An Office Affair

In 1945, William Shawn hired Lillian Ross to write for “The Talk of the Town.” In the 1950s, Ross’s profile of Ernest Hemingway, along with her groundbreaking longform piece on the making of the film The Red Badge of Courage, established her as one of the magazine’s most celebrated writers. During this time, Ross and Shawn began a passionate love affair that would endure for 40 years. Shawn remained married to his wife, Cecille, while splitting his time between home and Ross’s apartment, 11 blocks away. (Ross never married.) At the office, Shawn and Ross hid their intimacy, but they used identical Olympia typewriters. When Shawn was forced out of The New Yorker in 1987, he took the typewriters back to Ross’s apartment, where they collaborated on a screenplay before his death in 1992.