Hollywood producers bought the film rights to enough Ernest Hemingway novels and short stories to make 15 films. The popular author took the money but hated what the filmmakers did to his books, and he never quite understood the difference between the two markets.

Few people today expect a movie to provide more than a nod of recognition to the novel from which the film was made, and few writers publish a novel that isn't written with a Hollywood producer in mind. Yet four years before Hemingway's death in 1961, he wondered in a letter to a friend why Hollywood would deliberately make a rotten movie from one of his books. Producer Darryl Zanuck once wrote that Hemingway was never satisfied. If a character went from Café A to Café B instead of from B to A, Zanuck said, Hemingway was upset.

Hollywood's first adaptation of a Hemingway work was "A Farewell to Arms," produced in 1932 by Paramount's Frank Borzage. It was turned into a sloppy romance, full of melodrama, including a final scene that has doves flying out from under Catherine Barkley's death bed and church bells celebrating the end of the war. The movie also had an advertising campaign that turned Hemingway's stomach. The film was sold as "Ernest Hemingway's world famous story of two who began in passion's reckless abandon with a love that grew until it heeded neither shame, nor danger, nor death." And public relations writers insisted that the film "follows the Hemingway novel with remarkable fidelity," and that to "the thousands who have read "A Farewell to Arms," the sensitive, intelligent film version cannot be other than a fulfillment." No wonder Hemingway felt that "an author who sells his books to Hollywood loses his personal integrity."

The film starred Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper, who later became a close Hemingway friend. And in spite of all the things Hemingway objected to, the film was nominated for Academy Awards for best picture and best production design, and won the award for cinematography.

Hollywood Films

(in chronological order) "A Farewell to Arms" (Paramount, 1932) "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (Paramount, 1943) "To Have and Have Not" (Warner Brothers, 1944) "The Killers" (Universal, 1946) "The Macomber Affair" (United Artists, 1947) "Under My Skin" (from "My Old Man," Twentieth Century-Fox, 1950) "The Breaking Point" (from "To Have and Have Not," Warner Brothers, 1950) "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1952) "The Sun Also Rises" (Twentieth Century-Fox, 1957) "A Farewell to Arms" (Selznick Studio/Twentieth Century-Fox, 1958) "The Gun Runners" (from "To Have and Have Not," Seven Arts/United Artists, 1958) "The Old Man and the Sea" (Warner Brothers, 1958) "Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man" (from selected Nick Adams Stories, Twentieth Century-Fox, 1962) "The Killers" (Universal, 1964) "Islands in the Stream" (Paramount, 1977)

The most famous adaptation of a Hemingway novel is "To Have and Have Not," produced by Warner Brothers in 1944 with Humphrey Bogart and the 18-year-old Lauren Bacall in her first film. Nearly everyone identifies the movie by quoting Bacall's sexy line as she leaves Bogart's hotel room: "You know how to whistle, don't you? Just put your lips together and blow." Screenwriting credits are given to Jules Furthman and William Faulkner, but director Howard Hawks says that he had given the line to Bacall for her screen test and suggested that Faulkner, who was re-writing Furthman's earlier drafts, leave it in.

Faulkner switched the setting from Hemingway's Cuban pre-Revolution days (which created problems in 1944 for the U.S. State Department anyway) to the Free French resistance fighters escaping Nazi Germany. Casablanca had been successful the year before with the same setting, and it was easy for Bogart to play the Rick character from Casablanca as Harry Morgan in "To Have and Have Not."

The film version of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (1943) won several Academy Award nominations, including best picture and best actor nominations for Cooper as Robert Jordan and best actress for Ingrid Bergman as Maria. And in spite of Hemingway's constant irritation in working with Spencer Tracy on "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958), Tracy was nominated that year for an Academy Award as best actor. Hemingway thought Tracy was too fat and out of shape for the role of Santiago.

Several other major actors played in adaptations of Hemingway works. Ava Gardner played Brett Ashley in "The Sun Also Rises" (1957), Cynthia in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" (1952), and, as the sultry Kitty Collins, Gardner sang the Academy Award-nominated song "The More I Know of Love" in "The Killers" (1946). Errol Flynn was nominated for a supporting actor Academy Award in "The Sun Also Rises;" Tyrone Power played Jake Barnes and Mel Ferrer played Robert Cohn. Burt Lancaster played the Swede in the 1946 "The Killers;" Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes, and Ronald Reagan played in the second adaptation of "The Killers" (1964).

Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett, and Robert Preston played the lead roles in "The Macomber Affair" (1947), adapted from Hemingway's short story "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber." Peck and Susan Hayward were the leads in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." George C. Scott played Thomas Hudson in "Islands in the Stream" (1977), with David Hemmings and Claire Bloom in supporting roles. Audie Murphy and Patricia Owens had the lead roles in "The Gun Runners" (1958), another adaptation of Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not."

Hemingway was well paid for screen rights. He received $80,000 for the 1932 "A Farewell to Arms," an enormous paycheck then for a film adaptation. The most he was paid was $150,000 for "The Old Man and the Sea," but he turned down a $300,000 offer from Twentieth Century-Fox for the film rights to "The Garden of Eden," a novel in progress at the time which was not published until 1986, 25 years after he died. The film adaptation still has not been made.

Hemingway's only visit to Hollywood was in 1937, when he gave a speech to collect money in support of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. The Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens had just completed a documentary film, "The Spanish Earth," for which Hemingway wrote and narrated the script, and they screened the film for an audience of Hollywood's wealthiest people.

Hemingway once summed up his attitude toward the film industry, in spite of all the money he made, by suggesting that the best way for a writer to deal with Hollywood was to meet the producers at the California state line: "You throw them your book, they throw you the money. Then you jump into your car and drive like hell back the way you came."