Hemingway letters to Dietrich show strong friendship

BOSTON - Ernest Hemingway wrote letters so filled with longing and devotion to actress Marlene Dietrich - sometimes signing off 'I kiss you hard' - that it is difficult to believe the pair never became lovers.

The correspondence between the icons, who met aboard an ocean liner in 1934, reveals a complex, flirtatious relationship in which they propped each other up and spoke unvarnished truth about each other's romantic relationships, work and friends.

Thirty letters, cards and a telegram Hemingway wrote to the German-born actress and singer - whom he called 'my little Kraut' and 'daughter' - between 1949 and 1959 were made publicly available for the first time last Thursday at the Ernest Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston.

Hemingway, the self-appointed 'Papa' of the literary world, defended his friendship with actress Ingrid Bergman in a letter to Dietrich dated May 23, 1950.

'In the meantime, if you are angry at me stay angry as long as you want. But stop it sometime daughter because there is only one of you in the world, nor will there ever be another, and I get very lonely in this world with you angry at me,' he wrote.

The letters were donated to the library in 2003 by Dietrich's daughter, Maria Riva, on the condition that they be kept private until now. The library already held 31 letters and telegrams Dietrich sent to Hemingway during the correspondence.

Hemingway was 50 and Dietrich was 47 when their letter writing began in 1949.

He described the relationship to his friend, writer A.E. Hotchner, by saying he and Dietrich fell in love when they met aboard the Ile de France but 'we've never been to bed. Amazing but true. Victims of un-synchronized passion. Those times when I was out of love, the Kraut was deep in some romantic tribulation, and on those occasions when Dietrich was on the surface and swimming about with those marvellously seeking eyes, I was submerged'.

He typed his letters to Dietrich on a manual typewriter.

Peter Riva, her grandson, said the correspondence between his grandmother and Hemingway should be considered in its entirety to best understand the pair.

'What Hemingway and Dietrich had was a relationship that allowed them to be at times the succour of the other, at times the analyst of the other, but always to be the mirror, the truth-sayer to the other.'