[lit-ideas] Hemingway scuffles with Orson Welles - maybe
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 10:14:49 -0700
During the Spanish Civil War Hemingway helped the Dutch film director Joris
Ivens write the script of the film The Spanish Earth which came out in 1937.
Virgil Thompson and Marc Blitzstein compiled the sound track from forty
records of Spanish folk music. In June, MacLeish gave Orson Welles the
script and asked him to record it. Welles later provided a lively but quite
fanciful account of how he bear-baited Hemingway:
"There were lines as pompous and complicated as this: 'Here are the faces of
men who are close to death,' and this was to be read at a moment when one
saw faces on the screen that were so much more eloquent. I said to him,
'Mr. Hemingway, it would be better if one saw the faces all alone, without
commentary.'
"This didn't please him at all and, since I had, a short time before, just
directed the Mercury Theatre, which was a sort of avant-garde theatre, he
thought I was some kind of faggot and said, 'You ---------- effeminate boys
of the theatre, what do you know about real war?'
"Taking the bull by the horns, I began to make effeminate gestures and said
to him, 'Mr. Hemingway, how strong you are and how big you are!' That
enraged him and he picked up a chair; I picked up another and, right there,
in front of the images of the Spanish Civil war, as they marched across the
screen, we had a terrible scuffle. It was something marvelous: two guys
like us in front of those images representing people in the act of
struggling and dying. . . . We ended by toasting each other over a bottle of
whiskey."
"Prudencio de Pereda [a Cuban novelist also involved in the production]
doubted that anything like this ever happened. He recalled that they had
quiet and serious discussions during which Welles (like Ivens) criticized
the script.
"MacLeish and Ivens (whose English was not very good at the time) were
pleased with Welles' reading. But Lillian Hellman and Fredric March
disliked it; they thought his polished, theatrical voice clashed with the
stark, realistic script. When Ivens suggested that Hemingway read his own
words, Hemingway (perhaps remembering his mother's musical experience) said:
'No, no, I can't do it. I don't have the proper training in breathing.' He
was finally persuaded to speak the commentary without watching the film and
did it extremely well. Though the poor sound recording of that time made
his thin Midwestern voice sound rather flat, his natural tone made the
intense experiences on the screen more believable. As Ivens recalled:
'While recording, Hemingway found the emotions that he had felt at the
front. From his first sentences, his commentary acquired a sensibility that
no other voice would have been able to communicate. It was achieved, we had
succeeded in giving the film its true dimension.' Ivens asked MacLeish to
explain to Welles that he had become the voice on the recording room floor,
but MacLeish was too embarrassed to do this. Wells, who had worked without
a fee, was naturally furious, and took mild revenge in his account of the
recording session."
Lawrence
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