Lillian Florence Hellman, an only child, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 20 June 1906 to Max Hellman and Julia Newhouse Hellman. Both parents were descendants of German Jews who immigrated to the United States during the 1840s. The Newhouse side of the family was wealthy and successful, and through his marriage Max Hellman acquired enough money to open the Hellman Shoe Company. Sophie Marx Newhouse, Lillian's maternal grandmother, ruled the family. Sophie and her brother, Jake, became the models for Regina and Ben in The Little Foxes (1939). In her memoir, Hellman recalls meals with the Newhouse family as tense, unpleasant affairs where talk about money and possessions dominated, and reminders of her father's lower-class background and business failures were frequent. Hellman did not truly appreciate her mother until after the latter's death; instead, Hellman remembered her as refined, quiet, eccentric, and overly religious. Traces of her mother later appeared in Birdie of The Little Foxes. Although Hellman idolized her father, this feeling diminished as she learned of her father's infidelities.
At the age of six, Hellman moved with her family to New York City, where the Newhouses had relocated. After his shoe business failed, Max Hellman became a traveling salesman, and for the next eleven years the family divided their time between New York and New Orleans.
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