Village Roadshow has increasingly been expanding its television business including adapting Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast, a reboot of College Bowl, an adaptation of video-game Myst and Lo Life, a scripted series based on the Brooklyn street crew led by Big Vic Lo.
A Moveable Feast
Alix Jaffe, VREG’s Executive Vice President, Television, who will oversee the relationship, said, “As we continue to build our television division, we have the unique opportunity to partner with Kelly and the team at Treefort Media to expand our slate with premium, cross-platform storytelling that will create a more immersive experience for audiences. We believe there is an incredible synergy between our teams and are looking forward to the partnership.”
Kelly Garner, Treefort’s Founder and CEO added, “This is an incredible opportunity not only to collaborate with Village Roadshow’s talented team, but also to supercharge our slate by tapping into Village Roadshow’s iconic and diverse library. We can’t wait to explore the possibilities and expand our pipeline into TV and film.”
Shakespeare and Co. with Sylvia Beach. Hem with one of his many wounds
1918 Nurse Agnes von Kurowsky and American Red Cross volunteer Ernest Hemingway, Milan, Italy. Photograph in the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
Hemingway with Patrick, John “Bumby”, and Gregory “Gigi”), at Club de Cazadores del Cerro, Cuba. Photograph in Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
Below are a few photos that are not published as often as some. Hope you enjoy them. Best, Christine
Hem and his father
Idaho
Hem with his beloved Black Dog (a spaniel stray that adopted Hem)
hem and Mary
The early days in PARIS, On the left, Hadley with Bumby
My friend Trudy found this interesting Article about the writers of Paris in the ’20s. I edited it to shorten but I think you will enjoy it. Photos added by me.
Hem, Hadley, bumby
Best, Christine
Ernest Hemingway and Ezra Pound’s friendship spanned continents—and ideologies.
Ernest Hemingway, fresh off his marriage to Hadley Richardson, his first wife, arrived in Paris in 1921. Paris was a playground for writers and artists, offering respite from the radical politics spreading across Europe. Sherwood Anderson supplied Hemingway with a letter of introduction to Ezra Pound. The two litterateurs met at Sylvia Beach’s bookshop and struck up a friendship that would shape the world of letters.
Sylvia Beach’s Bookstore
They frolicked the streets of Paris as bohemians, joined by rambunctious and disillusioned painters, aesthetes, druggies, and drinkers. They smoked opium, inhabited salons, and delighted in casual soirées, fine champagnes, expensive caviars, and robust conversations about art, literature, and the avant-garde. Pound was, through 1923, exuberant, having fallen for Olga Rudge, his soon-to-be mistress, a young concert violinist with firm breasts, shapely curves, midnight hair, and long eyebrows and eyelashes. She exuded a kind of mystical sensuality unique among eccentric highbrow musicians; Pound found her irresistible.
Ezra Pound
Pound was known for his loyalty to friends. Although he had many companions besides Hemingway—among them William Butler Yeats, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Robert McAlmon, Gertrude Stein, e.e. cummings, Pablo Picasso, Wyndham Lewis, T.E. Hulme, William Carlos Williams, Walter Morse Rummel, Ford Madox Ford, Jean Cocteau, and Malcolm Cowley—Hemingway arguably did more than the others to reciprocate Pound’s favors, at least during the Paris years when he promoted Pound as Pound promoted others.
Olga Rudge
Young Ezra
Pound edited Hemingway’s work, stripping his prose of excessive adjectives. Hemingway remarked that Pound had taught him “to distrust adjectives as I would later learn to distrust certain people in certain situations.”
Olga and Ezra
Pound, however, grew disillusioned with Paris, where his friends were gravitating toward socialism and communism. Paris, he decided, was not good for his waning health. Hemingway himself had been in and out of Paris, settling for a short time in Toronto. In 1923, accompanied by their wives, Pound and Hemingway undertook a walking tour of Italy. The fond memories of this rejuvenating getaway inspired Pound to return to Italy with his wife Dorothy Shakespear in 1924. They relocated, in 1925, to a picturesque hotel in Rapallo, a beautiful sea town in the province of Genoa.
