Lawrence of arabia and american culture

12. George Pattullo, "The Second Elder Gives Battle," The Saturday Evening Post 191, no. 43 ( April 26, 1919): 2-3, 71, 73-74; Lee, Sergeant York, p. 52.

13. Lee, Sergeant York, p. 42.

14. Although not complete, and therefore not a totally reliable measure, the Subject and Title guides of Books in Print ( New York: R. R. Bowker) gives some indication of what publishers think the public will buy. Philip O'Brien has noted that since Thomas published the first biography of Lawrence in 1924 at least one full-length work about Lawrence has been written in all but eight subsequent years ( "T. E. Lawrence: The Man and the Printed Word," Library Gazette 22, no. 1 (Spring 1988): 4.

15. Two Lawrence biographers have suggested that Lawrence influenced the sun-and-sand films of the 1920s, basing their suppositions on films inspired by Edith M. Hull novel The Sheik. Neither offers evidence. See John Mack, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T. E. Lawrence ( Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1976) and Michael Yardley, T. E. Lawrence: A Biography ( New York: Stein & Day Publishers, 1987).

16. These films include An Arabian Knight ( 1920); One Arabian Night ( 1921); The Sheik ( 1921); Arabia ( 1922); Arabian Love ( 1922); The Sheik of Arab ( 1922, remake of 1919 release The Man Who Turned White); The Arab ( 1924; originally 1915); A Son of the Sahara ( 1924); The Son of the Sheik ( 1926); She's a Sheik ( 1927); and The Son of the Desert ( 1928); among others. These and other "Arabian" films are listed in Patricia King Hanson and Alan Gevinson, eds., The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, F1-F2 ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Most of them are listed in the Nitrate Film Control System-Title Record at the Library of Congress and can be viewed. Russel Nye, The Unembarrassed Muse: The Popular Arts in America ( New York: Dial Press, 1970), p. 364.

17. Allen Woll and Randall Miller, Ethnic and Racial Images in American Film and Television: Historical Essays and Bibliography ( New York: Garland Publishing Co., 1987), pp. 179-184.

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19. Edward Said, Orientalism ( New York: Vantage Books, 1978), p. 99.

20. Robert William Rydell, All the World's a Fair: America's International Expositions, 1875-1916 ( Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1980), p. 83; Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Book of the Fair: An Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the World's Science, Art, and Industry, as Viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893 ( Chicago: Bancroft Co., 1895), p. 840.

21. According to Michael Yardley, Irish director Rex Ingram approached Lawrence about making a film of his Arabian experience in the mid-1920s, and an agent for Lawrence presumably approached the producer Herbert Wilcox offering the film rights about the same time ( T. E. Lawrence: A Biography, p. 232).

22. Fitzhugh Green, "A Little of What the World Thought of Lindbergh," in Charles A. Lindbergh, We/The Famous Flier's Own Story of His Life and His Transatlantic Flight, Together with His Views on the Future of Aviation ( New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1927), p. 281; Leonard Mosley, Lindbergh: A Biography ( Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1976), pp. 119-120; Green, "What the World Thought," p. 266.

23. Mosley, Lindbergh, pp. 118- 119; John William Ward, "The Meaning of Lindbergh's Flight," American Quarterly 10 (Spring 1958): 13.

24. Charles Lindbergh, Autobiography of Values ( New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978), p. 128; Jeremy Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence ( New York: Athenaeum, 1990), p. 929.

25. Silas Bent, "Lindbergh and the Press," Outlook ( April 1932): 240. Edward Dean Sullivan , The Snatch Rackets ( New York: Vanguard Press, 1932) gives the number of abductions at 2,500 between 1929 and 1932.

26. Lauren D. Lyman, "America Shocked by Exile Forced on Lindberghs/England to Guard Arrival," New York Times, 24 December 1935: 1, 3.

27. Letter to Ralph Isham, 10 August 1927, in Malcolm Brown, ed. T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1989), p. 343.

28. J. M. Pughe, "Lawrence of Arabia Talks (Exclusive) Bitter Cry: 'I Want to Be Left Alone,'" News Chronicle ( 11 May 1934): 1; Lindbergh, Autobiography of Values, p. 320.

29. Mosley, Lindbergh, p. 320; Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame & Its History ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 11.

