Norman Allan
email
 
 science and philosophy    alternative medicine       history and misc.  
 poetry      gallery      lies my father told me      pipedreams       blog 

 

 

 

 



 

 


Ted Allan in Spain : the story
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
              
                               

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
      
 
                        
 

 

 

 

 
 
      
                             
                                 
                               
                                 
 
                            
                                                        
 
 
 
 
 
coming soon
  
 
 
   
 
this is a trailer for
the trailer
 
"Ted Allan in Spain: the movie, a Graphic Novel, first draft"
is an illuminated novella,
written by Norman Allan,
illuminated by Mark Mandel.

we plan to publish in 2015. .  
  
This is a trailer (for the trailer)....  
of the book ...  
  
 

  
    
 
January 1937 : Ted Allan turned 21 and readied to travel to Madrid to report on the Civil War for the Daily Clarion, the Canadian communist newspaper, and to work with his mentor, Norman Bethune - but Fred Rose, the Party Leader, has neglected to tell the Clarion... 		   
                 
   
 
                     
To get to Madrid was an imperative.   Ted Allan enlisted in the International Brigade; traveling to Spain with 26 other North American volunteers... The Brigade sends Ted to Madrid to report... on Bethune! We learn that all 26 of Ted's traveling companions were dead within six weeks..

.

  
 
 
 

Ted tangled with a bitter, and envious, Ernest Hemingway. (He had been kissing the bride to be.)
  

 

 
 
 
Ted meets with Robert Capa, the war photographer, and his companion, Gerda Taro. In the movie, when Ted is troubled about how to handle "the problem with Bethune", Gerda suggests to Ted that he send Bethune to China.* Ted sends Beth back to Canada, and on ?


 
 
 
 
Capa leaves Gerda in Ted's "care". Of course Ted falls in love. Ted and Gerda visit the front to report on the battle of Brunette..
 .  
 

 

 
 

 

 Will the cub reporter from Canada
and the lovely war photographer
  survive the battle of Bruenette... ?

 

* * *

 

  
 
   
       

 

     
     

"Ted Allan in Spain: the story"
provisional illustration

 

              

narrative
version

 

 

 



I do have this rather posed photo from 1939:

 

it's on the back of This Time a Better Earth,
Ted's Spanish Civil War book.

he look like Lenin

then that's fitting in that when Ted went as a volunteer in the International Brigade to Spain,
he was a fervent communist, so yes, relatively appropriate here, this Lenin look
but its a year or two of an anachronism: here 23, not just 21...
     
  Arriving in Spain, Ted expected to very probably die fighting fascism... or
 get to Madrid somehow and broadcast to America... stop fascism,
avert the holocaust... resist this badness, No Pasaran !!! 		 
 
 
  while writing TAiS last spring (2014) I collected relevant pictures from the web.
This of Bethune  with blood ready to transfuse   is rather wonderful,
delivering the revolutionary blood ..

  
 
 


 

early in the story we meet Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway's betrothed

I've this piece of Martha Gellhorn

 

 

it's a long story...

(perhaps I'll stick in a footnote)

  
 

In the car ride from Valencia, Sidney Franklin, "the Jewish bullfighter", and a close friend of Hemingway's, was riding in the front seat (though not in his matador outfit).

And here's Hemingway in Spain...
if it's Magnum then it's Robert Capa's...

  
 


Ted met Robert Capa and Gerda Taro
 

Here's the famous photo, usually attributed to Capa (though there are some who say Gerda may have taken it.)

  
  and I think I'm all right to show you this motif...  
     
 

Here is a Leica,                                           and a Rolliflex

              

 

 

                      

  
     
 

Other personae/characters in TAiS include...


     Constancia de la Mora                          Arturo Barea                                 Comrade Gallo

                     
     
  Gerda was spectacular. Of course Ted fell in love...   
  there's this of Gerda  
 

        from which I painted....

 

I'm going to start
a Gerda Taro page
mainly drawings and painting
for now
     
  oh I see it now, they are on a roof...
no I don't...
it's magic
what's going on?
     
 

 

  
     
     
oh: and this of old Ted, the Narrator

 
     
 

   Iulian Zambrean recently sent me this image from Ce Soir   4th September 1937

   So, I have the one picture of Ted from the Spanish Civil War... well, just after Ted left...

