To Have & Have Not

The average play's journey from playwright's study to the Broadway stage is all traffic lights, stalled motors, roads closed for repairs, slowing down on hills, running out of gas. Plays, as the old gag puts it. are not written but rewritten; not sold outright but leased around on options. Even a top-ranking author like Ernest Hemingway, with a spot-news play like The Fifth Column--treating of the Spanish civil war--gets jounced around on the rocky road to Broadway. The play, Hemingway's first,* was finished three months ago. Originally Producer Jed Harris was slated to produce it "after revisions by the author." "Revisions" caused an impasse, and suddenly Harris bowed himself out of the picture. Next came news that Austin Parker, former husband of Actress Miriam Hopkins, was doing the play, had offered Cinemactor Brian Aherne the lead.

At this point Hemingway, resuming his job of war correspondent, sailed for Spain. Two days later, with his $1,000 option check in the mail, Parker died. Because no contracts had actually been executed, Parker's heirs had no lien on the script, and it started on its travels all over again. With Hemingway's representative, Captain Rollin Dart--who had met Hemingway in Spain while an officer in the Loyalist Army--in charge of the script, it was wanted by the Theatre Guild, rumored sold to Gilbert Miller, to Jock Whitney. No rumor held water long. Last week, it was officially announced that The Fifth Column had been sold to Joseph Losey. The terms: $1,000 advance royalty, production by October 15. Losey, 29, is the husband of Dressmaker-Author Elizabeth Hawes (Fashion Is Spinach), has been stage manager for Jed Harris and Gilbert Miller, director for the Federal Theatre Project. Mentioned hopefully for lead in The Fifth Column: Cinemactor Gary Cooper, who "would be ideal."

*A Farewell To Arms was adapted by Laurence Stallings, flopped on Broadway in 1930.

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