30. Braudy, Frenzy, pp. 23, 8.

31. Letter to Evelyn Wrench in Brown, Selected Letters, p. 530.

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33. Ralph Isham in A W. Lawrence, ed., T. E. Lawrence by His Friends ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), p. 306. Some years later Lawrence's brother, A. W. Lawrence, when responding to the Spiegel-Lean film, recalled being told the same Disney analogy by Lawrence. A. W. Lawrence wrote that "T. E. thought Disney could do it justice . . . his role in the Arab revolt could best be understood through humor." A. W. Lawrence, "Brother Rejects Lawrence Film," New York Times, 5 January 1963: 1.

34. Bodleian Library, T. E. Lawrence: The Legend and the Man ( Oxford, 1988), p. 87; Lawrence to Robert Graves, 4 February 1935, in Brown, Selected Letters, p. 520; Michael Korda, Charmed Lives: A Family Romance ( New York: Random House, 1979), p. 340.

35. The commentary was done by Sir Ronald Storrs, among others, who, as governor of Jerusalem, had first introduced Lowell Thomas to Lawrence ( The Film Index: A Bibliography, Compiled by Writers' Project, Works Project Administration [ New York: H. W. Wilson Co., 1941], p. 610A).

36. O'Brien, Bibliography, p. 265.

37. Examples include Rowland Walker "Lawrence of Arabia" in The Wonder Book of Daring Deeds ( London, 1937), Robert Graves Lawrence and the Arabs ( Children's Edition, London, 1938), and Major J. T. Gorman With Lawrence to Damascus ( London, 1940).

CHAPTER 5

1. In Malcolm Brown, ed., T. E. Lawrence: The Selected Letters ( New York: W. W. Norton, 1989) p. 361.

2. For my description of the production of Seven Pillars, I have relied on Philip O'Brien's concise and authoritative preface in T. E. Lawrence: A Bibliography ( Boston: G. K. Hall, 1988); Jeremy Wilson "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" in T. E. Lawrence ( London: National Gallery Publications, 1988); and various other published sources. The exact number of copies of the subscriber's edition is unknown but estimated to be about 220 copies. Quote from Wilson, Lawrence of Arabia: The Authorized Biography of T. E. Lawrence ( New York: Athenaeum, 1990), p. 675.

3. "Book Costs $150 a Copy," New York Times, 16 February 1926: 18; "The Modest Author of a $20,000 Book," New York Times, 9 March 1927: 24; "$1,150 for Lawrence Book," New York Times, 16 March 1929: 10.

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5. O'Brien, Bibliography, p. 93.

6. T. E. Lawrence, T. E. Lawrence to His Biographer, Robert Graves ( London: Faber & Faber, 1938), p. 20; letter to E. M. Forster, 20 February 1924, in Brown, Selected Letters, p. 236.

7. Cited in Stanley and Rodelle Weintraub, Lawrence of Arabia: The Literary Impulse ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975), p. 89.

8. Lord Louis E., Classical Review 28, no. 7 ( April 1933): 533-536; A. T. Murray , Classical Philology 28, no. 3 ( July 1933): 225-227.

9. T. E. Lawrence, The Odyssey ( New York: Editions for the Armed Services, 1945); T. E. Lawrence, The Odyssey of Homer ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

10. Mark Van Doren, Nation 141 ( 6 November 1935): 545.

11. Vincent Sheean, "T. E. Lawrence--A Revelation and a Miracle," New York Herald Tribune Books ( 29 September 1935): 1-2; "Nelson Doubleday Adds to Lawrence Legends, Will Publish Noted Seven Pillars of Wisdom," New York World-Telegram, 7 August 1935. Malcolm Cowley, "Road to Damascus," The New Republic 84, no. 1088 ( 9 October 1935): 248-249; E. M. Forster, Two Cheers for Democracy ( London: Edward Arnold, 1972), p. 287.

12. "Reviewer's Scoop," Time 28, no. 24 ( 14 December 1936): 91; H. S. Canby gave a fuller account in his essay about Lawrence, "The Last Great Puritan" ( 1936) in Seven Year's Harvest (Port Washington, NY: Kennekat Press, 1966), pp. 40-46.

