An all-girls boarding school is closed down by rumors of a love triangle involving two of the teachers. This exemplary story examines prejudice and denunciation and foreshadows the anticommunist witch hunts of the late 1940s and ’50s. However, censorship triumphed before production began: Hellman was forced to remove any traces of the lesbian subtext from the story and adapt it to fit the production code of the time. 1936, U.S., BW, 35mm, 93 minutes.
Playwright and screenwriter Lillian Hellman wrote such classics as The Little Foxes (1941), Watch on the Rhine (1943), and The Chase (1966). She also published Scoundrel Time, a memoir focusing on the blacklist era. Hellman was subpoenaed by the HUAC in 1952 and refused to name others. Her Hollywood career was suspended for more than a decade.