When American History Unbound historian and stagewriter John Monsky set out to create the World War 2 theatrical production, The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day, he took on an incredibly ambitious project. Monsky created a dazzling stew of narration, history, song, acting roles, photographs, archival films, and set it to the live music of the Boston Pops to boot. The stage show covers the final months of the war, mostly through the eyes of Ernest Hemingway, photojournalists Lee Miller and Robert Capa, and a soldier and fledgling writer named “Jerry” who turns out to be someone of significant note.
The Eyes of the World: From D-Day to VE Day is a remarkable production. One that if a writer had attempted to pitch as a fictional story, few would’ve believed it. Even watching it and knowing that it wasn’t fictionalized, the narrative flow, the use of music, all of the elements that are in play, the history and images, it seems like an impossible puzzle to connect and come out with something so valuable and so clear, and so genuinely entertaining, moving across and changing tones so effortlessly. It is a brilliant and unique piece of work that begs to be seen so that it can be believed.
PBS filmed the stage production for television and put forth the show to compete for an Emmy in the Outstanding Variety Special category. I spoke with John, the show’s producer, Meredith Wagner, and Patrick Hemingway Adams, the great-grandson of Ernest Hemingway, and Board Member of Hemingway, Ltd, about how this most remarkable production came to be.
The Contending: This show is not exactly a play, musical, or a history lesson, but it’s all those things. How difficult was it to combine so much information with entertainment?
John Monsky: It’s an emotional history, that’s what I like to say. It never started from a bunch of suits saying Hey, do this and it’ll be really interesting. Material culture is a big part of it, the flags, the objects. A lot of different elements came about just as part of telling the story. I have four kids, and when the kids were little, on Flag Day, we’d have a little party before all their friends went away, and the parents of their friends would come, so I used Flag Day as an excuse. I put one flag on the mantle, and I said that’s not really enough, just to tell a few minutes about what this flag was and where it was, there’s always music, so let’s have some music. Originally, my wife, who’s very musical, played the piano, but then some friends would tell various funny stories, and eventually we ended up with a couple of singers on each side of the fireplace. And then I thought that’s not enough, because the pictures and the images are so important. So then, this was way back when you could rent a little screen, and we’d have the pictures, and then you could see the pictures and the flags and the singers, and each layer came along. And then you came to another layer: the people.
All these stories are, for me, a riveting experience because I start with people, and when you dig into people like Ernest Hemingway and Patrick’s family, you start finding nuances and pieces to this history that you didn’t know before. So I’m much more focused on what happened to Ernest Hemingway and why/how he ran into JD Salinger, Lee Miller, and Robert Capa. For me, there’s an element of evolution, a little bit of serendipity. It takes about a year to write these stories, but the people take you down different paths and shed different light, and you get this emotional history. With this one, I felt like I landed on the beach because I started with a flag that came into Utah Beach and another flag that came into Omaha Beach, and who was there and when. I discovered, oh my God, JD Salinger was probably on this boat, or the boat next to it. And what was Hemingway doing? He’s sitting in the middle of Omaha Beach, writing for Collier’s Magazine. And they run into each other. Meanwhile, Lee Miller is taking pictures, and Robert Capa’s driving around in a Jeep with Ernest Hemingway. So, it just exploded. That led to a lot of great things like meeting Patrick along the way. And he added stories to it, and took us all the way back to Cuba and what Hemingway was doing there. We spent a lot of time with Matt Salinger, who is JD’s son, and then we connected with Lee Miller’s family, and then the estate of Robert Capa, so that brings a whole bunch of other layers. That’s what makes the story so rich.
Meredith Wagner: You can’t crack open a history book and find these stories. These are John’s discoveries. Largely, these discoveries were informed by following his flags, which is a whole new way of storytelling.
John Monsky: These objects are a starting place, but then, as Meredith said, you start following the biographical stories and the letters. A lot of the still photography takes you to a number of places. For me, it was thrilling working on this over the course of a year because different little things kept turning up, as the mosaic came together. The arc of the story, while we’re telling the last nine months of World War II through all the battles from the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, the Hedgerows, is much more interesting when you’re following Ernest Hemingway through all of those places.
