Last spring I was flipping through Ivor Montagu’s With Eisenstein in Hollywood (1969) when my eyes happened to settle on this image—
—How so very strange!, I thought. What was Hell doing in Chaplin’s pool, and whosoever knew that Hell was a woman?
Ah, but how quickly our fancies dissipate: Hell, it turns out, was born Eileen Hellstern.
Yet, lucky for me, a new fancy soon congealed, for while it is clear that Hell Montagu’s nickname was derived from her maiden name, one might also imagine an instance in which Hell could be short for Eileen, being as it is on occasion an Irish variant of Helen—making Mrs. Montagu Hell twice over, hell, the Hell of Hells.
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