769]

What happened to television in the last 40+ years?! That’s it-I’m boycotting ‘Dr. Phi’, and ‘The Housewives of Atlanta’!

[@kristinmattson5768]

Critical race theory + mindless consumerism. The left and right hands of the cosmopolitan supremacists. Duh!

[@dorianphilotheates3769]

Kristin Mattson - Really?! - and here I was thinking it was because we were turning out more Egyptology doctorates...

[@waynej2608]

I'm certain that Ms.Hellman would not be amused by those shows either.

[@dharmaofdog7676]

A friend worked for Hellman many years ago & would tell THE most interesting & surprising stories. I took liberty many times over the years & retold some of them to others whenever Hellman's name came up. I strongly felt my friend should write and give a more detailed accounting. So no one was more excited than I when I discovered that she DID write about it. "A Likely Story - One Summer with Lillian Hellman" by Rosemary Mahoney. An extremely poetic writer, the book is truly a Little Gem -its a very honest and intimate perspective on this Force of Nature named Hellman - a contemporary David & Goliath scenario in some fashion. There is a lot of humor in her innocence and naiveté -she writes and expresses her perceptions within context to her youthful age and not altered through memory & retrospection. Her ability to express so many universal feelings of a 17 yr old makes it all very relatable and triggered some of my own remembrances. You also get a peek at some other famous Writers who were friends & came for a visit or Dinner at the Vineyard Cottage. Its a fast and entertaining read for sure.

[@joniheisenberg6691]

DharmaOfDog I read that book ! Thank you for your comments.

[@pkspalding]

I read it. Very entertaining book, and probably a great satisfaction to write. A wee bit of score settling, you must agree. I know a number of people who knew and interacted with Hellman, and their take is quite similar. She could be cranky and imperious and a holy terror. She was also, all agree, endlessly fascinating and entertaining.

[@angelhead4096]

Read it and hated it. It kind of reminded me of All About Eve. I don't think the writer understood the employer / employee relationship and the book comes across as the work of a spurned fan. Hellman owed your friend nothing. It wasn't any secret that Hellman could be a bitch (as could Dorothy Parker) for that is in all the the biographies.

[@dharmaofdog7676]

@@angelhead4096 - She was just a Teenager for Heaven's Sake and it was a Summer Job. There were no Waitressing Jobs available. I doubt she read a lot of "Biographies" - I think it was a pretty honest accounting of an overwhelmed Teen who felt periodically terrorized by this woman. Not sure what you meant by "Hellman owed friend nothing" but strongly disagree. We all owe each other something - fundamental courtesy and decency.

[@pkspalding]

I read her book when it came out. VERY good writer, and her portrayal of Hellman is pretty devastating. Not certain that I have ever seen a person's stock and reputation fall so far; so rapidly and thoroughly.

[@josephcollins6033]

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@XX-gy7ue]

I miss smart on television

[@JerjerB]

This truly shows us the collapse of the American cultural Empire which has happened since these days.

[@peterjeffery8495]

Your actually watching history in the making and a life (Ms. Hellman's) in the UNMAKING. Sad to watch knowing how much of what she claimed about "Julia" and many other adventures she wrote about as non fiction were utterly false. She was a troubled soul who wouldn't budge from lies about her past that were completely exposed. Her legacy has never and probably never will recover from this. I believe this interview was reconstructed on Broadway in a play about her feud with Mary McCarthy. Its still a great piece of TV.

[@mckavitt13]

You’re… writers can say something is based on a true story - & it isn’t. It’s stylistic.

[@Mrrossj01]

Lillian Hellman’s private life has always been controversial. I remember a criticism of her because she wrote out a list of things she wanted her housekeeper to do each day. In this case, the criticism was directed at her requirement that the window sills in her apartment in New York be wiped down each day. This was regarded as an example of her tyrannical nature. I laughed. New York is one of the most polluted places on Earth. Window sills, if the windows are operable, are filthy in New York. In my opinion, Lillian should have required that the window sills be wiped down morning, noon, and night. In any case, artist should be judged by their art not their lives, otherwise, we would toss all of Caravaggio’s luminous paintings into the bonfire of the vanities. Bravo, Lillian!

