''Pentimento: A Book of Portraits'' is a 1973 book by American writer

Lillian Hellman Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American playwright, prose writer, memoirist and screenwriter known for her success on Broadway, as well as her communist sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted aft ...

. It is best known for the controversy over the authenticity of a section about an anti-Nazi activist called "Julia", which was later made into the film ''

Julia Julia is usually a feminine given name. It is a Latinate feminine form of the name Julio and Julius. (For further details on etymology, see the Wiktionary entry "Julius".) The given name ''Julia'' had been in use throughout Late Antiquity (e.g ...

''. A psychiatrist named

Muriel Gardiner Muriel Gardiner Buttinger (née Morris; November 23, 1901 – February 6, 1985) was an American psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Early life and career Gardiner was born on November 23, 1901 in Chicago, the daughter of Edward Morris, president of ...

later suggested that her life story was fictionalized as Julia. Gardiner was a wealthy American who went to medical school in Vienna before World War II and became involved in anti-Fascist resistance there before her return to the US in 1939.

Controversy

The Oscar-winning film ''

'' was based on one chapter of ''Pentimento''. Following the film's release in 1977, New York psychiatrist

claimed she was the basis for the title character. The story presents "Julia" as a close friend of Hellman's living in pre-Nazi Austria. Hellman helps her friend to smuggle money for anti-Nazi activity from Russia. In fact Hellman had never met Gardiner. Hellman denied that the character was based on Gardiner, but never identified a real-life alternative. Hellman and Gardiner had the same lawyer (

Wolf Schwabacher Wolf Schwabacher (died 1951) was a prominent Jewish entertainment lawyer, a partner in the New York City law firm of Hays, Wolf, Schwabacher, Sklar & Epstein, whose clients included the Marx Brothers, Lillian Hellman, and Erskine Caldwell. He mar ...

) who had been privy to Gardiner's memoirs. The events depicted in the film conformed to those described in Gardiner's 1983 memoir ''Code Name Mary''. An investigation by Samuel McCraken into the particulars of Hellman's Julia story that was published in ''

Commentary Commentary or commentaries may refer to: Publications * ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee * Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...

'' in June 1984 concluded that the funeral home in London where Hellman said Julia's body was sent to did not exist, there was no record that Hellman had sailed to England to claim Julia's body on the ship she said she had made the transatlantic crossing on, and there was no evidence that Julia had lived or died. Furthermore, McCracken found it highly unlikely, as did Gardiner, who had worked with the anti-fascist underground, that so many people would have been used to help Hellman get money to Julia, or that money would be couriered in the way that Hellman said it did as Hellman admitted that Julia received money from the J. P. Morgan Bank. Ephraim London, Hellman's attorney in her libel suit against Mary McCarthy (who had publicly questioned Hellman's veracity, including her "Julia" story), admitted that while he believed that there had been a real Julia, Hellman has most likely dramatized her story and added incidents and plot elements that were not strictly true.

References

{{reflist American biographies American novels adapted into films 1973 books