Lillian Hellman: Her Legend and Her Legacy, by Carl Rollyson (HC, 1988, 613 pages, $4)
Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, by Joan Mellen (HC, 1996, 572 pages, $4)
Lillian Hellman denied she ever lied, but she did, and all the time. She made sure her legend fit with the way she wanted to be remembered. If the facts did not fit, she had them changed. Eventually even she could not tell where her myth ended and the truth began. She wrote three memoirs, and we still do not know her.
Dashiell Hammett met her while they were both still married, and not to each other. Together, "they defied every accepted formula of how a man and woman should love each other: intimate as a couple, they lived together infrequently, drank to excess, participated in orgies, and engaged in flagrant infidelities." (Interestingly, Hammett never wrote again after they had met.) Neither of them were particularly nice people. Her one moral action, as far as I can see, was in not naming names to the House Un-American Activities Committee, but maybe I am missing something?
These books are an attempt to understand these two complex people. Look for these two books in the biog. section.
Note: We also have copies of her memoirs:
Pentimento (PB, 1973, $1)
Scoundrel Time (PB, 1977, $0.50)
An Unfinished Woman (HC, 1969, first edition, $5)