[@constantreader7944]

I cannot imagine what Lillian would think of today’s assault on the rule of law.

[@vino140]

She was a horrible woman and a liar.

[@michaelwalsh1035]

She'd love it, so long as the rabid Left benefitted. She'd hate it if the rule of law was fairly applied to the hard Left.

[@jamesanthony5681]

Don't know. But in the 1930s what did Lillian think of Stalin's assault on Soviet citizens and the rule of law through his Purge Trials, the artificial famine in the Ukraine, and his non-aggression pact with Hitler? She dismissed all that when it was crystal clear from journalists like Malcolm Muggeridge (and others) that Stalin was not the darling she thought he was.

[@zazuzazz5419]

A brilliant, compassionate, articulate person. Lillian Hellman is a great American Master.

[@objetivista686]

zzz

[@myytchanneldinakoha8498]

Master manipulator, apparently.

[@steve3131]

@@myytchanneldinakoha8498 the only thing she was a master of was lying.

[@sandrashevey8252]

Food lousy, wine lousy but camaraderie great! Even in the Sixties when I started writing, there was that buzz around New York. People talked, really talked. They could and did have philosophical discussions. I`ve lived in London now for 40 years. All they`re capable of is small talk. Money was tight. Writers worked hard and for little. But there were creative industries ie journalism, theatre, publishing, etc. It was very very exciting.

[@dharmaofdog7676]

I SO agree with you!! People talked, REALLY talked! and different P.O.V.s were also HEARD! The more we Text, the less we Listen.

[@sandrashevey8252]

@@dharmaofdog7676 And the less we say.

[@hayleyanna2625]

Dicks show was/is my favourite talk show host.

[@Hands2HealNow]

Extraordinary!

[@Tervamursu]

Six years later she sued the channel, Cavett, and the author Mary McCarthy.

[@ironhills]

Because she got caught in a lie, a published one.

[@mariedewitt5033]

​@@ironhillsmore than a lie. She passed a fictional story as her personal experience. It was apparently based on another's experience

[@danrode104]

A shame Cavett never had McCarthy & Hellman on together.. The female version as opposed to the Vidal vs Mailer insult fest.. Great TV

[@retrobebop61]

I saw the movie, “Julia” with Jane Fonda and, I can’t think of the British actress’s name. The movie was amazing. I’m definitely going to try to find that memoir, she was being interviewed about, through my library. Thank you for this vid.

[@retrobebop61]

Isabel Santos Thank you Isabel! I just ordered the memoir through our library!

[@ozvoyager]

Yes, great movie. And it's funny that Hellman says she couldn't have written it as a novel, because it turns out that she either appropriated or made up most of it.

[@larespo1]

ozvoyager Yes, now people have pretty much proven it to be made up. However, it is a compelling story and it made for a good drama. Lilian Hellman in this interview is quite smart and very controlled. She was a great writer.

[@pianoman551000]

Hellman's biographer states that Hellman biographical story entitled "Julia" was totally fiction. If you read the story carefully, you will that Hellman contradicts herself in several parts where the times and dates of the story don't match up.

[@mcdonoghrahloh459]

Vanessa Redgrave!

[@gkennedy2998]

Subsequent interviews with Dick Cavett reveal that he considered Lillian Hellman as a liar and plagiarist. There is a video called, "Theatre Talk" on which Dick provides more insight into his view of Lillian.

[@hectormanuel9793]

She was such an opportunist, she only cared about about Dashiell Hammett and Katherine Anne Porter, so she could gain the rights to their work! She did get her hands on the work of Hammett, but was disappointed, when Porter left it to somebody else.

[@michaelknapp8961]

What would she think of Trump? What a fascinating woman.

[@mariedewitt5033]

Maybe your obsession isn't everyone's obsession. Ridiculous question

[@cresporomiti]

One of the most interesting interviews of them all. Lillian Hellman was later found out to have plagiarized, one of her most successful stories. Totally stolen from someone’s life, lifted and not attributed. Look it up, it’s delicious.

[@margyeoman3564]

Lillian Helman seems smart, deep, real. If one can go by her words and demeanor it seems people were not such shallow liars back then and saw life in serious focus.

