Word: pentimento
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...public image she had laboriously fashioned for herself. Biographical details had been eliminated, anecdotes shellacked, letters burned--many of them after she had extracted them from their recipients. As America's most prominent woman playwright (The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes) and the author of various memoirs (Pentimento, Scoundrel Time), Hellman wanted the record closed, and on her terms...
Despite Hellman's efforts, her reputation began to ravel in her lifetime, after she sued Mary McCarthy for calling her a liar on TV. Though the suit died with the antagonists, it gave publicity to the fabrications in Pentimento and Scoundrel Time. From the former comes the story Julia, which casts Hellman as a heroic anti-Nazi in World War II. Jane Fonda played Lillian in the movie (Vanessa Redgrave was Julia). None of the yarn was true, but the author stubbornly maintained its veracity...