Fun Facts

• After the success of The Children’s Hour, Hellman wrote Days to Come, which essentially failed.  She then travelled to Europe and studied the Spanish Civil War alongside her buddy, Ernest Hemingway.

• According to Npr.com, “Hellman drank like a fish, swore like a sailor and slept around like, well, like most of the men in her literary circle…”

• A review of the 1961 remake of The Children’s Hour:
• “Today, when every form of perversion except masturbation and bestiality have been shown on the screen, Hellman, Wyler and the Mirisch Co. apparently thought a re-do of The Children's Hour would sell tickets if lesbianism were not only restored as the charge the evil child falsely brings, but also condoned... There is an explicit line of dialogue which asserts that those who choose to practice lesbianism are not destroyed by it — a claim disapproved by the number of lesbians who become insane and/or commit suicide.”

      Films in Review (April 1962)

• According to nytimes.com, “She [Hellman] fled New York after the Broadway opening of [The Children’s Hour]; she explained that she was frightened by success and what it did to people.”

• Lillian Hellman wrote in her piece, An evening with Lillian Hellman, that she “was so drunk on the opening night of The Children’s Hour”, and when the audience chanted “’author, author’, it was not all modesty that kept [her] from the curtain call”, she was simply too drunk to walk out on stage.