Smithsonian Galaxy - Photographer Berenice Abbott, June 11, 1982
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I am Barbara Shissler Nosanow, Curator of Education at the National Museum of American Art. It is really a great pleasure to welcome you to our symposium on creative women in Paris and New York in the 1920s and the 1930s.
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As I think you know, the symposium has been sparked by an exhibition which is currently on view at our museum which is entitled Berenice Abbott: The 20s and 30s.
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Berenice Abbott was certainly one of the creative forces in photography in those days, as she is today. And before we get started with the symposium, I would like to take just a few moments of your time to show you a very brief selection of slides,
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slides of her work, because some of you may not as yet have seen her exhibition which simply opened at our museum last Friday to glowing reviews in the Washington Post and other papers.
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We hope you will come to see the exhibition itself. I thought, however, that it would be useful to show you a small selection of slides so you will begin to have some idea about what had sparked the idea for the symposium and something about the creative atmosphere in Paris and New York during those two decades.
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Could we have the lights down and could we have the screen down?
[SILENCE]
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Marvelous contraption. [[laughter]]
[SILENCE] Voila.
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Ah, no, not right, let's back up.
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Aha, very good.
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I want to begin with a photograph, not by Berenice Abbott but a photograph of Berenice Abbott by Man Ray, who is such an important contributor to the Dada movement early in the century.
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And to give you a little background about Berenice Abbott herself so that when she appears on the stage this morning, she will really need no introduction.
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She was born in Springfield, Ohio in 1898 and attended Ohio State University where she simply wanted to get a general education.
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She then went on to Columbia University in 1918 thinking that she really wanted to have a career in journalism.
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She found Columbia overcrowded, uninteresting from her point of view, and so instead she ended up in Greenwich Village where she achieved another sort of general education, another chapter I think in her general education efforts.
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One of her friends from Ohio State had been James Light, who was the head of the Provincetown Players, that really exciting theatrical group with whom Eugene O'Neill was associated,
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and so she says that her first night in the Village, which was spent at the Hell Hole, which was a local cabaret, the name of a local cabaret, was really a very memorable one.
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She met Eugene O'Neill and many of the people who surrounded him, as well as a number of anarchists and young communist sympathizers, among them Louise Bryant and Jack Reed whom we have heard so much about recently because of the film Reds.
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She also met Man Ray who took this photograph of her sometime later in Paris and Marcel Duchamp.
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These two really great leaders in the field of modern art at the beginning of the century became her pals and her buddies, and so perhaps it was not so unusual that, in 1921, she decided that she wanted to move on to Paris.
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She did not have a family inheritance as Gertrude Stein did, for example, to tide her over and to help her get started. She really had to make her way.
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She thought that she wanted to study sculpture in Paris, perhaps in Berlin. But eventually in 1923, having renewed her acquaintance with Man Ray, she ended up working in his darkroom as his assistant there,
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and she says that she qualified for the job because she knew nothing, absolutely nothing about photography and nothing about darkroom work
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and that is what Man Ray wanted. I think he was tired of having people who felt they knew more about it than he did and he wanted someone whom he could train.
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She was there for a period of three years or so. Uh, during that time began to do some photography work herself, was surprised to find how good she was at it and Man Ray was also, I think,
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and within a span of three years she had opened her own portrait studio on the Left Bank of Paris, and was really beginning to establish herself there.
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Thereafter there followed a stream of notable people who seem to have come and gone from her studio and whom she photographed, and I would like to show you just a small selection of them.
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Jean Cocteau, the poet, the novelist, the playwright, artist, filmmaker.
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How many of you who go back to, let's say, the 1950s have seen films by him, or films that any, uh, art film studio
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Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, Beauty and the Beast, Les Enfants Terrible, which of course was first of course written as a novel.
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He was an incomparable conversationalist also, and he really had a talent, I think, for uniting romanticism and surrealism in a very unlikely but tantalizing and astonishing mix.
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And so he-- here he is, striking a rather playful pose, uh, aiming a gun at you, really astonishing you-- again, which I think was his aim in life
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and Abbott, you see, is already interacting with those who come to sit with-- sit in her photography-- in her portrait studio, getting them to relax, getting them to be playful, getting them to express their personality so that she can capture their characters all the better on film.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, a graduate of Vassar in 1917, she had already published Renascence and other poems in the year of her graduation.
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There was something amazingly fresh and versatile about her and about her work, a real virtuoso.
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Soon thereafter, in 1920, she published a few, ah, A Few Figs from Thistles. She also worked for the Provincetown Players, and wrote plays for them,
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and then, in 1923, along about the time that this photograph was taken, or slightly thereafter, she printed Harp Weaver and Other Poems, which won the Pulitzer Prize.
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Janet Flanner, the famous "Genet", of the New Yorker Magazine, again in costume and striking a somewhat playful pose, I think.
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As you know Janet Flanner was also the author of The Cubicle City in 1925, and An American in Paris in 1940.
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But I think it is really her letters to the New Yorker over, really, several decades-- two generations really-- that make her well-known to us, the remarkable Genet.
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Eva Le Gallienne, an actress who graced the stages both in London and in New York.
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You know that she was, uh, the founder of the American Repertory Theater,
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and I was really delighted to see in the New York Times just this past week, that she will be opening in-- on Broadway, in October, in a revival of Alice in Wonderland,
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a play which she originally staged in the 1930s, and she will play the White Queen.
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--Princess Bibesco, a Romanian novelist and essayist
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who was living in Paris at that time.
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The photograph somehow is redolent of the uh
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style and fashion of that particular era.
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And Mrs. Theodore van Rysselberghe,
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the wife of the Belgian artist.
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Perhaps his work is not so well-known here,
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but in-- next year, in 1983, there will be an exhibition really,
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organized by the Federal Reserve,
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in which the work of her husband will be featured.
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She-- and that exhibition later will tour with SITES,
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with the Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition Service.
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Obviously she is a very character-full woman.
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The photograph is a quiet one,
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but one that is full of authority.
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She is obviously a woman to reckon with.
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And you can see that Berenice Abbott
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is already making use of telling details
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that somehow reveal as much about character
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as uh a glance or a stance.
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She's dressed in a velvet jacket.
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The pince-nez is right there, close to her right hand.
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The glance, as we said, is certainly one
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that is full of authority.
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James Joyce, one of her most famous photographs.
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What can I say about him?
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You know him, of course, as the author of Ulysses,
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Finnegan's Wake, Portrait of the Artist.
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He had had numerous operations on his eyes.
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The light was really-- uh bothered them terribly,
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so he was photographed wearing
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both a hat and the glasses.
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Again, telling gestures and telling details:
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the rings on the fingers,
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the cane in the hand.
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His daughter, Lucia Joyce, who ended,
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unfortunately, in a sanitarium in Switzerland,
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but who was evidently a remarkable and charming young woman
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and a delightful dancer.
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And so Berenice Abbott has captured her in full action.
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And then, of course, Eugene Atget, the famous French photographer,
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whose work was really overlooked, unappreciated.
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Berenice Abbott saw his photographs.
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He was an old man in Paris, still photographing Paris when she--
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while she was there. She was immediately attracted
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to his work and wanted to photograph him.
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You probably know that she really managed to save
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his collection of prints and negatives at the time of his death,
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and, with some 10,000 prints, returned to the United States
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and made vast-- made great efforts over a long period of years
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to see that they were properly placed and housed
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in some appropriate institution. She offered them
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to the French government, as I understand it--
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to Andre Malraux-- even as late as the 1960s.
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Malraux was uninterested in purchasing them.
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Finally they went to the Museum of Modern Art.
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And there has been a remarkable exhibition which has
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been drawn from them on view at the Museum of Modern Art
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this past year and also at the Corcoran here in Washington D.C.,
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which I hope you saw. Returning to New York in 1929,
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the year of the Crash, she found that she was quite fascinated
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with her native land. She had been gone long enough
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to find it interesting upon her return
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and she was fascinated with the city of New York.
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It had changed remarkably during the years of her absence
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and she was attracted to the beat, the tempo,
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the flux of life in the city, and decided that
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she wanted to take that as the theme
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for her next major work-- series of photographs.
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This one of New York at night perhaps does not seem
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so unusual to our eyes today. Think how unusual
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such a photograph would have been at the beginning of the 1930s.
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This is one of Rockefeller Center going up.
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She was terribly interested in technological innovation
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and so the whole series of skyscrapers,
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which were beginning to uh-- people-- populate the landscape
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there in New York at that point were of great interest to her.
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But also of interest were uh photographs of--
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quieter photographs of other sections of the city which were somewhat older
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and which recall a past time. This is Washington Square,
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an interesting blend of the old and the new.
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Finally, of course, this whole series of photographs
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on New York was funded by the Federal Art Project
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and was published in 1939 in a memorable book
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called Changing New York.
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I think I don't really need to go on to tell you more about her.
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I think we can have uh the screen up
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and I would like to have the people come out on the stage
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and introduce them to you this morning.
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Our participants. It's obvious that the time she lived in
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was an exciting one. That it was a creative period.
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That it seems perhaps even more so to us today,
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a legendary period, in fact. And it was filled with
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a number of very interesting people who, as a group,
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created a rather dazzling world which was uniquely their own
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and changed for all time, I believe,
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our concept of life and literature and art.
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Now to meet some of the people who participated
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in that creative life in Paris and New York,
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we will have the lights up. The slide-- the screen will disappear
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and the women themselves will come onstage
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and I will introduce them to you.
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Barbara Shissler Nosanow: We are revealed. Let me get them. I think they can hear.
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[SILENCE]
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Barbara Shissler Nosanow: Just a moment. Everyone is coming.
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Some are in rather frail health,
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So we really feel it's a real honor to have them with us this morning. [[long applause]]
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Berenice Abbott will be here in just a moment.
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She's just gone back to the Presidential Suite for one second.
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So I think that what I should do is begin by introducing the other women to you.
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I'm sure you know them. [[applause]] Here she is. [[cont. applause]]
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Shall I give you a little rundown on them?
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You probably know about them in general terms, but it never hurts, I think, to repeat their achievements.
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Lillian Hellman, as I think you know, was born in New Orleans, and spent her childhood
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both in New Orleans and in New York
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where she attended New York University and Columbia.
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In 1934, she launched her career as a playwright with 'The Children's Hour'.
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Over the next 30 years, a succession of major achievements in the theater were hers.
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Among them: 'The Little Foxes', 'Watch on the Rhine',
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'Another Part of the Forest', 'The Autumn Garden', and 'Toys in the Attic'.
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Her books include: 'An Unfinished Woman', a memoir which was published in 1969;
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'Pentimento', a book of portraits;
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and one of the portraits, of course, was-- sparked the film Julia, which I'm sure many of you saw;
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'Scoundrel Time', which was published in 1976;
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and 'Maybe', which has been published as recently as 1980.
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She was twice awarded the New York Drama Critics Circle Prize for Best Play of the Year.
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That was for 'Watch on the Rhine' and for 'Toys in the Attic'.
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And she has been the winner, also, of the National Book Award
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for 'An Unfinished Woman'.
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She has also received the Gold Medal for Drama from the
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National Institute of Arts and Letters
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and the Creative Arts Award from Brandeis University.
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Lillian Hellman, as I think you know, also traveled to Russia in 1936 and 1945.
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Some of her reactions to this trip are included in 'An Unfinished Woman'.
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But she also testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952.
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That was during the McCarthy Era.
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And she is really noted for having steadfastly refused to testify against her friends and colleagues.
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Now then, let me do the introductions for the others also:
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Berenice, I've already told you about, in the beginning introduction --
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I would now like to introduce to you Emily Hahn, who is on the staff of The New Yorker.
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Her life has been so colorful that when I was talking about it
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with a younger member of our staff,
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they said, "Well, my God, her life should be made into a film,
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and it should star Katherine Hepburn and Tyrone Power." [[laughter]]
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I also called one of her old friends, here in town, to see what emphasis I should give,
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and he began by saying, that
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she was the first woman in the United States
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who received a degree in mining engineering
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from the University of Wisconsin.
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That's what her undergraduate degree was in.
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And he felt absolutely confident that she got it in mining engineering
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because they told her that women could not go into that field.
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Since that time, she has been leading an interesting and sometimes unconventional life.
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I know that during her early years
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she was a guide, as she said, to the "dudes"
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who came out west to New Mexico.
