Lillian Hellman: A legacy of political and social influence in literature

Political challenges in the '40s

In the '40s he continues to work intensively for the theater, but the political persecution by the US Government, limits its freedom of speech hindering the publication of his works."Toys in the Attic," written in 1959, is another piece of theater of success, which also was nominated for a Tony Award.In 1966 he wrote the screenplay for "The Hunt" (The Chase), Arthur Penn's film, starring Marlon Brando.In 1973 published a novel titled "Repentance", which four years later will be successfully brought to the big screen, in the Oscar-winning film, Giulia (Julia) of Fred Zinnemann. In the story, which recounts the author's friendship with an anti-fascist women, the role of Lillian Hellman is played by Jane Fonda. From "Slander" director William Wyler obtained two films "Slander" in 1936 and "The Children" in 1961. "The Little Foxes" will be adapted for the cinema by Wyler. Among the other works to be remembered "The guard on the Rhine" (1941), the story of a pair of German anti-fascists who collaborated with the Americans: this, perhaps his most acclaimed by critics, becomes the subject of the film "Watch on the Rhine "(1943), directed by Herman Shumlim, starring Bette Davis and Paul Lukas and scripted by Dashiell Hammett.Besides the already mentioned "Repentance", the Hellman wrote other autobiographical books that would have been a source of heated discussions on their reliability and historical veracity: "An Unfinished Woman" (1969), "Time Villains" (1976) and "A secret woman "(1980).Lillian Hellman died in Tisbury (Massachusetts), June 30, 1984, ten days after his seventy-ninth birthday.

For many it was the writer who in the twentieth century better than anyone has been the use of a literary or theatrical text as an act of social protest and politics.