Posted on 04/27/2008 3:14:50 AM PDT by Stoat
In "The Good Life According to Hemingway," out next month, A.E. Hotchner, who traveled the globe with him, bares a series of never-before-published slaps Hemingway took at the film business.
When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in "A Farewell to Arms" and he'd pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: "If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs. Selznick portraying 24-year-old Catherine Barkley, does earn $50,000, you should have all $50,000 changed into nickels at your local bank and shove them up your [bleep] until they came out of your ears."
Darryl F. Zanuck, the boss of 20th Century Fox, was trashed when he asked Hemingway to shorten the title of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," which starred Gregory Peck. Hotchner quotes Hemingway, "I said, you want something short and exciting that will catch the eye of both sexes, right?" He then reeled off the first letters of Hollywood studio names that together spelled out the F-word. "That should fit all the marquees and you can't beat it as a sex symbol." Zanuck titled the film "The Macomber Affair."
(Excerpted to comply with Free Republic posting requirements)
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I had wanted to read that book. Just put it on hold at the library.
You might feel different about Papa with a belly full of red wine and bread. And more rich, red wine. And more bread. Etc.
I've had an uneasy feeling that maybe Hemingway is really Shakespeare or Faulkner or Jane Austin or Herman Melville and I completely missed it.
Well said, W.
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