out of curiosity...

[Glenn Anders]

I agree.

I think we are getting pretty far afield from anything useful now. I remember Jaime describing that "short script" before. Sounds like the kind of thing a couple of trapped, bored, urbane writers, one of them in several kinds of pain, would come up with. [If you have ever spent much time in the high desert near Victorville, you will know what I mean.] Now, we could speculate that the parody at Welles' expense might have stimulated Welles to go for some of the inside jokes he put in the final picture.

There is considerable anecdotal material to suggest that Houseman had a gay streak (closer to the surface in the Arts than in other professions, even now), but I know of no credible evidence of Hemingway being a homosexual. The nature of his injuries in the First World War, and ignorance about the subject at the time, may have made him sensitive to the issue. There is that theory that 200 percent men have something they are afraid of in these areas.

Glenn

[Knowles Noel Shane]

The Hemingway comment refers to the dubbing session for the film Spanish Earth, which I think was from 1938. Hemingway wrote the copy for that and did record narration for the film, but Orson was also hired to record narration. When Welles suggested cuts in the voice-over, Ernest became enraged, questioning Welles' sexual orientation. Various reports describe a fist-fight ensuing or chairs being thrown. The two apparently reconciled immediately and became lifelong friends. I never heard that Hemingway was gay; he was so overtly, stridently manly in everything he did. Orson would have seemed a bit flowery by comparison. I only brought it up because I thought Mank and Houseman might have made a similar disparaging accusation. As for Spanish Earth, both versions (with Welles' and Hemingway's narration) survived.

[Glenn Anders]

I don't think we are in serious disagreement, Knowles. I was just answering your question.

I used to teach "Spanish Earth," but at the time, I was not aware that Welles had done a narration for it. Neither did I know until now the story behind the controversy which you relate. It is my understanding that the original narration was done by Welles, and Hemingway replaced it.

I have never heard Welles' version. Does anyone know if it is available in a commercial form?

All that remains in my mind are a few images, a few of Hemingway's phrases, and Virgil Thompson's energetic score. It was certainly a vigorous, prophetic warning in 1937.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

i've read about hemingway's sexual issues in his later years. his last wife said he liked to dress up like a little girl for sex.

some one here a long time ago posted what hemingway said to welles, "what do you sissy boys of the new york theater know about real war." this is priceless. it's such a hillarious comment. ernest is like welles' depiction of hotspur in chimes.

at one point some one asked hemingway why he did not like welles' narration, and hemingway said, "when welles says militia, he sounds like a cocksucker swallowing." this came from dangerous friends by peter viertel. a pretty darn good book.

[jaime marzol]

you also have to wonder about a man that likes his friends to call him 'pappa.' there is something to be read in that.

viertel's book paints an excellent, true portrait of hemingway. it's a real, first hand picture, not a researcher's view

[Glenn Anders]

Interesting, Jaime. Hemingway, like Jack London and George Bernard Shaw, was among those first writers and artists in the early 20th Century who self-dramatized themselves through the coming of Mass Media. In Hemingway's case, that terrible injury in Italy no doubt encouraged him to recreate himself for Media in a way which is quite common today.

So, toward the end, Mary Hemingway said, "he liked to dress up like a little girl for sex," eh?

Given the wounds, given the tremendous influence of Sigmund Freud's theories in the period, given the emphasis he put on "good sex," given his capacity for drink, and given the fact that he was much battered and older than his years would have indicated, it may not be surprising that Hemingway, a man who had long lived behind a disguise, should create another.

In desperation, if for no other reason.