13. R. P. Blackmur, "The Everlasting Effort: A Citation of T. E. Lawrence," in The Expense of Greatness ( New York: Arrow Editions, 1940), pp. 1-36; the Levin affair is mentioned in Russell Fraser, A Mangled Yarn: The Life of R. P. Blackmur ( New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1981), p. 175.

14. Letter to Charlotte Shaw, 9 December 1933, in Brown, Selected Letters, pp. 477-478.

15. Boston Evening Transcript Magazine ( 25 May 1935): 3, 5; Christian Century 52 ( 29 May 1935): 717-718.

16. "Books at Clouds Hill" in A. W. Lawrence, ed., T. E. Lawrence by His Friends ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1937), pp. 476-510.

17. Letter to Lincoln Kirstein of 12 April 1934 in David Garnett, ed., The Letters of T. E. Lawrence ( New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1939), p. 796.

18. Letters to Edward Garnett of 20 November 1922 and 5 October 1933 in Garnett, Letters, pp. 384, 779.

19. Letter to Walter Williams of 24 November 1934, T. E. Lawrence Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin (HRHRC).

20. See, for instance, letter from Pound to Lawrence of November 1933 in D. D. Paige , The Letters of Ezra Pound 1907-1941 ( New York: Harcourt, Brace &

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21. Letter from Lawrence to Pound quoted in Mohammed Shaheen, "Pound and T. E. Lawrence: Two Self-Crowned Laureates of the Time," Paideuma 17, no. 2-3 (Fall-Winter 1988): 227.

22. According to J. J. Wilhelm, Ezra Pound in London and Paris 1908-1925 ( University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990), p. 224, Pound and Lawrence had dinner together with Frederick Manning in December 1918. Wilhelm quotes from page carbons of a Pound letter (PC 510) at Beinecke Library, Yale University; T. E. Lawrence et al., The Home Letters of T. E. Lawrence ( London: Basil Blackwell, 1954), pp. 165, 229.

23. Jeffrey Meyers, The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis ( Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 128-130; Lawrence to William Rothenstein of 8 December 1927 in Garnett, Letters, p. 556.

24. F. N. Doubleday, "A Few Indiscreet Recollections Privately Printed, Not Published for Indulgent Relatives" ( 1928), pp. 79-85. Houghton Library, Harvard University.

CHAPTER6

2. David Garnett, ed., The Essential T. E. Lawrence ( New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1951), p. 26; "Wilson, House and the Arabs in 1919," New York Times, 5 June 1945: 18; Lowell Thomas, "Lawrence of Arabia and the False Lawrence," Los Angeles Times, 7 and 22 July 1945.

3. I know of four instances when this debt has been, to varying degrees, discussed: Michael S. Reynolds, Hemingway's Reading 1910-1940: An Inventory ( Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 25; my own detailed studies in 1981, 1984, and 1991, see, for instance, Joel Hodson, "Robert Jordan Revisited: Hemingway's Debt to T. E. Lawrence," Hemingway Review 10, no. 2 (Spring 1991): 2-16; Jeffrey Meyers, Hemingway: A Biography ( London: Macmillan, 1985); and Susanne Opfermann, "A Laying of Ghosts: G. A. Custer and T. E. Lawrence in For Whom the Bell Tolls," Amerikastudien 32, no. 4 ( September 1987): 453-465. Opfermann reasons that Hemingway considered Lawrence a literary rival and his novel was an attempt to outdo Lawrence. She concludes that, in having Jordan kill Kaskin, Hemingway kills off Lawrence in effigy.

4. The extent to which Lawrence's writings about guerrilla strategy have been used in fiction and in military studies can only be suggested. For instance, at the U.S. Army War College alone, at least twenty-five papers were written on Lawrence between 1950 and 1977. These studies, by officers of the rank of lieutenant colonel or above, were the ones I could locate by looking through the incomplete U.S. Army College Guide to Student Theses, 1950-1977. They repre-

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5. Hemingway claimed to have invented the plot for the novel but in contradictory statements professed that certain episodes were factual. See, for instance, Carlos Baker, Ernest Hemingway: A Life Story ( New York: Avon Books, 1968), p. 440; Carlos Baker, ed., Ernest Hemingway, Selected Letters ( New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981), p. 837; Alvah Bessie, "Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls," New Masses 37 ( 5 November 1940): 25-29; and Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, 3rd ed. ( London: Hamish Hamilton, Ltd., 1977), p. 274.

