The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby

By Robert P. Newman

Book Overview

Lillian Hellman's memoirs are as notable for what they omit as for what they reveal. In An Unfinished Woman (1969), she notes that, although she kept an extensive diary of her Moscow trip in the winter of 1944-45, "No where is there a record of . . . how close I felt then and now to a State Department career man whose future, seven or eight years later, went down the drain for no reason except the brutal cowardice of his colleagues under the hammering of Joe McCarthy."

The State Department career man is John Fremont Melby, principal author of the government's China White Paper of 1949. Hellman and Melby met in Russia, fell in love, talked often of marriage, and, during their separations over the next thirty years, wrote each other voluminously. When Hellman appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the famous confrontation of May 21, 1952, she was anxious to protect not the Hollywood leftists she had known but Melby and Averell Harriman, the former American ambassador to Russia under whose roof she began her affair with Melby.

The Cold War Romance of Lillian Hellman and John Melby is the story of their affair, certainly one of the most intense of Hellman's life. It is also the story of Hellman's role in Melby's seven Loyalty-Security hearings, extending over eighteen months. The transcripts of these hearings, divulged here for the first time, reveal far more about her politics than does her brief appearance before the HUAC. Melby was fired from the State Department in 1953 by John Foster Dulles because of his affair with Hellman and because he would not repudiate her. It was a pure case of "guilt by association."

This is a tale of politics, personalities, and passion. Based on Hellman's and Melby's letters, FBI and Passport Office files, transcripts of Melby's hearings, and the files of Hellman's lawyer, Joseph Rauh, this book establishes that Hellman's association with the Communist party was fleeting. But more importantly, it is a compelling account of a love affair that was aborted and then revived by the Cold War.

Originally published in 1989.

A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807865753
• ISBN13: 9780807865750
• Release Date: January 2011
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

More little-known Post-WWII and Cold War History...

Robert Newman not only leads up to his highly praised history of the Owen Lattimore story and the influence of the "China Lobby" with this account, but gives much denied credit as well to the history of the left which had been censored, denied, and castigated... Included is a little-known quote from Lillian Hellman in her opening remarks to the Waldorf Peace Conference in 1949, which she co-organized. The Waldorf Conference was a credit to the post-WWII anticolonialist peace movement fueled by the activism of the radicalism of the 30s. This social/political/cultural movement included among others Hellman and W.E.B. DuBois, who founded the Peace Information Center in 1950 and circulated the Stockholm Peace Petition at a time when the Soviet Union was allegedly running a "peace offensive" and at a time when anyone who promoted peace or who criticized U.S. policy must therefore be viewed as being an agent of a foreign govt. in the McCarthy hysteria. Not only was anyone associated with those promoting peace at risk of suspicion, but also anyone who showed any independent thinking regarding foreign policy, no matter how extensive the institutional experience (as in Melby's case) or how well-founded the logic. This was the case with John Melby, chief editor of the China White Paper which acknowledged the inevitable failure of the KMT and the subsequent "loss of China." Just as anyone associated with the Waldorf Conference was eventually brought before HUAC and/or blacklisted, so anyone associated with authorship of the China White Paper was subjected to loyalty security board hearings and their careers ruined, but for different cause. The irony of this book is that it illustrates how the relationship of Melby and Hellman resulted in a collision of these two very different worlds of thought, intellectual culture, career, and experience.