The Contending: There’s a really interesting balancing act here because by using the Boston Pops and the music of the time, which often countered the despair or the horror of the war, you have music that is often very uplifting and ebullient. At the same time, you’re telling this story that has a fair amount of grimness to it as well. Did you ever worry about tone?
John Monsky: Some of the music is meant to be ironic. I think the audience picks that up, but the opening always scares me, even when I’m standing on stage, because you’re hearing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” from Cabaret and you’re seeing Hitler rise to power. You’re seeing the book burnings happening; this is not made up, this is actual photography that is incredibly close and intimate. So you’re hearing “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” and you’re seeing Hitler walk up the steps of the stadium in Berlin. The music creates some level of depth because of the contrast. There are some pieces that are really hard to get out of your head. Ian Weinberger, a conductor and music arranger, wrote a piece for the Hurtgen Forest. The Americans had 35,000 casualties in the Hurtgen. This is like a mini-Vietnam. We were just stuck in there. Typically, after I write the script, I’ll get together with Ian and say I need this and this. I’ll have maybe 75% of the songs in my head, but a lot of the stuff we’ll write because it’s all underscored. The Hurtgen piece is very scary. I had known that he had a grandfather in World War II, but what I didn’t know until he finished this terrifying piece was that his grandfather was a platoon leader and lost his leg in World War II in the Hurtgen. We do try to give the audience some relief along the way. Yeah, Ernest Hemingway was at the front lines, but as he told his editor, he had a $13,000 expense report because he had to entertain an entire division. (Laughs). And he did entertain the entire division. His bar bill at the hotel was off the charts. So that’s people. Lee Miller and her amazing personality. It wasn’t just war, these reporters were at the bar and they were telling the stories and drinking along the way. What else could you do as you watched everybody dying?
The Contending: Patrick, Ernest, being your great-grandfather, I imagine some of your contribution might have been separating fact and legend. I’m curious, along the way of being a part of this project and seeing it evolve, did you learn things about your great-grandfather that surprised you?
Patrick Hemingway Adams: Oh, absolutely. What really drew me to the project at the very beginning was this opportunity to explore and express, probably, the most misunderstood period of Hemingway’s life, being his actions during World War II. John and I were immediately drawn to each other on this concept from the beginning. He mentions the submarine hunting in Cuba before Hemingway ever went to Europe. And I said I have facts about that story that I think tell it differently. It was not a booze cruise or something totally outlandish, but it was actually a government-sanctioned and supported operation. So we started using some of those facts to explore and then look at his actions in World War II. I learned a hell of a lot following along with John. The perspective that he’s chosen to use individuals as your lens and as your characters lends this really personal perspective on war. You mentioned the tone, the tone could be very down, but there are these beats of victory, and some things break through and shine, and you swell with the music. It’s hard not to put yourself in those shoes, and what big shoes they are.
John Monsky: You’ll remember, after they get off Omaha and we show Robert Capa’s stunning pictures from Omaha Beach, you hear a song called ‘Too Young to Say Goodbye.” Nobody’s heard that song, that’s an original work, but you just feel the loss of these young men when you hear it, and you see Robert Capa’s pictures put against it.
The Contending: John, as the creator of this show, writing the screenplay, and then hosting and being in charge of the transitions, how many brains do you have? It seems like you would need more than one to manage this. (Laughs).
John Monsky: I got a lot of great help. I always reach out to people. That’s one reason I reached out to Patrick, but it’s the excitement of the story that I think makes the brains work. But after you look back on it, you’re like, did we really get the flag from Pointe du Hoc there and Patrick Hemingway, both the living and the artifact? It is amazing. Having Patrick as well as others who know the family history, particularly Lee Miller’s family, made it all the more real. Going there to that cemetery, it brings you to your knees. We tried to get the photography to link the audience to that. And then the film element, two people in Washington, D.C., at the National Archives helped mine the archives for the film that we slowed down of the Americans marching in Paris, and you see those little kids on the sidewalk, waving to the Americans and the celebration of liberation. When the Americans enter Paris, it pulls at your heart.