6. Hemingway may have observed a guerrilla operation during the Spanish Civil War. Will Watson looked at this possibility in a three-part article for North Dakota Quarterly that began with "Investigating Hemingway" in the Winter 1991 issue ( 59. 1: 38-68).

7. Cecil D. Eby, "The Real Robert Jordan," American Literature 38 ( November 1966): 380-86. Merriman and Lerude agree with Eby in American Commander in Spain: Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade ( 1986), but dissimilarities between Merriman and Jordan outweigh the parallels. The character of Robert Jordan is an anonymous dynamiter and partisan fighter working behind enemy lines with a band of guerrillas. He is fighting under communist command on the Republican (Loyalist) side of the war, but he is not a Marxist. His politics match that of Al Wager in Hemingway short story "Night Before Battle" or Hemingway himself instead of Merriman's. By contrast to Jordan, Robert Merriman was also a well-publicized commander, a major and chief-of-staff for the Lincoln Brigade, and the highest-ranking American officer in Spain at the time of his death. He fought in an organized army with American volunteers at the front. Moreover, as his letters and comments indicate, Hemingway did not plan For Whom the Bell Tolls as a commemorative novel for Merriman.

8. Edwin Rolfe, "The Secret Fighters," New Masses 33 ( 14 November 1939): 12-14. The American guerrillas are also referred to in books by Alvah Bessie, Inquisition in Eden ( New York: Macmillan Co., 1965), pp. 103, 132-135, and

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9. Milt Machlin, The Private Hell of Ernest Hemingway ( New York: Paperback Library, 1962), p. 148.

10. Arthur Landis, who interviewed Goff in 1964, includes a description of this bridge mission in The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, p. 349. The description closely resembles that of Jordan's mission in For Whom the Bell Tolls. A problem with speculating on the description of this mission, however, is that the story was told to Landis by Goff nearly thirty years after it was reportedly performed and long after Hemingway's novel was published.

11. Reynolds, Hemingway's Reading, p. 24.

12. Robert Graves Lawrence and the Arabs ( 1928); Basil Henri Liddell Hart's Colonel Lawrence: The Man Behind the Legend ( 1934); Edward Robinson's Lawrence ( 1935); Vyvyan Richards Portrait of T. E. Lawrence (1936). Garnett Letters of T. E. Lawrence was also included in Hemingway "Key West Inventory," a record of the books he shipped to Cuba in 1940. A facsimile of this inventory is included in Hemingway's Reading, pp. 45-71. James D. Brasch and Joseph Sigman, Hemingway's Library: A Composite Record ( New York: Garland Publishers, 1981), lists Hemingway also owning T. E. Lawrence by His Friends (1937), edited by A. W. Lawrence, and the edition of C. M. Doughty Travels in Arabia Deserta (1937), which included an introduction by T. E. Lawrence. According to Brasch and Sigman, however, most of these books did not arrive in Cuba until 1941.

13. Landis, The Abraham Lincoln Brigade, p. 349. This description is problematical, however, because it was told to Landis by veteran Irving Goff nearly thirty years after it was reportedly performed and long after Hemingway's novel had been published.

14. T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom ( New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1935), p. 411.

15. Wirt Williams, The Tragic Art of Ernest Hemingway ( Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 137.

16. Georg Lukacs, The Historical Novel ( London: Merlin Press, 1962), p. 129; Arturo Barea, "Not Spain But Hemingway," Horizon 3 ( May 1941): 350-361.

17. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls ( New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1968), p. 79; letter to General Clayton in David Garnett, ed., The Letters of T. E. Lawrence ( London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), p. 225.

18. Irving Howe, "T. E. Lawrence: The Problem of Heroism," Hudson Review 15, no. 3 (Autumn 1962): 333-364.

19. Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, p. 15.

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21. T. E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom, p. 386.

22. Ibid., pp. 275-276.

23. Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls, p. 162.

24. Ibid., pp. 43, 162.

CHAPTER 7

1. Murray Schumach, "Lawrence of Arabia Producer Defends Film Story of Hero," New York Times, 26 January 1963: 5.

2. In the collective biography of his famous filmmaking family, Charmed Lives: A Family Romance ( New York: Random House, 1979), p. 340, Michael Korda discussed Churchill's intervention. Korda wrote that Churchill feared the film might alienate the Turkish government, which England wanted as an ally in case of another war with Germany.

