Overview
Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man is a 1962 American adventure film directed by Martin Ritt based on Ernest Hemingway's semi-autobiographical character Nick Adams, and featuring Richard Beymer as Adams. A.E. Hotchner wrote the screenplay, originally calling the film Ernest Hemingway's "Young Man". The cast includes Diane Baker, Jessica Tandy, Ricardo Montalbán, Eli Wallach, Arthur Kennedy and Paul Newman. It was released in July 1962.
Licensing
Producer Jerry Wald negotiated with Hemingway to license his short stories: "Indian Camp", "The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife", "The End of Something", "The Three-Day Blow", "The Battler", "A Very Short Story", "In Another Country", "Now I Lay Me", "A Way You'll Never Be" and "A Pursuit Race". Hemingway had to approve the screenplay during all stages of development.
Plot
Nick Adams is a young, restless man in rural Michigan who wants a good life and to see the world. He leaves his domineering mother and noble but weak physician father on a cross country trip. In his ramblings he encounters a punch-drunk boxer, a sympathetic telegrapher, and a burlesque show promoter. Nick applies to be a reporter for a newspaper in New York City, but is told he lacks experience. While working at a catered banquet, he hears a speech by a beautiful woman soliciting volunteer ambulance drivers for the Italian Army in World War I, and impulsively signs up. On arrival, he is assigned a bilingual companion to help him, who cannot believe that Nick would volunteer for such a posting. They experience battlefield horrors, Nick is injured, and falls in love with his nurse, who then falls ill herself and dies at the moment they are taking their bedside wedding vows. Finally returning home to his family, he is stunned to hear that his father had died after worrying about Nick.
Cast
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).