The Children's Hour (play)

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This article is about the stage play by Lillian Hellman. For other articles with the same name, see The Children's Hour (disambiguation).

The Children's Hour is a 1934 stage play written by Lillian Hellman. It is a drama set in an all-girls boarding school run by two women, Karen Wright and Martha Dobie. An angry student, Mary Tilford, runs away from the school and to avoid being sent back she tells her grandmother that the two headmistresses are having a lesbian affair. The accusation proceeds to destroy the women's careers, relationships and lives.

[edit] Source information

Scotch Verdict: Miss Pirie and Miss Woods V. Dame Cumming Gordon (1983) by Lillian Faderman (author of Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers) recounts the historical incident Hellman drew from for her play. In 1810 in Edinburgh, Scotland a student named Jane Cumming accused her school mistresses Jane Pirie and Marianne Woods of having an affair in the presence of their students. Dame Cumming Gordon, the accuser's influential grandmother, advised her friends to remove their daughters from the boarding school and within days the school was deserted and the two women had been deprived of their livelihood. Pirie and Woods eventually prevailed both in court and on appeal but given the damage done to their lives, the win was considered a hollow one.

[edit] Adaptations

Shirley MacLaine and Audrey Hepburn in the 1961 film version

In 1936 the play was made into a film but because of the Production Code (administered by the Hays Commission) the story was adapted into a heterosexual love triangle, the controversial name was changed and the movie eventually released as These Three. Hellman reportedly worked on the screen play, virtually all of the play's original dialogue was kept and she was satisfied with the result, saying the play's central theme of gossip was unaffected by the changes. In 1961 the play was adapted with its lesbian theme into a film under its original title.