The Children's Hour (play)

The Children's Hour (play)

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.

The play was first staged on Broadway at Maxine Elliott's Theatre in 1934, where it ran for over 2 years, and in 1936 was put on at London's Gate Theatre Studio and Dublin's Gate Theatre. In Joshua Waletzky's 1999 film "Dashiell Hammett. Detective. Writer", the narration offers that "Hammett had the idea for the play, and edited it, and helped make Hellman into a writer".