They were life partners after other marriages. I don't think she was ever a gossip columnist, but here is a link and a bit of the bio.
She became a writer at a time when writers were celebrities and their recklessness was admirable. Like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, and Hammett, Lillian Hellman was a smoker, a drinker, a lover, and a fighter. Hellman maintained a social and political life as large and restless as her talent. While her plays were a constant challenge to injustice, her memoirs were personal accounts of the exciting and turbulent life behind the art.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/hellman_l.html
