One late-night YouTube search led Pete Carvill to an overlooked friendship between Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles – two legends, forever sparring. Here, Carvill shares the unexpected discoveries that brought his book on their friendship, A Duel of Bulls, to life.
What drew you into Hemingway and Welles’s relationship?
Well, I’ve always had this fascination and interest in the lives of both men. Their respective arts aside, they are probably just as well known for their public personae. And one day, I put into YouTube their two names and the site spat back the 1973 interview with Michael Parkinson that would end up opening the book. That’s got over 2 million views so far. And it was then that I began to realise they had this incredible friendship. Not only that but it was so far entirely undocumented. And I thought, ‘Well, I wonder if anyone else finds this interesting…’
Tell us about the title, A Duel of Bulls?
The title is a reference to their love of Spain, which found itself manifested in a love of bullfighting. And it was the case, too, that they spent their lives sparring with each other. In the case of Welles, he continued to spar against the myths of Hemingway long after the latter’s death in 1961. There’s also the implication, I think, that any duel between bulls always ends in a draw. Which is ironic, given that neither party ever really declares ‘victory’ over the other. Hemingway never really understood Welles or vice versa. And as I write in A Duel of Bulls, what might collaborations between the two have looked like? A Welles adaptation of The Sun Also Rises might have been interesting.
How have history and literature remembered their relationship? Where does your book stand in this historiography?
Their relationship so far has NOT been remembered in history or literature. They are essentially footnotes in one another’s story. A Duel of Bulls goes some way to try to correct this. Also, given that both men were unreliable narrators of their own lives/consummate bullshit artists, there’s great licence here to use fiction to tell a non-fiction story.
In the process of writing this book, how has your understanding of Hemingway and Welles changed?
Honestly, I felt sorry for Hemingway by the end. Despite being a monster at points, his ending was so sad that you cannot have anything but empathy and compassion for him. My understanding of Welles didn’t change so much – rather, my sense of him being slightly disappointed in his own career at the end but still taking great joy in life and what it has to offer was buttressed by the research I did.
How exactly did the Spanish Civil War bring them together?
Well, the pair first meet in 1937 when Welles was hired as the narrator of The Spanish Earth, a documentary film that Hemingway had been working on. There are a number of legends around what happened in that screening room in New York and probably all of them are false. But the Spanish Civil War aside, it was inevitable that their paths would cross at some point. Marlene Dietrich was a close personal friend of both, as was Marc Blitzstein, who was a composer for Welles and would do the score for The Spanish Earth.
What was the most surprising discovery you made about their friendship?
The most surprising thing I discovered was how similar they were in life: they peaked quite early, went through a fallow period during their forties and fifties but then had a last burst of creativity. Both being big personalities, they were very, very similar. I suspect Welles at times was a darker character than I’ve made him out to be, while Hemingway was probably a little lighter. Certainly, Welles thought of him that way.
If A Duel of Bulls were made into a film, who would you love to see cast as Hemingway and Welles and why?
Adrian Sparks was tremendous as the older Ernest Hemingway in Papa: Hemingway in Cuba. So, he would be a good choice for the final few chapters. For Welles, I don’t think anyone has topped Christian McKay in Me and Orson Welles, and he’s still the right age to play Welles in a film version of A Duel of Bulls.
If we can’t get those two, then I think Nick Offerman would make a good Hemingway. They’re both from Illinois and Offerman is a great actor. For Welles, I think you’d need someone with a great stage presence, because Welles was very much a theatrical actor. That’s a great question, though – it’s really hard to cast someone as Orson Welles without wanting it to be actually Orson Welles!
A Duel of Bulls: Hemingway and Welles in Love and War by Pete Carvill is out 10 April.
Enjoyed this? Read Pete’s introduction to his first book, Death of a Boxer, here.
Check out some of our other author introductions: