Lillian Hellman – Tuesday 20 June 1905 – Saturday 30 June 1984

Introduction

Discovered Lillian Hellman through reading her first autobiography, An Unfinished Woman (like the title). Haven’t read or seen any of her plays; but I did read her subsequent autobiography, Penitmento: A Book of Portraits, and saw the film Julia, which is based on the portrait of the same name in her book.


Foreword from Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

“Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter “repented,” changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.”

Excerpt from Theatre in Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

“It is strange to me that so many people like to listen to so many other people talk about the theatre. There are those who talk for large fees or give it away at small dinner parties and often their stories are charming and funny, but they are seldom people who have done much solid work. You are there, you are good in the theatre, you have written or directed or acted or designed just because you have and there is little that you can or should be certain about because almost everything in the theatre contradicts something else. People have come together, as much by accident as by design, done the best they can and sometimes the worst, profited or not, gone their way vowing to see each other the next week, mean it, and wave across a room a few years later.

The manuscript, the words on the page, was what you started with and what you have left. The production is of great importance, has given the play the only life it will know, but it is gone, in the end, and the pages are the only wall against which to throw the future or measure the past.”


Yesterday’s writer – Lorraine Hansberry
Tomorrow’s writer – Katharine Hepburn

Source: Hellman, Lillian. Pentimento: A Book of Portraits. Signet, 1974. Foreword: page 1, Excerpt: page 125

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

Center: Lillian Hellman from MD, March 1974

Lorraine Hansberry – Monday 19 May 1930 – Tuesday 12 January 1965

Introduction

Though I often have to confess that “Yes, I’ve seen the movie and no, I haven’t read the book”. In the case of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun, I can say that “Yes, I’ve seen the movie and yes, I’ve read the play”. Although the play is her best-known work, it is Lorraine’s autobiography, To Be Young, Gifted And Black, that is the focus here. I will never write a comprehensive autobiography (although perhaps a selective memoir or two), so I do respect anyone who willingly presents their whole life to the world.

Excerpt from Chicago: Southside Summers in To Be Young, Gifted And Black

“For some time now-I think since I was a child-I have been possessed of the desire to put down the stuff of my life. That is a commonplace impulse, apparently, among persons of massive self-interest; sooner or later we all do it. And, I am quite certain, there is only one internal quarrel: how much of the truth to tell? How much, how much; how much! It is brutal, in sober uncompromising moments, to reflect on the comedy of concern we all enact when it comes to our precious images!

Even so, when such vanity as propels the writing of such memoirs is examined, certainly one would wish at least to have some boast of social serviceability on one’s side. I shall set down on these pages what shall seem to me to the truth of my life and essences…which are to be found, first of all, in the Southside of Chicago, where I was born….

All travelers to my city should ride the elevated trains that race along the back ways of Chicago. The lives you can look into!

I think you could find the tempo of my people on their back porches. The honesty of their living is there in the shabbiness. Scrubbed porches that sag and look their danger. Dirty gray wood steps. And always a line of white and pink clothes scrubbed so well, waving in the dirty wind of the city.

My people are poor. And they are tired. And they are determined to live.

Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.”


Yesterday’s writer – Edith Hamilton
Tomorrow’s writer – Lillian Hellman

Source: Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young, Gifted And Black. Signet, 1970. ISBN 0-451-11080-3. Excerpt: page 45

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of To Be Young, Gifted And Black

Center: Lorraine Hansberry from the website en.wikipedia.org

Edith Hamilton – Monday 12 August 1867 – Friday 31 May 1963

Introduction

I have always enjoyed the mythology presented in various cultures around the world, but I have especially loved the stories of the Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses. Not exactly sure what about them appeals to me. Perhaps it is the adventures and exploits they have with each other and humans; or their amazing abilities and recognizable flaws; or maybe it is simply that they are immortal and I found that completely intriguing. In any case, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, is a wonderful book full of the myths surrounding the deities of an earlier time and in a fantastical place.

Excerpt from The Lesser Gods of Olympus in Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“THE GRACES were three Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia (Good Cheer). They were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, a child of the Titan, Ocean. Except in a story Homer and Hesiod tell, that Aglaia married Hephaestus, they are not treated as separate personalities, but always together, a triple incarnation of grace and beauty. The gods delighted in them when they danced enchantingly to Apollo’s lyre, and the man they visited was happy. They “give life its bloom.” Together with their companions, the Muses, they were “queens of song,” and no banquet without them could please.