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D.H. Lawrence, I believe, was in the area at that time,
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or at least must have sparked your interest
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somewhere along the line
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because you've written a very interesting book about him,
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Miss Hahn, called 'D.H. Lawrence and the Women Who Loved Him'.
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You began to write for The New Yorker, I believe, in 1929.
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Shortly thereafter, however, you were in the Congo for several years.
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Went on a walking safari and came out in East Africa,
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having walked all the way across the African continent
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alone with only native bearers in a walking safari.
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You also seem to have been fascinated
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by foreign places, because during the 1930s
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you also went to China, where we know that
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you were active writing, active in publishing.
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Came to know the Soong sisters, wrote about them.
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The Soong sisters, of course, were a famous--
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famous sisters. One was Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek.
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The other was Mme. Sun Yat-Sen.
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While she was there she met her future husband, Charles Boxer.
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They were not immediately married.
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Unfortunately, he became a prisoner of war
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in a Japanese prison camp.
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You were, also, for a brief period of time. Is that right?
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Managed to return to the United States in 1943
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on the second trip of the Gripsholm here,
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and then finally she and Charles Boxer were married after the war.
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They have two daughters.
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He, in addition to his other accomplishments,
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is an expert on Portuguese Colonial History in Asia in the 16th Century,
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and fortunately has been invited to lecture all over the world on that subject.
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I say fortunate because, although she lived in England for a while with him,
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the tax laws changed in England, and
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if you lived in England for more than three months out of the year, you had to pay tax there,
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and then, of course, she would have to pay tax here,
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because she continued her affiliation with The New Yorker.
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So as a result of that, they really began a transatlantic commute
00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:51.000
in order to preserve their marriage,
00:18:51.000 --> 00:18:54.000
which I gather is still strongly-- still going strong.
00:18:54.000 --> 00:18:56.000
She is the author of 50 books
00:18:56.000 --> 00:19:00.000
and her contributions to a variety of fields are really quite remarkable because
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:05.000
she has published history, travel, biography, fiction, even children's books.
00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.000
'Once Upon a Pedestal', I think is one which you would enjoy.
00:19:09.000 --> 00:19:11.000
'Mabel', which is about Mabel Dodge Luhan,
00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:14.000
is another that people should find interesting to read.
00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:17.000
'On the Side of the Apes', also gives you some indication of
00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:21.000
the great variety of her interests in many different fields.
00:19:21.000 --> 00:19:24.000
Then I want to introduce Meryle Secrest,
00:19:24.000 --> 00:19:27.000
who will be the moderator for our panel today.
00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:30.000
Meryle Secrest is known to a number of us
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:32.000
here in Washington, because, in the past,
00:19:32.000 --> 00:19:35.000
she has been editor, writer, critic for the Washington Post.
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:38.000
She began-- she's English by birth,
00:19:38.000 --> 00:19:40.000
although a naturalized citizen.
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:46.000
She began as Women's Editor, at the age of 19, for the Hamilton News in Hamilton, Ontario.
00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:48.000
She was also a general reporter at one time
00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:52.000
for the Bristol Evening Post in Bristol, England.
00:19:52.000 --> 00:19:55.000
But, I think we remember her, particularly
00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:57.000
at the National Museum of American Art,
00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:00.000
for a number of remarkable biographies which she has written.
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:02.000
One called, 'Between Me and Life',
00:20:02.000 --> 00:20:07.000
a biography of Romaine Brooks, which was published in 1974.
00:20:07.000 --> 00:20:11.000
A more recent publication called, 'Being Bernard Berenson',
00:20:11.000 --> 00:20:15.000
which came out in 1979 and which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.000
And a biography which she is now working on entitled, 'Kenneth Clark',
00:20:19.000 --> 00:20:23.000
which we hope that we will be able to see shortly.
00:20:23.000 --> 00:20:28.000
Meryle, would you like to take over and begin the symposium.
00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:29.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, I will.
00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:34.000
First of all, is there anybody in the back who isn't hearing my voice?
00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:36.000
This is a problem that I have.
00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:39.000
If so, please raise your hand. Any problems back there?
00:20:39.000 --> 00:20:41.000
Okay. I can't see very well. The lights are in my eyes.
00:20:41.000 --> 00:20:44.000
Barbara Shissler Nosanow: Could I interrupt just one moment?
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
00:20:44.000 --> 00:20:50.000
Barbara Shissler Nosanow: I was really supposed to make one announcement, and that is that there can be absolutely no smoking in the audience. All right?
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.000
Just wanted to say that before I sat down. Thank you.
00:20:54.000 --> 00:20:55.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Except by me.
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:58.000
Barbara Shissler Nosanow: Except by you. [[laughter]]
00:20:58.000 --> 00:21:01.000
MERYLE SECREST: I feel-- you know, I was on the stage
00:21:01.000 --> 00:21:03.000
when I was 5 years old for the first time,
00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:05.000
and I was an angel, I think.
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:08.000
We were talking about this just before I came out.
00:21:08.000 --> 00:21:12.000
And I was on-- I came on with a whole group of little girls,
00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:14.000
and they all went to the edge of the stage
00:21:14.000 --> 00:21:18.000
and started waving, you know. When they saw their mummy.
00:21:18.000 --> 00:21:26.000
Well, I've just seen my in-laws, so hello. [[laughter]] So nice to see you here.
00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:29.000
Well, now I feel a little better.
00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:33.000
We had-- we've all of us-- three of us,
00:21:33.000 --> 00:21:36.000
the four of us just met last night.
00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:38.000
And we were talking about the kinds of questions that
00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:42.000
I should ask. And we decided that--
00:21:42.000 --> 00:21:45.000
well, I got the distinct impression that
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:47.000
my questions were going to be wrong.
00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:51.000
So, I had a long sleepless night and I woke up
00:21:51.000 --> 00:21:52.000
about five o'clock this morning--
00:21:52.000 --> 00:21:56.000
I was telling Miss Hellman-- and I had inspiration. You know,
00:21:56.000 --> 00:21:58.000
wonderful, deep, profound questions
00:21:58.000 --> 00:22:01.000
that were going to really, sort of, draw everybody out.
00:22:01.000 --> 00:22:04.000
And wrote them all down and looked at them again
00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:06.000
at 8 this morning - they're lousy.
00:22:06.000 --> 00:22:11.000
So, I'm going to-- to say what I really want to say,
00:22:11.000 --> 00:22:15.000
and that is-- I mean, you're sitting there, but
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.000
I'm hoping very much that you're going to be thinking about
00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:23.000
the things you want to ask, because we can't possibly
00:22:23.000 --> 00:22:25.000
cover-- I mean, it's such an open-ended subject --
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:28.000
'Creative women in Paris in the 20s and New York in the 30s'
00:22:28.000 --> 00:22:31.000
is so incredibly open-ended that there are going to be
00:22:31.000 --> 00:22:33.000
a lot of things that we just won't say
00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:35.000
or we'll get involved in something and we won't say it.
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:42.000
So, we're going to have, um, well, half an hour, 45 minutes of questions at the end of the period.
00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:46.000
And, I just want you to be saving them all up
00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:49.000
and I promise I'll-- you know, by now, by then I'll have
00:22:49.000 --> 00:22:51.000
gotten through this light business
00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:52.000
and I'll be able to see hands
00:22:52.000 --> 00:22:55.000
and maybe they'll put the lights on or something.
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:57.000
So, that's the preamble.
00:22:57.000 --> 00:23:00.000
So let me start with my prepared statement
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:03.000
which won't take very long.
00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:07.000
This seminar had its origin some time ago
00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:10.000
when a certain girl went to Paris.
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:13.000
Gertrude Stein, who can always be counted on
00:23:13.000 --> 00:23:15.000
for large and inaccurate assertions, [[audience laughter]]
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:20.000
has said that Paris was where the 20th century was.
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:23.000
You see how much trouble one has with that.
00:23:23.000 --> 00:23:27.000
But, for a lot of people who came to adulthood
00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:32.000
at the end of World War I, I imagine it had a certain grain of truth.
00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:36.000
And it's, it's that, that will be interesting to explore.
00:23:36.000 --> 00:23:40.000
I don't know if you know a lady called Bryher. I do. She's an English writer.
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:43.000
She's a marvelous person, and Berenice, I think --
00:23:43.000 --> 00:23:47.000
-- you know her, don't you?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Who?
MERYLE SECREST: Bryher.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Bryher.
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:51.000
I interviewed her a few years ago and she wrote in her memoirs
00:23:51.000 --> 00:23:54.000
that one cannot possibly conceive
00:23:54.000 --> 00:23:56.000
how different social life is nowadays
00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:59.000
compared to the way it was in 1900,
00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:04.000
when the decree was absolute that conventional behavior was next to godliness.
00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:06.000
Women-- straitjacketed in stays,
00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:08.000
and muffled in scarves and veils--
00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:12.000
were stifled physically, mentally, and emotionally.
00:24:12.000 --> 00:24:16.000
Bryher said, "Our symbol of freedom was nature.
00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:19.000
Some of the people about me literally lived
00:24:19.000 --> 00:24:23.000
on views. The storm and the savage became emblems
00:24:23.000 --> 00:24:26.000
of mystery, with walks and drives through the countryside
00:24:26.000 --> 00:24:29.000
the only permissible form of self-expression."
00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:33.000
No wonder that so many masochistic heroines
00:24:33.000 --> 00:24:35.000
of the period took to their beds.
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:38.000
I was thinking about Alice James. If you've read that
00:24:38.000 --> 00:24:40.000
recent biography of her, she literally
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.000
took to her bed. "It was," Bryher concluded,
00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.000
"a period when self-torture reached its peak."
00:24:47.000 --> 00:24:51.000
There is, however, always a new generation
00:24:51.000 --> 00:24:54.000
eager to forge its own future, and it's about these people,
00:24:54.000 --> 00:24:57.000
specifically these women, that we speak today.
00:24:57.000 --> 00:25:00.000
Born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898,
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.000
or born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1907,
00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:08.000
or born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1905,
00:25:08.000 --> 00:25:10.000
we have with us, really-- think about it--
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:12.000
spokeswomen for a whole generation
00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:16.000
no longer willing to accept as "godly behavior",
00:25:16.000 --> 00:25:21.000
the stifling conventionality that they saw all around them.
00:25:21.000 --> 00:25:24.000
Berenice Abbott, for instance,
00:25:24.000 --> 00:25:26.000
took the avenue which many talented young Americans
00:25:26.000 --> 00:25:29.000
seized on in those years following World War I.
00:25:29.000 --> 00:25:32.000
She turned her back on America, looking to Europe
00:25:32.000 --> 00:25:36.000
for the freedom to achieve an aesthetic path
00:25:36.000 --> 00:25:39.000
and the personal fulfillment that was denied her at home.
00:25:39.000 --> 00:25:41.640
Lillian Hellman--
00:25:45.000 --> 00:26:16.000
Unknown Speaker: Was rebellious against life in general, by the time she came to enroll in New York University in 1925. She got there, she was introduced there to an exicitng period of Kant and Hegel, and spent her spare time curled up on a dark bench in a Greenwich Village restaurant arguing about Wehrlen and that scandalous new book by James Joyce. Her unerring sense of direction soon took her towards a world of books and a job with the most exciting publisher in New York.
00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:39.000
But before we go any further, I'd like to reminisce a little bit with Berenice Abbot because I had a very exciting thing happen to me about ten years ago, more than ten years ago. I got in a car and I went to Maine. I went to Maine to interview Berenice Abbott, and when we got there it was really a super time.
00:26:39.000 --> 00:27:22.000
It really was because we talked a lot about photography and the way pictures are taken and she doesn't remember this but she showed me a box camera and how it works upside down and I took a picture of her and I don't know where that picture is now, which is very discouraging, but we talked about the people in Paris of the generation of Romaine Brooks, who is a lady I went to Paris to see, and we had a rather marvelous time. I remember having drinks on this wonderful lake in an A frame and [[laughter]] sort of reminiscing about life in general.
00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:40.000
Berenice, I wanted to ask you--some water, here we are, you've seen, have you, I'm sure Barbara's asked you this but let's go over it again. You've seen the exhibition, right? What do you think of it?
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:50.000
Unknown Speaker: How do you feel about it?
Berenice Abbott: Well, mixed feelings.
Unknown Speaker: Really?