Rapallo
Young Ezra
The move to Italy also effectively terminated Pound’s glory years in Paris, about which Hemingway wrote affectionately:
More than anything else, Italian politics—and the rise of fascism—damaged Hemingway’s regard for Pound, who became a zealous supporter of Mussolini and a reckless trafficker in conspiracy theories.
Hemingway offered Pound some money, sensing that money was needed, but Pound declined it.
The falling out was no secret, and other writers took sides. William Carlos Williams wrote to Pound in 1938, saying, “It is you, not Hemingway, in this case who is playing directly into the hands of the International Bankers.”
Archibald MacLeish helped to orchestrate Pound’s release from St. Elizabeth’s, (A mental asylum Pound had been committed to. See below as to how he got there.) drafting a letter to the government on Pound’s behalf that included Hemingway’s signature, along with those of Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot. A year later Hemingway provided a statement of support for Pound to be used in a court hearing regarding the dismissal of an indictment against Pound.
Archibald MacLeish
Hemingway awoke on the morning of July 2, 1961, put a 12-gauge, double-barreled shotgun to his head, and, alone in the foyer of his home, blew his brains out. He was 61. Pound’s friends and family didn’t tell him about Hemingway’s death, but a careless nurse did, and Pound reacted hysterically. The older of the two, Pound, at 72, was free from St. Elizabeth’s, where he’d spent 12 solemn years. He had returned to his beloved Italy to finish out his long and full life. In the autumn of 1972, he died peacefully in his sleep in Venice, the day after his birthday, which he’d spent in the company of friends.
Allen Mendenhall is an associate dean at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law and executive director of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty.
ME here: I may have over-edited re: how Ezra ended up in a psych facility. Ezra Pound was closely aligned with the Fascists in Italy. He was later imprisoned in Pisa by the liberating American forces in 1945 on charges of treason. In Pisa, he purportedly was placed in a small 6 x 6 cell and had a mental breakdown. He was ultimately sent to St. Elizabeth’s psychiatric hospital in Washington D.C. for 12 years. Friends including Hemingway sent money and petitions for his release which finally happened. While most acknowledged that he was a bit “crazy,” most felt he was far from any sort of danger to anyone including to his country. Once released he returned to Italy and died in Venice eleven years after Hemingway’s death. Christine
I thought I’d post some photos that I had not viewed in a while and are not as frequently viewed. I love them all and hope you enjoy them too. Best, Christine
I finally made it to Paris after a bit of drama in getting away. Due to a family illness, the trip was touch and go as to whether or not we were going to get there at all. Emergency rooms, doctor appointments (not for me; I was packed and set to board that plane) but two days later, after a doctor cleared the trip, we arrived in Paris.
We had rented an apartment in the Marais district and it was perfect. There were two flights of stairs to lug baggage up but it was not too tough and the climb was worth it. The apartment was both quaint and modern. It was bright and sunny with a wonderful galley kitchen. We marveled over the storage in the modest space. I immediately checked out the WIFI and it worked as if I were home in Connecticut. I’d brought my own hotspot anticipating a glitch but there was none.
The neighborhood was very walkable. Once outside our lovely garden courtyard, I strolled narrow streets, ducked into little hidden parks, heard a band playing in the street in the middle of the day. Better yet, couples took to the street dancing and an old lady danced solo up near the band. It was at that moment that after being in Paris one hour that I knew it would capture my soul.
It was just a few steps around the corner to a bakery with fresh baguettes and croissants. Cheese and supplies were handy from a nearby small grocery.
I launched my Hemingway search on day one. While, of course, Paris has changed vastly since Hemingway was there, but still there are some memorable spots that are not much changed. Shakespeare & Company is still there minus Sylvia Beach. Les Deux Magots is still there, although it’s now a very busy corner. I had fun pretending that Hemingway was sitting at a corner table, deep in thought and writing what ultimately became The Sun Also Rises or one of his reporting pieces that kept the family afloat while he waited for his big break.