[@steve3131]

One could hardly find a more prodigious liar than Stalinist Lillian Hellman, who expropriated Muriel Gardiner's brave resistance to Nazism for her own self aggrandizement. I only wish she had lived long enough to be exposed as the pathological liar she was, which would have happened if her foolish suit against Mary McCarthy had gone to trial.

[@zachgates7491]

Jane Fonda played her in Julia. An unlikely bit of casting.

[@mariedewitt5033]

A real stretch

[@Section5_CdnIntelService]

She must be one of the few people to pronounce Hammett's first name correctly. I've never heard Dash-eel before.

[@patriciafeehan7732]

Julia 😢

[@TheDisinterestedSpectator]

Hammett. Hooah.

[@tedwatson9929]

She had great hair.

[@mark-j-adderley]

Wonderful how to be so low key, and yet, and at the same time, so formidable and approachable, at least to me, a 60 year old gay composer of contemporary classical music ... 🌻🌼🌸🌺🥀🌷🌈

[@zefallafez]

And and the.

[@teeniebeenie8774]

who were her famous feuds with??

[@mariedewitt5033]

Mary McCarthy

[@AlongtheFarClimbDown843]

🔴🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 🔵 An author no longer sells his books. He sells copies of his books. ALL manufactured goods are copies of prototypes.

[@JL0ndon]

Is this the interview she sued cavett over?

[@jamesanthony5681]

No. Hellman sued after the Mary McCarthy interview in 1979.

[@kathrynfauble9053]

She is lying when she says Julia left her young daughter in Alsace Lorraine. Julia never existed. Neither did her daughter.

[@michaelwalsh1035]

The truth was putty in Lil's hands. She made it serve her despicable ends.

[@nadinestapler3881]

Another Megan.

[@DeepScreenAnalysis]

Julia didn’t exist. She invented the entire story.

[@sandrashevey8252]

Goldwyn was punning for crissakes. Don you really think any genius who makes films and tells Olivier to `buck it up or he`ll be fired` is a stupid hick? He was punning. Goldwyn was a genius!

[@jennifervonpickartz2428]

I thank G-d for You

[@bovnycccoperalover3579]

The House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) led by J. Parnell Jones did a good deal of damage to the arts. I don't understand why he is rarely mentioned. Ironically, Jones ended up in a prison with a few of the Hollywood Ten - he was convicted for embezzlement! Hellman wrote A letter and read it to HUAC in 1952 and was blacklisted but not jailed. She felt to Europe for work. She wrote, "I will not cut my conscience to fit today's fashion". Remarkable woman.

[@bessied.5694]

In the 1950's, this nation was living on a daily basis with the threat of having to wage nuclear war with the Soviet Union, Stalin's totalitarian dictatorship that had already been responsible for the deaths of millions. It's no wonder that most sane Americans were frightened by the fact that they had leftist kooks in their midst, who were apparently more than willing to aid the enemy in bringing down the United States or destroying the world in the attempt to do so. To this day, they are still playing the victim role and using the term "witch hunt". Witches aren't real, communists are. Hellman was a disgusting communist bag and needed a socio-political ideology which would support that. disgusting woman.

[@user-rh2io7gm1l]

@@bessied.5694 Yes, Hollywood (LA) and Broadway (NYC) have always been loaded with covert communists. (People in the arts tend to lean left, politically.) They've just become more emboldened and blatant about it in recent years.

[@timharris2291]

I think you should look into what Mary McCarthy thought about this liar.

[@sandrashevey8252]

There are not that many of us who like to swing our legs on the seat in front..I do Hugh Grant does (his mother objects) And apparently Hellman does.

[@babsfreeburg6400]

Nora ephron knew her they were good friends. until Nora got divorced and Lillian sued Dick cavett and pbs for something a guest said.

[@mariedewitt5033]

Never read that they were friends in Nora's writing but that she knew Nora's parents

[@mariedewitt5033]

In Nora's writings, she noted her parents were contemporaries of Hellman. Her parents were screenplay writers

[@planesandcooking5142]

A rare treat. Fascinating watching her smoking. Couldn't even resist lighting the 2nd one in less than 20 minutes talking. I'm so glad it is not acceptable to smoke in public places like that anymore. Poor Dick, I wonder how he felt about breathing second hand smoke.

