"During breakfast the next morning, my assistant called. "Have you seen the papers?" she said. "Hellman is suing Mary McCarthy, PBS, and you for two and a quarter million." "And me?" I replied, in a prepubescent squeak. The other phone rang, and the familiar whiskey-and-cigarettes baritone rasped, "Why the hell didn’t you defend me?" "I guess I never thought of you as defenseless, Lillian," I managed. "That’s bullshit. I’m suing the whole damn bunch of you." In that, at least, she proved a woman of her word. I had been to dinner at Lillian’s, and she, too, had been on my show. She was a sharp and entertaining guest—an eager appearer, arriving early, looking as if she’d just stepped out of Elizabeth Arden. No one was neutral about Lillian. She had a famous friendship with Dorothy Parker, yet to Jean Stafford she was "Old Scaly Bird." A professional critic talking about a public figure is rarely the stuff of lawsuits. Incredibly, Hellman denied being a public figure, forgetting, perhaps, that she had recently appeared in a national advertising campaign for Blackglama furs, which used only women who were so identifiable that their names were omitted; the copy read "What becomes a legend most?""