Who is Martha Gellhorn? Why do I think she deserves a biopic?
The story of a woman that deserves wider attention…
Martha Gellhorn might be the most underrated personality in history, despite being a war correspondent during World War II. Although several movies depict the events of WW-II, no movie has ever mentioned her (I’m gonna pretend that the 2012 television film Hemingway & Gellhorn doesn’t exist). So, who is Martha Gellhorn? Why do I think she deserves a biopic or standalone movie?
A briefer history of Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn was an American-born novelist, journalist, travel writer, and war correspondent. She was a top official in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and has been a voice to the downtrodden around the world.
She was born in a feminist family as her mother was a suffragist and her father worked as a gynecologist. Since her parents were all about women empowerment, she was raised to know that she could do anything a man could do. These words stuck with Martha Gellhorn as went on to uplift the lives of several people and exposed several sickening atrocities in human history as a part of her career. She covered nearly every major conflict across the globe which was very much a man’s area of expertise at that time.
She was an accomplished fiction writer and used several investigative topics to draw a collection of short stories. Martha Geller was an independent and self-sustained woman. She deeply cared about the struggles of human beings and stuck with the path of hard-hitting journalism. Being a career-focused woman in the 20th century, she experienced sexual harassment at work and was mocked by several people for her line of work.
“Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit”
Childhood and Early Life of Martha Gellhorn
Marhta Gellhorn was born on November 8, 1908, to Edna Fischel Gellhorn and George Gellhorn in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up in a well-educated family and attended a progressive private school founded by her parents.
At the age of 7, her mother brought Martha Gellhorn to witness 7,000 people protesting in The Golden Lane rally. It was against the Democratic Party’s 1916 national convention demanding the right to vote for women. This event stuck with her for the rest of her life and she never took her vote for granted.
In 1926, she graduated from John Burroughs School in St. Louis and enrolled in Bryn Mawr College, a private all-girls school outside of Philadelphia. The following year, she realized that her degree was not necessary to pursue her career as a journalist and dropped out of college.
The career of a courageous woman
During the initial days of her career, she was able to get a few articles published in The New Republic and eventually applied for the foreign correspondent position in Paris.
In 1930, she started working at the United Press bureau, determined to become a foreign correspondent. Unfortunately, she became a victim of sexual harassment at work and was fired from her job for reporting it.
“Nothing is better for self-esteem than survival.”
― Martha Gellhorn, Travels With Myself and Another
However, she continued to live in Paris and sell her articles to several magazines, including Vogue. She decided to move back to the United States in 1932 as she felt that the American people needed a voice.
President D. Roosevelt created an organization called the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and Martha Geller began working for the government. She interviewed underprivileged families every day and empathized with their poverty, disease, and other struggles. Her articles directly stuck politicians and their actions as she largely distrusted them for their level of disconnect with the people’s broader views.
“Here one has the perfect example of justice: the men have kept their women enslaved…stupid and limited and apart, for their male vanity and power; result: the dull women bore the daylights out of the men.”
― Martha Gellhorn
Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt and first of the United States, found the articles to be moving and reached out to her directly. Martha Geller encouraged a group of workers to riot against their bosses while working at FERA and it eventually escalated into a riot leading to few damages for the property.
She was fired from work and eventually, the Roosevelts interfered to make sure the authorities were changed. Martha Geller went on to work at the White House and helped Eleanor Roosevelt with writing ‘My Day’, a column in the Woman’s Home Companion magazine. She worked alongside Earnest Hemmingway to cover the events of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1941 while working for Collier’s Weekly.
Martha Geller was determined to get the atrocities of war on record and so she dressed up as an army nurse to land at the beaches of Normandy during the D-day. She helped to carry soldiers on a stretcher and made mental notes of her surroundings to expose the truth.
How cool would it had been if Christopher Nolan or Steven Spielberg had decided to include Martha Gellhorn as a major character in their movies Dunkirk (2017) and Saving Private Ryan (1998) respectively. I wonder why there is no major screen space for female personalities/characters in war movies.
After the Allied Victory, she stayed in Europe and made her way to the Dachau Concentration Camp to report on one of the most horrible human acts in history.
She continued to live a busy schedule and chose the lifestyle of travelling off to places to put her life in danger. She felt the acts of government to be disgusting as it was run by power-hungry politicians and eventually moved to London where she spent the rest of her life.
“ I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same.”
― Martha Gellhorn
Major Works of Martha Gellhorn
Her debut novel, What Mad Pursuit in (1934) was panned by critics. The book was about three college friends who seek fulfillment and meaning in their life. They take on several adventures on life and meet mostly with disappointment — and an STD. She disappointed with the book’s reception and listed it herself as one of her rare published works. Although her debut book was a failure and was never reprinted, she went to write several book in fiction, nonfiction, and memoir.
She simultaneously produced several works amid conducting her courageous reporting from war fronts. The Trouble I’ve Seen (1936) captured the emotions of the working class as they were emasculated by lack of work during the Great Depression by interweaving several short stories. In this documentary style of writing, Martha Gellhorn covered the emotional, financial, and spiritual devastation wrought by the financial collapse
The Face of War (1959) was considered to be one of her greatest works. It included a collection of reports and essays that she collected over the years in war reportage. In the genre of war writing, she addressed the international rivalries, combat, and freezing frontiers in an unadulterated version.
The Arabs of Palestine (1961) primarily comprised of her experience travel to the Middle East and reported at length on the Palestinian refugees' misfortunes. She also stressed the fact that the United Nations was being operated as a tool by the Western Imperialists, such as Great Britain and the United States.
Awards and Achievements received by Martha Gellhorn
A blue English Heritage plaque was unveiled at her London home in 2019 and was the first to be featured as a war correspondent.
She was the only lady at Normandy on D-Day June 6, 1944. She impersonated as a stretcher bearer to be present there.
She was honored in the American Journalists stamp series of 2008 alongside four other male journalists.
A quick look at the personal life and legacy of Martha Gellhorn
Martha Gellhorn has covered some of the most impactful events of the 20th century, and she did it without permission. She was a well-determined woman who would go any extents to get things done in the ideal time. With such ambitious ideologies and immense talents, she could never have a normal life that every typical person would long for.
She met Ernest Hemmingway in 1936 and became his third wife four years later. He insisted Martha to retire from career and focus on leading a life like a typical woman. He wanted her to focus on raising children and doing chores rather than reporting war atrocities. Her career and several misunderstandings between them lead to a divorce in 1945.
She adopted an Italian boy named George Sandy Alexander in 1949 and sent him to a boarding school. Martha Gellhorn called him Sandy Gellhorn and spent her time as a devoted mother for a time, but was not by nature maternal due to her career. For the most of his life, he grew up in the care of relatives in Englewood, New Jersey and also attended boarding school. It is said that the mother-son relationship was embittered. Sandy Matthews, describes his mother as a “very conscientious” person.
Martha continued to travel all over the world and reported on several sensitive issues. Ultimately, she decided to retire and get settled in her home in London after her health deteriorated. In 1998, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and her vision started to blur. She eventually ended up committing suicide in 1998 by swallowing a cyanide pill leaving everything she owned to her adopted son.
Martha Gellhorn’s life reminds me how we read history via a prism- a recollection of the past and a reflection on our own time. As years rolled, several things have changed and so much is much the same. Male dominance, racism, hunger, and several other atrocities humans inflict on one another. Even today, what disturbs me is that, Martha Gellhorn is often introduced as the third wife of Ernest Hemmingway, rather than a war correspondent or the best journalist in the history. Her career achievements are often overshadowed by her personal life, just like every other women.