[@elijahbey3366]

Dashiell Hammett took her to POUND TOWN!! My man!!!

[@plasticweapon]

ew.

[@tommie4321]

?

[@paulstuart551]

Hellman stole the story Julia as her lawyer was a friend of the real character called Muriel who Hellman never even met & could have sued her. She was foolish to put in dates, times & places which didn't match. In the film Hellman throws her typewriter out of the window, Parker threw hers over a leaving ship after Hemmingway tried to make a smart comment. They had all gone to France to stay with friends of Parker, they took a short trip to Spain but were nothing more than tourists. She was two-faced about the multi-talented wit Dorothy Parker who she recalls as a close friend in her book (Parker gave her play The Little Foxes it's title). Parker knew Hellman was financially secure & made Hellman her executor of her will, when she was told Parker had left everything including her published royalties to Martin Luther King & the advancement of Black Americans she called her a f*cking bitch & threw all of her possessions away rather than auction them & all unpublished work. She deliberately went against Parker's wish not to have a funeral & then left the ashes behind. She totally degraded her after her death. Hellman's first success was based on a true story in Scotland, Hammet passed the news report to her which was The Children's Hour. She was a total fake. Hammet based the female in The Thin Man on Hellman "She was the kind of woman who would rather lie than let you believe she lied".

[@tmac8892]

Yea Stalin!

[@warlord8954]

Yeah, she was a liar and never wrote anything, though she claimed it to be so, factual or historical. Julia was a lie.

[@MilesBellas]

4:50 she was blacklisted by McCarthyism

[@zachgates7491]

And people say McCarthyism is a bad thing.

[@bovnycccoperalover3579]

No. She was blacklisted by HUAC of whom J. Parnell Jones was Chairman. They destroyed people's lives. McCarthy believed that there were Communists in the Government spying for the Soviets. That was the Alger Hiss meetings.

[@Dory8]

@@zachgates7491 Tyranny is marvellous when it isn't directed at you, hey Fascist?

[@zachgates7491]

@@Dory8 the Stalinism that Hellman and you support actually isn’t so marvelous. The fact that you refer to your current leader as “the big guy” says it all.

[@Dory8]

@@zachgates7491 Neither I nor Lillian Hellman support stalinism (no capital required as it an adjective not a noun) despite your lame attempt at ad hominem (before my time anyway). But it says a lot about you that you are not offended by being called a fascist. I don't goose step to leaders like you do, so please enlighten me as to who this 'leader', which is a figment of your demented imagination, I am supposed to have referred to. Where did I say it? We don't refer to our prime minister in Australia as a 'leader'; that is what fascists refer to those leading them by the nose. Perhaps you could think for a change instead of following some troll song book. Everyone on you tube is not an American by the way and I wouldn't be so unsophisticated (that is, like you) as to use the term 'the big guy'.

[@65wiseman]

Of the mayonnaise dynasty -

[@cyanrazorCel]

Do prosperously try to claim this guy is a woman!

[@philipterzian4581]

Dick Cavett's favorite liar/Stalinist!

[@Chris-co1vk]

Fascinatingly disgusting

[@wmpetroff2307]

Did not like her low brow New York accent.

[@seethevolcane]

The Lying Lillian!!!!!!!!!!!

[@michaelwalsh1035]

Lil was the dodgiest of the old Stalinists.

[@Dory8]

The lying skunk, Trump

[@IndianaRose.]

This is a guy right?

[@SuperBnichols]

such a jew

[@rrbaggett7]

Any chance the "B" in your username stands for bitch, Super one?

[@zazuzazz5419]

SuperBnichols Do you understand anything about what you just witnessed? The courage involved, the artistry, and most remarkably - the honesty - - acted out on a level you can’t possibly comprehend. Stop making cheap, twerps comments. Go sit down somewhere. Learn something.

[@firewings4742]

And you are such a moron.

[@riccardodemedici7116]

There are places for people like you.

[@waynej2608]

Such a mindless thing to say!