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Heroic fatalism, or fatalistic heroism, a dignified, graceful acceptance of one's circumstances in the face of personal disaster up to and including one's death, is a theme that surfaces in Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers" and elsewhere in his short fiction and novels. That theme is pointedly explored in three films adapted from the story. Robert Siodmak's feature, a black-and-white film noir starring Burt Lancaster, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O'Brien, was released in 1946, followed a decade later by Andrei Tarkovsky's black-and-white short, made while the revered Russian director was still in film school. Don Siegel's color made-for-television adaptation, with Lee Marvin, CIu Galager, John Cassavetes, Angie Dickinson, and Ronald Reagan, played theaters in 1964.
The Hemingway character most willing, and perhaps even most eager, to accept his own terrible destiny is Ole Andreson, a former boxer also referred to as the Swede, in "The Killers." The character, according to "The Art of the Short Story," an essay Hemingway wrote while in Spain during May and June 1959, was inspired by "Agile" Andre Anderson, bom in Denmark. Anderson, on one occasion, beat his opponent after agreeing to throw a fight, as Hemingway told Gene Tunney, a heavyweight boxing champion of the late '20s: "All afternoon he had rehearsed taking a dive, but during the fight he had instinctively thrown a punch he didn't mean to" (Young 35). The boxer had knocked down Jack Dempsey in a 1916 bout that ended in no decision, and was shot to death a decade later in a Chicago cabaret.
The story, written in Madrid (Flora, Ernest 139) and originally titled "The Matadors," was first published in March 1927 in Scribners. The magazine, which had rejected Hemingway's story "An Alpine Idyll," accepted "The Killers" in late August 1926 for $200. Hemingway told F. Scott Fitzgerald that he had sent the story merely "to see what the alibi would be" if it were rejected. Fitzgerald, who at the time was earning $3,000 per story from The Saturday Evening Post, wrote a note of encouragement to his friend and rival: "I hope the sale of 'The Killers' will teach you to send every story either to Scribners or an agent" (Donaldson 101).
"The Killers," which was included in the collection Men...