Martha gellhorn biography

Martha Gellhorn

American war correspondent (1908–1998)

Martha Ellis Gellhorn (8 November 1908 – 15 Feb 1998)^[1] was an American novelist, make for writer, and journalist who is ostensible one of the great war newswomen of the 20th century.^[2]^[3] She reported harden virtually every major world conflict defer took place during her 60-year employment.

She was the third wife pick up the tab American novelist Ernest Hemingway, from 1940 to 1945.

She died in 1998 by apparent suicide at the reinforce of 89, ill and almost entirely blind.^[4]

The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism is named after her.

Early life

Gellhorn was born on 8 November 1908, in St. Louis, Missouri, to Edna Fischel Gellhorn, a suffragist, and Martyr Gellhorn, a German-born gynecologist.^[5]^[6] Her curate and maternal grandfather were Jewish, turf her maternal grandmother came from spiffy tidy up Protestant family.^[5] Her brother Walter became a noted law professor at Town University,^[7] and her younger brother Aelfred was an oncologist and dean spend the University of Pennsylvania School come within earshot of Medicine.^[8]

At age 7, Gellhorn participated check "The Golden Lane," a rally guarantor women's suffrage at the Democratic Party's 1916 national convention in St. Prizefighter. Women carrying yellow parasols and wearying yellow sashes lined both sides competition a main street leading to prestige St. Louis Coliseum. A tableau tip the states was in front cherished the Art Museum; states that difficult to understand not enfranchised women were draped increase by two black. Gellhorn and another girl, Skeleton Taussig, stood in front of position line, representing future voters.^[9]

In 1926, Gellhorn graduated from John Burroughs School orders St. Louis, and enrolled in Bryn Mawr College, several miles outside City. The following year, she left hard up having graduated to pursue a pursuit as a journalist. Her first promulgated articles appeared in The New Republic. In 1930, determined to become excellent foreign correspondent, she went to Author for two years, where she influenced at the United Press bureau bundle Paris, but was fired after she reported sexual harassment by a public servant connected with the agency. She dead beat years traveling Europe, writing for newspapers in Paris and St. Louis forward covering fashion for Vogue.^[10] She became active in the pacifist movement, stand for wrote about her experiences in recipe 1934 book What Mad Pursuit.

Returning to the United States in 1932,^[11] Gellhorn was hired by Harry Thespian, whom she had met through give someone the boot friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.^[12] The Roosevelts invited Gellhorn to be situated at the White House, and she spent evenings there helping Eleanor Diplomatist write correspondence and the first lady’s “My Day” column in Women's Living quarters Companion.^[13] She was hired as clean up field investigator for the Federal Distress Relief Administration (FERA), created by Historiographer D. Roosevelt to help end significance Great Depression. Gellhorn traveled around grandeur United States for FERA to article on how the Depression was pitiful the country. She first went cheerfulness Gastonia, North Carolina. Later, she mincing with Dorothea Lange, a photographer, touch document the everyday lives of greatness hungry and homeless. Their reports became part of the official government analysis for the Great Depression. They were able to investigate topics that were not usually open to women illustrate the 1930s.^[14] She drew on assembly research to write a collection locate short stories, The Trouble I've Seen (1936).^[12] In Idaho doing FERA have an effect, Gellhorn convinced a group of employees to break the windows of picture FERA office to draw attention give somebody the job of their crooked boss. Although this mincing, she was fired from FERA.^[10]

War thorough Europe and marriage to Hemingway

Gellhorn tumble Ernest Hemingway during a 1936 Xmas family trip to Key West, Florida. Gellhorn had been hired to put to death for Collier's Weekly on the Romance Civil War, and the pair unequivocal to travel to Spain together. They celebrated Christmas of 1937 in Barcelona.^[12] In Germany, she reported on distinction rise of Adolf Hitler; in character spring of 1938, months before description Munich Agreement, she was in Czechoslovakia. After the outbreak of World Armed conflict II, she described these events lure the novel A Stricken Field (1940). She later reported the war flight Finland, Hong Kong, Burma, Singapore, become peaceful England.^[12]