I walked the Hemingway walk along the Seine, up to Montmartre and saw the first apartment that he and Hadley shared. Obviously it’s occupied but I saw where it was. I was recently listening to some tapes that Alice Sokoloff had made of conversations with Hadley and which ultimately went into her book about Hadley. Hadley described in this conversation the bad neighborhood that she and Hemingway lived in when they first arrived in Paris, the unpleasant smells from the nearby businesses, and her loneliness in Paris. I’d never been as aware of that fact prior to listening to the tape. I had the impression that Hadley was happy in Paris because Hemingway was happy, but she described how difficult it was without knowing the language and given the fact that he was away during the day writing. She felt alone and an outsider. She was very homesick. She ultimately came to love Paris and willingly stayed there and even after moving back to Chicago with her second husband Paul Mowrer, she and Paul went back to live in Paris for a few years after the war. A Moveable Feast describes well the foods, the sights, and the smells in Paris in those early years. It was my dream to go and see these places while knowing they had changed, and it exceeded my expectation.
Aside from the Hemingway connection, I found Paris to be the most lovely city I’ve ever been in and I can’t wait to go back. I truly fell in love with it. I did not meet one surly French person. I speak a little French but far from well. Still, everyone was simply wonderful; the food was terrific and we weren’t eating at five-star restaurants and I felt welcome and everyone we met was very friendly. I am obsessed with the Eiffel Tower, the Seine, the Love Lock Bridge, the Pont Neuf, the Rodin Museum. I would go back in a split second and I will. To Hemingway’s Paris, then and now. Below: me at the Place des Voges.
Nice article about places to visit and feel Papa’s memories. I did not know that his usual seat at La Flordita in Havana was blocked off and a daiquiri placed on the counter daily near his statue. I have it on good authority that his favorite drink however was a mega-cold Martini. However, a daiquiri will do. Hem Places
If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. Ernest Hemingway
Hem in Paris
Paris
It’s the beginning of a very rugged winter—or so it seems—in Connecticut. Yesterday the winds were grueling and temps were in the twenties. I’m writing this in November as I have a busy December and a trial in January so things will be even worse here by the time this is printed..
Winter!
I’m sustaining myself by planning my springtime trip to Paris. I’ve never been to Paris unless you count passing through it one day in college. On that trip I stayed outside of the city of Paris in a little town called Meaux. I don’t know if I was particularly hungry but the restaurant in the small hotel that I stayed in was one of the best I’d ever had. I’ve always carried that fond memory of France with me.
For my June trip, I’ve rented an apartment for eight days. It’s located in the Marais district on a quiet street. I’ve heard that the Marais is quaint, has lots of boutiques and restaurants, and encompasses both the gay district and the Jewish district, an interesting juxtaposition.
Hem in the 20s
I’ve looked on the internet and found suggested Hemingway walks and tours. I’m sure that many of Hemingway’s places are no longer there but I can imagine. I’ll check out Shakespeare and Company, Montparnasse, the old home of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, the apartment where Hemingway and Hadley lived and the separate place where Hemingway rented a room to write. I know that we all romanticize Paris of that era and it doesn’t exist anymore except with the help of Woody Allen’s admirable efforts to revive it in Midnight In Paris. However, I’m still looking forward to the trip.
Gertrude Stein and Bumby in Paris
The Sun Also Rises
I’ve heard that Paris is the most magical city in the world. I’ve also heard that it’s just one more big, dirty city. I want to decide for myself.
If anyone has great ideas about places I should go or must see places that are Hemingway-related or just great places, please do let me know.
I’d like to see Paris before I’m too old
I’ve already booked dinner at a place that is featured in my new book. It’s a restaurant called Dans Le Noir where dinner is served completely in the dark. I’m told that it is really completely dark. The waiters and waitresses are blind and it’s supposed to be an amazing experience of your senses. In my new book, I’ve renamed it En La Obscuridad and made it a Spanish restaurant in New York City. A dramatic scene takes place there so I must try the original. As I’m clumsy anyway, this should be good: eating in the dark.
A Moveable Feast
Anyway, let me know your thoughts on “must see” and “must do” events in Paris.
