Lillian Hellman: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels Martinson, Deborah (Author) ISBN: 1582433151 Counterpoint Press Published 2005-11 Hardcover , $26.00 (336p) Biography & Autobiography | Literary; Biography & Autobiography | Women; Literary Criticism | Drama Ages Publishers Weekly, Reviewed 2005-10-24

Martinson, an associate professor of English and writing at Occidental College, aims to capture a "more complex" and "human" Hellman than other biographers have. Her portrait of the famed playwright and memoirist (1905-1984) is more admiring than those of William Wright or Carl Rollyson. Martinson excels in evoking Hellman's forceful presence: the cigarette-husky voice, the galvanic sexuality of a woman who refused to be defined by her plain face or tiny stature. She also grasps the crux of Hellman's romance with Dashiell Hammett, which was his invaluable editing and guidance in shaping her plays, from The Little Foxes through Toys in the Attic . Martinson conscientiously covers the basics, from Hellman's childhood bouncing between New Orleans and New York through her feisty old age. But Martinson is more interested in Hellman the woman than in her controversial political stances. Taking her subject at face value as a courageous opponent of McCarthyism, she goes similarly easy on the nonfiction, praising Hellman for inventing "a new form of the memoir," without examining her carelessness with facts and frequently self-serving political statements. This vivid evocation of a tumultuous life is a good starting place for those unfamiliar with Hellman's achievements (and misdeeds), but the definitive biography remains to be written. 16 pages of b&w photos. Agent, Nat Sobel.(Dec. 5)

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*STARRED REVIEW

LILLIAN HELLMAN

By Deborah Martinson

November 1, 2005

Out of the feuds, plays, movies and affairs of a complex life comes a sweeping, focused biography.

It’s reassuring to have Martinson (English and Writing/Occidental Coll.) write at the start of a biography authorized by her subject’s estate that “I don’t always like Lillian Hellman.” Sharp insight into Hellman’s often contradictory, controversial life is what Martinson goes after, not hagiography. Indeed, Hellman herself could be a little fox. Settling the estate of writer Dashiell Hammett, her longtime lover, she outmaneuvered his daughters to win the royalties from his work, though his will directed her to share them with his family. It was grab that could have been made by one of the characters in Hellman’s thundering melodrama, The Little Foxes. Hammett, according to Martinson, pulled Hellman’s life and writing career together as he pointed her playwriting by critiquing, editing and even contributing to her texts. Major success on Broadway and in Hollywood as a screenwriter followed. But Hellman did not get cozy on Shubert Alley or at the Brown Derby. A vocal, active liberal she covered revolution in Spain and life in Russia, ending up the subject of extensive FBI files and, eventually, a witness before the House of Un-American Activities Committee during the red scares of the ‘50s. Throughout her life, she suffered fools with cutting words, though her razor-sharp opinions could be contradictory and hypocritical. As intense as her anger were the affairs she enjoyed well in to late middle age. She once feared Leonard Bernstein, in a hotel room next to hers, might hear the noise she’d made while making love. Then she realized she could hear Bernstein, similarly engaged.

A rich, literate, compelling account with the spark of a Hellman play.

Review by Donna Seaman

As controversial as she was accomplished, dramatist and memoirist Hellman has been neglected of late, an omission Martinson, who gained unprecedented access to invaluable archives, corrects in this meticulous, groundbreaking biography. Raised in both her native New Orleans and New York, Hellman, unruly and precocious, became a commanding, audacious, and unconventional woman who made enemies right and left thanks to her irascibility, success, and complicated affairs with brilliant, difficult men. Among Hellman’s many conquests, the gifted yet dissolute noir writer Dashiell Hammett was the love of her life and the bane of her existence, helping her, in better days, to become an epoch-defining playwright with The Children’s Hour and The Little Foxes. Martinson fluently recounts the intricate inside stories of each of Hellman’s triumphs on Broadway and in Hollywood, and each of her best-selling memoirs, including the National Book Award – winning An Unfinished Woman (1969). And then there’s Martinson’s riveting coverage of Hellman’s heroic appearance before the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee. Hellman’s life was exceptionally full, complicated, and dramatic, and Martinson judiciously orders a daunting wealth of material to portray Hellman in all her moxie and glory.

