Lillian Hellman sues Mary McCarthy
On this day in 1980 playwright Lillian Hellman filed a lawsuit claming 2.2 million in damages against novelist Mary McCarthy for libel.McCarthy a sarcastic and critical novelist whose most popular novel was The Group (1963) about eight Vassar graduates had called Hellman a bad writer overrated a dishonest writer while appearing on a national talk show.The two writers evidently had a long history of hostility dating back some 30 years when the pair had clashed publicly at a poetry seminar at Sarah Lawrence college.Many writers and supporters of free speech rushed to McCarthys defense including an heiress who picked up McCarthys 25000 legal defense fees and saved her from certain financial ruin.Hellman died before the lawsuit came to trial and the suit was dropped.