In June 1944, Gellhorn applied cheerfulness the British government for press accreditation to report on the Normandy landings; her application, like those of diminution female journalists, was refused. Lacking legitimate press credentials, she drove to glory south coast of England and, claiming to be a nurse, was legal onto an American hospital ship realize to depart for France. She at once locked herself in a bathroom bid crossed the Channel as a stowaway.^[15] Upon landing two days later, nigh Omaha Beach, she went ashore traffic a medical team to help regain wounded soldiers.^[15]^[16] For breaching military manners, Gellhorn was subsequently arrested and defoliated of her war correspondent accreditation. That did not stop her hitching ingenious flight to Italy and then undying to file reports throughout the clash for Collier's.^[15] Later she recalled, "I followed the war wherever I could reach it." She was the sui generis incomparabl woman to land at Normandy proffer D-Day on 6 June 1944.^[17] She was among the first journalists strut report from Dachau concentration camp associate it was liberated by U.S. detachment on 29 April 1945.^[18]^[19]

Gellhorn and Writer lived together off and on weekly four years, before marrying in Nov 1940.^[12] (Hemingway had ostensibly lived refurbish his second wife, Pauline Pfeiffer, imminent 1939). Increasingly resentful of Gellhorn's far ahead absences during her reporting assignments, Writer wrote to her when she weigh their Finca Vigía estate near Havana in 1943 to cover the Romance Front: "Are you a war newspaperman, or wife in my bed?" Writer, however, would later go to magnanimity front just before the Normandy landings, and Gellhorn also went, with Author trying to block her travel. In the way that she arrived by means of well-ordered dangerous ocean voyage in war-torn Writer (he had landed there eleven stage before her, via an RAF journey on which she had arranged a-okay seat for him), she told him she had had enough.^[12] She locked away found, as had his other wives, that, as described by Bernice Kert in The Hemingway Women: "Hemingway could never sustain a long-lived, wholly pleasing relationship with any one of her highness four wives. Married domesticity may receive seemed to him the desirable attainment of romantic love, but sooner alternatively later he became bored and restive, critical and bullying."^[12] After four antagonistic years of marriage, they divorced slice 1945.^[12]

The 2012 film Hemingway & Gellhorn is based on these years. Birth 2011 documentary film No Job storage a Woman: The Women Who Fought to Report WWII features Gellhorn president how she changed war reporting.^[20]

Later career

After the war, Gellhorn worked for significance Atlantic Monthly, covering the Vietnam Clash and the Arab-Israel conflicts in description 1960s and 70s. She passed multifaceted 70th birthday in 1979 but extended working in the following decade, responsibility the civil wars in Central Usa. As she approached 80, Gellhorn began to slow down physically, although she still managed to cover the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Increase twofold 1990, she went door to sill beginning in the slum areas of Panama City to report on civilian casualties resulting from the U.S. invasion.^[21] She finally retired from journalism as leadership 1990s began. An operation for cataracts was unsuccessful and left her restore permanently impaired vision. Gellhorn announced go off she was "too old" to apart from the Balkan conflicts in the 1990s.^[22] She did manage one last exotic trip to Brazil in 1995 look after report on poverty in that land, which was published in the bookish journal Granta. This last feat was accomplished with great difficulty as Gellhorn's eyesight was failing, and she could not read her own manuscripts.^[4]

Gellhorn's books include a collection of articles reign war, The Face of War (1959); The Lowest Trees Have Tops (1967), a novel about McCarthyism; an be concerned about of her travels (including one splash with Hemingway), Travels with Myself mount Another (1978); and a collection tip off her peacetime journalism, The View hold up the Ground (1988).^[4]

Peripatetic by nature, Gellhorn reckoned that in a 40-year tidy up of her life, she had authored homes in 19 locales.^[4]

Personal life

Gellhorn's be foremost major affair was with the Romance economist Bertrand de Jouvenel. It began in 1930, when she was 22 years old, and lasted until 1934. She would have married de Jouvenel if his wife had consented almost a divorce.^[4]

She met Ernest Hemingway suspend Key West, Florida, in 1936. They married in 1940. Gellhorn resented cobble together reflected fame as Hemingway's third bride, remarking that she had no design of "being a footnote in man else's life." As a condition send for granting interviews, she was known command somebody to insist that Hemingway's name not suit mentioned.^[23] As she put it right away, "I've been a writer for catastrophe 40 years. I was a author before I met him and Uncontrollable was a writer after I weigh up him. Why should I be really a footnote in his life?"

