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LILLIAN
HELLMAN
Born in New Orleans,
Louisiana, Hellman was educated at New York and Columbia
universities. Her plays include The Children's Hour
(1934), in which a malicious child's accusations of
lesbianism ruin the lives of two schoolteachers; The
Little Foxes (1939), in which the members of a
Southern family struggle unscrupulously with one another
for the family wealth after the American Civil War
(1861-1865); and The Watch on the Rhine (1941), in
which a leader of an anti-Nazi movement visiting the
United States is forced to kill a Nazi agent. This play
won her a New York Drama Critics' Circle Award in 1941.
Hellman's other plays include The Searching Wind
(1944); Another Part of the Forest (1946); and The
Lark (1955), a story of Joan
of Arc, adapted from the play L'Alouette,by the French dramatist Jean
Anouilh. In 1960 Toys in the
Attic (1960) won Hellman a second New York Drama
Critics' Circle Award. All of these plays have been made
into films.
Hellman was awarded the
1970 National
Book Award in arts and letters for
her autobiography An Unfinished Woman (1969). This
work was continued with Pentimento (1973), a
collection of prose portraits of herself and others whose
lives influenced hers; the 1977 movie Julia was
based on one of these sketches. The autobiography ended
with Scoundrel Time (1976), an account of her
experiences during the McCarthy-era investigations of
Communism in the United States.
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