Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

is widely acknowledged to be one of America’s greatest writers, penning such masterpieces as The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and A Farewell to Arms.  He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1953 for The Old Man and the Sea, and a year later was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

There is a wealth of information available on the web:

Biographical Information:

Hemingway at Simon & Schuster

Hemingway the Nobel Laureate

Hemingway In Spain:

Dispatches from Spain at the New York Times (full text)

Hemingway on Spain

More Information:

The Hemingway Society

The Hemingway Collection at the Kennedy Library

The Story

THE FIFTH COLUMN is the dramatic, sexy and surprisingly funny story of the private and political passions of Philip Rawlings, a counter-espionage agent working for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War. The beating heart of the play is a romance between weary, shell-shocked Rawlings and Dorothy Bridges, a journalist in over her head professionally and head-over-her-heels personally. Against a backdrop of treachery and danger, Dorothy and Philip take solace in each other’s arms and dream of peace and pleasure—a dream that threatens Rawlings’s commitment to the cause.

Hemingway wrote THE FIFTH COLUMN in 1937 while in Madrid as a correspondent for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Franco’s army had four columns advancing on the city and a “Fifth Column” of hidden fascist sympathizers within the city using terrorist tactics to bring down the government. Hemingway’s fictional hero is fighting these insurgents.

The Author

THE FIFTH COLUMN rings out with a battle-scarred truth as one would expect from Ernest Hemingway, the Nobel and Pulitzer-prize winning author of A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls and a celebrated war correspondent.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was one of the most influential and important voices in American fiction, famous for his short, declarative sentences and no-nonsense prose. From the 1920’s until his death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Hemingway captivated the public with his oversize personality and dramatic exploits as well as his powerful short stories and novels. Whether running with the bulls in Pamplona, hunting big game in Africa or reeling in marlin off the Florida Keys, Hemingway had a huge appetite for adventure, competition and exhibitions of strength and courage.

Writing the Play

THE FIFTH COLUMN was forged under fire on the front line. “While I was writing the play the Hotel Florida, where we lived and worked, was struck by more than thirty high explosive shells. So if it is not a good play perhaps that is what is the matter with it. If it is a good play, perhaps those thirty shells helped write it.” When Hemingway left his room during the day, the play was stashed inside a rolled up mattress for safety. “When you came back and found the room and the play intact you were always pleased.”

While writing the play Hemingway was having an affair with Martha Gellhorn, who eventually became his third wife. She was in Madrid as a journalist, also living in the Hotel Florida. Spain’s Civil War was the first of many conflicts that she covered in her storied career. Gellhorn; tall, blond and glamorous, served as the model for THE FIFTH COLUMN’S Dorothy Bridges.

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Performances begin February 26, 2008.