Scoundrel Time

Scoundrel Time (1976) is American playwright and screenwriter, Lillian Hellman’s third autobiography, following An Unfinished Woman (1969) and Pentimento: A Book of Portraits (1973). An award-winning writer, Hellman authored several plays that are considered classics, among them The Children’s Hour and The Little Foxes. She earned two New York Drama Critics Circle Awards, and An Unfinished Woman won a National Book Award. Scoundrel Time focuses on a period in the 1950s, “a sad, comic, miserable time of our history,” when Hellman was suspected of being a Communist Party sympathizer, blacklisted, and subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Hellman refused to incriminate others and ultimately did not go to trial, but she endured significant financial and personal losses.

Hellman begins Scoundrel Time by describing the political scoundrels behind the second Red Scare: Senators Joseph McCarthy and Pat McCarran, and then-Representatives Nixon, Walter, and Wood: “All of them were what they were: men who invented when necessary, maligned even when it wasn’t necessary.” Hellman believes McCarthy chose the “Red theme” partially to undo the work of Roosevelt and largely to play on the fears and “confusions of honest people.” In the late 1940s and into the 1950s, many historical events fed into the worry over Communist influence. Mao conquered China, and Russia tested its first nuclear bomb in 1949. The Korean War began in 1950. McCarthy convicted Alger Hiss on perjury charges related to accusations of Russian espionage. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted and executed in 1953 for being Russian spies. All these episodes made “many honest men and women” frightened of Communism, and McCarthyism exploited that anxiety.

While the political scoundrels are ambitious, dangerous, and unapologetic, Hellman is more outraged by the large numbers of creative, educated, and intellectual individuals whom she believed supported freedom of thought. By their actions implicating other innocent people and their inaction of not standing up to unjust persecution, Hellman feels they contributed to McCarthyism and are also scoundrels.



The Hollywood blacklist began in 1947, following a press release of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) announcing its firing of a group of directors, producers, and screenwriters called the Hollywood Ten. In this Waldorf Statement, the MPA also declared it would not hire anyone with Communist affiliations. The House Un-American Activities Committee began investigating Communist infiltration of the entertainment industry. Hellman recalls how Elia Kazan, who directed such classic films as On the Waterfront and A Streetcar Named Desire, told Hellman how he was threatened: Unless he became a “friendly witness” and accused people he knew of being Communists, he would “never make another movie in Hollywood.”

Hellman describes herself as an “aimless rebel” who never joined the Communist Party, but she did support the American Civil Rights Movement and the Spanish Civil War. During the 1930s and 1940s, Hellman writes, people were “turning toward radical political solutions.” One of those people was her partner and lover, detective-novel writer, Dashiell Hammett. Author of the classic, The Maltese Falcon, Hammett joined the Communist Party because of his disgust with corruption. Hellman attended a handful of Communist Party meetings with Hammett, remembering them not for their political messages, but for the eccentricities of the people she met.

Hammett testified before the Committee. A trustee of the Civil Rights Congress, Hammett had provided bail money to some Communists. Hammett refused to give up the names of his associates who financed the funds. Hammett was found guilty and sentenced to jail time in 1951. In February of 1952, Hellman received her subpoena to appear before the HUAC because of her association with Hammett and her left-leaning political tendencies. Hammett worried that Hellman would not be able to handle prison.



Hellman called lawyer Abe Fortas, who told her it was time to “take a moral position” against this frenzy of accusations. He put Hellman in touch with another lawyer, Joseph Rauh, who represented her. Hellman wrote a letter to the Committee, stating her position. She explained that she was raised with Christian honor to tell the truth and not bear false witness and that she tried to live by that code. Hellman declared that she had nothing to hide and had done nothing wrong. She stated that she would waive the privilege against self-incrimination and answer questions about herself if they allowed her to refuse to talk against anyone else. If not, she would plead the Fifth Amendment. Hellman writes, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions.” By writing this letter, Hellman assured that the Committee could not say she was “uncooperative.”

The Committee read her letter into the record of the court, which Rauh recognized was a mistake on their part. They released Hellman after an hour and seven minutes. Hellman did not quite understand why she was released. Rauch explained he thought the Committee had been backed into a corner because Hellman wouldn’t give up any names: they couldn’t name her as a Fifth Amendment Communist (those who refused to answer questions by pleading the Fifth were assumed guilty), because she had offered to answer questions about herself; and they couldn’t prosecute because they forced her into taking the Fifth.

Although her encounter with the Committee was over, Hellman faced a backlash of hardships. Financially, she and Hammett were ruined. Hammett was out of prison, but the IRS had taken all his money. Knowing she “would be banned from writing movies,” Hellman returned to writing plays. They had to sell their farm, an event Hellman admits, “was the most painful loss of my life.” In 1960, Hellman’s play Toys in the Attic was financially successful. Though Hammett died a year later, Hellman was thankful that their last year together was “lived in security.” Hellman concludes Scoundrel Time, “The past, with its pleasures, its rewards, its foolishness, its punishments, is there for each of us forever, and it should be.”