Lillian Hellman

Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans on June 20, 1905. She moved to New York with her family in 1910, but spent half the year living in a boarding house with her aunts. After studying at both New York University and Columbia University, Hellman dropped out of school and worked as a book reviewer for the "New York Herald Tribune." In 1930, she moved to Hollywood and became a script reader for MGM, where she became involved in the social and political scene. There, she met writer Dashiell...See more

Lillian Hellman was born in New Orleans on June 20, 1905. She moved to New York with her family in 1910, but spent half the year living in a boarding house with her aunts. After studying at both New York University and Columbia University, Hellman dropped out of school and worked as a book reviewer for the "New York Herald Tribune." In 1930, she moved to Hollywood and became a script reader for MGM, where she became involved in the social and political scene. There, she met writer Dashiell Hammett and began a close relationship with him that lasted almost thirty years. Over the next 30 years she published many very successful plays: The Children's Hour (1934), The Little Foxes (1939), Watch on the Rhine (1941), The Lark (1955), and Toys in the Attic (1960). She taught at several colleges throughout the 1960s and 1970s, including Harvard and Yale. She published three volumes of memoirs, one of which won a National Book Award. She died in 1984 in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts. See less