A. E. Hotchner (1917–2020,) fully Aaron Edward Hotchner, was an American editor, novelist, playwright, and a well-known biographer of Doris Day and Ernest Hemingway. He also wrote numerous television screenplays and co-founded the philanthropy food company Newman’s Own with actor Paul Newman.
Born to a Jewish family in St. Louis, Missouri, Hotchner graduated from Washington University in St. Louis with a degree in history and a J.D. Hotchner was admitted to the Missouri State Bar in 1941 and practiced law in St. Louis 1941–42. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a journalist, becoming a major.
After the war, Hotchner decided to abandon his law practice and pursue a writing career as an editor, biographer, novelist, and playwright. He settled in New York, became an editor at Cosmopolitan, and worked on literary fiction. In 1948, Hotchner met Ernest Hemingway, and the two remained close friends. Hotchner wrote the famous biography Papa Hemingway (1966.)
Hotchner also wrote the biography Doris Day: Her Own Story (1975.) He penned teleplays in the 1950s and 1960s, adapting Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Killers, The Fifth Column, and After the Storm. Steven Soderbergh made Hotchner’s 1973 autobiographical novel into the film King of the Hill (1993.)
Hotchner’s last works were Paul and Me: 53 Years of Adventures and Misadventures with My Pal Paul Newman (2010,) Hemingway in Love (2015,) and the novel Amazing Adventures of Aaron Broom (2018.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by A. E. Hotchner
Of course we all have our limits, but how can you possibly find your boundaries unless you explore as far and as wide as you possibly can? I would rather fail in an attempt at something new and uncharted than safely succeed in a repeat of something I have done.
—A. E. Hotchner
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