THE MUSES were nine in number, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Memory. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from each other. “They are all,” Hesiod says, “of one mind, their hearts are set upon song and their spirit is free from care. He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of the Muses to men.”

In later times each had her own special field. Clio was Muse of history, Urania of astronomy, Melpomene of tragedy, Thalia of comedy, Terpsichore of the dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Erato of love-poetry, Polyhymnia of songs to the gods, Euterpe of lyric poetry.”


Yesterday’s writer – Mollie Gregory
Tomorrow’s writer – Lorraine Hansberry

Source: Hamilton, Edith. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. Mentor Books, 1963. Excerpt: page 37

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Center: Edith Hamilton from the back cover of my personal copy of Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Mollie Gregory – still living as of this post

Introduction

It was in 2003 that I first attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books which was held at UCLA. Because of my interest in film, on the second day of the two-day event, I went to a panel discussion titled “Women in Hollywood” in which Mollie Gregory participated, along with Norma Barzman, Cari Beauchamp, and Lynda Obst. This is from my journal: “Went to the book signing and decided to buy Mollie Gregory’s book “Women Who Run The Show”. When Mollie signed my book, she asked me what I did. I said…for art I did black and white photography….she mentioned two women in the book I should read.” – personal journal, Sunday 27 April 2003. In my copy of Women Who Run The Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood, Mollie wrote: “For Adrean Good luck in all your pursuits! Mollie Gregory April 27 2003.”

Excerpt from Beachhead: The 1970s in Women Who Run The Show

“It felt like a beachhead. Certainly each woman fought and struggled hard in different ways in a kind of war. “Women working today have never been in battle, but we were,” one woman, an entertainment lawyer, said. “I deserved war pay.”

1973 might as well be a century ago, so much has changed.

Before 1973, employment want ads were separated into jobs for men and women. In some states women could not invest in stocks without their husband’s written approval. Most women went to work in high heels and skirts. Society still frowned on women and men living together without benefit of a marriage license, “single parent” and “significant other” were unknown tags to define your personal setup, and baby boomers were a long way from retirement. Abortion was illegal and often dangerous. Face-lifts were something only movie stars did.

There were three networks-ABC, NBC, and CBS-and seven major film studios (Paramount, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Columbia, United Artists, MGM and Universal). A few independent producers turned out shows and films so constantly they resembled mini-studios. We went to movies in theaters and watched shows on television. If we missed a TV show, it was gone until rerun time. Video cassettes, VCRs, and personal computers did not exist; neither did CDs, laser discs, Home Box Office, CNN, or Blockbuster.

In January 1973, the Supreme Court made two momentous decisions: ruling on Roe v. Wade, the Court made first trimester abortions legal; it also declared in another case that job advertisements could not specify gender. Imagine scanning an ad for a mechanic that did not specify men only-or a cosmetics sales position not restricted to women. Reading those ads, imagination began to wander outside traditional limits for, perhaps, the first time.”

Author’s Note in Women Who Run The Show

“This book is based on more than 125 interviews conducted mainly in Los Angeles, in person and by telephone. I have also used secondary materials-books, magazine and newspaper articles, and some unpublished studies-to fix events by date, and to augment facts related in the interviews. But the thrust of the book relies on the candor and the memory of those interviewed, their sense of their own experiences, their point of view; their accounts are both factual and subjective, a cousin, perhaps, of the oral history. When accounts differed with others, I have noted it, but generally recollections did not differ much where they interconnected. Some of the women, and men, interviewed, did not want their remarks on the record, or asked that a portion of their remarks by kept confidential; therefore, some comments are noted as “anonymous.” Most interviews were done entirely on the record.”

Yesterday’s writer – Doris Kearns Goodwin
Tomorrow’s writer – Edith Hamilton

Source: Gregory, Mollie. Women Who Run The Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood. St. Martin’s Press, 2002. ISBN 0-312-30182-0. Excerpt: pages 1-2. Author’s Note: page 379.

