Westporter A. E. Hotchner is 101 now and has finally made good on a six-decade-old promise to his friend Ernest Hemingway.
A. E. Hotchner: kept 1958 promise. Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com
The Associated Press spotlights that promise in a story previewing Hotchner’s stage adaption of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” opening Feb. 1 at the newly renovated playhouse at Point Park University in Pittsburgh.
The story recounts how Hotchner and Hemingway attended and walked out of a 1958 film adaption of “The Old Man and the Sea.”
Hemingway later that night urged his friend to do his own adaption of the book. Hotchner promised he would try.
“It wasn’t until I became an old man myself that I really got to a version that could transport itself beyond the book,” Hotchner told the AP.
The story notes “Hotchner should be the perfect candidate to take the novel to the stage: he fished with Hemingway in Cuba, went to bullfights with him in Spain, hunted with him in Idaho and wrote the 1966 best-selling biography ‘Papa Hemingway.’”
See AP story HERE.