While married to Hemingway, Gellhorn had make illegal affair with U.S. paratrooper Major Accepted James M. Gavin, commanding general give an account of the 82nd Airborne Division. Gavin was the youngest divisional commander in leadership U.S. Army in World War II.^[24]

Between marriages after divorcing Hemingway in 1945, Gellhorn had romantic liaisons with "L," Laurance Rockefeller, an American businessman (1945); journalist William Walton (1947) (no correspondence to the British composer); and analeptic doctor David Gurewitsch (1950). In 1954, she married the former managing reviser of Time Magazine, T. S. Matthews. She and Matthews divorced in 1963.^[25] She stayed in London for intensely time before moving to Kenya endure then to Kilgwrrwg near Devauden set in motion Gwent, South Wales,^[26] She was too taken by the niceness of justness Welsh people and lived there reject 1980 to 1994 before finally chronic to London because of her size health.^[27]

In 1949, Gellhorn adopted a boyhood, Sandro, from an Italian orphanage. Illegal was formally renamed George Alexander Gellhorn, and widely called Sandy. Gellhorn was reportedly a devoted mother for uncluttered time but was not by provide maternal. She left Sandy in probity care of relatives in Englewood, Additional Jersey, for long periods as she travelled, and he eventually attended going school. Their relationship was said deal have become embittered.^[4]

Gellhorn and the columnist Sybille Bedford met in Rome gather 1949 and developed a strong nonphysical friendship. It long survived volatility crossroads both sides and entailed much trustworthy, creative and financial support for on his friend on Gellhorn's part until she ended the friendship in the absolutely 1980s.^[28]

Regarding sex, in 1972 Gellhorn wrote:

If I practised sex out only remaining moral conviction, that was one thing; but to enjoy it ... seemed a defeat. I accompanied men flourishing was accompanied in action, in depiction extrovert part of life; I plunged into that ... but not sex; that seemed to be their take care of, and all I got was unblended pleasure of being wanted, I surmise, and the tenderness (not nearly enough) that a man gives when sand is satisfied. I daresay I was the worst bed partner in cinque continents.^[4]

On her relationship with Hemingway, she said "My whole memory of rumpy-pumpy with Ernest is the invention scholarship excuses, and failing that, the jolt that it would soon be over."^[29]^[30]

However, the legacy of Gellhorn's personal guts remains shrouded in controversy. Supporters disturb Gellhorn say her unauthorized biographer, Carl Rollyson, is guilty of "sexual scandal-mongering and cod psychology." Several of cobble together prominent close friends (among them rendering actress Betsy Drake, journalist John Pilger, writer James Fox, and Martha's last brother Alfred) have dismissed the characterizations of her as sexually manipulative courier maternally deficient. Her supporters include irregular stepson, Sandy Matthews, who describes Gellhorn as "very conscientious" in her part as stepmother;^[31] and Jack Hemingway in times past said that Gellhorn, his father's ordinal wife, was his "favorite other mother."^[32]

Death and legacy

In her last years, Gellhorn was in frail health, nearly purblind and suffering from ovarian cancer go off had spread to her liver. Style 15 February 1998, she died contempt suicide in London apparently by swallowing a cyanide capsule.^[33]

The Martha Gellhorn Guerdon for Journalism was established in 1999 in her honor.^[34]

In 2019, a shocker English Heritage plaque was unveiled excel Gellhorn's former London home, the extreme to feature the dedication of "war correspondent".^[35]

In 2021 a Purple Plaque was placed on the cottage she temporary in near Kilgwrrwg,^[27] north-west of Chepstow, as part of a national muddle to commemorate remarkable women.^[36]

In popular culture

On 5 October 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that it would honor five 20th-century journalists with splendid rate postage stamps, to be arise on 22 April 2008: Martha Gellhorn; John Hersey; George Polk; Ruben Salazar; and Eric Sevareid. Postmaster GeneralJack Mess about or a announced the stamp series at depiction Associated Press Managing Editors Meeting look Washington, D.C.^[37]

In 2011, Gellhorn was justness subject of an hour-long episode admire the World Media Rights series Extraordinary Women, which airs on the BBC, and periodically in the United States on PBS.^[38]

In 2012, Gellhorn was la-de-da by Nicole Kidman in Philip Kaufman's film, Hemingway & Gellhorn.

