Hotch at 100: “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man”
In this installment of “Hotch at 100,” our ongoing series of video interviews with writer, philanthropist, and Washington University in St. Louis alumnus A. E. Hotchner, Hotch tells us about the making of the film “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man,” and how it evolved from his first Hemingway adaptation, “The Battler” (detailed in a previous “Hotch at 100” installment). Shortly after “The Battler” aired in 1955, Hotch was contacted by the producer John Houseman about adapting more of Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories into a cycle for live television. Hotch recounts how he turned the stories into “The World of Nick Adams” and got the composer Aaron Copland to contribute the score. After the live broadcast, which included a chamber orchestra playing Copland’s score live in the studio, Hollywood producer Jerry Wald inquired as to whether Hotch would be willing to expand the story even further for a feature film. That film turned “The World of Nick Adams” into “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man,” which starred Richard Beymer, Eli Wallach, Ricardo Montalban, Paul Newman, and Susan Strasberg.
Stay tuned for our next installment, where Hotch tells us how years later he and Paul Newman returned to “The World of Nick Adams” for a series of highly successful and acclaimed charity stage shows!
The following images are from materials related to “The World of Nick Adams” and “Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man,” including draft script pages and production photographs, acquired in a recent accession which is being added to the A. E. Hotchner Papers.
The Modern Literature Collection has been acquiring Hotchner’s manuscripts and other papers since 1967. The A. E. Hotchner Papers currently consist of manuscript and editorial material toward the books Papa Hemingway (1966), Treasure (1970), King of the Hill (1970), The Man Who Lived at the Ritz (1981), Looking for Miracles (1975), Choice People (1984), Louisiana Purchase (1996) and Hemingway in Love (2015), as well as scripts for Hotchner’s adaptations of Hemingway materials for television and original plays for television and the stage. View the Finding Aid here.
A major new acquisition from Hotchner this year includes further manuscripts and screenplays, correspondence with Hemingway, photographs and other memorabilia of Hotchner’s time at Washington University, dozens of photographs of Hemingway, and many materials related to Hotchner’s long-running charity production of the Hemingway story-cycle “The World of Nick Adams.” These acquisitions are currently being processed.