Who controls Hemingway's legacy? By MAUREEN DOWD of Fashion Licensing of America, the when his father died because he The New York Times family's agent, saying Hemingway could not disappoint him anymore. Ltd. had exclusive rights "to use Patrick Hemingway, the middle son, ORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - and/or exploit the name and likeness had to back off from a plan to market Hemingway shotguns. It was consid- For years people have come of Ernest Hemingway." Befitting the times we live in, the ered tacky, given that Papa killed him- to Key West to celebrate self with one. Now they have gone Papa. The town was small. issue is not whether American icons F should be exploited. The issue is "upscale" to protect that "authentic, And it grew large with tourists. The masculine and romantic" Hemingway sun was warm and it was good. You whether they should be exploited by image, in Metzner's words, with a could drink a Corsican wine that had strangers or loved ones. Hemingway Mont Blanc pen for $600 a great authority and a low price. It Martin Luther King Jr.'s children (it refuses to write long sentences), a was a very Corsican wine. And at are wringing every last dime out of line of eyeglasses starting at $375, and Sloppy Joe's, there were men at the their father's "I Have a Dream" a home-furnishings collection "which bar with white beards and big bellies speech with stiff licensing fees. Andj reflects the styles of Spain, Africa and who prayed for good bulls and good they sold Oliver Stone the rights to Key West." (Hemingway as Martha fish and good Buds. the King story, presumably including Stewart.) But the Hemingway Days Festival, Dexter King's embarrassing rap- Patrick Hemingway claims the festi- a raffish institution in Key West for prochement with James Earl Ray. val was not dignified enough. But his the last 16 years, was canceled this Like the Kings, the Hemingways own Key West stories include the time month. Held every summer near the happen to have a sacred father, that he and his father urinated together to house where Ernest Hemingway is to say, a product. put out a fire on a bridge, and the time lived from 1929 to 1940, it featured a The Hemingway sons were left by his father, thinking a neighbor's cat Hemingway look-alike contest, fish their swaggering behemoth of a fa- was injured and in, pain, shot it in the fry and arm-wrestling tournament. ther with their own festival of dys- head. The cat survived. Some Great function. Jack begged money from White Hunter. This year, though, the three Hem- father did not like cheap ingway sons — Jack, Patrick and his father. Gregory, who started He said his wearing white gloves and spike heels knock-offs. When a place called the Gregory -- threatened to sue if they Stork Club opened in Key West, his fa- did not get a 10 percent cut, a fee for and calling himself Vicky, once said he had spent a fortune "trying not to ther, a friend of the original Stork Club past profits and content control. owner, went and demanded that it be Michael Whalton, the festival's be a transvestite," and wrote in his shut down at once. head, got a letter from Marla Metzner memoir that he felt "profound relief" "The money is important," the ami- able Hemingway said from his home in Bozeman, Mont. "But those people down there give an image of Ernest Hemingway that is crude, as sort of a beachcomber. It's nasty, like when my dad visited the Bahamas and they made up a song, 'Big Fat Slob in the harbor, tonight's the rught we got fun.' Nobody would say my father wasn't a drinker. But it was not the core of who he was." Whalton contends that the writer would be more appalled to see an out- 044Aii4YOPPM:144 fit called Fashion Licensing of America peddling his image than he would be to nes McBride see a bunch of guys who look like him. lying Ophella by. Patrick Hemingway talks about a symposium at the Kennedy Library hon- ivll Action by oring the 100th anniversary of his fa- ther's birth. But it may be too late to get the 1!14.# the toothpaste back m the tube. Hem- tlization by ing'way was already a parody of himself friends by Carr when he died. Now, along with other macho writers Cloister calk such as Jack London, Irwin Shaw and Norman Mailer, his work has gone out of fashion. Book club readers who swoon over "The English Patient" titter 04.if at the idea of reading the superior "Farewell to Arms." He has been booted off college curriculums filled with more multiculturally correct, if not always as talented, women, minority and gay writ- ers. Jnqui8t Mince try Kay The only lesson here may be that there's nothing more valuable in life niviStasc• than obscure parents. Brie with. 6.ot: The writer is a columnist for The New York Times.