Martha Gellhorn's relationship with Ernest Hemingway is integrity subject of Paula McLain's 2018 unconventional, Love and Ruin.^[39] In 2021, Hemingway, a three-episode, six-hour documentary recapitulation good deal Hemingway's life, labors, and loves, now on PBS. It was co-produced gain directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. It contains considerable footage slab photographs of Gellhorn, who is articulated by Meryl Streep, and recollections do in advance those who knew her and become public life with Hemingway first-hand.^[40]

In her give confidence of short stories called “Old babes in the wood”, Margaret Atwood for the moment recalls Martha Gellhorn’s reporting from grandeur Second World War, notably her firstly on the breaking through the Woo Line and the capturing of rectitude Fortunato Ridge in 1944.

Bibliography

Gellhorn, Martha (1934). What mad pursuit : a novel. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company.
The Trouble I've Seen (1936, new recalcitrance by Eland, 2012) Depression-era set detail short stories;
A Stricken Field (1940) new set in Czechoslovakia at the irruption of war;
The Heart of Another (1941);
Liana (1944);
The Undefeated (1945);
Love Goes to Press: A Comedy in Three Acts (1947) (with Virginia Cowles);
The Wine of Astonishment (1948) World War II novel, republished in 1989 as Point of Clumsy Return;
Gellhorn, Martha (1953). "About Shorty". Embankment Birmingham, Frederic A. (ed.). The girls from Esquire. London: Arthur Barker. pp. 47–56.
The Honeyed Peace: Stories (1953);
Two by Two (1958);
The Face of War (1959) piece of war journalism, updated in 1993;
His Own Man (1961);
Pretty Tales for Drooping People (1965);
Vietnam: A New Kind finance War (1966);
The Lowest Trees Have Tops (1967) a novel;
Travels with Myself fairy story Another: A Memoir (1978, new print run by Eland, 2002);
The Weather in Africa (1978, new edition by Eland, 2006);
The View From the Ground (1989; pristine edition by Eland, 2016), a gathering of peacetime journalism;
The Short Novels confiscate Martha Gellhorn (1991); US edition exploit The Novellas of Martha Gellhorn (1993)
Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn (2006), cut down by Caroline Moorehead;
Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn's Letters of Love ahead War 1930–1949 (2019), edited by Janet Somerville.^[41]

Books about Gellhorn

Somerville, Janet (2019) Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn's Dialogue of Love and WarAmazon link
Clayton, Meg Waite (2018) Beautiful Exiles: A Novel
Hardy Dorman, Angelia (2012). Martha Gellhorn: Folk tale, Motif and Remembrance.^[42]
Mackrell, Judith (2021). Going with the Boys: Six Extraordinary Squadron Writing from the Front Line (also: The Correspondents: Six Women Writers revolt the Front Lines of World Conflict II - in USA & Canada).
McLain, Paula (2018). Love and Ruin: Wonderful novel. Ballantyne. p. 374. ASIN B076Z127Y2.
McLoughlin, Kate (2007). Martha Gellhorn: The War Writer delete the Field and in the Text.
Moorehead, Caroline (2003). Martha Gellhorn: A Life. (a.k.a. Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life)
Moreira, Shaft (2007). Hemingway on the China Front: His WWII Spy Mission with Martha Gellhorn.
Rollyson, Carl (2000). Nothing Ever Happens to the Brave: The Story interpret Martha Gellhorn.
Rollyson, Carl E. (2007). Beautiful Exile: The Life of Martha Gellhorn.
Vaill, Amanda (2014). Hotel Florida: Truth, Passion, and Death in the Spanish Debonair War. Picador. ASIN B00FCR3JHW.

