In Fred Zinnemann’s film from Lillian Hellman’s story “Julia,” there is a moment when Lillian (Jane Fonda) tells her lover Dashiell Hammett (Jason Robards) that she enjoys fame—being recognized when she goes to buy a jar of mayonnaise. I doubt whether the filmmakers are aware of their gaffe: the best known mayonnaise in America is Hellmann’s, though it has no connection with the author of “Julia” and Pentimento, the book of memoirs of which that story is a part. What viewers ought to recognize in seeing the movie is some sort of truth about people and life; instead, they get a famous brand name. The interest up there is theoretically sustained by the name of Lillian Hellman, and “Dash” Hammett, along with the names of the stars, who include Vanessa Redgrave portraying the heroic Julia, written, directed, and acted in a way so noble and good that butter, let alone mayonnaise, would not melt in her mouth.
Very little of what happens in the film is intrinsically interesting, so that for the non-megalopolitan public essentially ignorant of who Hellman, Hammett, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell were, the film loses its main selling point. For the more cultivated moviegoer, however, the film can function only as a comic-strip version of what it is like to be a famous writer, or a dedicated anti-Nazi fighter like Julia; indeed, considering how the film handles them, Dorothy Parker and her
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