00:27:50.000 --> 00:28:07.000
Berenice Abbott: I'd really rather not say. [[laughter]]
Unknown Speaker: [[laughter]] Oh, come on.
Berenice Abbott: [[laughter]] I'd rather not say, I'm sort of amazed at some of it. I don't know, some people made some prints of mine--
00:28:07.000 --> 00:28:17.000
Unknown Speaker: Yeah.
Berenice Abbott: --and I was horrified
Unknown Speaker: What was wrong with them?
Berenice Abbott: Just bad prints.
Unknown Speaker: Oh, yeah.
00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:35.000
Berenice Abbott: Printing is very difficult and if you have printers I should print everything myself but I just can't stand it anymore. It's too hard. It's very hard work.
Unknown Speaker: Yeah, I'm sure it is.
Berenice Abbott: Standing in a dark room and--
Unknown Speaker: Are there methods of printing that you use that aren't in use now?
00:28:35.000 --> 00:29:03.000
Berenice Abbott: No, it's very time-consuming, it's drudgery. Good printing is, you need the patience. Total patience, I used to have it, I don't think I have it now.
Unknown Speaker: Well, yeah, any works, any photographs, any portraits in there that you have good feelings about that you liked very much, any favorite works, in other words?
Berenice Abbott: No.
00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:17.000
Unknown Speaker: [[laughter]] Okay.
Berenice Abbott: [[inaudible]]
Unknown Speaker: What? [[laughter]]
Berenice Abbott: What?
Unknown Speaker: She said she loves you. [[laughter]]
Berenice Abbott: Oh. [[inaudible]]
00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:39.000
Unknown Speaker: Well-- [[clears throat]] --let's go onto a new subject. [[laughter]] Let's talk about Greenwich Village in 1918.
Berenice Abbott: Why--why pick on me?
Unknown Speaker: Because it's the-- [[laughter]] --because it's your exhibition and I'm just being polite.
00:29:39.000 --> 00:30:03.000
Berenice Abbott: Oh, wait a minute, 1918, it was a very lively time, and it was really quite wonderful. I happened to fall in with a group of very interesting people by chance, at admittance at Ohio State.
Unknown Speaker: Weren't these, wasn't this someone involved with the Provincetown Players?
00:30:03.000 --> 00:30:23.000
Berenice Abbott: Yes, they were involved with the Provincetown Playhouse on MacDougal Street. It was a cold winter night, but very nice people. There was--
Unknown Speaker: Who was there? Do you remember?
Berenice Abbott: Well, there was Norma Millay, and Millay was around, a great deal.
00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:36.000
Unknown Speaker: Oh, really?
Berenice Abbott: So was O'Neil. Do you know, Neil was very active around there. And--
Unknown Speaker: You were meeting all these people at the age of 20, something like that?
00:30:36.000 --> 00:30:52.000
Berenice Abbott: And Floyd Dell, Ida Rauh, who's the wife of Max Eastman--
Unknown Speaker: Right, right.
Berenice Abbott: --and Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton. [[laughter and clapping]]
00:30:52.000 --> 00:31:05.000
Berenice Abbott: I don't know.
Unknown Speaker: Quite right, too.
Berenice Abbott: I don't know. There was some very wonderful anarchists there.
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.000
Unknown Speaker: Yes. [[laughter]] Let's talk about them.
Berenice Abbott: No, don't--
Unknown Speaker: Were you one of them?
00:31:09.000 --> 00:31:20.000
Berenice Abbott: I liked them. I liked them very much. One said I was his daughter and I loved that.
Unknown Speaker: Oh really? Who was that?
Berenice Abbott: Hippolyte Havel.
00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:29.000
Lillian Hellman : Oh yes.
Berenice Abbott: Yes. Did you know Hippolyte?
Lillian Hellman : Yes. He had a little restaurant in--
Berenice Abbott: Did he? Well that was earlier, before--
00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:40.000
[[cross talk]]
Lillian Hellman : He was kind of their prize anarchist.
Berenice Abbott: Oh yes.
Lillian Hellman : They showed him off.
Berenice Abbott: Yes. He was very special. [[pause]] Pick somebody else.
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:57.000
Unknown Speaker: Alright. [[laughter]]
Lillian Hellman : Emma Goldman.
Berenice Abbott: Yes, Emma Goldman. I didn't meet her 'til later. She was very harmless.
Lillian Hellman : I'm sure. Much too old.
Berenice Abbott: Yes. [[laughters]]
00:31:57.000 --> 00:32:19.000
Unknown Speaker: Miss Hellman, in your book "An Unfinished Woman", which I'm gonna read from--
Lillian Hellman : I'm sorry, I can't hear.
Unknown Speaker: Okay. Try again. In your book--
Lillian Hellman : I have those things in for my ears from the airplane yesterday. I forgot to take them out, but try again.
00:32:19.000 --> 00:32:45.000
Unknown Speaker: In your book "An Unfinished Woman", page 29, you won't remember, chapter 4, you say: "By the time you grew up, the fight for the emancipation of women, their rights under the law, in the office, in bed, were stale stuff. My generation didn't think much about the place or the problems of women.
00:32:45.000 --> 00:33:10.000
We're not conscious that the designs we saw around us had so recently been formed that we were still part of the formation. The shock of Fitzgerald's flappers was not for us. By the time we were 19 or 20, we'd either slept with a man or pretended that we had. And we were suspicious of the words of love." Well, I would ask you about that, because I'm--
00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:24.350
Lillian Hellman : I don't understand a word I was writing. [[laughter]]
Unknown Speaker: So you're not willing to back it, huh?
Lillian Hellman : You'd have to explain that to me, because I really don't understand--
00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:29.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Would you mind reading it once more if it doesn't bore the audience too much?
00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:32.000
MERYLE SECREST: Okay. You --
00:33:32.000 --> 00:33:34.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I'm sorry about this --
00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:37.000
MERYLE SECREST: No, let me paraphrase it.
00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:43.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh, if that's what you're saying - yes. [[laughs]]
00:33:43.000 --> 00:33:49.000
MERYLE SECREST: You were saying that you weren't involved, that you thought the whole --
00:33:49.000 --> 00:34:01.000
-- that your generation thought the whole business of the emancipation of women had been either won or it was a boring subject or it wasn't anything that necessarily concerned you anymore.
00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:09.000
And I wanted to ask you about that because, if this is so, of course the answer is obvious, but let's go through it.
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:22.000
If it's true that women were emancipated by the time you came to young womanhood, why is it then that my generation of the 1950s had such a hard time?
00:34:22.000 --> 00:34:35.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: You weren't as bright. [[extended laughter with audience]]
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:36.000
No, I - I --
00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:40.000
MERYLE SECREST: I guess that answers that! [[laugh]]
00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:46.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I do, I do really think that you were taken - not you were taken, not women were taken -
00:34:46.000 --> 00:34:52.000
there'd been a very large step back in America, as there's been a very large step back today.
00:34:52.000 --> 00:35:00.000
My generation, I don't really ever think my generation thought of the emancipation of women.
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:10.000
We were, probably the first, we weren't the first, we were the second or third generation that went to college, my mother went to college.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:18.000
It didn't do her very much good, she didn't learn anything, but my generation did begin to want to learn,
00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:26.000
and did begin to doubt certain things that I think should be doubted. Half the time we were --
00:35:26.000 --> 00:35:28.000
MERYLE SECREST: What things?
00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:41.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well, it began -- I began to sit and listen in a class, and often to think to myself, "I don't think he knows what the fuck he's talking about." [[laughter and applause]]
00:35:41.000 --> 00:35:48.000
And I'll go out and read a book for myself or look it up in the encyclopedia. I don't think my mother did that.
00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:56.000
Probably because it wasn't her nice nature to do it. and it was my un-nice nature to do it.
00:35:56.000 --> 00:36:02.000
But I wasn't alone in it. My roommates all did it. My friends all did it.
00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:08.570
We were beginning to feel as if, possibly--
00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:23.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: --we had some place in the world. And I don't, I don't think it came from the generation of Alice James, although it certainly had its stem in the great Boston spinsters--
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah.
00:36:23.000 --> 00:36:28.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: --who deserve credit for all they did, and they did an enormous amount.
00:36:28.000 --> 00:36:36.000
And so did the great English spinsters do a great[[ular]], and non-spinsters did--
MERYLE SECREST: Right, right, and non-spinsters too, yeah.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: --a great deal.
00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:52.000
I-I just think we were... we were possibly better students. We possibly, although this I very much doubt, we- colleges were a little bit better than they are now.
00:36:52.000 --> 00:37:11.000
One asked oneself more questions. I-I was brought up on a theory that - I don't know whether I was brought up on it or taught it to myself - that the purpose of an education was to ask questions.
00:37:11.000 --> 00:37:14.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:25.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And I- I don't think I came out with any answers. I don't think I came out saying "Women must go forward", [[laughter]], because I don't think they did go very far forward.
00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.000
But I do think we were brighter than what happens now.
00:37:29.000 --> 00:37:35.000
What happened -- I-I-I've been teaching off and on for -- [[interruption]] -- 10, 15 years --
MERYLE SECREST: Brighter and better educated, you mean?
00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:37.000
MERYLE SECREST: Brighter and better educated?
00:37:37.000 --> 00:37:38.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I'm sorry?
00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:41.000
MERYLE SECREST: Brighter and better educated?
00:37:41.000 --> 00:37:48.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well, I don't know- I don't know whether 'brighter' comes into it or not. I have often wondered what brightness meant or didn't mean.
00:37:48.000 --> 00:37:56.000
Or whether it was just... a seeking of something. Whether it was your nature to seek or not your nature to seek.
00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:10.000
Whether mind has much to do with that. It- It's just-- well I suppose it does. I suppose education is - really should be directed at - I wonder if I believe what I'm hearing?
00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:15.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I wonder if it's true what the world tells me about itself?
00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:16.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, yes.
00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:20.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I wonder if I believe what a man tells me, or a woman tells me, and my mother tells me, my father tells me?
00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:23.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:30.000
Whether that's education or whether you are sort of born with it. Whatever that means, "born with it".
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:49.000
I think it has begun, uh, begun -- I must make clear here that, uh, I must make quickly here because it's all I've got left in the world. I was not born in 1912, I was born in 1907. [[audience laughter]]
00:38:49.000 --> 00:38:54.000
EMILY HAHN: That was me Lillian!
MERYLE SECREST: That was Emily!
00:38:54.000 --> 00:39:04.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well, no, it wasn't envy. I'm sure it was just a -- it was one of those-- I tried, I tried, I've been trying games on who's who for many many years and I've never found them yet to catch me at it.
00:39:04.000 --> 00:39:11.000
I change my age almost every year, I go backwards and forwards. [[audience laughter]]
00:39:11.000 --> 00:39:17.000
Just to see whether they ever will go read their previous edition, they never have yet.
00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:20.000
MERYLE SECREST: [[laughs]]
00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:29.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: So I, I- I play this game just to be playing it every year. [[MERYLE SECREST laughs]] It was 1907 for a very strange reason-- well, not such a strange reason --
00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:46.000
--the courthouse in New Orleans burned down. And then everybody made a guess and the guess came out 1907. Whether I am 1907 or whether I was born in 1888, I haven't the slightest idea.
00:39:46.000 --> 00:39:48.000
MERYLE SECREST: [[laughter]] [[Clears throat]] Well, Miss Hahn--
00:39:48.000 --> 00:39:52.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: But there were many many ahead of me. Many many ahead of me.
00:39:52.000 --> 00:40:01.000
MERYLE SECREST: Miss Hahn, can you tell us, did you feel that the emancipation of women was old hat by the time you appeared on the scene?
00:40:01.000 --> 00:40:09.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes, I think I did. I heard a lot about the votes for women, but I was too young to pay any attention to it.
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah.
00:40:09.000 --> 00:40:22.000
EMILY HAHN: And I think that all of us who dashed aboard trains to get away from Missouri and Kansas and Iowa and everything, came to New York, or went up the gangplank to go to Europe, were--
00:40:22.000 --> 00:40:31.000
--we were really living on a foundation that - that our parents had put down - let's say our mothers, hardly our fathers.
00:40:31.000 --> 00:40:35.000
MERYLE SECREST: I suppose occasionally our fathers -- we have to --
00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:38.000
EMILY HAHN: I've put a few men in this too --
00:40:38.000 --> 00:40:39.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes --
00:40:39.000 --> 00:40:44.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes, but we already had it, and we ignored it.