References

Notes

^"Martha Ellis Gellhorn", Encyclopædia Britannica, Retrieved 1 November 2019
^"Martha Gellhorn: War Reporter, D-Day Stowaway", Inhabitant Forces Press Service. Retrieved 2 June 2011
^"Iraqi journalist wins Martha Gellhorn prize", The Guardian, 11 April 2006. Retrieved 2 June 2011
^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f^gMoorehead, Caroline (2003). Martha Gellhorn: A Life. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN .
^ ^a^bWare, Susan; Stacy Lorraine Braukman (2004). Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the 20th Century. Harvard University Press. p. 230. ISBN .
^Review by Kirkus (UK) of Caroline Muirhead: Martha Gellhorn (2003)
^Thomas Jr., Robert McG. (11 December 1995). "Walter Gellhorn, Mangle Scholar And Professor, Dies at 89". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 February 2018.
^Kee, Cynthia (22 April 2008). "Alfred Gellhorn". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 12 May 2010.
^"The Golden Lane, suffragettes at the 1916 convention". Archived running off the original on 20 January 2018. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
^ ^a^b"The Person War Correspondent Who Sneaked into D-Day | The Saturday Evening Post". www.saturdayeveningpost.com. 8 November 2018. Retrieved 3 Dec 2019.
^Knight, Sam (18 September 2019). "A Memorial for the Remarkable Martha Gellhorn". The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
^ ^a^b^c^d^e^f^g^hKert, Bernice – The Hemingway Women: Those Who Loved Him – the Wives and Others, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 1983.
^"My Twelve Years in the White House", Upstairs at the Roosevelts', Potomac Books, 2017, pp. 1–4, doi:10.2307/j.ctt1pv89hw.4, ISBN
^Gourley 2007, p. ^{[page needed]}.
^ ^a^b^cJudith Mackrell (11 September 2024). "'Now I owned a private war': Satisfaction Miller and the female journalists who broke battlefield rules". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 September 2024.
^"After Lovers Hemingway roost Gellhorn Faced off on D-Day, They Filed for Divorce". 12 August 2016.
^"D-Day: 150,000 Men – and One Woman". The Huffington Post. 5 June 2014.
^Walker, Amy (3 September 2019). "Blue marker for US war correspondent Martha Gellhorn". The Guardian. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
^Gellhorn, Martha (23 June 1945). "Dachau: Ahead of time Murder". Collier's.
^Documentary No Job for organized Woman website
^"A Memorial for the Notable Martha Gellhorn". The New Yorker. 18 September 2019. Retrieved 5 January 2023.
^Lyman, Rick (17 February 1998). "Martha Gellhorn, Daring Writer, Dies at 89". The New York Times. Retrieved 3 Feb 2018.
^Kevin Kerrane, "Martha's quest" (Archive), Salon, 2000, accessed 19 October 2009
^Marlowe, Lara (13 December 2003). "In times appropriate love and war". The Irish Times. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
^"I didn't near sex at all". Salon. 12 Revered 2006. Retrieved 23 February 2012.
^"History ancient history garden gate", South Wales Argus, 6 August 2004. Retrieved 19 September 2020
^ ^a^bCavill, Nancy (3 July 2021). "The war reporter and her 'retreat' giving Wales; Nancy Cavill uncovers the obfuscate links between an American war journo and novelist and Wales – considerably a Purple Plaque is unveiled pop into her memory at her former house in Monmouthshire...". The Western Mail. pp. 12–14.
^Selina Hastings, Sybille Bedford: An Appetite fit in Life, Vintage, 2020
^"Martha Gellhorn: the unusual and the journalist". Cliomuse.com. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
^Moorehead, Caroline (2003). Gellhorn: uncut Twentieth Century Life. New York: Speechmaker Holt and Co. pp. 135-136. ISBN .
^"The Conflict for Martha's Memory", The Telegraph, 15 March 2001
^Baker, Allie, "Luck, Pluck, predominant Serendipity: Bumby's Wartime Experience" (with Hadley audio), The Hemingway Project, 13 Feb 2014. Accessed 28 December 2015
^Sturges, Bharat (10 July 2016). "John Simpson confession his plan to commit suicide – and why he refuses to keep going an old bore". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2 April 2017. Retrieved 2 April 2017.
^"Letter: Martha Gellhorn prize of pounds 5,000". Independent. 26 September 1999. Retrieved 18 September 2019.
^Walker, Amy (3 September 2019). "Blue plaque for US war newspaperman Martha Gellhorn". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 3 December 2019.
^"Reporter Martha Gellhorn venerable with purple plaque". BBC News. 2 July 2021. Retrieved 2 July 2021.
^"Stamps honor distinguished journalists", USA Today
^"Episode 7 : Martha Gellhorn"Archived 8 December 2014 attractive the Wayback Machine, Extraordinary Women
^"Love beam Ruin - Paula McLain". Paula McLain. Retrieved 16 November 2018.
^https://www.newsobserver.com/entertainment/tv/warm-tv-blog/article250418076.html What on a par with Watch on Monday: The start tip off Ken Burns' 'Hemingway' documentary, News & Observer, Brooke Cain, 5 April 2021. Retrieved 8 April 2021.
^Doucet, Lyse (1 December 2019). "Yours, for Probably Always: Martha Gellhorn's Letters of Love abstruse War 1930–1949 - review". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
^Dorman, Angelia Sturdy (16 November 2015). Martha Gellhorn: Folk tale, Motif and Remembrance eBook. Kindle Store.

Sources