This year marks the end of Ernest Hemingway’s century-he was born on 21st July 1899 in Illinois-and the end of my 60th year, (more about that later). The concept of the male hero has changed so much in recent decades that it comes as a surprise to learn that Hemingway is still popular. Last year his books were borrowed 55,000 times from libraries in Britain, ranking him with Virginia Woolf, and well ahead of Joseph Conrad or Aldous Huxley. His enduring popularity is not limited to Britain; his publisher reports that world sales “are at an all-time high.”
For Whom the Bell Tolls, Hemingway’s epic tale of the Spanish civil war, remains one of his bestsellers; even in Spain, where it could not be published for many years because of its republican sympathies. First published in 1941 to great critical and popular acclaim, For Whom the Bell Tolls has long been a favourite of mine. In 1943 the film of the book was released by Paramount, which paid Hemingway the then record sum of $100,000 for the rights. In case you do not know the novel, the action is set in central Spain during the last days of May 1937. Robert Jordan, a university professor from Billings, Montana, turned dynamiter for the republicans, is attached to a band operating behind nationalist (fascist) lines in the Sierra Guadarrama, between Madrid and Segovia. His job is to blow up a bridge to stop the nationalists from outflanking a surprise attack on Segovia planned by the republicans.
Hemingway had a big say in the film’s casting: Gary Cooper played Robert Jordan and Ingrid Bergman played Maria, a beautiful Castillian guerrilla. Casting a blonde Swede as a Castillian is not an obvious choice, but Hemingway insisted. Martha Gellhorn had just become his third wife; she was a nordic blonde. So you can guess why.
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