Lillian Hellman Centennial: Outstanding Writer & Anti-Fascist

"I cannot and will not cut my consicence to fit this year's fashions" proclaimed playwright Lillian Hellman to the anti-Commnist witchhunters of HUAC (House Unamerican Activities Committee) on May 21, 1952. It is her political spirit and her classics of American literature that we honor this year, the hundredth anniversary of her birth.

The full text of that letter may be found in Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts of Hearings Before HUAC 1938-1968, Edited by Eric Bentley (1971; 2002: Thunder's Mouth Press/Nation Books
, NY).

She refused to comply with the witchhunt, and for that, as well as her outstanding writings, all of which are classics of American literature, we celebrate her life and work. She was born in 1905 in New Orleans and died in 1984 in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

Some of her plays include:
Watch on the Rhine (1943)
Another Part of the Forest (1948) (opposed "free market" ethics)
The Children's Hour (1961) (pro-Lesbian, anti-homophobia-radical for that time)
Toys in the Attic (1963)

More on her work may be found at:
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap8/hellman.html