00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:49.000
I love to vote, but I'm sure I didn't particularly when I was just old enough to.
00:40:49.000 --> 00:40:54.000
We didn't appreciate it, I think. Don't you think?
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
00:40:54.000 --> 00:40:59.000
EMILY HAHN: We did very little about it and very few women went into government.
00:40:59.000 --> 00:41:01.000
It changed. We got used to it.
00:41:01.000 --> 00:41:10.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes. Yes, I think, I- from my own point of view, I think it comes down -- certainly for myself, I can't speak for my generation --
00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:19.000
I will only say that, when I was a young woman in my 20s, I felt very much that [[emphasised] if I were a woman, then I would want to be a wife and mother,
00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:25.000
and [[emphasised]] if I wanted to do more, then I were not being woman. Now, where I picked that up I don't know.
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:32.000
But I have a hunch that a lot of people felt that way. And a lot of people tried to do it all, as I did.
00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:39.000
And then decided that they couldn't do it all, so they were going to be career women first, and wives and mothers second.
00:41:39.000 --> 00:41:48.000
And then decided that they were women, so whatever they were was what women was, and I think that's the point that I've arrived at,
00:41:48.000 --> 00:42:01.740
and I feel very comfortable with it. But I think it's a uh-- I- I'd like to think that it's each generation makes its own decisions and re-examines the question uh,uh anew.
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:18.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: --really think that anybody's, any woman's decision comes down to "will I be a career woman or will I be a wife and mother?"
00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:23.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah, it did for me.
EMILY HAHN: It did for me.
BERENICE ABBOTT: [[BG]] I don't undertand.
00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:31.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I, I, -- That must have completely missed me. That -- It certainly missed almost all my friends.
00:42:31.000 --> 00:42:35.000
MERYLE SECREST: Really?
BERENICE ABBOTT: You couldn't possibly not consider that.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: It didn't seem any conflict there.
00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:41.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: You couldn't possibly consider it--
MERYLE SECREST: You couldn't possibly consider what?
BERENICE ABBOTT: --not remotely, just doing what you have to do, whatever it is.
00:42:41.000 --> 00:42:43.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well, that's exactly what I mean.
00:42:43.000 --> 00:42:44.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Whatever it is.
00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:46.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: That's exactly what I mean.
00:42:46.000 --> 00:42:50.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: There shouldn't be, there shouldn't be a difference. - [[overlap]] - There shouldn't be a problem.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: That's exactly what I mean. - [[overlap]] - That's exactly what I mean.
00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:52.000
MERYLE SECREST: There shouldn't be, but there is --
BERENICE ABBOTT: If there's a problem, then it's artificial.
00:42:52.000 --> 00:42:56.000
MERYLE SECREST: There shouldn't be, but there is --
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I'm used to it.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Totally artificial.
00:42:56.000 --> 00:42:58.000
EMILY HAHN: [[overlap]] I think it's forced on us--
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, if standing back and looking at oneself was--
00:42:58.000 --> 00:43:05.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I think too much ego, forgive me for saying it.
EMILY HAHN: Well, I read somewh--
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And there's a great many, a very great many -
00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:10.000
- remarkable women have been both wives and mothers and creative artists.
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:22.000
This -- I don't see any great conflict. Unquestionably, the first 4 or 5 years of your life with children must go into the children.
00:43:22.000 --> 00:43:36.000
After that -- well, I was once a member of something called the Radcliffe Institute, which was a very brilliant idea of President Bunting's.
00:43:36.000 --> 00:43:42.000
Didn't go through too well, but it was a very brilliant idea, which was a --
00:43:42.000 --> 00:43:58.000
-- a good deal of money was to be spent by Radcliffe and Harvard setting up an institute for women who had started out as very brilliant students, doctors, chemists, biologists, --
00:43:58.000 --> 00:44:08.000
-- had gotten married, had lost what they had in college because the science itself had so advanced.
00:44:08.000 --> 00:44:14.000
So it was allowing them a year or two of financial support to come back.
00:44:14.000 --> 00:44:22.000
It's astounding how a few did do it, and how many did not do it.
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:32.190
I finally concluded that it didn't have very much to do with marriage and children, if it had been there in the first place--
00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:44.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- it would've come back for those wonderful 2 or 3 free years of very good living and very good support.
00:44:44.000 --> 00:44:59.000
MERLYE SECREST: Yeah. I think, Miss Hellman, the conflict that I'm talking about is a very practical one. You know, I have a very good friend who said that what she really needed was a good wife. This is what a lot of women who are trying to do it all really need.
00:44:59.000 --> 00:45:00.000
EMILY HAHN: I've often said it.
00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:06.000
MERLYE SECREST: Have you? There you are, there's another one. But you've got something you wanted to read on this subject.
00:45:06.000 --> 00:45:11.000
EMILY HAHN: Well, not much. Let's see --
00:45:11.000 --> 00:45:21.000
I remember an argument, well, no, earlier than that -- A life like mother's, anybody's mother, wholesome and safe though it was cracked up to be, ceased to appeal.
00:45:21.000 --> 00:45:25.000
And this might be because we had the vote, and I think not. I don't know. It might've been in the air.
00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:31.000
If it comes to that, was there ever a time in history when the normal young American woman yearned to be wholesome and safe?
00:45:31.000 --> 00:45:38.000
I don't think so. Perhaps it's a question of age, perhaps of training - I only know my own generation.
00:45:38.000 --> 00:45:46.000
For all I know, the average fledgling female wants a home of her own and nothing better. But I don't think so.
00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:56.000
I've met a whole lot of young wives and mothers who wanted something else. I think it's the human condition.
00:45:56.000 --> 00:46:02.000
And we went out and got it. -- That's it. Yeah.
00:46:02.000 --> 00:46:11.000
MERYLE SECREST: Right. Yeah.
BERENICE ABBOTT: It shouldn't be a problem.
EMILY HAHN: I don't think it is a problem.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I don't think you can divide it neatly --
EMILY HAHN: No.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- course you can have --
00:46:11.000 --> 00:46:24.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- you can really have both, it seems to me. Unless the man says you cannot have both, in which case I would think you would pass up the man.
00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:30.000
[[laughter]]
EMILY HAHN: Yes, indeed.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Of course.
00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:40.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Then I don't see the troubles involved in it. Except, as I said before, for the first four or five years of not leaving little children when they shouldn't be left.
00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:51.000
Then you do give up those four or five years, I guess, but in a lifetime that isn't a great deal to give up. And one can return to --
BERENICE ABBOTT: [[inaudible]]
00:46:51.000 --> 00:46:59.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah, except if you have three in a row, it becomes more than four or five years, so-- I did. Too many.
00:46:59.000 --> 00:47:06.390
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Don't you find an increasingly -- I find increasingly, perhaps you don't, that --
00:47:08.000 --> 00:47:20.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- women who are now in their late 30s and 40s are so deeply - it seems to me - unhappier than we were, chiefly because they do find this such a problem.
00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:25.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Right.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: It's such a --
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- built-up problem to me.
BERENICE ABBOTT: It's crazy!
00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:34.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Should I stay home? Should I take my child to school? Should I--? Do I owe my child a house in the country?
00:47:34.000 --> 00:47:43.000
I would like a nurse, but I can't afford a nurse, therefore I can't do the writing I wanted to.
00:47:43.000 --> 00:48:01.000
It seems to-- I-I-I live part of the year on the coast and very often go up to San Francisco. And I was highly-- I wasn't amused for very long at a San Francisco, very upper-class dinner party about two years ago --
00:48:01.000 --> 00:48:21.000
-- because I got it exactly from five young women, five very rich young women, who came and sat next to me, in what I guess was their version of adoration - [[audience laughter]] - and my, and my version of boredom - [[audience laughter]] --
00:48:21.000 --> 00:48:38.000
-- for a long, each individual story of how they get started out either to be artists or writers or some form of creation, creators, and had married, had children, and had to give it up.
00:48:38.000 --> 00:49:03.000
When the fifth one came, who I thought was Japanese - it turned out she was Jewish, but I thought [[audience laughter]] she was just that, I don't see very well: she was Japanese to my eyes. I said, meaning really no harm, 'Why don't you go back to Japan and -- ?' [[long audience laughter]]
00:49:03.000 --> 00:49:12.000
I-I really said it quite innocently, I swear I did. She was very -- She said, 'I don't know what you mean.' [[audience laughter]]
00:49:12.000 --> 00:49:28.000
I-I-I said, 'Well you seem so upset at the child - children you've had and the life you've had, I would think you'd go back to your own country - [[audience laughter]] - and start to create what you'd gave up. What did you give up, incidentally?'
00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:42.000
She said, 'I was a very good artist, I think.' And then she did the most astounding thing I've ever known - and one of the most cruel I've ever known anybody to do - she reached across a woman to touch the leg of a man.
00:49:42.000 --> 00:50:07.000
And she said to him, 'Max,' who I guess was her husband, 'I-I have just told Miss Hellman that I gave up my career to marry you. And she doesn't seem very sympathetic.' And Max said, 'Well, good for Miss Hellman!' [[laughter]]
00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:17.000
When I really - what I was really dying to ask was, 'Were you any good? Who gave you the idea you were any good? Just you?'
00:50:17.000 --> 00:50:31.300
The man was obviously a very rich man, I later was to find out. She was having a perfectly [[emphasised]] lovely life in San Francisco, with a great mansion to live in, but that isn't really what anybody is talking about, is it?
00:50:33.000 --> 00:50:38.000
LILLIAN HELLEMAN: -- of being put down by men, of being, giving up something.
00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:48.000
EMILY HAHN: Well, the most curious thing is, why they should want to put you down. I don't understand that.
LILLIAN HELLEMAN: I don't either! I don't either!
00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:53.000
MERYLE SECREST: You must have some clues by now!
LILLIAN HELLEMAN: That's really what I was saying, I think.
00:50:53.000 --> 00:51:03.000
MERYLE SECREST: Emily, last night we were talking about first writings, and you were saying that you really started to write at a very young age, but you never thought anything much about it.
00:51:03.000 --> 00:51:13.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes, lots of kids do scribble a lot - I did. But I never thought I was going to be a Writer, capital 'W'. Sometimes I still don't believe it!
00:51:13.000 --> 00:51:21.000
But the first line I ever wrote, that I can remember, was a theme on birds. I don't know how old I was, but not very.
00:51:21.000 --> 00:51:33.000
And the line was, 'The first bird would hardly have seemed so to an ignorant spectator.' [[laughter]]
00:51:33.000 --> 00:51:41.000
Anyway I went on, from there, to writing somewhat scientific treatises.
00:51:41.000 --> 00:51:46.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, that was your main interest at the time, was it?
EMILY HAHN: Yes.
MERYLE SECREST: Where did that come from, exactly?
00:51:46.000 --> 00:51:50.000
EMILY HAHN: It was in the air in America, don't you think?
MERYLE SECREST: I don't know.
00:51:50.000 --> 00:52:03.000
EMILY HAHN: I liked geology. Probably because that first bird and the fossils.
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, yes --
EMILY HAHN: And that went on to mining engineering.
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah, we were talking about that last night and you said you graduated --
00:52:03.000 --> 00:52:06.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes.
MERYLE SECREST: -- with some opposition, considerable opposition.
00:52:06.000 --> 00:52:08.000
EMILY HAHN: A lot of opposition. They threw rotten eggs at me!
00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:11.000
MERYLE SECREST: Oh! [[laughter]] Who threw rotten eggs?
00:52:11.000 --> 00:52:15.000
EMILY HAHN: The lawyer undergraduates. There was a --
MERYLE SECREST: What?!
00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:28.000
EMILY HAHN: -- a very old, traditional quarrel between the engineers and the lawyers, don't ask me why, how do these things grow up? And anyway: A woman! A woman.
00:52:28.000 --> 00:52:30.000
MERYLE SECREST: Were you the first to graduate?
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:38.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes. They always say the same thing. Even if you're trying to get a job in engineering, they say, 'What are you going to use for a bathroom?'
MERYLE SECREST: Oh, I see!
00:52:38.000 --> 00:52:41.000
EMILY HAHN: Or, 'How can we talk normally in front of you?'
