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Canadian Consul greets playwright | Hemingway at Home Exhibit | Hemingway on Stage | Hemingway Bronze Statue
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Canadian Consul greets playwright
Canadian Consul General Marcy Grossman, second from right, and her husband Mike, left, joined Irish-Canadian actor Brian Gordon Sinclair and Key West Art and Historical Society Executive Director Claudia Pennington at a gala reception at the Custom House after Sinclair’s performance of his one-man play “Hemingway: the Man Eaters.”
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When twenty-nine-year-old
Ernest Hemingway arrived in Key West, he had already experienced two
major military conflicts, extensive European travel, and life as an
expatriate in Paris. Yet, it was Key West that captured his imagination
and served as home base for over a decade as he and his wife Pauline
traveled, raised their young sons, and became a part of the Key West
community. Hemingway’s passion for bullfights frequently took him from
Key West to Spain; his love of sport fishing and the “great blue river”
between Key West and Cuba brought him home.
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Hemingway on Stage: Ernest Hemingway, it has been said, never left a wife until he had another woman waiting. Looking for writing privacy that Key West could no longer offer, and an escape from his wife Pauline, Hemingway took his fishing boat, Pilar, to Cuba, where the other woman lived. Man-eaters, he often called the women in his life and the lives of his friends, especially when the women dominated over the men, as his mother dominated his father. However, the man-eaters often gave the writer background material for his short stories and novels. Jane Mason, the other
woman and wife of Grant Mason, founder of Pan American Airlines,
collected writers as well as their books. She offered Hemingway
everything Pauline didn’t. She had a passion for fishing and hunting and
she could hold her booze. And, she lived in Cuba, a safe 90 miles from
Key West and Pauline. The safari was planned,
but Hemingway lost interest in Mason when she was involved in a car
accident with his sons, Jack and Patrick, riding along. The day after
the accident Mason fell off the balcony of her Havana home. Some say it
was attempted suicide, after Hemingway called off their relationship. When the Spanish Civil War
began, Hemingway left the safety of Key West and Havana for the Spain of
his youth, of bullfighting and fiestas. What he found was Madrid under a
fascist siege. He traveled to report on the civil war, condemning
non-fascists countries for not helping put a stop to Hitler and
Mussolini’s atrocities in Spain. The failure to stop fascism in Spain,
Hemingway predicted, would result in a larger war in the future. The fascist man-eaters, like the women, led Hemingway to write and it resulted in “For Whom the Bells Toll,” his novel on the atrocities and brutalities of the Spanish Civil War. Irish-Canadian actor-writer, Brian Gordon Sinclair brings these facts and many others to breathtaking life at the Waterfront Playhouse, as he presents “Hemingway on Stage: The Road to Freedom, Part IV: The Man-Eaters.” The play will be held from July 18-21, with a gala opening and reception at 7 p.m. on July 18th. July 19-21 there will be matinee performances only, at 2 p.m. The play is set to coincide with Key West’s Hemingway Day Festival that celebrates Hemingway’s 107 birthday, July 21. The Hemingway exhibit at the Custom House, next door to the playhouse, remains open and popular all year long with Hemingway aficionados. For more information, go to www.kwahs.org
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Bronze Statue erected on Front Street
Lorian Hemingway, author and granddaughter of author Ernest Hemingway, admires sculptor Terry Jones bronze statue of her grandfather outside the Key West Arts and Historical Society on Front Street in Key West. |
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