Lillian Hellman

Emptying the cache of books stored in trunks in the garage- I have read, in rapid succession: Wake Up, Stupid by Mark Harris (the Boswell enthusiast), Paradise Postponed by John Mortimer, nearly half of Disraeli by Andre Maurois, a third of Tender Is The Night, half of Ian Fleming's Goldfinger. None of these were very well-suited to my tastes- I seem to be averaging one book I enjoy to three I do not.
My latest rediscovery is this marvelous bio on Lillian Hellman called "Lillian Hellman: The Image, The Woman" by William Wright
excerpts:

One of the most overworked devices of
the playwright is to fiU missing plot strands with servants telling
each other what has gone on before the curtain rises, describing
the characters we are about to meet, indicating which ones we
are to root for and which to beware of. Working on The Little
Faxes in the Tavern Island house, Hellman fell into this familiar
trap, and one night, after a long stretch at her typewriter, she
left a new draft of the first act for Hammett to read, then went
to bed. Among the play's characters were two Negro servants
who commented at length about the household.

The next morning Hellman awoke to find Hammett had left
for Manhattan, but had written a note that read:

Missy write blackamoor chit-chat.

Missy better stop writing blackamoor chit-chat."

The primary difference-and Hellman
stressed.this point in discussing North Star-was in the visual
aspects of the film, which were far from what she had envi-
sioned: the dirt-farmer realism she felt the subject matter de-
manded. The unwillingness to recreate meticulously a poor
Russian village was not surprising from a producer who once
complained to Wyler that his slum sets for Dead End "looked
dirty. " The prettified version of a Russian collective farm was
perhaps the most ludicrous aspect of the film and was best
summed up by the writer Irving Drutman, who was the film's
publicist; in a post-screening discussion of North Star's credits
he snapped, "And patches by Irene."