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Martha Gellhorn

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The Resume

    (November 8, 1908-February 15, 1998)
    Born in St. Louis, Missouri
    War correspondent
    Reporter for Collier's and the Atlantic Monthly
    Covered the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Vietnam War and the Six-Day War
    Wrote 'The Face of War' (1959), 'Vietnam: A New Kind of War' (1966), 'Travels with Myself and Another' (1978) and 'The View from the Ground' (1988)
    Married Ernest Hemingway (1940-45)
    Committed suicide by drug overdose while battling cancer

Why she might be annoying:

    She was openly partisan in her writing, dismissing 'all that objectivity shit.'
    While married to Hemingway, she had an affair with General James M. Gavin.
    She allegedly loathed Hemingway so much that she aborted their child without ever telling him that she was pregnant.
    She resented being viewed as 'a footnote in someone else's life' and as a condition of interviews would demand that Hemingway's name not be mentioned.
    She chain smoked.
    She referred to Arabs as 'wogs.'
    She wrote a letter to her adopted son Sandy declaring, 'You are a poor and stupid little fellow in my eyes. I’d be so damned ashamed to be you, I’d want to jump off a cliff.'
    She wrote a clause in her will specifying that Sandy would lose his share of her inheritance if he were overweight.

Why she might not be annoying:

    One biographer wrote, 'Martha Gellhorn was blonde, leggy, smart, sassy, impassioned — and one terrific writer.'
    When Hemingway began covering WWII as well, he used his influence to try to block her travel.
    When she was denied press credentials to cover D-Day, she stowed away on a hospital ship and hit the beach disguised as a stretcher bearer.
    She was among the first journalists to report on the liberation on the Dachau concentration camp.
    At age 81, she travelled to Panama to cover the US invasion.
    After she was raped at age 80, she wrote, 'Fear is only damaging if you let it change your attitudes and actions, which certainly I shall not.'
    She went nearly blind after a botched operation for cataracts (1992).

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 6 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 2 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 17 Votes: 52.94% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 3 Votes: 33.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 11 Votes: 63.64% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 11 Votes: 90.91% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 16 Votes: 56.25% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 15 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 18 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 14 Votes: 71.43% Annoying