Julia Dorn Heflin (July 22, 1911 – August 20, 2007) was an American journalist, theatre producer and teacher. Throughout her long and varied career, Heflin taught drama with Lee Strasberg, worked on Broadway, staged a production of Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty on the streets of Moscow, and led the drama department at Mount Vernon College in Washington, D.C. for 22 years. Heflin directed more than 80 theatre productions at Mount Vernon, then a private women's college before merging with George Washington University. She was one of the first Americans to work in the theatre in Russia before World War II and was a member of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre, the Arts Club of Washington, and the Woman's National Democratic Club. On August 20, 2007, Heflin died of respiratory failure at the Washington Home hospice, aged 96. She is remembered as a "fiery, feisty woman who held her charges to high standards." Education Heflin graduated from Smith College, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa. At university, Heflin was named president of the Why Club. A director's award has since been named after her at Smith College. Early career Fresh out of college, Julia joined the Hedgerow Repertory Theatre, where she acted and was assigned to the production office. She then worked briefly on Broadway in the 1930s before heading to the Soviet Union. Arriving in Moscow, Heflin worked as a Reggisseur Practicant at the Meyerhold and Vahktangov theatres, and helped workers on a collective farm produce And Quiet Flows the Don, an opera. She also worked with an English-speaking cast to stage a production of the Clifford Odets drama Waiting For Lefty on a truck-bed in the streets of Moscow, where perhaps the only words understood by the Russians who gathered to watch were, "Strike! Strike!" which brought clamorous cheers from the audience. While working in Europe, Julia became an interviewer and freelance European/Soviet feature correspondent for Stage Magazine and the old New York Herald Tribune, first abroad, and later when she returned to the United States. She interviewed Nemirovitch-Danchenko, who, with Konstantin Stanislavsky, founded the Moscow Art Theatre. Among many others, she also interviewed actor-singer-activist Paul Robeson, film director Sergei Eisenstein and playwright George Bernard Shaw. Just before the start of World War II, Heflin returned to New York and began teaching acting classes in the evenings at the Laboratory Theatre in