The Children's Hour

Lillian Hellman wrote The Children’s Hour in 1934. It was the first of Hellman’s many major plays, and she wrote it while working in producer Herman Shumlin’s office as a play reader. She asked Shumlin to read a draft of the play, and he immediately offered to produce it. It appeared on Broadway within the year. The play is based on a real-life event that occurred in Edinburgh in 1810. A student accused her school’s two headmistresses of being romantically involved. The two women won their lawsuit, but the damage to their reputations was already done. The 1934-35 Pulitzer committee seriously considered The Children’s Hour but ultimately awarded the Pulitzer to Zoë Akins for her play The Old Maid. The committee claimed that The Children’s Hour had not been eligible because, based on a court case, it was not an original story, ignoring the fact that The Old Maid was based on an Edith Wharton story. In all likelihood, the play was deemed too controversial, as one committee member refused to even see a performance of it. Ire over the Pulitzer decision led the New York Drama Critics’ Circle to establish its own award the following year.

The Children’s Hour tells the story of two women, Martha and Karen.