The brilliant story of how Orson Welles met Ernest Hemingway
Two complete and utter heavyweights of the 20th Century – both in physical and artistic stature – were undoubtedly Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles. Hemingway is widely considered one of the best fiction writers in the English language, while his contemporary, Welles, is one of the best filmmakers of all time.
The story of the two men meeting one another is brilliant and was relayed by Welles when he was in conversation with Michael Parkinson. “He was a very close friend of mine,” Welles said. “I knew him on and off for many years. We had a very strange relationship. I never belonged to his clan because I made fun of him, and nobody ever made fun of Hemingway, but I did, and he took it, but he didn’t like me to do it in front of the ‘club’.”
Welles went on to explain that he had met in a projection of a film that Hemingway had made and wanted Welles to narrate. Welles noted: “We met in the projection of a movie. We hadn’t seen each other, this is a dark projection room, and I was reading the text, and I said, ‘Is it really necessary to say this? Do you think it wouldn’t be better to just see the picture?’ Things like that.”
However, Welles’ comments seemed to rile Hemingway up. He continued: “Then I heard this growl from the darkness, you know: ‘You, who runs an art theatre, are trying to tell me how to write narration’, and so on. So I began to camp it up. I thought, ‘If that’s what I’m dealing with’. I said, ‘Oh, Mr. Hemingway, what, you think because you’re so big and strong and have hair on your chest…'”
It’s likely that Welles said this to Hemingway in order to wind him up even further, and it worked. Hemingway “swung” at Welles, and so Welles swung back at him. “Now you have the picture of the Spanish Civil War being projected on a screen and these two heavy figures swinging away at each other and missing most of the time,” Welles added. “[Then] the lights came up, we looked at each other and burst into laughter and became great friends.”
It’s a brilliant way for two ultra-masculine artists to become friends. However, Welles also admitted that it was “not a friendship that was renewed every year, but over many years at different times”. Detailing further, he added: “I saw him in the last year in which he was still entirely in control of himself. He’s a great, great artist. I was extraordinarily fond of him as a man too.”
Indeed, Hemingway’s physical and mental health had begun to deteriorate towards the end of his life, and on July 2nd, 1961, he shot himself with his favourite shotgun. Hemingway, like Welles, retains his status as one of the greatest artists of the 20th Century.