The Contending: Meredith, as the producer of a show like this with so many moving parts and the timing of what needs to happen on stage, and also filming a stage production for television, to have come across effectively–when you were deciding what to focus our eyes on: at what point do we focus on the band, at what point do we focus on the images behind it, and what point do we focus on John? Some of this probably occurs naturally, but I think there’s a real challenge in filming a stage production for television. Did you feel that?
Meredith Wagner: Let me say this. We work with amazing production companies, wonderful producers, and wonderful directors, and they make those creative decisions for us, but in many ways, and speaking for them, I would say it tells itself. When John is narrating and he is talking about an important turning point, an important person, those people are on the screen. It calls out to you to zero in on that image because the images are also really beautiful. Similarly, the music is so extraordinary. If there’s an oboe moment, you go there. So we’re very fortunate because there are so many different kinds of emotional cues in the show that there’s an abundance of opportunity, but I think it also calls out to you, “choose me.” When John is telling a particularly sensitive story, you want to see his face. One of the other things that’s been fun about these shows is that Patrick not only has helped us with the history of his great-grandfather, but he also appears in the shows. Those are incredible moments when we have real-life descendants who are deeply connected to the characters in the show. Those are major spotlight moments that really advance the emotion of it.
John Monsky: David, I would say you’re spot on in that question, and the true north is the arc of the story. If you had to really pull it apart, this is a story, and what drives it is the story. So the camera focuses on these photographs, the film, the story being told, and the music wraps around it. It’s stunning at the end, what happens to all these people and where they go. Salinger landed on the beach; he’d written a couple of short stories. Hemingway landed on the beach, and he really didn’t want to be there. He had a pretty big tussle with Martha Gellhorn, who finally dragged him over there. What happens to him in the Hurtgen Forest and how it changes him is pretty remarkable. Lee Miller was forever changed. Robert Capa doesn’t even want to go to shoot the concentration camps because they’re filled with Hungarian Jews, and he didn’t wanna see it. He was a Hungarian Jew.
So I think you were spot on, because the tough question is, where does that camera go? We spent months and months in the editing room, writers going back to “Are we getting this right from a historical story point of view?” Because that’s what’s so thrilling and interesting and somewhat depressing, too, what happens to these four people–the same thing that happens to the ordinary soldiers in the field. The ones that really fought it come home, and they never talk again. Not all of them, but a vast majority. Salinger never wanted to talk about the camps. He only made one comment, which is that you can’t get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose. You’re spot on on the tension of making this for television, and we just let the story drive it. The story is compelling by itself. That expression “the truth is stranger than fiction”, that’s the story. You couldn’t believe it. If I brought it to you as a script, you would say “Forget it.”
The Contending: Patrick, I’ve been to your great-granddad’s house in Key West. I’ve petted many a six-toed cat. My wife’s favorite book is The Sun Also Rises. I didn’t know what I was getting into when this was sent to me. And then to find so much of your great-granddad there, he’s such a fascinating character. And then, can you just talk about the idea that he took his wife’s job? I know he passed away before you ever got a chance to know him, but I’m sure some stories are both apocryphal and real, and separating the two can be a fascinating journey.
Patrick Hemingway Adams: Sure. This was the man, the myth, and the legend. In the 1940s, Ernest Hemingway was one of the most famous people on earth, which is less understood now. You get that impression in the show. It talks about how important it is, and why he was allowed to go around behaving the way he did. He was this beloved figure, and with that, you have to try to stay on top, and here was this grand event. This is the next big adventure for the whole world. So he wanted to be at the forefront of it. And I think John can clarify, the Army rules at that time were that one magazine was allowed one correspondent, and Colliers was big time. So he sort of muscled in and took his wife’s job, which turned out to be unforgivable for their marriage, which did not survive the war.
Off he goes and has this experience that changes him for the rest of his life and affects all of his work that comes after. He has a terrible, traumatic brain injury in a car accident during the war, which changes him and affects his depression. When he finally gets on the ground after we’ve invaded, he takes over his own group of irregulars and leads them into battle. Separating what is true about what happens next and what he did and didn’t do is a whole ‘nother story. He was a participant in some ways, not legally, but he was there. He was in the mud with them. He was under fire all the time. It wasn’t a cushy thing at all. So when they arrived at these towns, he would send his guys to go find supplies, which was usually champagne or tins of food, and he would help resupply whatever guys they were embedded with because he had this pull and used his celebrity in the field when he could. That was mostly with the generals and the command staff, who would be very permissive of his behavior on the battlefield because of who he was. And the troops just loved the hell out of him.