00:52:41.000 --> 00:52:46.000
MERYLE SECREST: 'Normally'?
EMILY HAHN: Yeah. Bad language. Which would have killed me, wouldn't it?
00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:48.000
MERYLE SECREST: [[laughter]] It certainly would, yeah.
00:52:48.000 --> 00:52:55.000
EMILY HAHN: They always say the same things, I'm amused when I come upon it now. But, there are lots of women engineers now.
00:52:55.000 --> 00:53:00.000
It takes a war, when they need the women.
MERYLE SECREST: It takes a generation, it takes time.
00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:10.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes.
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah. I remember when I was in Bristol, England - Barbara mentioned it - what she didn't know was that I went back to England.
00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:19.000
I'd emigrated when I was 18, I went back when I was 20. I looked for a job and I couldn't find one and I was starving, more or less.
00:53:19.000 --> 00:53:30.000
And I went to the editor of the Bristol Evening World, who was a very nice man. And I said I'm desperate for a job, you must give me something to do, --
00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:39.000
-- you know, I'm down to my last two pounds, which I was. And he said, Well, he said, 'Have you had any experience?' So I told him I had 2 years on a Canadian paper.
00:53:39.000 --> 00:53:45.000
And he said, 'Well that doesn't help because, after all you're now in England and that won't do any good to us --
00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:53.000
-- and how can I use you? What good are you? I mean I can't send you too far. I can't send you to Police Court.'
00:53:53.000 --> 00:54:02.000
And of course I was 20 and I would have said, 'I'm just as good as anybody else. But I, of course, being 20, and young and anxious to eat, --
00:54:02.000 --> 00:54:08.000
-- I sort of mumbled that I thought there were some things I could do at least as well as a man.
00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:17.000
So he said, 'Alright,' he said, 'I'll try you out. Here's --,' he pointed out this county south of my home town of Bath.
00:54:17.000 --> 00:54:27.000
And he pointed it out to me and he said, 'Go down into this area, it's a 40 mile radius or something like that. And come back with some stories and we'll pay you 3 ha'pence a line.'
00:54:27.000 --> 00:54:34.000
Well Emily would probably know a bit about that. 1 penny, ha'penny, which probably was about 3 cents a line.
00:54:34.000 --> 00:54:48.000
So you see there was a lot of incentive to getting things like flower shows and graduations and things like that because if you just send in an ordinary story, they could cut it from the bottom, --
00:54:48.000 --> 00:55:00.000
-- which is what journalists always do and you'd end up with 2 paragraphs and 10 shillings and 6 pence or something, but if you had, uh, flower show results or vegetable prize results or something, --
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:09.000
-- then they had to put them all in and you really could get a lot of money. And the biggest story I ever got, I was paid a pound for, which was 2 dollars.
00:55:09.000 --> 00:55:16.000
So, I said, 'Right,' you know, I'm going off and I'm going to do this, and I went, then I realized I had no transportation. So I went on a bicycle.
00:55:16.000 --> 00:55:27.000
And after about 2 months of covering this little area, which was a coal mining district, on a bicycle, and this very hilly terrain, --
00:55:27.000 --> 00:55:41.000
-- I thought, 'My gosh, you know, I mean, I'm not good enough to be hired [[laughs]] because I don't have what a boy does, but here I am biking up and down this and that's something, isn't it?'
00:55:41.000 --> 00:55:51.000
So I went to the editor of the opposition paper and asked for a job and he said 'What are you good at?' And I said, 'Riding a bicycle'. [[laughs]]
00:55:51.000 --> 00:55:58.000
That's a long story with a short moral, which is that things have changed a lot since then.
00:55:58.000 --> 00:56:11.000
EMILY HAHN: Things have changed a lot. I was teaching at Yale with my husband a few years ago and I got there the time, the first year, '69, they were letting women in,
00:56:11.000 --> 00:56:25.000
-- and there was a good deal of agitation among the older members of the corporation, about bathrooms -- this seems to obsess gentlemen. [[audience laughter]] And our Dean said, 'Well, they can use the same bathroom. Why not?'
00:56:25.000 --> 00:56:34.000
He said, 'Good Lord. They can't do that!' He said, 'They don't care. I assure you, they don't care.'
00:56:34.000 --> 00:56:45.000
'It's the parents who care.' And that's they way it works now. There are no sex in the bathrooms. I don't mean that. I mean, that -- [[audience laughter]]
00:56:45.000 --> 00:56:47.000
Let's say there's no gender.
00:56:47.000 --> 00:56:50.630
MERYLE SECREST: Freudian slip.
00:56:53.000 --> 00:57:04.000
MERYLE SECREST: Miss Hellman, you were telling a really, really delightful story before we - just as we were waiting here, about the first time you were an actress.
00:57:04.000 --> 00:57:10.000
Would you tell the audience about it? It's a delightful story. The first and last time you went on the stage.
00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:21.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh, I wish I thought it was that good a story, but I'd be delighted to tell you why I never went on the stage, thank God.
MERYLE SECREST: Right!
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And why you were all spared so much.
00:57:21.000 --> 00:57:42.000
I was in high school and they resurrected a very old English play called "Mrs. Gorringe's Necklace" by a playwright I'd - I who remember nothing, remember his name - his name was Hubert Henry Davies. And the reason I remember is that I re-read it about a year ago.
00:57:42.000 --> 00:58:03.000
I was Mrs. Gorringe, who was a villainess. And I had a dress made by my aunt, of some green velveteen curtains that we no longer wished to have, evidently. Very tightly fitted on this child of thirteen.
00:58:03.000 --> 00:58:18.000
And I was supposed to come on stage and then to get off while they discussed whether I had stolen the necklace or hadn't stolen the necklace - I was the villainess of the play, in any case --
00:58:18.000 --> 00:58:31.000
-- and I went to the door to let myself out and of course, this very bad scenery, the door wouldn't open. So I didn't know what to do with myself, I decided just go back and sit down, what was the difference? [[audience laughter]]
00:58:31.000 --> 00:58:44.000
So I went back and sat down and everybody had a fit, they'd look at me and motion. [[audience laughter]] And I would suggest they go try the door and once in-- [[audience laughter]]
00:58:44.000 --> 00:59:02.000
--once in a while I'd get up and try it and it would still be [[audience laughter]] - and I'd come on back and sit down and they'd go on denouncing me whether I'd stolen or not -- [[audience laughter]] -- and I never wanted to go on the stage again, and you've all been spared a great deal. [[audience laughter]]
00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:10.000
MERYLE SECREST: Did anybody ever do that during a performance of one of your own plays, Miss Hellman?
00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:15.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Uh, no. There have been some pretty comic incidents, but--
00:59:15.000 --> 00:59:17.990
MERYLE SECREST: Can you remember any of them?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Once in--
00:59:20.000 --> 00:59:34.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Once in another part of the forest, we had a very fine British actor called Percy Waram and -- we had a very large and very expensive tree on the stage.
00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:45.000
And of course you can't have a tree on the stage, you have to have a stump and then the rest of the tree is flown down and sat on the stump.
00:59:45.000 --> 01:00:00.000
And he had a whole, very important scene, to play leaning against the tree, and it was a bench round the tree where he sat, while he made up his mind, or something very important, plot point.
01:00:00.000 --> 01:00:10.000
And I was standing in the back of the theater and I suddenly saw him look around and there was no tree. [[laughter]]
01:00:10.000 --> 01:00:24.000
So I flew backstage and said, 'Where's Percy's tree?' at the top of my lungs. And the man up in the -- who was lowering it, said, 'Lillian, go home!' [[laughter]]
01:00:24.000 --> 01:00:31.000
'The tree can't come down in time and you and Percy Waram will both be killed. Get off the stage!' [[laughter]]
01:00:31.000 --> 01:00:36.000
That's my only other memory of it. [[laughter]]
01:00:36.000 --> 01:00:47.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Percy didn't get home, but I went home, I can tell you, as fast as I could go. This thing must have weighed three thousand pounds coming down.
MERYLE SECREST: [[gasp]] That's incredible.
01:00:47.000 --> 01:00:50.000
[[whispering between participants]]
01:00:50.000 --> 01:00:55.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: There are always accidents in the theatre, the theatre is full of accidents.
01:00:55.000 --> 01:01:06.000
MERYLE SECREST: Let's talk about the 20s. Miss Abbott, can you remember the first photograph you ever took?
01:01:06.000 --> 01:01:08.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I think so.
01:01:08.000 --> 01:01:13.000
MERYLE SECREST: What was it?
BERENICE ABBOTT: oh, let's don't talk about it.
MERYLE SECREST: Why not? [[laughter]]
01:01:13.000 --> 01:01:17.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: It was taken in Amsterdam with a Brownie.
01:01:17.000 --> 01:01:23.000
MERYLE SECREST: Really? [[pause]] You were six at the time, or --? [[laughs]]
01:01:23.000 --> 01:01:25.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: No, no, no.
01:01:25.000 --> 01:01:31.000
MERYLE SECREST: What? No, I'm talking about professionally. You know, the first--
01:01:31.000 --> 01:01:36.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: The Brownie was professional! [[Meryle Secrest laughs]] I think it's wonderful you took it with a Brownie.
01:01:36.000 --> 01:01:47.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Took it with a Brownie! It's a very good camera. Sort of primitive, but -- a good camera should be made very much like a Brownie, but we don't have them.
01:01:47.000 --> 01:01:56.000
MERYLE SECREST: And, for those of us who aren't mechanically minded, what, how is a Brownie, what is it about a Brownie that you like so much?
01:01:56.000 --> 01:01:59.050
BERENICE ABBOTT: Well it's fairly simple but not simple enough.
01:02:02.000 --> 01:02:05.000
MERYLE SECREST: It's uh --
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Hear, hear!
01:02:05.000 --> 01:02:10.000
MERYLE SECREST: Do you still use Brownies, Miss Abbott?
BERENICE ABBOTT: What? It's apparently...? What?
01:02:10.000 --> 01:02:13.000
MERYLE SECREST: Do you still use it?
BERENICE ABBOTT: No.
01:02:13.000 --> 01:02:16.000
MERYLE SECREST: What do you use now? What do you like?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Nothing.
01:02:16.000 --> 01:02:21.000
MERYLE SECREST: You're not photographing?
BERENICE ABBOTT: No.
01:02:21.000 --> 01:02:25.000
MERYLE SECREST: What were you using?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Everything. [[laughter]]
01:02:25.000 --> 01:02:30.000
MERYLE SECREST: I give up! [[laughter]]
01:02:30.000 --> 01:02:40.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: You need all kinds. You need different, for different types of subject, you need different cameras. You can't do anything with the wrong camera.
01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:47.000
Most people try, they don't seem to know it. They do everything today with a little bitty camera.
01:02:47.000 --> 01:02:49.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah, I see what you mean.
01:02:49.000 --> 01:02:59.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: It's too easy, to carry around. It's easy. I wish it were easy, I wish it were easy.
01:02:59.000 --> 01:03:07.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: You taught yourself photography, of course.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes. Well, I learned the darkroom work with Man Ray.
01:03:07.000 --> 01:03:13.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Did you work with Man Ray?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Three years.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Really?
BERENICE ABBOTT: And I started out with him.
01:03:13.000 --> 01:03:27.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I didn't know that.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes, I started out with him and I ended up - you know, doing - I was the Girl Friday. I did everything after he took the picture. So I developed it and printed it and spotted --
01:03:27.000 --> 01:03:31.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: What wonderful training that must have been!
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes, I did everything.
01:03:31.000 --> 01:03:41.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Is he as great a photographer as most people think, to you?
BERENICE ABBOTT: That's an embarrassing question! [[laughter]]
01:03:41.000 --> 01:03:51.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well you don't have to answer that, I take it back. [[laughter]]
BERENICE ABBOTT: I think he took some marvelous portraits of men.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yeah.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Some very fine portraits of men.
01:03:51.000 --> 01:03:53.000
MERYLE SECREST: Who can you think of?
01:03:53.000 --> 01:04:16.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Oh I can't remember names-- of course, Marcel Duchamp, Stella, they were very fine. And others - well, Sinclair Lewis, especially a European Musician was a superb portrait. And, well he took some very wonderful portraits, no doubt. But I think --
01:04:16.000 --> 01:04:22.000
MERYLE SECREST: You weren't with him all that long, were you, about a couple of years, was it?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Three years.