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Women Who Run The Show
Center: Mollie Gregory from the website molliegregory.net
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Women Who Run The Show

Doris Kearns Goodwin – Monday 4 January 1943 – still living as of this post

Introduction

I had vaguely heard of Doris Kearns Goodwin in an academic context (she is an Historian). However, it was as an interviewee in Ken Burn’s excellent documentary film, Baseball (the sequel, The Tenth Inning is scheduled to air on PBS in the Fall of 2010), that Doris’s name has stuck with me. Doris is a baseball fan and in Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, she recounts her childhood love for the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a baseball fan myself, I enjoyed the story of how her love of baseball evolved. I have been a Boston Red Sox fan all my life (Red Sox Box) and Doris became a Red Sox fan in her adulthood.

Dedication in Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

“In memory of my parents MICHAEL AND HELEN KEARNS and to my sisters, CHARLOTTE AND JEANNE”

Excerpt from CHAPTER ONE of Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

“ON A SULTRY FRIDAY evening that same summer, after months of listening to games on the radio, I saw my first game at Ebbets Field. As my father and I walked up the cobblestone slope of Bedford Avenue and approached the arched windows of the legendary brick stadium, he explained how, as a boy, he had watched the ballpark being built, since the place where he had been sent to live after his parents died was only two blocks away. He was at the site in 1912, when Dodger owner Charles Ebbets pushed a shovel into the ground to begin the excavation. And when the park opened a year later, he was in the bleachers watching the first official game, against the Philadelphia Phillies. He had seen the Dodgers win their first two pennants in 1916 and 1920, only to lose to the Red Sox and the Indians. He had sustained his love affair with “dem Bums” through the frustrating period of the thirties, when he Dodgers were stuck at the bottom of the division, into the happier era of the forties, when under General Manager Branch Rickey they began to look like a championship team. And now my own pilgrimage was about to begin.

The marble rotunda at the entrance to the shrine looked like a train station in a dream, with dozens of gilded ticket windows scattered around the floor. The floor tiles were embellished with baseball stitches, and in the center of the domed ceiling hung an elaborate chandelier composed of a dozen baseball bats. As we started through a tunneled ramp into the stadium, my father told me that I was about to see the most beautiful sight in the world. Just as he finished speaking, there it was: the reddish-brown diamond, the impossibly green grass, the stands so tightly packed with people that not a single empty seat could be seen. I reached over instinctively to hold my father’s hand as we wended our way to seats between home plate and first base, which, like the thousands of seats in this tiny, comfortable park, were so close to the playing field that we could hear what the ballplayers said to one another as they ran onto the field and could watch their individual gestures and mannerisms as they loosened up in the on-deck circle. There, come to earth, were the heroes of my imagination, Snider and Robinson and the powerful-looking Don Newcombe; and there were the villains-the “hated New York Giants,” an epithet that was to us a single word-Monte Irvin, Sheldon Jones, and the turncoat Leo Durocher.”

Excerpt from the EPILOGUE of Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

“Although time and events outdistanced and reconciled my personal losses, my anger over O’Malley’s treason still persisted. At Colby College and in my first year at Harvard-where I would teach for almost a decade before leaving to become a full-time historian-I refused to follow baseball, skipping over the sports pages with their accounts of alien teams called the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. Then, in my second year of studying for my doctorate, a young man invited me to Fenway Park. Allowing my desire for his companionship to overcome my principled reluctance, we took the subway to Kenmore Square in Boston, and together we walked up Lansdowne Street to the park. There it was again: the entrance up the darkened ramp disclosing an expanse of amazing green, the fervent crowd contained in a stadium scaled to human dimensions, the players so close it almost seemed that you could touch them, the eccentric features of an old ballpark constructed to fit the contours of the allotted space. I watched the players, the dirt scars which marked the base paths, the knowledgeable fans shouting their imprecations and exhortations.

For years I had managed to stay away. I had formed the firmest of resolutions. I had given myself irrefutable reasons, expressed the most passionate of rejections. But I could not get away. Addiction or obsession, love or need, I was born a baseball fan and a baseball fan I was fated to remain.”


Yesterday’s writers – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
Tomorrow’s writer – Mollie Gregory

Source: Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir. Touchstone, 1998. ISBN 0-684-84795-7. Dedication: page 7, Excerpt: pages 45-48, Epilogue excerpt: pages 253-254.

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir
Center: Doris Kearns Goodwin from the website achievement.org