*Spoilers Abound Below* may have loathed most of the translations of his own stories to film, and sometimes with good reason. Happy endings were tacked on to many of his stories. In
The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) a conflicted hero lived
, despite a touch of systemic septicemia, a gangrenous leg, and a heckuva death wish. (The author fumed and called it 'The Snows of Zanuck' in private
). Political realities were sometimes lost.
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) does not seem to have a commie in sight and only one mention of a fascist is made, at least by name. Evocative situations were embellished.
The Killers (1946) left Hemingway's terse masterpiece behind after the first superb fifteen minutes, but the author expressed some liking for that one despite this amplification, (his acceptance of the film may have been partly due to the presence of Ava Gardner and the likability of the producer, Mark Hellinger). "A fat actor"--in Hemingway's words--played one of his best characters when an aging
Spencer Tracy took the lead in
The Old Man and the Sea (1958) a novella that led to the awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to the writer in 1954.
Other, lesser known adaptations of Hemingway stories fared a bit better, with glimmers of the writer's elusive style in
A Farewell to Arms (1932)
, and
The Breaking Point (1950).Of course, Ernie wasn't allergic to the money the studios tossed in his lap for these tales, though he was miffed when he learned what some of them eventually earned after he sold the rights to the books to filmmakers. He reportedly didn't speak to
Howard Hawks for six months after he challenged the director to make a movie from what Hawks called "his worst book"; only to have
To Have and To Have Not become a giant hit, even though the story had little to do with the original novel. Nor did he disdain the company of the beautiful and the gifted people who sometimes took roles in these movies. Who can blame him for feeling the pull of the glamorous company of his hunting buddy Gary Cooper, radiant Ava Gardner or the glorious Ingrid Bergman, among others?
As early as 1926, when The Sun Also Rises became a best selling account of the wounded and rootless members of The Lost Generation adrift in Europe, Maxwell Perkins, the renowned Scribner's editor, asked his suddenly famous author how he wanted him to field inquiries from the movie capital. Hemingway replied "As for movie rights please do the best you can i.e. the best money you can get--I do not go to the movies and would not care what changes they made. That is their gain or loss. I don't write movies,"...more on the TCM Movie Morlocks
