In 1941 with another war on the way that would feed upon dispatches, you could attend a matinee of Dumbo and pick up a bottle of gin and a copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls on the way home. Would Nick Adams have seen most everything when he’d seen an elephant fly? Would Francis Macomber shoot the damn thing in Tanganyika? Feather or no feather?
Papa didn’t hate movies. He was fond of Gary Cooper. He took him hunting. Theirs was a 20-year friendship between men. But the film version of The Sun Also Rises (1957) smelled of death rotting in the wagon tracks in the mud on the day of the bullfight.
They had waited too long to film it. The pigeons, especially the dark ones with the grey eyes, had long since feasted on the lost crumbs of the moveable feast. Paris in the Twenties was thirty years gone. Three. Four wives ago.
But to sit quietly and take it would have been wrong. After twenty-five endless stinking minutes he shot out of his seat, excused himself in bluster in a rush to the aisle, then stomped like a water buffalo toward the exit light. America’s writer slammed the door loud and certain enough for the directors and the producers and the flunkies and the script girls to hear.
“I saw as much of Darryl Zanuck's splashy Cook's tour of Europe's lost generation bistros, bullfights, and more bistros... It's pretty disappointing and that's being gracious. Most of my story was set in Pamplona so they shot the film in Mexico. You're meant to be in Spain and all you see walking around are nothing but Mexicans... It looked pretty silly. The bulls were mighty small for a start, and it looked like they had big horns on them for the day. I guess the best thing about the film was Errol Flynn.”
Tyrone Power probably craved a great hole in which to crawl. But it surely amused Ava Gardner, free of Frank Sinatra and wild again, still as fresh as the green hills of Africa. She might have giggled into the ice that cooled the vodka in her red concession stand Dixie Coke cup.
Ava might have laughed all the way to the airport and on the next flight to Cuba and clear on to Finca Vigía. There she would swim naked under the Havana moon. Ernest would call his staff together then promised to shoot the fiend who might ever think about draining that pool.
Why all the Hemingway? It’s the fault of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick and their true at first light new PBS three-parter Hemingway. (Use this link to stream all episodes.)The darlings of modern documentary have thrown fresh air and bold honesty on a subject we all thought we knew. They have taken Hemingway, hiding in plain sight, and precise as a rum runner have balanced the saga of the man, his courage, and his energy on scales alongside his demons and scars and his damnable warts. The bell tolls, the full measure weighs out and, spoiler, it still ends with a shotgun.
Papa would have praised and loathed their honesty. He would have shown Burns how to stand unafraid, his digital camera traded for a rifle and scope, square in the path of an unsentimental rhinoceros. As for Novick, he would have proposed after a few rounds of martinis, promising to marry her in Tijuana as soon as he returned from Madrid.
But enough of what might have been. Here are some of the films from some of the prose from the man who wrote none of the screenplays but poured blood and sand into all of the words.
“Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
Key: Title / (Written publication year, film year) * Denotes multiple motion pictures / Cast / Scenario
The Sun Also Rises (1926, 1957*)
Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Jose Ferrer
A group of expatriate writers (led by Hemingway inspired Jake Barnes), artists, etc., hang out in Paris of the 20s and go to Spain for the bullfights.
The Killers (1927, 1964*)
Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, Clu Gulager, Ronald Reagan
There’s a great 1946 version with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. But in the 60s we get the only Hemingway movie to feature a future president. And to see Ronnie attach a silencer for a little trickledown murder is so iconic. In this gritty pre-Tarantino saga of all bad people, two men get confused when their target doesn’t try to elude them. The 1946 version stars Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.
Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man (1920s, 1962)
Loosely based on 10 of the 19 Nick Adams short stories, starring Richard Beymer fresh from West Side Story (1961).
A Farewell to Arms (1929, 1932*)
Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper
Frederic, the American ambulance driver, falls big time for his nurse.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1936, 1952)
Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner
Harry Street, a disillusioned writer, goes on safari in Africa looking for a change of scenery and a chance to shoot lots of animals. Instead he gets poked by a thorn, gets really sick, and dreams about friends and lovers. A $12.5 million 1952 movie was a big deal.
The Macomber Affair (“The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber”) (1936, 1947)
Robert Preston, Joan Bennett, Gregory Peck
What ended in a flash at the end of the short story is just the beginning for a drawn out court case over exactly what happened on a safari in Africa,.
To Have and Have Not (1937, 1944)
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall
The story is director Howard Hawks bet Papa he could make a great movie out of the worst Hemingway manuscript. Like working with a bad Beatle song, right? This tale of a guy named Harry smuggling in French Resistance fighters is a big hit. William Faulkner contributed to the screenplay, Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer wrote the music. Bogie (49) meets Bacall (19). You know how to whistle, don’t you?
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940, 1943*)
Gregory Peck, Ingrid Bergman
Robert Jordan’s adventures fighting against dictator Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). He is an American in big demand because of his skills with dynamite. Just as Bob starts to question his life, his motives, the things he has exploded, he meets and falls in love with Maria. Eight Oscar nominations including Peck and Bergman, and a statue for supporting actor Akim Tamiroff.
The Old Man and the Sea (1952, 1958*)
Spencer Tracy
It’s been a long time between catches for this senior citizen Cuban fisherman. Hemingway invents the great white shark metaphor that your dreams may come true but your lunch may be eaten by others.
Islands in the Stream (1970, 1977)
George C. Scott, David Hemmings, Susan Tyrrell, Gilbert Roland, Claire Bloom
Thomas Hudson is a Hemingwayesque artist hiding from the world in the Bahamas. His three sons come for a visit, which is a bit awkward because it is their first get together since he left their mother. Pieced together by Hemingway’s widow and publisher ten years after his death.
Postscript
“That was a kind of lousy thing to say about my picture before the reviews came out. I think a writer is entitled to criticize if there is a complete distortion. But if he sees that there has been a serious attempt to put his story on the screen, even if it failed in some instances, he doesn't have the right to destroy publicly something he's been paid money for. Over 60% of the dialogue in the picture is out of Hemingway's book. We treated it as something Holy. We showed the script to him and he made some changes. We even showed it to him again after the changes were made. If the picture doesn't satisfy Hemingway he should read the book again...because the book won't satisfy him...I don't think he saw the picture. I think someone told him about it.”
--Daryl F. Zanuck
Producer, The Sun Also Rises
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