3. Stephen M. Silverman speculates that the cost of the British government's 30 percent entertainment tax killed the project. See David Lean ( New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1989), p. 128.

4. William K. Zinsser, "In Search of Lawrence of Arabia," Esquire 55 ( June 1961): 104.

5. Ibid., 104.

6. Letter to Basil Henri Liddell Hart of 23 September 1962 in T. E. Lawrence Collection, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin (HRHRC).

7 Rattigan converted his film script to the play Ross in 1960. Spiegel reputedly paid the Lawrence Trust Fund 17,500 pounds for film rights, a comparatively low amount. See Michael Yardley, T. E. Lawrence: A Biography ( New York: Stein & Day, 1987), p. 233.

8. Cited in Zinsser, "Search,"104; letter to Sam Spiegel of 1 August 1962 (HRHRC).

9. Letters of 30 August 1962 and 6 September 1962 (HRHRC).

10. Variety ( 19 October 1960). For a lengthier discussion of the various aspects of the screen credit debate, see my article "Who Wrote Lawrence of Arabia?" in Cineaste 20, no. 4 (Fall 1994): 12-18.

11. Telegram to Michael Wilson from David Lean, 3 February 1960, Michael Wilson Collection, University of California at Los Angeles Theater Arts Library (MWC); letter to Sam Spiegel from David Lean in Amman, Jordan, 5 January 1961.

12. Interview with Michael Wilson, Positif #64/65 ( 1964): 94, translated by the author.

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14. Letter to Sam Spiegel from Michael Wilson, 7 November 1962; letter from Bolt to Wilson, 3 December 1962 (HRHRC).

15. Letter from Bolt to Wilson, 3 December 1962 (HRHRC).

16. The script I use for the comparison is Michael Wilson's revised second draft of "Seven Pillars of Wisdom," 27 September 1960 (MWC); Robert Bolt's screenplay is reconstructed from the film.

17. Letter from J. G. Johnson, General Secretary of the Screen Writer's Guild, to Phillip McNair (HRHRC).

18. "Michael Wilson on 'Arabia'; Another Ex-Blacklistee," Variety 220, no. 8 ( 19 October 1960): 1; Letter from Wilson to Bolt, 29 November 1962 (HRHRC).

19. Letter from David Lean to Sam Spiegel, 5 January 1961.

20. Silverman, David Lean, p. 130; Marlon Brando with Robert Lindsey, Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me ( New York: Random House, 1994), p. 268; Lowell Thomas, "I Remember Lawrence of Arabia--But Not As the Man in the Movie," TV Guide ( 27 January 1973): 20.

21. Columbia Pictures Corporation, Columbia Pictures Presents the Sam Spiegel-David Lean Production of Lawrence of Arabia ( 1963), p. 6.

22. Alexander Walker Evening Standard review and William Connor Daily Mirror are cited in L. Robert Morris and Lawrence Raskin, Lawrence of Arabia: The 30th Anniversary Pictorial History ( New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 157; Penelope Gilliatt, "Blood, Sand and a Dozen Lawrences," Sunday Observer, 11 December 1962; "All Star, All Good," Newsweek ( 24 December 1962): 64.

23. Gilliatt, "Blood, Sand and a Dozen Lawrences."

24. Elizabeth Bowen, "Lawrence of Arabia," Show, ( December 1962): 66-69, 132; Silverman, David Lean, p. 147; Bosley Crowther, "Screen: A Desert Warfare Spectacle," New York Times 17 December 1962, Western edition: 5; and Stanley Kauffman , "A Passion in the Desert," The New Republic ( 12 January 1963): 26-28.

25. Andrew Sarris, "Sand Gets in Your Eyes, or the Sheik of Araby," The Village Voice, 8, no. 9 ( 20 December 1962): 16-17.

26. Melvin Maddocks, "Lawrence of Arabia as Screen Biography" Christian Science Monitor ( 20 December 1962): 6; Philip K. Scheurer, "Lawrence Film Opens with Fanfare," Los Angeles Times ( 21 December 1962): 2; Omar Sharif interview cited in Morris and Raskin, Lawrence of Arabia, p. 177.