Review by

Austin Pendelton,

Actor, director, and author of Orson’s Shadow

“Lillian Hellman was and is a magnificent person. Some were foolish enough to resolve their feelings about her, in one direction or the other, and all they got was either sentimental or sued. Deborah Martinson makes no such error. She plunges right in to all her unresolved feelings about Lillian Hellman, and writes about them with fervor and fascination. This book is very moving.

Review by

Phillip Schopper,

Director, “The Lives of Lillian Hellman”

American Masters, PBS

“Deborah Martinson cuts through the fog perpetrated for years by fans and foes alike and finally reveals a truly trustworthy and vital portrait of this legendary woman. It’s a book about Lillian Hellman, which is to say it’s a book about sex, politics and power – what could be better?”

The King Features Syndicate Inc., A Unit of The Hearst Corporation

The following review will be published by King Features which is syndicated to over 350 papers in the US and Canada.

“Crisply written and meticulously researched, this highly readable book is an absolute joy… Martinson writes with such clarity, one can almost hear the cigarette-husky voice of Hellman coaxing her from the shadows.”

LILLIAN HELLMAN: A LIFE WITH FOXES AND SCOUNDRELS by Deborah Martinson (Counterpoint, $27.95) Reviewed by Larry Cox

    Lillian Hellman was not a handsome woman.  In fact, in later life she looked a little like Benjamin Franklin in drag.  What she lacked in physical beauty, she more than made up with her charisma and intellect.
Hellman was born in 1907, and raised in the Garden District of New Orleans. She studied at New York and Columbia Universities, and began work as a critic for the New York Herald Tribune in 1929.  She later read scripts for MGM in Hollywood.
    While living in California, she met Dashiell Hammett, and their friendship soon blossomed into a love affair. She made such an impact, Hammett modeled his Nora Charles, the loyal wife of his detective hero, Nick Charles, after her.  Although she remained close to Hammett, she drifted in and out of numerous affairs throughout her life.
    Many of the details of Hellman’s life have been in dispute for decades. Since she refused to cooperate with biographers and ordered those close to her to do the same, many of the stories about her have contained half-truths and skewed information.  Deborah Martinson was given permission and received the full cooperation of Hellman’s literary executors and intimates and, perhaps, for the first time we see Lillian Hellman for the fascinating creature she was.
    Crisply written and meticulously researched, this highly readable book is an absolute joy.  Filled with copious details, Hellman emerges as a sassy, outrageous woman who was committed to at least three things in her life, namely writing, politics, and having her say.
    Regardless of the perceptions of others, Hellman never allowed anyone to sell her short.  Her power and creativity stemmed from her ability to take ownership of herself, her sexuality and her literary work.  She lived life with brilliance, wit, truth, a few scattered lives, and chutzpah. 
    Martinson writes with such clarity, one can almost hear the cigarette-husky voice of Hellman coaxing her from the shadows.  This is well crafted book about a woman who was once dubbed as hell on a short fuse, and so she was.

Book World Review

January 8, 2006

“[Martinson] has covered Hellman from sunup to sundown, mapping her interactions with virtually every public figure of the 20^th century……

She has provided sympathetic, if orthodox, takes on Hellman’s work… We finally do get the chance to assess Hellman’s achievement.”

“This fine literary biography is indeed a great story, a big, bold treatment of a larger than life American legend

Who believed in herself with fierce determination that lives and breathes again in the pages of

LILLIAN HELLMAN: A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels.”

Publicity History

LILLIAN HELLMAN

A Life with Foxes and Scoundrels

By Deborah Martinson

Publication Date: December 5, 2005

Counterpoint

NATIONAL PRINT

10/24/05: Publishers Weekly (review)

11/1/05: Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

11/15/05: Booklist (starred review)

12/15/05: Library Journal (review)

12/17/05: The Economist (review)

Winter 2006: The Wilson Quarterly (review)

January 2006: Bust Magazine (review)

1/8/06: Washington Post Book World (review)

LOCAL PRINT

11/25/05: New York Sun (review)

11/26/05: The Advocate

12/04/05: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (round-up)

12/09/05: New York Observer (review)

12/14/05: New York Sun (piece on book party)

12/17/06: The Economist

12/18/06: Times-Picayune, New Orleans (review)

EVENTS

12/8/05: Leila Hadley Luce Book Party (New York City) from 6-9 PM

1/23/06: Vroman’s, Signing/Reading (Pasadena) at 7 PM

4/29 – 4/30/06: Los Angeles Times Festival of Books