John Monsky: There’s a great line in the show when I get to the whole thing with Colliers. Colliers thought he was covering the war; Hemingway thought he was fighting it. (Laughs). Much of this goes back to World War I, because Hemingway was in the Red Cross but never served in World War I. He was very macho about that. He gave Fitzgerald a hard time because Fitzgerald never went over. You have this revolving thing. What Patrick said about him being the most famous writer in the world, here’s this kid, JD Salinger, who lands on the beach and realizes that Hemingway’s embedded in his division, the Fourth Infantry Division, and runs into him. We trace all these letters where Salinger’s talking about his meetings with Hemingway, and the most remarkable story unfolds. So while we’re watching the last nine months of the war, we’re watching the story between Salinger and Hemingway. There’s pieces of it all over the place in different places, but putting the two of them together in one continuum was really interesting.
Meredith Wagner: Tell David about the moment in Boston too, when we really put them together.
John Monsky: It’s funny how history continues to roll out of history. Matt Salinger, JD’s son, had been very helpful, and Patrick was coming in from Bozeman. Because we filmed it over two nights, Matt says he’s coming up. Now remember, I’ve spent several years at this point unfolding the story of these two people, really four when you count Miller and Capa, but in particular Salinger and Hemingway and all their meetings during the war, which are just so moving, particularly the letter that you saw that Hemingway writes in the field to Salinger, “Your stories are damn good, they’re damn damn good. They’re really damn good.” I think there’s a fourth damn in there, but at any rate encouraging Salinger. So all this has happened, and all this work’s been done, and coincidentally Matt and Patrick are there on the same night. At intermission, Patrick was sitting with my sister, and Matt came over to say hello to my sister. Patrick sticks out his hand and says I’m Patrick Hemingway Adams and he says I’m Matt Salinger. So here it is, eighty years later, their progeny meet. History’s unfolding while we’re talking about history.
The Contending: When this was pitched to me as an option to cover, I jumped at it. But I have to admit, I only read about three-quarters of what the show was about, and I was like “Oh, I’m in.” I didn’t even read the last paragraph, which divulges that “Jerry” is JD Salinger. So when I was watching it, that was not in my head at all. When Jerry was revealed as JD, it was a complete jaw dropper to me. Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite novels. While watching, I kept thinking, “Why is Jerry so important?” He’s probably “the everyman,” and maybe that’s it. And then he turns out to be JD Salinger. I remember I felt a hush come over me.
Patrick Hemingway Adams: I’ll tell you, in person, it’s a jaw dropping moment. I’ve seen it several times as an audience member and there’s a hush and then a wow. It’s not a “who done it,” but suddenly you realize all of the pieces were there.
John Monsky: Credit Hemingway for taking in this guy, essentially a fan, and that meeting they have in the bar at the Ritz in Paris, when the whole place is in chaos. There’s still German snipers on the buildings, and Salinger finds Hemingway at the Ritz. He’s an intelligence officer, and Hemingway pours the drinks. It’s just phenomenal. You feel like you’re right there because Salinger wrote back to his editor about what happened, and then again when they’re huddled in a house in the Hurtgen. I was even surprised as I was turning the pages because you go back and you read Catcher in the Rye. We all grew up in high school thinking Catcher in the Rye is a story about coming of age. You finish the story of the last nine months of World War II, and you have a different understanding of who’s being rescued from the rye. In the middle of it, Holden’s older brother says, “Read this book,” and Holden says, “What book?” It’s Hemingway’s Farewell to Arms. Salinger was speaking to his friend from the war. Holden says, “Oh, the narrator’s a phony.” His brother says, “You got that wrong.” This is a great book.
