Our pal Larry Michie died this year. In the early days of this blog Larry often wrote articles for us. He was a great fan of Hemingway’s and we thought we’d pay tribute to him by re-running this essay he wrote for us several years ago.
Ernest Hemingway has long been acknowledged as one of the most influential – and popular – writers of the twentieth century.
His distinctive style and gripping tales of love, war, honor, manliness, and loss were read, absorbed and acclaimed by generations.
As might be expected, Hemingway’s various works of fiction were turned into motion pictures by some of the leading masters of Hollywood. For reasons that could be argued eternally, most of those motion pictures have been embarrassing flops. Somehow the genius of his prose didn’t translate to film very well.
Oddly enough, one of the better films was the first – 1932’s “A Farewell to Arms,” a later version of which is discussed below.
The 1932 “Farewell” starred Helen Hayes as Catherine Barkley, billed over the young Gary Cooper as Lieutenant Henry. Adolphe Menjou supplied both humor and, eventually, considerable menace.
Hayes was good, but Cooper was outstanding. He owned the screen. No surprise that a decade later Cooper was tapped to play another Hemingway hero in “For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
The Hayes/Cooper movie is remarkably true to the novel, and the World War I scenes are handled well by director Frank Borzage (there was an Academy Award for cinematography).
One aspect of the movie that is a bit startling, considering the time in which it was made, is that the film was true to the novel, which meant that the two lovers not only had sex but conceived a child – with no more sanction by society than the anguished blessing of a priest. Menjou plays a villain’s role, conspiring to keep them apart until Lt. Henry is forced to desert so he can be with his lover.
True to Hemingway’s tale, Catherine’s child is born dead, and she herself soon expires. Pretty strong stuff for 1932, especially since the Hays Office was in existence. (The Motion Picture Production Code was set up in 1930.)
It’s only appropriate at this point to hold one’s nose and bring up the later incarnation of “Farewell to Arms,” the 1957 version starring Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones, (above) with the stellar backing of Vittorio De Sica, Oscar Homolka, Mercedes McCambridge and Elaine Stritch.
Hudson was, in a word, unwatchable.
Scratch that film off your list, unless you actually enjoy pain. Not even Ben Hecht’s screenplay could rescue this turkey. Rock should have saved his energy for Doris Day.
That was Larry’s take.
Next week we’ll return to movies about movie stars!
I always found Helen Hayes rather bland as an actress. I’m not a fan of Hemingway’s stories, but no one can deny he was a talented writer. I had the opportunity to see a special exhibit on him when I was in New York City several years ago at one of the museums there. It really helped personalize an almost larger than life figure.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY -IF ONLY THEY WOULD MAKE A MOVIE ABOUT WHO HE REALLY WAS…
They say if you wait around long enough the truth starts to come out…
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, like so many iconic household name authors, poets, artists and activists you were introduced to in school, was very much a part of an intelligence project called MODERNISM, that is still ongoing…
Against all the odds we live with in the REAL world, these people seem to have gotten all-the-breaks, received all-the-incredible luck to become such icons, who’s words and art are promoted and revered almost over-night.
You may think it’s all wild “Conspiracy theory,” which incidentally was a term created by the CIA itself to ridicule non-believers of the JFK assassination, but even the mainstream press like THE INDEPENDENT, who with an article from Francis Stoner Saunders published on October 22, 1995 –
MODERN ART WAS A CIA WEAPON
“For decades in art circles it was either a rumour or a joke, but now it is confirmed as a fact. The Central Intelligence Agency used American modern art – including the works of such artists as Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko – as a weapon in the Cold War. In the manner of a Renaissance prince – except that it acted secretly – the CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years.
The connection is improbable. This was a period, in the 1950s and 1960s, when the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art – President Truman summed up the popular view when he said: “If that’s art, then I’m a Hottentot.” As for the artists themselves, many were ex- communists barely acceptable in the America of the McCarthyite era, and certainly not the sort of people normally likely to receive US government backing.
Why did the CIA support them? Because in the propaganda war with the Soviet Union, this new artistic movement could be held up as proof of the creativity, the intellectual freedom, and the cultural power of the US. Russian art, strapped into the communist ideological straitjacket, could not compete.
The decision to include culture and art in the US Cold War arsenal was taken as soon as the CIA was founded in 1947. Dismayed at the appeal communism still had for many intellectuals and artists in the West, the new agency set up a division, the Propaganda Assets Inventory, which at its peak could influence more than 800 newspapers, magazines and public information organisations. They joked that it was like a Wurlitzer jukebox: when the CIA pushed a button it could hear whatever tune it wanted playing across the world.”
Ernest Hemingway was connected to intelligence as was his son Jack. If you go on the CIA’s own website you’ll see how proud they are of Jack with their piece on him THE SON ALSO RISES… Of course they leave out everything they don’t want you to know.
But ERNEST HEMINGWAY is now well documented as in Writer, Sailor, Soldier, Spy by Nicholas Reynolds, as having been a spy for both the CIA forerunner the OSS, and the Soviets. A double-agent maybe, or maybe not?
Still, it’s the role, the impact that his very name and work have to this day, that are continued in the ever on-going Modernism intel project that shapes our perceptions of the world, and shuts out the true creative people that never get that incredible fast-tracked break or a chance to give us real truth and beauty!
Do your own research, and learn to connect the dots…
-With respect to Joe & Frank’s pal Larry Michie and his passing, who had a fine way with words himself, and for his contributions to Classic Movie Chat.