                    
     
 
 
  In some draft of his notes, Ted wrote: ...  
  "In Paris I said goodbye to Delmar and Matthews and registered in a small cheap hotel. I lay in bed most of the time. I had called Ce Soir to find out where Capa lived. I wanted to see him and tell him I had tried to take good care of Gerda, that it wasn't my fault she was dead. I left a message that I had phoned. Ce Soir sent a photographer who took my picture. I wore sunglasses and two crutches and my photograph was on the front page of Ce Soir next day. I walked out of the hotel conscious that people were looking at me, and wondering why until I bought the paper. I returned to the hotel feeling ashamed and excited. I now had my evidence: I was a complete fraud. The first evidence had been my not feeling anything when Gerda died. The second had come when I thought, "Capa will not get her now". The third and conclusive item was this, my cashing in on her death. I was getting attention because of it. I despised myself, but I was still a little thrilled seeing my picture in the paper, being recognised on the streets. This thought, this reaction confirmed that I was a phoney. It made me ill. I didn't want to be a phoney, but I enjoyed the notoriety, the attention. I was still in a bit of a fog, a bit of a fugue, and I was wearing those sunglasses...
     I feel nauseous. I have just gone to the bathroom to vomit, but I didn't.

Lily told me in Paris that Gerda wasn't happy with Capa.
     I think Gerda was afraid of Capa. She went to him because she was afraid of him. I didn't know how to save her from him. Then when she died and I thought, "He won't get her now," it wasn't that I meant if I can't have her you can't have her. Perhaps I only meant that she was being saved from him by dying.
     Okay, if I was glad she died, then why did I start screaming twenty years later, screaming my insides out.
     When Robert Capa was killed in Vietnam in 1954 I thought: "Now I can tell the truth about Gerda."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

In TAiS I wrote:

     NARRATOR (CONT'D V.O.): "Later, in 1954, when I heard that Capa had died, that he stepped on a landmine in Vietnam, I thought, "now I don't have to give her to Capa." I got very confused."

SLOW DISSOLVE TO: the Putney apartment, night. Older Ted on camera: "I didn't know who. Give who to Capa? I forgot Gerda for twenty years she disappeared, and then, when I met another redhead, Lucille, who moved and smelled like Gerda, it all came flooding back. Flooding back. But that's another story."

  
       
                             
                                 
                               
                                 
     
  So: Ted Allan in Spain: the movie: the text of my short novel is now available at CreateSpace (but with the photo from This Time a Better Earth, rather than the Ce Soir photo). Click on the image below...  
 
 
     
 
Mark Mandel
has done some amazing "roughs"
for an illustrated edition of TAiS:tm
which you can preview at
coming soon
 
     
     
     
 

"You see, I know, we were gamblers, but our stakes were never small.
"Faites vous jeux! Messieurs, faites vous jeux!" cry the Olympians.
And the last line: - "Rien ne va plus"."

Francis Penney-Bethune

 
     
 
 
 
and more iterations of Gerda this Gerda
  
 



 
 


 
 
 
 


 



  
 
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     
 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

fin

 

 

  
     
 

footnote

I had the thought of story boarding using, for example,
an image reminiscent of The Daily Planet in the opening scene...

  
 

 

 

  
 
sort of like ...

  
 
INT. NEWSROOM OF THE DAILY CLARION - DAY

An ASSISTANT leads TED through a small newspaper news-room. (And perhaps this is in black and white to put us in a 1937 frame of reference.)

          NARRATOR (V.O.)
Originally, I thought I was going to go as the Daily Clarion's war correspondent. The Clarion was Canada's communist newspaper. January 1937. I went up to Toronto to pick up my credentials."

Ted Allan (the ideal casting would be a young Marlon Brando, with an Anglophone Montreal accent)… Ted is shown into the editor's office.
   
   
   
or
 
 
 

Ted Allan (the ideal casting would be a young Marlon Brando, with an Anglophone Montreal accent)… Ted is shown into the editor's office.
   
 
   
   
   
 
     
 

footnote

 

Mark Mandel's rough illustrations were wonderful: the cover showed Gerda (large), Capa, Bethune, and Hemingway (in small circles), and was introducing Marlon Brando as Ted Allan... in how much resolution dare I show it?

 

  
 

             

 

 
 

Mark's formating/page design, and his vignettes, are also superb, mais...    
but, not mine to copy, copyright

 

 

 

  
 
"Rien ne va plus"
  
     
     
     
 
OMG I just got photoshop!
  
 
 
 
 
  

 

 

 

  
 

 

  
 
 
 
 





                       
  
     
 
 
 
 
     
 
 
     
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

coming soon

I put together a draft of TAiS with Mark's r
took them down over film rights
but things are so MM is going to do the book
that I'll put them back up
at least as dataoughs