“We are being made into a fearful people, and fearful people will stand for very little deviation.”
These words were spoken in 1950 by playwright and memoirist Lillian Hellman to students at Swarthmore College. In June of that year, Hellman’s name had been published in Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television. The brainchild of three FBI agents, this official blacklist named 130 organizations and 151 individuals—actors, musicians, writers, and broadcast journalists. It was intended to flush out subversives in the media and, in contemporary parlance, to “no-platform” them—that is, to refuse them an opportunity to make their ideas or beliefs known publicly.
A few months earlier, eight screenwriters, one film producer and one film director (the “Hollywood Ten”) had all begun serving prison sentences for their non-cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), the Congressional committee headed up by Senator Joseph McCarthy to purge the country of alleged Communists.
In spring 1952, Lillian Hellman was served with a subpoena to testify before HUAC. Nine of her plays had been produced on Broadway, and four of these would be adapted to film, including The Children’s Hour, The Little Foxes, and Watch on the Rhine. She was a member of the Screenwriters Guild of America, and she had been serving on the Dramatists Guild Council for a decade.
Would Hellman now face the same fate as the “Hollywood Ten?” Would she also be sent to prison, like her partner, author and screenwriter Dashiell Hammett?
Hellman was presented with the Hobson’s choice of naming names of friends and colleagues associated with blacklisted organizations, or else pleading the Fifth Amendment, which would almost certainly result in an indictment for contempt of Congress, with an attendant prison sentence of six months to a year. HUAC had already issued ninety-one such citations.
Hellman reached out to the attorney Abe Fortas, who would later be named to the Supreme Court. He shared with her his “hunch” the time had come for somebody to take a moral position in confronting HUAC, not just leaning on the legalities of the Fifth Amendment. Hellman agreed.
On May 19, 1952, she sent a letter to John S. Wood, the Chair of HUAC. In this letter she offered to answer any questions about herself, her views, and her activities as long as the Committee did not ask her to name other people. That same day, she went out and bought herself an expensive Balmain dress, a hat, and a pair of white kid gloves for her court appearance. The following day, the offer was officially refused, and on May 21, her hearing began.
After some preliminary questions, Frank Tavenner, acting as government’s counsel, asked her if she knew a writer named Martin Berkeley, who had testified previously as a friendly witness for HUAC. Berkeley had described a meeting of Hollywood members of the Communist Party that allegedly took place at his home in 1937, and he named Hellman as one of the attendees. This testimony was read, and Hellman was asked if the account was true.
In response, she referred to her letter of May 19 and asked the committee to reconsider her offer.
Tavenner pressed her: “In other words, you are asking the committee not to ask you any questions regarding the participation of other persons in the Communist Party activities?”
Hellman replied, “I didn’t say that.”
At this point, she got her first break. The Chair instructed Tavenner, for the sake of clarity, to read Hellman’s letter into the record, which he did. As he finished, Hellman’s attorney grabbed a stack of mimeographed copies of the letter and began passing them out to members of the press.
The questioning resumed, and Tavenner asked her again if she had attended the meeting in Berkeley’s home. She could have honestly answered she did not know the man and that it was an easily verifiable fact that she had been in Europe at the time of the meeting, but as she wrote in her memoir Scoundrel Time, Hellman chose to “swallow the words” and inform the committee she must refuse to answer. Her use of the word “must” triggered the Chair, who reprimanded her: “You might refuse to answer; the question is asked, do you refuse?”
At this critical moment, an anonymous voice from the press gallery rang out: “Thank God somebody finally had the guts to do it.”
The Chair rapped his gavel: “If that occurs again, I will clear the press from these chambers.”
Again, the voice: “You do that, sir.”
At this, the Chair turned to confer with someone behind him. Turning back, he asked, “Is there any reason why this witness should not be excused from further attendance before the Committee?” Tavenner, taking his cue, responded, “No sir.” And, with that, the hearing was abruptly adjourned.
The exchange was so sudden, Hellman didn’t understand what had happened until her attorney nudged her: “Get up. Get up. Get out of here immediately… Don’t run, but walk as fast as you can and just shake your head and keep moving if anybody comes near you.”
And that is what she did.
In his book, Thirty Years of Treason: Excerpts from Hearings before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, 1938-1968, theatre critic Eric Bentley characterizes Hellman’s courageous testimony as a landmark.
As Garry Wills notes in his preface to Scoundrel Time, “This was not Miss Hellman’s battle. She came to it armed with no ideological weapons, just with that personal code, undefended decency—which is, on occasion, the strongest weapon of them all.”
Full Citation: Letter to the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (HUAC) from Lillian Hellman Regarding Testimony; 5/19/1952; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives. [Online Version, https://www.docsteach.org/documents/document/letter-to-the-house-unamer…, August 14, 2025]
