Orson Welles on Hemingway

[Ryan]

I was looking for some info on the upcoming Ken Burns series on Hemingway. I can't wait for that. I literally think it's going to change my life.

Anyway, i came across this. Nice stuff. If you don't know, the interviewer is Michael Parkinson, he had a hugely popular celebrity interview show in the UK for probably 30 years, that we used to see in Ireland too. A bit like a UK Dick Cavett.

Now I'm looking for that Welles narrated film by Hemingway on the Spanish Civil War, mentioned in the interview.

There is some language that most celebrities don't get away with today but it was 1974. 14 years after Hemingway died.

 

[Ken Gargett]

interesting.

huge fan of hemingway. take or leave welles though he did some great stuff. his macbeth is pretty fabulous. but outside of his acting/movies/the wells end of the world stuff on radio (all of which is more than enough to give him status as a great in that world), he seems a blowhard trying to create a legend about himself that ws nothing like reality. 

one example, after reading james ellroy's perfidia, very hard to look at welles with anything other than utter contempt ever again. i know it is fiction but ellroy does seem to get hold of some very interesting character flaws in all the real characters which inhabit his novels. welles comes across as a craven coward of the worst kind and one would never trust a word out of his mouth. hopefully it is fiction. but as far as i can research, all of welles' comments about his alleged friendship with hemingway and their brawls and him making fun of hemingway are all from after hemingway died. which does make me wonder if it is anything but welles making up stuff to make himself look like one of the boys. 

from everything/anything i have been able to find out, welles would have run a thousand miles if hemingway so much as growled at him. as for swinging punches, not buying it. although if you search the net, you can find other versions of this. one has hemingway making the comments after welles made the suggestions direct to hemingway when they first met. and it did end up in pushing and shoving. so who knows. 

must say i am also very keen to see burns' doco. might shed more light.