Julia Heflin

Julia Dorn Heflin (1911-2007) was a journalist, a theatre producer and a teacher. The Washington Post aptly called her "a firebrand." In the 1930's, with an English-speaking cast, she staged an incendiary production of the Clifford Odets play Waiting For Lefty on a truck-bed in a Moscow street -- where perhaps the only words understood by the Russians who gathered to watch were "Strike! Strike!" which brought clamorous cheers from the comrades. She was still making sparks in 1977 when, at the formal ceremony marking her retirement from Mount Vernon College in Washington, DC, she chided the administration for insufficient support of the theatre curriculum. As a Phi Beta Kappa, fresh from Smith College and Columbia University, Julia...