Hellman had aggravated the matter further by claiming that the real reason for turning down the benefit was because when the Spanish Republican government fell to Franco's fascists, Hellman and Shumlin requested that Bankhead put on a benefit for the Spanish loyalists fleeing to neighboring France, and the actress and company refused. Bankhead was further incensed by these comments, as she had helped many Spanish Republican fighters and families to flee the Spanish Civil War in 1937, after they had been turned on by Stalinist fighters behind their own Republican lines. Hellman and Bankhead would not speak again until late 1963. Years later, drama critic Joseph Wood Krutch recounted how he and fellow critic George Jean Nathan had shared a cab with Hellman and Bankhead: