Hellman Cites Early Career

"I choose to separate myself from the active life of the theater, because I do not find its standards healthy for an artist," Lillian Hellman said yesterday in the first of three lectures on "People and Plays."

Miss Hellman prefaced her remarks with a threefold explanation of her misgivings about discussing the theater. First, she admitted a strong distaste for people who incessantly talk about the theater. "My head swizzles often," she said, "at such talk. Talking excessively about art is a sterile form of living which tends to drive art out of existence."

Secondly, she confessed to a superstitious fear of the pleasures of talk as opposed to the stern rigors of writing. Finally, she expressed a dislike for autobiographical discussion, calling it a process as impossible to carry on dispassionately as "regarding your own legs."

The body of her lecture consisted of a series of memories and journal entries covering her life until the opening of The Children's Hour, Nov. 22, 1934.

Her early reading consisted of: "Dostolevsky propped up by a copy of Confessions of a White Slaver." She often read in the boughs of a large tree and picked figs from neighboring branches.

Then came her first success with The Children's Hour. During the rehearsals for that play, Miss Hellman made a diary entry which remains a summation of the theater for her: "Lisp, lisp, lisp, and Thomas Wolfe." She explained that "lisp" refers to a character whose manner of speech she refused to change despite continued harrying from her director and others. Thomas Wolfe represents the endless complaints she heard from Aline Bernstein, her set designer and Wolfe's mistress.