MERYLE SECREST: Oh, three years. Yeah.
01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:29.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: The women were more - just beautiful objects, as a whole --
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah. They weren't people, huh?
01:04:29.000 --> 01:04:34.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I think they were - sort of beautiful still lifes.
01:04:34.000 --> 01:04:36.000
EMILY HAHN: Yes, I remember his still lifes.
01:04:36.000 --> 01:04:44.000
MERYLE SECREST: You obviously parted company with him on that way of looking at things.
01:04:44.000 --> 01:04:54.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: No, it just happened. I was very fond of Man Ray. He was a wonderful person. He was a very good friend. We were good friends before I worked for him.
01:04:54.000 --> 01:04:58.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah, you met in Greenwich Village, did you?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes.
01:04:58.000 --> 01:05:06.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Do I remember a picture or am I dreaming that you took of E.E. Cummings?
BERENICE ABBOTT: No.
01:05:06.000 --> 01:05:11.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: You did not?
BERENICE ABBOTT: No. E.E.Cummings? No.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Funny, I--
01:05:11.000 --> 01:05:23.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Mine were mostly in Paris, my portraits. And I found making portraits in America so different, that I lost interest in it--
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Of course, he was in Paris for a long time--
01:05:23.000 --> 01:05:25.000
MERYLE SECREST: Well what was different about it?
01:05:25.000 --> 01:05:43.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I lost interest. Well it was partly technical. Unless you have plenty of light or skylight. It's pretty difficult. You need light to take portraits but you don't want difficult, shiny lamps and - all that sort of thing.
01:05:43.000 --> 01:05:46.000
MERYLE SECREST: You're talking about, natural light, of course.
01:05:46.000 --> 01:05:50.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: So I didn't have that. In New York, I had to do everything with artificial light, it made it very unpleasant.
01:05:50.000 --> 01:05:51.000
Meryle Secrest: Oh I see.
01:05:51.000 --> 01:05:57.000
Berenice Abbott: And people never had the time and they never wanted to pay for pictures.
01:05:57.000 --> 01:06:07.000
They seemed to think that you could go to the department store and get one for a dollar. And it was very hard to convince them that isn't true.
01:06:07.000 --> 01:06:11.000
MERYLE SECREST: How much time did you like to take?
01:06:11.000 --> 01:06:20.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I never went by the time. It sometimes takes longer but you don't want to be hurried. And I never took more than one a day, I didn't want to.
01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:26.000
EMILY HAHN: Not quite passport photo place, no!
BERENICE ABBOTT: No, no.
01:06:26.000 --> 01:06:30.000
{OVERLAP}
EMILY HAHN: Did you know a woman named -- Doris Ulmann?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: If I asked you, if I asked you -- who do you think is the --
01:06:30.000 --> 01:06:41.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- that's a silly question, 'best' doesn't mean anything, but who you think is the most interesting of modern photographers?
01:06:41.000 --> 01:06:44.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I couldn't possibly say.
01:06:44.000 --> 01:06:47.000
I really couldn't.
01:06:47.000 --> 01:07:04.000
A great deal of photography right now - I don't even know what's going on. There are no ways of - there are no publications. There are a few books, but, there are no good magazines. It's all for the amateur.
01:07:04.000 --> 01:07:08.000
And the same old stuff, over every three years.
01:07:08.000 --> 01:07:15.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And it's all fashion stuff.
BERENICE ABBOTT: -- and it's all technical and glamour stuff. It's idiotic stuff.
01:07:15.000 --> 01:07:19.000
I don't know - I don't know what they're doing.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes.
01:07:19.000 --> 01:07:29.000
MERYLE SECREST: Hmm - you were saying --
BERENICE ABBOTT: It isn't, certainly isn't - it isn't the kind of material usually that's meant for this fabulous medium.
01:07:29.000 --> 01:07:35.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Medium of this century. It has tremendous potential, and it isn't being made use of.
01:07:35.000 --> 01:07:37.000
MERYLE SECREST: How would you like to see it used?
01:07:37.000 --> 01:07:39.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Don't ask me that.
01:07:39.000 --> 01:07:47.000
The present day - the now - that's all you can photograph. What's happening today. What's vital and important today.
01:07:47.000 --> 01:07:53.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, it's a sort of sinful, because, almost nothing of importance is being photographed.
01:07:53.000 --> 01:08:00.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I know and there are tremendous things going on. Of course, New York is quite mad.
01:08:00.000 --> 01:08:04.000
MERYLE SECREST: Well somebody could be doing with New York what you were doing in the 30s, couldn't they?
01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:05.000
Berenice Abbott: Of course
01:08:05.000 --> 01:08:15.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Think what you could do with Reagan's face, for one. [[laughter and clapping]]
01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:17.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I could do a beaut.
01:08:17.000 --> 01:08:19.000
MERYLE SECREST: She could do a beaut, she said.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I bet you could.
01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:24.000
[[cross talk]] Supersized --
EMILY HAHN: I think today's talent goes into movies, don't you?
01:08:24.000 --> 01:08:31.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: What?
EMILY HAHN: A lot of today's photographic talent goes into moving pictures and television.
BERENICE ABBOTT: TV, which incidentally --
01:08:31.000 --> 01:08:44.000
EMILY HAHN: That's where it all is.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes. I think something about the 20s that, one reason why -- there was a pretty nice period there for a while, was that we didn't know television.
01:08:44.000 --> 01:08:53.000
It didn't exist. And if you can imagine what this meant. Not to have a television in every place. People gathered around looking at it.
01:08:53.000 --> 01:09:01.000
It was non-existent. There also -- there were, we never listen to radios.
01:09:01.000 --> 01:09:11.000
People worked, and did their thing, and they went out to the cafe.
EMILY HAHN: You can't - yes - [[garbled]]
BERENICE ABBOTT: They had a cafe life which is very healthy and wonderful.
01:09:11.000 --> 01:09:19.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: You know, for the first time I disagree with you. I think some motion picture photography is very great.
01:09:19.000 --> 01:09:32.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Today?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Today, yes, I think some of it is, I don't think television is ever very good with -- I think some motion picture photography is wonderful.
01:09:32.000 --> 01:09:49.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I wish I knew where it was. Of course where I live out in Maine there are no movies what ever - so I never see any. And this, I'm sure I lose something because -- but the last time, I never see them, almost never. I haven't seen them for 10 years.
01:09:49.000 --> 01:09:54.000
If they were around, if I thought a good movie came around, I'd probably go see it.
01:09:54.000 --> 01:10:02.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I think you'd want to go see - uh, Bergman uses - I never can remember his name. Probably the greatest of all --
01:10:02.000 --> 01:10:05.000
MERYLE SECREST: Ingmar. Ingmar Bergman.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: What's his name?
01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:09.000
MERYLE SECREST: Ingmar.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Ingmar?
MERYLE SECREST: Ingmar.
01:10:09.000 --> 01:10:16.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh I remember Bergman's name - I meant the photographer's name.
MERYLE SECREST: Oh the photographer's name - sorry.
01:10:16.000 --> 01:10:24.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I never can remember his name - he's a very great photographer. Buñuel uses a great photographer, but I suspect that Buñuel himself is a great photographer.
01:10:24.000 --> 01:10:28.000
MERYLE SECREST: What was that, sorry?
FROM AUDIENCE: The cinematographer's name is Sven Nykvist.
01:10:28.000 --> 01:10:37.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: That's right - Sven Nykvist - exactly - thank you. He's a very great photographer, I think.
01:10:37.000 --> 01:10:42.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Well I'd probably go if it - when we're around but --
01:10:42.000 --> 01:10:57.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah, Miss Hellman, you've sort of mentioned that you were in Paris in 'An Unfinished Woman', but you don't say very much about it.
01:10:57.000 --> 01:11:03.000
When did you go there? I'm not clear about that, for the first time, to Paris?
01:11:03.000 --> 01:11:08.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: When, what?
MERYLE SECREST: When did you go to Paris for the first time? I'm not clear on that.
01:11:08.000 --> 01:11:12.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I went on my honeymoon which was about 6 or 8 months after we were married,-
01:11:12.000 --> 01:11:29.000
- and my husband worked on a -- I couldn't get a job, but he got a job on a magazine that maybe Miss Abbot remembers - I see no reason why she should - it was quite bad, called the 'Paris Comet'.
01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:33.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Oh yes.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Do you remember this?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes.
MERYLE SECREST: Paris Comet.
01:11:33.000 --> 01:11:40.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Then I - then, out of the kindness of his heart, he began to publish some short stories I wrote.
01:11:40.000 --> 01:11:46.000
I got 22 dollars for one, and pretty proud I was, too.
01:11:46.000 --> 01:11:51.000
MERYLE SECREST: And was it then that you met F. Scott Fitzgerald?
01:11:51.000 --> 01:12:07.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Uh, no. I had met F. Scott Fitzgerald a few years before when I had gone to Paris with my two college roommates. And Scott Fitzgerald had taken a great fancy to one. Not to the rest of us, God knows why.
01:12:07.000 --> 01:12:20.000
And I remember my days in the Tess Hotel were spent persuading her to sleep with him so that we could all find out what he was like. [[laughter]]
01:12:20.000 --> 01:12:28.000
MERYLE SECREST: Did she?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: But the stubborn bastard wouldn't go along. [[laughter]]
01:12:28.000 --> 01:12:40.000
MERYLE SECREST: So we'll never know.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I will never know, no. No, I will certainly never know. I was never to see him again until the ride I wrote about.
01:12:40.000 --> 01:12:49.000
MERYLE SECREST: Right, the ride you wrote about. You say he had changed a great deal, but you don't really tell us what change you found in him.
01:12:49.000 --> 01:13:08.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well he had become from, I suppose in those days when I first met him he probably was 30 - 32. And by the time I saw him in Hollywood again, which was, he probably was in his deep 40s, middle 40s anyway.
01:13:08.000 --> 01:13:16.000
And a very changed man. I know he changed in aged, but changed in general. Emily probably remembers him then, don't you Emily?
01:13:16.000 --> 01:13:20.000
MERYLE SECREST: Did you know him then?
EMILY HAHN: Yes. I didn't know him well, but I met him.
01:13:20.000 --> 01:13:26.880
MERYLE SECREST: You met him in Hollywood?
EMILY HAHN: Yes, I was disappointed because it was in that later phase. He wasn't as pretty as he had been --
01:13:29.000 --> 01:13:35.000
MERLYE SECREST: He was - he had been drinking for a long time, at that point --
EMILY HAHN: Yes -- so many people did, there.
01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:49.000
MERLYE SECREST: Yeah, but he was --
LILLIAN HELLMAN: He was so insanely shaky and nervous and miserable - and frightened, really frightened. All the stuffing was out of him. It was a terrible thing to see, just awful.
01:13:49.000 --> 01:14:05.000
Because he had been - beyond - you know, I had no feelings for the glamour of his life, as a matter of fact, the glamour of both of them seemed to be rather sickening. But I certainly did for the books and --
01:14:05.000 --> 01:14:15.000
MERLYE SECREST: You were very nice to him, I thought.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well, I hope I was. 'Cause I certainly admired him - it wasn't any niceness, it was just admiration for --
01:14:15.000 --> 01:14:25.000
-- a very remarkable writer. And now --
EMILY HAHN: He was defeated.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- when I've read it - I find him a broken man, a totally broken man.
01:14:25.000 --> 01:14:36.000
MERLYE SECREST: What about Zelda, was she, is she well-described in the biography of her that came out a few years ago, I mean, --
01:14:36.000 --> 01:14:51.000
-- how did you react to her ?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I never met her in my life --
MERLYE SECREST: Oh ! [[TO EMILY:]] Did you never ? --
EMILY HAHN: No, she wasn't with him!
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- I never saw her in Paris and I never met her, any other place. I know her daughter slightly, but I don't know her. She - I never saw her.
01:14:51.000 --> 01:15:00.000
I knew people who knew them very well - such as the Murphys who sort of raised the Fitzgeralds, but - uh, -
01:15:00.000 --> 01:15:10.000
I never knew them except for a story so remarkable I've always slightly doubted it.
01:15:10.000 --> 01:15:20.000
MERLYE SECREST: What's that?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Which is that Gerald Murphy once told me - well, of course raised Fitzgerald practically, and was very close to Hemingway --
01:15:20.000 --> 01:15:39.000
-- he took Hemingway over to see the Fitzgeralds one weekend afternoon in Paris. And Zelda was out in the garden, and she came in and poured them each a drink, and then went out back in the garden again.
01:15:39.000 --> 01:15:47.000
And Hemingway had never seen her before, and he said to Fitzgerald, 'My God, you're married to a crazy woman.'
01:15:47.000 --> 01:15:53.000
And Murphy said --
MERLYE SECREST: [[quiet reaction]] Really?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- that he rose from his chair and said,
01:15:53.000 --> 01:16:03.070
'I'm going home now', unable to bear the pain in Fitzgerald's face, and
MERLYE SECREST: [[gasp]]
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- and the fact that Hemingway had guessed so accurately.
01:16:05.000 --> 01:16:16.000
MERYLE SECREST: It's an amazing story.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Whatever was the matter with Hemingway - and almost everything was - he had the most remarkable instincts, immediate instincts for people I ever saw in my life.
01:16:16.000 --> 01:16:19.000
MERYLE SECREST: You know, you describe some devastating --
01:16:19.000 --> 01:16:28.000
-- times that you had with Hemingway, when he was at his worst.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well, I didn't happen to like Hemingway very much, but --
Berenice Abbott: I never liked him.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: [[TO BERENICE ABBOTT:]] Did you like him?
Berenice Abbott: No, no I don't like him.
01:16:28.000 --> 01:16:38.000
MERYLE SECREST: Did he have a saving grace? Hemingway? Apart from his ability to - ?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh yes, [[garbled]] a very grace, a first grace, he was an enormously talented man - not to save anybody in my mind.
01:16:38.000 --> 01:16:46.000
And he was a man of enormous power, enormous power.
MERYLE SECREST: You mean, physical?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And when he walked in a room --
01:16:46.000 --> 01:16:53.000
EMILY HAHN: I have some experience with him --
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- it's no great gift, but it's something to be commented on - he took over the room.
01:16:53.000 --> 01:16:59.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yeah. What- What experience did you have Emily?
EMILY HAHN: One, I'm not going to talk about. And the other, was --
01:16:59.000 --> 01:17:05.000
MERYLE SECREST: [[Laughs]] Oh, that's not fair !
EMILY HAHN: Oh no, really [[laughs]].. The other was, uh --
01:17:05.000 --> 01:17:11.000
-- in Hong Kong, he came out there with Marty Gellhorn-- who was his third wife, I think?
MERYLE SECREST: Yes.
01:17:11.000 --> 01:17:18.000
EMILY HAHN: And she went off to Canton --
MERYLE SECREST: When was this?
EMILY HAHN: Just before Pearl Harbor.
01:17:18.000 --> 01:17:25.000
MERYLE SECREST: And you were doing what then, in Hong Kong?
EMILY HAHN: Teaching, and having a baby. And that's the point.
01:17:25.000 --> 01:17:31.000
She went of to Canton to do a story for Collier's, I think.
01:17:31.000 --> 01:17:44.000
And he was sitting out in front of the Hong Kong Hotel, a sort of a café place, downstairs, when I was coming by - waddling by - [[background laughter by MERYLE SECREST]] and he asked me to come in and have a drink - they'd been over to our house the night before.
01:17:44.000 --> 01:17:51.000
And he invented, I think, the Bloody Mary - at least he introduced it to the Far East, which is quite something, he should put in on his tombstone!
01:17:51.000 --> 01:17:53.000
[[MERYLE SECREST and the audience laugh]]
01:17:53.000 --> 01:18:02.000
We were having Bloody Marys and he said, 'What's Charles going to do about this baby of yours? They'll kick him out of the army, won't they?'
01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:08.000
I said, 'No they won't - nobody else speaks Japanese, we think we're all right, [[background laughter by MERYLE SECREST]] for that long.'
01:18:08.000 --> 01:18:10.530
He said, 'You can say it's mine.'
01:18:13.000 --> 01:18:20.000
EMILY HAHN: He was quite serious. And, uh, I said, 'Thanks, I don't think Charles would like that.'
01:18:20.000 --> 01:18:25.000
[[chuckling]] I didn't think Marty would either.
01:18:25.000 --> 01:18:28.000
But that is Hemingway, I think. Don't you think, Lillian?
01:18:28.000 --> 01:18:32.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, I do.
EMILY HAHN: But, yes.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, I do think it was.
EMILY HAHN: Yeah.
01:18:32.000 --> 01:18:36.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Um, I uh, I don't see why you think he was so powerful.
01:18:36.000 --> 01:18:48.000
I think his, his looks was, uh, tremendous and in his favor - because of this big, sort of beautiful --
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, he was a very very handsome man.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Very handsome.
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, he's -- [[garbled]] -- gorgeous! Yeah.
01:18:48.000 --> 01:18:56.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: If he'd go into an editor's office or anyplace, you'd be impressed with the appearance, with the - with the, uh, this apparition.
01:18:56.000 --> 01:19:09.000
But he wasn't - he really wasn't a very strong man. He wanted to be, but he wasn't.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: No, I - there I agree with you. I don't think he was a very strong man - I meant something else by power --
01:19:09.000 --> 01:19:18.000
I several times saw him come into a party, including the night I wrote about with Fitzgerald.
01:19:18.000 --> 01:19:37.000
And I several times saw him come into a restaurant - and within 5 minutes he had sort of taken over everybody and was giving orders. That's what I meant by power. I didn't mean anything, essentially 'strong', 'cause I agree with you, he wasn't, strong.
01:19:37.000 --> 01:19:47.000
MERYLE SECREST: You mean, dominating?
BERENICE ABBOTT: He was beautiful
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, he was a dominating man. And he was wonderful looking. He was one of the handsomest man I ever saw.
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes, very, terribly handsome.
EMILY HAHN: Good loud voice?
01:19:47.000 --> 01:20:01.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes. Um, well, we have two writers here. Dare I ask, were either you, Miss Hahn, or you, Miss Hellman, admirers of Mr. Hemingway's prose style?
01:20:01.000 --> 01:20:08.000
EMILY HAHN: Oh, yes, when I was in my teens I thought he was terrific. Now I don't know. What do you think, Lillian?
01:20:08.000 --> 01:20:20.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Uhh, well, I - this is - I hope you'll forgive the, at least semi-immodesty of this --
01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:31.000
When I first got out of college I went to work for a publishing house called Boni & Liveright, which was, -- [[cross talk]] of course, --
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, you talk about that in your book.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: -- the greatest publishing house in America at the time.
01:20:31.000 --> 01:20:37.000
And all the junk manuscripts that came in they didn't want to read, they'd pass on to me.
01:20:37.000 --> 01:20:51.000
I was combination stair sweeper, office straightener, somebody to get drunk with or somebody to go to the station and get Sherwood Anderson off a train --
01:20:51.000 --> 01:21:01.000
I did a little bit of everything. I was given all the so-called 'ignored manuscripts' to read. And one night I was given an 'ignored manuscript' to read - and I took it home, --
01:21:01.000 --> 01:21:11.000
-- and it was called 'In Our Time'. And about three o'clock in the morning when I finished, I began calling all the partners, not knowing that you didn't do that.
01:21:11.000 --> 01:21:18.000
Nobody paid any attention, they were either asleep or they said, 'are you crazy?!' and hung up the telephone.
01:21:18.000 --> 01:21:30.960
So I got to the office, 7 o'clock in the morning, not realizing of course that, A) they were all drunks are were not going to get there until 11 -- and I paced up and down like crazy and posted notices on people's doors --
01:21:34.000 --> 01:21:43.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: It's a wonderful book, In Our Time, I re-read it about three years ago -- it's just wonderful.
MERYLE SECREST: You still like it? You still have the same feeling about it?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh it's wonderful, wonderful. The best book he ever wrote, I think.
01:21:43.000 --> 01:21:47.000
By far, the best book he ever wrote. [[TO EMILY:]] Don't you --?
EMILY HAHN: Yeah.
01:21:47.000 --> 01:21:51.000
MERYLE SECREST: They published it, of course.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: They published it.
01:21:51.000 --> 01:21:57.000
And they published it with great pride - I don't mean to take any pride in - they published with great pride.
01:21:57.000 --> 01:22:02.000
They lost him because he then did that typical Hemingway piece of nastiness --
01:22:02.000 --> 01:22:12.000
-- he sprang from Sherwood Anderson, who had been very very good to him, actually sent him to Liv- Horace and then Boni & Liveright.
01:22:12.000 --> 01:22:19.000
And he wrote a book called 'Torrents of Spring', attacking Sherwood Anderson very violently.
EMILY HAHN: Yes.
MERYLE SECREST: [[sighs]] Did he really?
01:22:19.000 --> 01:22:24.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And they turned the book down as they should have done.
EMILY HAHN: They parodied it.
MERYLE SECREST: Oh, I see.
01:22:24.000 --> 01:22:32.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And they lost him forever. He was quite a nasty man, Hemingway.
BERENICE ABBOTT: I think so.
EMILY HAHN: He had a lot of malice.
01:22:32.000 --> 01:22:33.000
MERYLE SECREST: Were you influenced by him at all?
01:22:33.000 --> 01:22:43.000
Consciously, do you think? Or unconsciously? As a writer?
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh no - oh, no - I never advised him. [[whispered + chuckle: "she couldn't hear"]] I wasn't on that level.
BERENICE ABBOTT: No.
01:22:43.000 --> 01:22:51.000
MERYLE SECREST: What do you mean, I'm sorry.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I mean, I was on no such level in any publishing house to give anybody any advice.
01:22:51.000 --> 01:23:10.000
MERYLE SECREST: Well, Miss Hellman you mentioned that at the age of 34 you first found out about the life-long troubles of an only child - I'm an only child too, what did you find out? I'd like to know.
01:23:10.000 --> 01:23:26.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question.
MERYLE SECREST: You wrote, when you were 34, you said that you first found out about the life-long troubles of an only child - I'm an only child too and what did you find out?
01:23:26.000 --> 01:23:44.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Oh I found out that almost everything that was wrong with me came, -- oh you don't want to hear, it's too personal and long, and you'd be here 'til 9 o'clock tonight. [[Audience laughs]] If not, the rest of the year. [[Audience laughs]]
01:23:44.000 --> 01:23:55.660
MERYLE SECREST: [[Laughing]] OK, I'll take it back.
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I found out that I had - as all only children find out - that they have the upper hand.
01:23:58.000 --> 01:24:01.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And it's a very bad thing to find out in this world.
01:24:01.000 --> 01:24:05.000
MERYLE SECREST: I never thought I had the upper hand.
01:24:05.000 --> 01:24:06.000
EMILY HAHN: You were English.
01:24:06.000 --> 01:24:12.000
[[laughter]]
01:24:12.000 --> 01:24:15.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, that was quite different.
01:24:15.000 --> 01:24:18.000
Quite different. Quite different.
01:24:18.000 --> 01:24:26.000
MERYLE SECREST: Paris in the 20s... What should we talk about, Berenice?
01:24:26.000 --> 01:24:31.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Well, the things that made it a special time I think, --
01:24:31.000 --> 01:24:38.000
-- why, it was a little nice period between rather horrible things and people were very innocent, --
01:24:38.000 --> 01:24:45.000
-- they didn't know really what was going on. They thought the First World War had ended, the "war to end wars".
01:24:45.000 --> 01:24:51.000
So they were happily on their way to sort of realizing their potentialities, -
01:24:51.000 --> 01:25:00.000
- not consciously, especially, but it was in the air and so they were rather blissfully ignorant.
01:25:00.000 --> 01:25:11.000
There wasn't all this, the bigness, that topples over everything that there is today.
01:25:11.000 --> 01:25:14.000
MERYLE SECREST: It was a manageable world, huh?
01:25:14.000 --> 01:25:23.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Absolutely. There wasn't any - they were not aware of any population explosion - the term didn't even exist.
01:25:23.000 --> 01:25:30.000
There were not these huge restaurants, or the huge theaters, or -
01:25:30.000 --> 01:25:34.000
MERYLE SECREST: How about roads? [[laughter]] You didn't have those either, did you?
01:25:34.000 --> 01:25:35.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Which?
01:25:35.000 --> 01:25:37.000
MERYLE SECREST: Roads. Super highways.
01:25:37.000 --> 01:25:40.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Of course, no, but they had very, very fine roads, really.
