Hal Phyfe, photographer · Public domain

One of Broadway's most successful playwrights of the mid-20th century, with The Children's Hour, The Little Foxes, and Watch on the Rhine among her hits, and a decades-long companion of writer Dashiell Hammett. Blacklisted after refusing to answer questions before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1952, her income from film work dried up even as she kept working on Broadway. Her later memoirs were challenged for factual accuracy, most notably by Mary McCarthy, in a defamation dispute still unresolved at Hellman's death in 1984.