I have always enjoyed Viertel's gossipy writings, but distrust him because he betrayed so many better writers and artists in his work. The remark about Welles' narration for "Spanish Earth" sounds in Hemingway's character though. After all, Hemingway was not a successful man of the Theater. In 1937, he would have been struggling with his only play, The Fifth Column, which failed to conquer the New York stage a few years later. If he had swallowed his own contempt for the "Boy Macbeth," he might have gotten some good tips from Welles on revising and staging that effort.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

i didn't know viertel had a rep as a gossip monger. i've only read 2 books by him, i enjoyed both. so now i don't know if the portrait he painted on hemingway is true or not, but none of that complexity that you post above was in viertel's portrait. from the viertel book i walked away with a different impression, he had a pixie-ish manner, was a bit pevish, and unremarkable, which might account for his jelousy and competative nature when he was around huston, who was a very remarkable guy. i also have a thin book by liilian ross called i think, PORTRAIT OF HEMINGWAY, where she spent a day with him and wife in NY, and wrote what it was like. he just seemed like another badly dressed fat guy in NY.

[Glenn Anders]

Well, jaime, if we just take Peter Viertel's impressions of Hemingway and John Huston, we see a pretty ascerbic talent for character assassination.

The Hemingway of the 1920's and 1930's, a writer who changed the prose style of the English language, was not the man or the artist who emerged after World War II. Things happen to people. He made an easy target for a writer like Viertel.

And as you suggest, John Huston was a remarkably complex man and artist, but if you only knew him and his work from White Hunter, Black Heart, you would come away with the impression that he was an irresponsible psychopath.

Just my opinion.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

ONE MAN'S TREASURE IS ANOTHER MAN'S TRASH:

GLEN SAID:
Well, jaime, if we just take Peter Viertel's impressions of Hemingway and John Huston, we see a pretty ascerbic talent for character assassination.

JAIME SAYS:
viertel's account of huston is tremendous, read it several times, made me want to know more about this fascinating man. viertel's portrait falls right in with what ray bradburry wrote, with what paul newman said, what richard brooks said, with what lilliam ross wrote, and with what lawrence grobal wrote - all well known character assassins.

GLENN SAYS:
Things Happen to people. He made an easy target for a writer like Viertel.

JAIME SAYS:
i don't know much about hemingway except what i have read about him in books that are not about him.


GLEN SAYS:
And as you suggest, John Huston was a remarkably complex man and artist, but if you only knew him and his work from White Hunter, Black Heart, you would come away with the impression that he was an irresponsible psychopath.

JAIME SAYS:
i know him from the ray bradburry book, from the grobal bio, from the ross book, from the reflections in a male eye book, from the jh intervews book, from the preface of the treasure of the sierra madre screenplay, from researching the stranger, from from several on the set documentaries, NOTES FROM UNDER THE VOLCANO, from JH AND THE DUBLINERS, from short, on location documentaries, and from about 20 of his films. he was an highly talented, eccentric, unreasonable, irresponsible, violent psychopath, and had every vice known to man. capable of acts that made him a giant among men, and capable of publicly humiliating his best friends.

i think you judged viertel before you saw a lot of the evidence.

[Glenn Anders]

Jaime: As the lamented Rick Schmidlin evidently concluded, one can waste a good deal of time on this board in Hemingwayesque pissing contests over credentials, which sometimes descends into the ad hominem.

I have read or seen almost all the sources you cite.

Lillian Roth, for instance, wrote a great pioneer study of Hollywood in her Picture, but she did not understand, as an outsider from New York, that a young writer-director like Huston could not do much about the 20-some minutes cut out of his THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE. It was out of his hands. Already a veteran of the system, he knew when "to hold 'em" and when he had "to fold 'em." That's one reason he joined Sam Spiegel at Horizon Pictures, for more control.

Richard Brooks, whatever differences the two difficult men had, became a writer-director himself partly because of his association with Huston. Whatever Paul Newman may have thought about his experience on the troubled MACKINTOSH MAN, he was eager to do it after turning in one of his more distinguished performances in Huston's underrated THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JUDGE ROY BEAN, a great example of American tall tale-telling, which Mark Twain might have admired. And if you have ever met Ray Bradbury, no matter how casually, you recognize that he is a frail soul, and an eccentric personality, possibly not the Huston's best choice to collaborate on a vigorous production of MOBY DICK, a project he had long planned and staked his reputation on.

