Abstract

Loving Lillian

This article presents information on the book "Hellman and Hammett: The Legendary Passion of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett," by author Joan Mellen. The relationship between U.S. playwright Lillian Hellman and detective story writer Dashiell Hammett were very complex, and they both lied, hugely, particularly in their work. Hammett gave to the world silky Nick and Nora Charles, so sexy with their little windsock dog, their shiny cocktail shaker. Hellman gave the gnomic, hard-boiled paternalism of the Hammett she imagined, the stem, often unreadable master who is also oddly evanescent, a man who might at any minute turn on the knife edge of his perfect profile and disappear. They pushed and pulled, abandoned one another at crucial moments, seduced scores of people, stopped having sex with each other in 1939, but continued their emotional wrestling match for twenty years.