He saw in Cooper the ideal Hemingway hero and when Paramount acquired the rights to For Whom the Bells Toll, Hemingway insisted it be done with Cooper or nobody. He and Coop became fast friends right up to when they both died in 1961. The one thing that Hemingway did like was the casting of Gary Cooper as the hero Fredric Henry. A Farewell to Arms is definitely in keeping with that tradition. Borzage did a whole slew of tender romantic stories in the Thirties like Three Comrades, The Mortal Storm, stuff like that. If he did just knowing Frank Borzage directed this film should have told him something. When Papa Hemingway said that he obviously did not know Hollywood well at all. They turned his novel and put too much emphasis on the romance angle. When this version of A Farewell to Arms came out, Ernest Hemingway hated this film.
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