I saw John Huston at the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1969, where he personally a la Orson Welles led several hundred people down the street from the theater to a legendary restaurant for a buffet he had arranged (difficult for him because he was walking with a cane after a riding accident), and brought people back for a showing of the rough cut of A WALK WITH LOVE AND DEATH. I observed the affection with which his companions regarded him. Not to mention his sheer generosity.

I have been to Puerta Vallarte, where for years his statue sat in the garden of the Jazz club he founded near the Malecon. Mexican friends, dating from the shooting of NIGHT OF THE IGUANA, told me how Huston, over the years, loved to sit on the promenade and chat with whoever came by. They said he genuinely liked people, was fascinated with their lives.

Huston was a child of the Hollywood Studio System. He survived an admittedly troubled youngmanhood to become a disciplined artist, writer and director. Whatever his failings, he kept a lifelong group of friends and collaborators, and if he was hard on women, he maintained a number of long relationships with them, and managed to turn out three pretty good kids, especially Anjelika Huston, who from all I can gather, is a pretty nice person, quite a lady, a great broad, a superb actress, and a sensitive director in her own right.

And we should not forget why we are here. Orson Welles and John Huston were friends and collaborators from the late 1930's on. By all accounts I've come across, they liked and admired each other their entire lives.

As for my remarks on Peter Viertel, I am indebted to a member of this board, who sent me the following support of my view:

"Peter Viertel does not emerge as a particularly likeable character in Arthur Laurents's autobiography A PLAY BY..(2000). He is criticized for his anti-semitic remarks by the Jewish author who was blacklisted temporarily. Laurents's seems to question Viertel's honesty and reliability in certain matters."

Laurents had a long, rather distinguished career after a start in Radio, as a playwright (The Time of the Cuckoo), a screenwriter (ANASTASIA) and libbretist (Westside Story). His autobiographical work, also known as Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood, evidently cuts bluntly and judiciously through a lot of innuendo.

I do not necessarily disagree with all your assertions, but if John Huston was a psychopath, he was a very successful one in a number of arenas, both personal and professional.

We simply differ in our final assessments.

Let's leave it there.

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

it's hillarious to me how i never agree with anything you say, but it's ok, we are not all supposed to like the same shit. if we did, it would be boring and i would have never enjoyed the pleasure of posting at a site where glenn posts.

[jaime marzol]

i just read your last line, where you wrote "lets just leave it there." i got this mental picture of a rustic table and chair and an exasperated glenn at not getting his point across to the beligerent child wipes his sweaty brow with his arm, and takes a swig of his beer.

[Knowles Noel Shane]

You two are very entertaining. Thank you. In the words of Rodney King: "Why can't we all just get along?"

I need to dig up the pages of Clifford Irving's Fake Hughes Bio I found online years ago. They should add some spice to the brew. There was a sequence with Hughes and Hemingway skinnydipping, but I don't remember anything more. When I found the passages from the book, some publisher had just announced it was going into print; when I checked the same site a few weeks later, the extracts were gone as was the announcement it was being published. Maybe it HAS been published since - I'd like to find it. I'd also like to find The Book about The Book. Irving's book Fake, the bio of Elmyr, is fascinating too - that one I found.

[Glenn Anders]

I don't know about "entertaining," but I quite agree, Knowles. Actually, Jaime's description of my work site is inaccurate only in that where I turn out my infuriating factual observations is much more primitive than he imagines. But he comes pretty close.

I had the same experience with the text excerpts of Irving's "fake" biography.

Perhaps, an explanation is to be found in the report which has just come over the wire:

http://www.themovieinsider.com/news....x'

Richard Gere is in negotiations to play Irving (or is it Hughes?) in a motion picture about the scandal. If it comes off, sounds as if there might be a role for an actor playing Orson Welles.

What do you think?

Glenn

[jaime marzol]

getting along is not easy when glenn is around. all that negativity makes this place a bummer and i have to be in a certain mood to come by.

i also read AN OPEN BOOK. an excellent read, though it's not a bio. you could almost call it an evening with huston.