Hellman then worked on Corman's The Intruder (1961), adapted by Charles Beaumont from his own novel, but, like Corman's earlier Sorority Girl (1957), probably inspired by Calder Willingham's End as a Man (filmed by Jack Garfein in 1957 as The Strange One). As Corman told Joseph Gelmis, "It was about white and black relationships. The film was a magnificent critical success but did not make money. Thinking back on it, I decided that one of the reasons the film was not a commercial success was the fact that I believed so much in my subject matter that I pushed my own personal thoughts a little bit too heavily into it and the film became slightly propagandistic."4 This rare financial failure particularly annoyed Corman, who kept changing the film's title in order to make it more commercial (it is variously known as Shame, I Hate Your Guts and The Stranger), and finally sold it to Mike Ripps, a distributor who had a big success with Poor White Trash. Hellman was asked to make The Intruder more suitable for Ripps' market by shooting additional sex scenes with anonymous actors: "Mike Ripps was involved in my added scenes. It is my recollection that, on one of his trips to meet with me in L. A., Mike was killed on the freeway while on his way to my house. But I see that a Mike Ripps directed a film in 1974, so if it's the same Mike Ripps, it was obviously someone else who was killed on the freeway — perhaps someone working for Mike."5 Sadly, prints of The Intruder containing Hellman's footage are no longer available: "All I remember is being embarrassed shooting the scenes, and putting pasties over the woman's nipples, and taping up the man's and woman's genitals."6
Around this time, Hellman married again (to Jaclyn Hellman) and formed The New American Film Society, an organization which, according to its manifesto, was intended for "film professionals who have banded together with the purpose of screening films they could not otherwise see." As Charles Eastman recalls, "Monte asked me to recommend some films to be considered for the program, and so perhaps the viewing of Unfaithfully Yours was my idea. Night and Fog was Monte's, my first encounter with this Resnais film."7 Although the first screenings took place at the Directors' Guild, the society soon moved to Sunset Boulevard's Lytton Center of the Visual Arts, the basement screening room of a bank built on the site of the former Garden of Allah hoteclass="underline" "The New American Film Society was basically formed by John Fles and myself. The original board of directors also included my wife Jackie (as she was credited on the flyer for the second season), Louis Barron, Fred Haines, Jack Hirschman, B. J. Merholz, Bill Schipp, Jack Schwartzman (my lawyer), Lisa Stein, Paula Touber and Selwyn Touber. The first series included A Man Escaped, Zero for Conduct, Another Sky by Gavin Lambert, Broken Blossoms, A Movie by Bruce Connor, El, Entr'acte, We Are the Lambeth Boys, L'Atalante, The Curse of the Cat People, The Shop Around the Corner, The Bicycle Thief. The second series consisted of Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's Summer Skin (there's a forgotten film!), White Mane, Port of Shadows, Lemon Hearts by Vernon Zimmerman, Outcast of the Islands, Swing Time, The Loves of Jeanne Ney. The third season was supposed to be Fires on the Plain, Queen Kelly, Fear and Desire, The Red Badge of Courage, Sawdust and Tinsel, The Birth of a Nation, M, The Gold Rush, Rome Open City, The Passion of Joan of Arc. I don't remember how much, if any, of this season was realized. Night and Fog and Unfaithfully Yours must have been introductory screenings before we announced our full program."8
In 1961, Hellman returned to Columbia, "working for the first time as an assistant editor. I believe one picture was Birdman of Alcatraz, and another The Notorious Landlady. The job was not like my work on Medic, where I worked closely with the editor. Columbia was more like a factory (we called it 'the prison,' which it looked like) where all the assistants from different productions worked more or less together. It was not unusual to see parts of dailies from different productions, nor to see bits of scenes on moviolas in different cutting rooms during the course of a day. I had much more of a rapport with the other assistants than with my own editor."9