01:25:40.000 --> 01:25:43.000
I once said to a friend of mine who was a very dedicated American -
01:25:43.000 --> 01:25:47.000
- I said, "I wish our roads were as good as the French roads."
01:25:47.000 --> 01:25:50.000
And she said, "Oh, everybody knows ours are the best in the world." [[laughter]]
01:25:50.000 --> 01:25:55.000
But I don't agree at all.
01:25:55.000 --> 01:26:03.000
But there were many things - there wasn't this bigness, there was good food, there was no junk food.
01:26:03.000 --> 01:26:07.000
And even the cheap little restaurants were - were very good.
01:26:07.000 --> 01:26:16.000
In one little place where I had eaten at one time, regularly, was a little place called 'Rosalie'.
01:26:16.000 --> 01:26:19.000
MERYLE SECREST: Where was that?
BERENICE ABBOTT: I don't remember.
MERYLE SECREST: On the Left Bank, somewhere?
01:26:19.000 --> 01:26:24.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: On the Left Bank. Utrillo had paintings all over the wall because he'd help pay for some of his meals that way.
01:26:24.000 --> 01:26:30.000
Meryle Secrest: Oh, incredible.
Berenice Abbott: The food, the cooking was marvelous. Just great food.
01:26:30.000 --> 01:26:36.000
MERYLE SECREST: Well isn't it true, that you literally couldn't get a bad meal in Paris?
01:26:36.000 --> 01:26:42.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I don't think at that time you could very-- The cooking was excellent.
01:26:42.000 --> 01:27:06.000
And people combined, with - with hard work, I think they worked - they combined pleasure with it and fun, and in a wholesome way. That is, they met their people, met people and friends, and danced, and enjoyed themselves, also. Instead of going home and sitting in front of the television.
01:27:06.000 --> 01:27:22.000
I find that such a change, a total different life. I think it's very sad - that people work, they don't play much unless they go to people's houses and drink too much or something.
01:27:22.000 --> 01:27:31.000
Uh, people did-- Oh, the Americans drank quite a lot, I think, and those Norwegians and the Swedes. But the French didn't, I don't think as much.
01:27:31.000 --> 01:27:37.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: No, and then they lost --
EMILY HAHN: I heard that they, they drank a little, all day. - [[Audience laugh]] -
01:27:37.000 --> 01:27:40.000
They were never quite drunk, they were never quite sober.
01:27:40.000 --> 01:27:46.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes, well they do drink a lot of wine, it's true. I often wonder how on Earth they do it.
01:27:46.000 --> 01:28:03.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I'm convinced the French lost that - what makes them such nasty people now, I think they're terribly nasty people now - is that they enjoyed that frugality they had and since they've had money, they've become nasty people.
BERENICE ABBOTT: [[Quietly in background]] Really? Oh, it could be.
01:28:03.000 --> 01:28:16.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I think they liked putting those silver and gold coins in a drawer and locking the key in. - [[laugher]] - Counting it, what there was, for the old age and --
01:28:16.000 --> 01:28:18.000
MERYLE SECREST: Putting them under the bed!
01:28:18.000 --> 01:28:26.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: But there wasn't any pollution then--
LILLIAN HELLMAN: No.
BERENICE ABBOTT: And, uh, there's such pollution today you can't sit on a terrace of a café.
01:28:26.000 --> 01:28:34.000
MERYLE SECREST: That's true I--
BERENICE ABBOTT: And this is-- this is revolting, this is dreadful. In fact it ruins it. 'Cause it's still a very beautiful city.
01:28:34.000 --> 01:28:40.000
MERYLE SECREST: It's changed even since I was in Paris in the early 1950s, uh, and I'm sure a lot of you remember that period -
01:28:40.000 --> 01:28:52.000
- when it really-- one really could have the sensation that one was sitting in a sidewalk café and watching the world go by and, uh, and doing-- doing the Left Bank thing. But you can't do it anymore - In the first place, uh, --
01:28:52.000 --> 01:29:04.000
-- the - the traffic on the boulevard on Saint Germain, which was the place that I knew and loved, is so incredible that you can't hear yourself think even if you could, --
BERENICE ABBOTT: Too many people.
01:29:04.000 --> 01:29:22.000
Yeah, y'know it's um, it's sad to say this - and I hate to say this because somewhere in the audience there's someone who's never been to Paris and is going to go and say 'This is wonderful, and what were those awful people doing saying that Paris isn't any good anymore?!' - [[laughs]] - But, uh,--
01:29:22.000 --> 01:29:28.890
-- the fact is, there was a moment - when it was the most glorious city in the world. I think.
01:29:32.000 --> 01:29:38.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Speaking about, um, creative women of the 20s,--
01:29:38.000 --> 01:29:45.000
There was quite a group of people there - women - let's speak about the women now.
01:29:45.000 --> 01:29:53.000
But they were so different. You can't imagine two people less alike - everybody was themselves, --
01:29:53.000 --> 01:29:59.000
-- they weren't stereotypes. There wasn't the conformity of fashion and dress that there is today.
01:29:59.000 --> 01:30:08.000
I think, very unfortunately, that people, especially young people, they all dress alike. And I --
01:30:08.000 --> 01:30:11.000
MERYLE SECREST: But didn't Parisian women do that in your day?
BERENICE ABBOTT: [[emphatic]] No.
01:30:11.000 --> 01:30:16.000
MERYLE SECREST: Weren't they following fashion? I mean, it's the capital of fashion.
01:30:16.000 --> 01:30:30.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I think they have a great native sense of fashion, yes. But, I'm talking about these creative women --
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, I see.
BERENICE ABBOTT: -- I thought we were talking about..
01:30:30.000 --> 01:30:44.000
They were certainly totally themselves and there was no conformity there of any kind. And I think that's very interesting and indicative.
01:30:44.000 --> 01:30:46.000
Totally different people.
01:30:46.000 --> 01:31:01.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Yes, and people didn't have - all conformed houses and - all look alike.
MERYLE SECREST: Yes, why don't you start --
BERENICE ABBOTT: Interior decoration looks alike, and the peop-- you know, the thing that, uh, is it Tocqueville?
01:31:01.000 --> 01:31:10.000
-- wrote 'Democracy in America' - said it was very dangerous, that we would be leveling out people - that you had conformists.
01:31:10.000 --> 01:31:21.000
And that you have to -
LILLIAN HELLMAN: You sure are.
BERENICE ABBOTT: - you have to sort of, especially if you're a woman, you have to sort of look a certain way and - all this sort of thing. And uh --
01:31:21.000 --> 01:31:33.720
-- it's deadly. It's absolutely deadly. Because, first of all you have to be yourself. If you want to do anything, you have to honestly be yourself.
01:31:36.000 --> 01:31:38.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: And what?
MERYLE SECREST: Sorry?
01:31:38.000 --> 01:31:49.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Hope you're not. Because of those Mexican outfits. [[IN BACKGROUND]]
EMILY HAHN: What did she say?
MERYLE SECREST: Missed it - Let's talk about [[?]] --
BERENICE ABBOTT: Those Mexican outfits. I think they should wear what's sort of good on them.
01:31:49.000 --> 01:31:55.000
But when they all wear the same thing I find it very sad.
01:31:55.000 --> 01:32:09.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I went to a wedding 3 or 4 weeks ago, with a bride who was a good 55 years old and she was all done up in Mexican clothes.[[laughter]]
01:32:09.000 --> 01:32:22.000
I thought, this just won't do, it would be nice to go back to -- just a pale chiffon dress.[[laughter]]
BERENICE ABBOTT: No, it would be nice to -- [[?]] -- It's sad.
01:32:22.000 --> 01:32:37.000
MERYLE SECREST: Emily, let's talk about some of the women you have on your list - for Paris.
EMILY HAHN: Well, I have a very few for Paris - Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap who were editors and publishers of the Little Review and took it over there from Chicago, well from New York.
01:32:37.000 --> 01:32:41.000
MERYLE SECREST: Did you meet them?
EMILY HAHN: No, no. My brother-in-law knew them pretty well, but -
01:32:41.000 --> 01:32:43.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I knew them quite well.
MERYLE SECREST: Did you?
EMILY HAHN: You did?
01:32:43.000 --> 01:33:01.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes, I knew them in New York. And when I was a very young - and first there, I waited for that magazine to come out, it was so good. I thought it was so good. And of course, they ran this magazine on a shoestring, did a really heroic job.
01:33:01.000 --> 01:33:13.000
They were the first to publish Joyce serially and went to jail for it. They were fingerprinted and uh, all the time pleading and trying to raise some money.
01:33:13.000 --> 01:33:25.000
They also published Hemingway. I don't happen to care much about Hemingway, but his - I think some of the early short stories that were in the Little Review were really terrific.
01:33:25.000 --> 01:33:29.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: They were wonderful. Wonderful. The Little Review was a wonderful --
MERYLE SECREST: Yes?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Marvelous. And I liked that.
01:33:29.000 --> 01:33:31.000
MERYLE SECREST: They were in New York you said?
01:33:31.000 --> 01:33:36.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes.
EMILY HAHN: They stopped off, on the way to Paris
01:33:36.000 --> 01:33:42.000
MERYLE SECREST: [[laughs]] I see. And what did they print besides short stories?
01:33:42.000 --> 01:33:46.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: Oh, everything poems, and articles comments, Ezra Pound For a while there they went way out and -
01:33:46.000 --> 01:33:52.000
MERYLE SECREST: Did they have photographs too?
01:33:52.000 --> 01:34:00.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: I think so - they had quite a few in their final issue in Paris by that time.
01:34:00.000 --> 01:34:09.000
EMILY HAHN: In our early days Margaret Anderson was so poor she couldn't afford a room to live in or any way a houseand she lived on the edge of Lake Michigan--in a tent!
01:34:09.000 --> 01:34:18.000
She had one outfit that she wore and it was a white blouse. We didn't have nylon then so God knows what it was.
01:34:18.000 --> 01:34:25.000
She would wash it in the lake at night and hang it up and it would be dry in the morning and she would wear it again.[[laughter]]
01:34:25.000 --> 01:34:31.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: But she always looked extremely elegant.
EMILY HAHN: She looked wonderful - yes. Very trim.
01:34:31.000 --> 01:34:33.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: What a group of women they were.
EMILY HAHN: Yes.
01:34:33.000 --> 01:34:45.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: And so was Marianne Moore - they all were. They were so themselves, and so good eccentric, not bad eccentric. Good eccentric.
01:34:45.000 --> 01:34:49.000
EMILY HAHN: And Djuna Barnes.
BERENICE ABBOTT: They were, yeah they were remarkable.
01:34:49.000 --> 01:34:54.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Djuna I could do without for personal reasons. [[laughter]]
01:34:54.000 --> 01:34:56.000
MERYLE SECREST: What about Djuna Barnes?
BERENICE ABBOTT: Oh that's--
01:34:56.000 --> 01:35:00.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Well she was a very talented woman, as you know. She was a very talented woman.
01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:06.000
MERYLE SECREST: Yes. She wrote one famous book and then she more or less--
01:35:06.000 --> 01:35:08.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: No. She's written--
MERYLE SECREST: Retired - didn't she, from writing?
01:35:08.000 --> 01:35:14.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: No. She wrote several books.
EMILY HAHN: The one that was the one that you heard of.
01:35:14.000 --> 01:35:20.000
BERENICE ABBOTT: She's very old and sick.
MERYLE SECREST: And then you had--
LILLIAN HELLMAN: You can't expect us to go on forever! [[laughter]]
01:35:20.000 --> 01:35:23.000
MERYLE SECREST: O.K.
01:35:23.000 --> 01:35:31.000
EMILY HAHN: and I had the old reliable Gertrude Stein
LILLIAN HELLMAN: I might go right back to bed in two or three minutes.
EMILY HAHN: Janet Flanders, Sylvia Beach, all these people we know about.
01:35:31.000 --> 01:35:35.000
LILLIAN HELLMAN: Sylvia Beach was not really
BERENICE ABBOTT: Yes, indeed.
01:35:35.000 --> 01:35:55.800
MERYLE SECREST: Well, I think we're coming up to 10 minutes to 12 and we decided that at 5 minutes to 12 that we would suggest a 5 minute break. But - so let's stand up and have a 5 minute break. 5 minutes on the nose we'll sit down again and then we'll have questions from--
