LILLIAN HELLMAN AND THE SOVIET THEATER

The article examines the contacts of the American playwright Lillian Hellman with the Soviet theatrical world. It focuses on Soviet productions of her plays, recollections of actors involved in those productions, critics’ reviews of the premieres. Hellman’s more than 20-year career in the USSR helps to trace back the changes of Soviet cultural and ideological agenda. Acting as a cultural emissary during the Second World War, Hellman visited Moscow where she was greeted as a dear guest, and her plays were staged by two lar­gest Moscow theaters. With the beginning of the Cold War, her dramas The Little Foxes and Watch on the Rhine disappeared from the repertoire. Surprisingly, Hellman’s play with a conspicuously Western title Ladies and Gentlemen circumvented theatrical censorship amid an anti-American propaganda campaign, although the production received negative reviews from magazine critics. In the 1960s Hellman returns to Moscow again, where she meets Raisa Orlova and Lev Kopelev. Cultural and political landscape of that period was deeply influenced by struggles of the dissident movement, which Hellman deeply sympathized with. She considered Kopelev and Orlova to be people of remarkable courage and integrity since they refused to leave their native Russia despite the risk of being imprisoned and persecuted. That is why the case of Anatoly Kuznetsov who fled to the UK from the USSR infuriated Hellman who publicly disapproved his decision to flee. Hellman wrote and spoke about dissidents back at home in the United States, and she continued to correspond with Orlova almost until her death in 1984. Thus, Hellman’s creative biography represents the trajectory of defecting from the ranks of Soviet sympathizers: starting her career as a pro-Stalinist, she subsequently refused to support Soviet socialism.

The Home Front

The main theme is Milestone’s World War II film work. After a consideration of his two pre-War romantic comedies Lucky Partners and My Life with Caroline, both starring Ronald Colman, attention turns to the propagandistic documentary Milestone edited with Joris Ivens using footage from Soviet cameramen, Our Russian Front. A section on The Edge of Darkness, set in Nazi-occupied Norway and starring Errol Flynn, follows. The controversial Oscar-nominated The North Star is then extensively treated. This argumentative collaboration with screenwriter Lillian Hellman (with music by Aaron Copland), produced by Sam Goldwyn, was widely condemned for an overly sympathetic portrayal of the USSR, but earned six Oscar nominations.

Hellman, Lillian (1905–84)

Lillian Hellman, whose plays developed the conventions of modern theatrical realism, is among the most renowned twentieth-century American dramatists. Her oeuvre includes eight original plays, four adaptations, eight screenplays, and three widely read memoirs: An Unfinished Woman, Pentimento, and Scoundrel Time. Over the course of her career, Hellman elicited controversy for the subjects of her plays, her political alliances, and her refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. In the 1950s, she was blacklisted by film producers. In the late 1970s and 1980s, she came under searing recrimination from critics who challenged the veracity of her memoirs.

Candide

This chapter represents the most thorough and accurate study to date of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, including its long, torturous history both before and after its 1956 premiere. It pays special attention to how the show’s books and lyrics evolved over the year, including contributions of Latouche, Lillian Hellman, Dorothy Parker, Richard Wilbur, Stephen Sondheim, Hugh Wheeler, and others, and studies its many productions under the supervision of such directors and adaptors as Hal Prince, Jonathan Miller, and John Caird. It also surveys its critical reception over the years.

Peter Beauvais

Der Regisseur Peter Beauvais prägte mit seinen vielfältigen Filmen das westdeutsche Fernsehen über fast drei Jahrzehnte. Er war erfahren in der Adaption literarischer Vorlagen – von Lillian Hellman bis Karin Struck, von Herman Bang und Joseph Roth bis Siegfried Lenz und Martin Walser. Er drehte zeitkritische Komödien und sozial engagierte Fernsehfilme. Auch Krimis gehören zu seinem Oeuvre. Geboren 1916, als Jude verfolgt, emigrierte Beauvais in die USA. Nach dem Krieg kam er als amerikanischer Soldat nach Deutschland zurück und war als Vernehmer bei den Nürnberger Kriegsverbrecherprozessen und als Theateroffizier tätig, bevor er seine Karriere zunächst als Schauspieler und Regisseur beim Theater begann. Er wirkte beim Hörfunk und wagte einen Abstecher zum Kinofilm, reüssierte schließlich als Regisseur beim westdeutschen Fernsehen und war renommiert als Opernregisseur. Beauvais, der 1986 starb, verfolgte mit seinen Inszenierungen, ob für Schauspiel, Oper, Film oder Fernsehen, das Konzept einer radikalen Vielfalt. Mit Beiträgen von Rolf Aurich, Julia Glänzel, Wolfgang Jacobsen und Nicky Rittmeyer.