Theater Talk: Hellman v. McCarthy

[@itsGabby]

terrific episode. great thanks to CUNY TV and to the friends of Theater Talk.

[@davidgottfried5819]

Funny that Hellman and McCarthy had such a literary feud and her ex-husband Edmund Wilson and Vladimir Nabokov also had a colossal literary feud.

[@MrKlemps]

The basis of the Hellman/McCarthy feud was political. McCarthy had always been a strong anti-Stalinist. Nabokov's feud with Wilson had to do with the arcane matter of Russian prosody.

[@holyspacemonkey]

“a sick and ugly woman”? “A toad”? That’s a bit much, Cavett.

[@mariedewitt5033]

And unlike Dick Cavett. He was pretty chivalrous and I think could have expressed his feelings more appropriately

[@veritas6335]

No it isn’t.

[@nonenoneonenonenone]

My great-aunt was a Stalinist to the end of her life. This was not rare.

[@veritas6335]

No different than the maga sycophants and flying monkeys who will swear allegiance to a sickeningly corrupt psychopath till the end of their days.

[@JMoruzzi]

Interesting to see the two actresses, even off-stage, are really identifying with their roles. The Lillian Hellman lady looks very uncomfortable with the others slagging off 'her' girl.

[@jamesmacdonald7101]

Lillian Hellman was a wonderful writer and a very decent human being and well deserves to be so remembered.

[@MissPerriwinkle]

so wish i had seen this play, is it on film anywhere?

[@Twentythousandlps]

Funny that Cavett regrets not confronting Hellman on her obdurate Stalinism - not aware that he was not a confrontational Mike Wallace-like interviewer. This was one of his virtues.

[@gazitjewelry2834]

And yet here, he's spewing poison. funny....

[@veritas6335]

Hellman was a very homely woman with a need to glamorize and embroider her life. She wanted the world to believe she’d had heroic adventures and legions of important lovers and made up stories about herself like mad, including appropriating Hammett’s material and Muriel Gardiner’s life as her own.

[@kidmarine7329]

Cavett is spot on when he said he wasn’t very good when he was young. He wasn’t.

[@poetcomic1]

Hellman was a ruthless Stalinist horror of a woman. Her two greatest plays The Little Foxes (had to be slashed to remove pages of tedious political harangues) and The Children's Hour which was lifted almost entirely from a Scottish 19th century trial, often word for word was extensively reworked by her more hard-nosed writer boyfriend Dah Hammett.

[@garydeblasio8810]

You know what I think. I think McCarthy was jealous of Hellman. Jealous of the fame of the movie Julia, of Hellman's appearance on the Academy Awards the year before Julia came out.

[@mariedewitt5033]

The movie Julia,based on lies, with that ridiculous casting of Fonda as Hellmann is nothing to be jealous of regardless of the popularity of the film

[@veritas6335]

Hardly. Besides being Hellman’s attempt to falsely cast herself as a glamorous heroine undertaking a dangerous mission against Nazis, the movie was overrated and Fonda was ridiculously cast. She was far too glamorous to play ugly duckling Hellman, even ugly duckling Hellman’s plagiaristic misrepresentation of herself as Muriel Gardiner’s intrepid friend, a person whom she never knew in real life. The movie was phony, like the person who wrote Pentimento was a phony. A huge phony. .

[@danielstanwyck2812]

oh, brother - these people love themselves a wee bit too much. including cavett.

[@ulfhednar9304]

Performing artists have always had a tendency to fellate themselves.

[@jamesmacdonald7107]

Lillian Hellman is a wonderful writer whose talent is manifest for anyone to see. She writes rings round Mary McCarthy, whatever McCarthy felt, My Masters supervisor called literary biography the soft porn of serious analysis, and this preoccupation with Hellman's life is a case in point.

[@sportsmediaamerica]

...and then there are the rumors that Hammett was her unattributed collaborator.

[@danielstanwyck2812]

happylilsunbeam person: Your final sentence betrays you. You silly old thing you.

[@vincentparisi2644]

People criticize each other all the time. The fact that that you call it sexist shows you to be completely oblivious. Did you even watch this? Maybe through an agenda laden stupor. You people are the death of culture.

[@jamesanthony5681]

James MacDonald, your English is not very good for someone who is/was in the masters program. She may have been a good writer- made up as it was - but she was a terrible human being. If she thought Stalinism was wonderful (or whatever term she used), why didn't she go live under Stalin?

[@garydeblasio8810]

@happylilsunbeam how was Hellman a liar? What exactly did she lie about?

[@08CARIB]

interesting

[@veritas6335]

These people spend too much of the interview cackling too loudly and drowning out Dick Cavett, who is the only one here with real and interesting information.

[@franciscoluisparreira8057]

The actresses are a bit sick. They really persist in speaking in the first person. Grotesque.

[@jackriggs1805]

This guy is extremely (host) annoying. His voice splits my brain. !!!

[@DartagnanMagic]

17:17 of course one knows now... Do people? I hear people invoke Marxism still.

[@MrKlemps]

One knew THEN if you were not a true believer. Orwell certainly knew. And SO many others.

[@danielstanwyck2812]

Reidel. Nice you are not there anymore. And all the cackles and guffaws of the guests on this show sound coven-like A little in-joking goes a long way.

[@pianoman551000]

It would have been a MUCH BETTER interview had Reidel followed in the Cavett tradition and had asked interesting/intelligent questions rather than being a bombastic egoist snorting and laughing like a damn hyena!! Actually, the whole bunch of them were overboard with their egos!

[@nonenoneonenonenone]

@@pianoman551000 He's a very good interviewer.

[@TerryInUSA]

I agree with too much laughing by the hosts and not enough intelligent questions but the guests did okay in trying to explain the situation of the play. As for egos, talk shows wouldn’t work very well if the guests were polite and unassuming. They kinda HAVE to expound on what they were brought in for. These guests tried and Cavett can’t help making wise cracks.