The Contending: We have talked a little bit about the photojournalists, Robert Capa and Lee Miller. Robert, being a Hungarian Jew, who could take some of the most devastating photos you’ve ever seen, couldn’t do it in the concentration camp. That speaks to the horror of it. But Lee Miller was able to, and Martha Gellhorn–after having her job swiped–found her own way to get there and to contribute. These extraordinary people put themselves in terrifying positions that, as you mentioned before, were life-changing. For Robert, being a Jew, and for Lee and Martha, being women, it couldn’t have been easy for any of them.
John Monsky: There’s a time when we all have to do our part. It comes up over and over again in terms of trying to do the best we can for our country, our nation, et cetera. These people inspire you, and the conditions which they worked under. You see how people step up, and they stepped up. One of my favorite moments in the show is one that kind of can get by you. Martha, still being the wife of Ernest Hemingway, even though they were breaking up, is in London, and Lee Miller goes to do a photo shoot with her and shoots her picture. What would it have been like to be in that room with these two incredible women who were so far ahead of their time and such pathbreakers for the women who follow? It’s just incredible. And then Martha Gellhorn gets onto Omaha Beach before Ernest Hemingway, which killed him. Hemingway was not happy about it at all. And the Army won’t let her story be printed, because they said no women could go to the beach.
Lee Miller took some of the most spectacular photographs of the war, right up there with Robert Capa. She wasn’t supposed to be there, but she went to the front lines anyway. So they’re amazing. Robert Capa is there when they get into Paris, and, as we’re talking about some of the lighter moments of the war, Capa’s with Miller when they go to see Picasso. Lee Miller talks about Picasso hugging, kissing her, and touching her a lot. What a moment, and they were all there. There’s a party that Robert Capa throws a couple of days before the invasion. It’s kind of a gallows party because the reporters know they could get killed too. We tell the story of that party, and all the reporters are there. There’s no record of it, I think Lee Miller was there too, but Hemingway and Capa were definitely there. It’s that evening after the party, when Patrick talks about that life-altering event for Hemingway, when the car accident happened.
The Contending: One important thing your show did is that the Tuskegee Airmen, the 761st Tank Battalion, known as the Black Panthers, and the Six Triple Eight get a significant amount of run in this show.
John Monsky: Jackie Robinson was originally in the 761st, but during training camp, he refused to move to the back of the bus, so he didn’t go over. But that Tank Battalion is another arc in the story, and what a story. At the end of the war, they rescued Antony Blinken’s stepfather from a concentration camp.
Meredith Wagner: We were able to meet with one of the survivors of the Six Triple Eight, Cresencia Garcia, and highlight her in one of our shows, and subsequently we were able to interview her granddaughter to get more content.
John Monsky: One of my favorite pictures of the D-Day landings, maybe favorite’s the wrong word, but one that always sticks out, is you see the balloons. They’ve landed on the beach, swarming with American ships and landing craft, and these balloons are being flown. What you can’t tell in that picture is that there’s a black battalion flying a lot of those balloons, and they’re all over the beach. They’re part of the story, so they come into this too.
The Contending: The show makes a great point about how black soldiers were so integral and significant to the winning of the war, and then they came home and were treated like second-class citizens. A lot of people talk about the GI Bill, but the GI Bill wasn’t open to black people who served in World War II. I think showing that sort of parallel of their significance in fighting for a country—I’m paraphrasing Muhammad Ali here—“that wouldn’t fight for them,” is a fascinating dichotomy.
John Monsky: There were so many interesting layers to that. I looked for a lot of music related to World War II that you don’t always hear. Josh White was a figure at the beginning of the story who did blues music and did “Freedom Road,” an incredible song filled with messages and filled with hope. So that’s part of the story. We were asked, and Patrick came with us, to do a performance at the White House in December for Biden, and I syncopated some of this production to the White House. Josh White had been to the White House. His two biggest fans were Eleanor and FDR. When you see the 761st, you see a lot evolving there. It’s that moment in the production that’s riveting where Patton gets up on the top of his Jeep in the middle of the Battle of the Bulge and says, “I need you guys, but you guys are fighting for the pride of your race, and the press back home are watching.” So it’s depressing that they didn’t get more honor when they came back, but you also see things changing and happening, from Josh White all the way to that moment with Patton. Josh White’s music is not heard enough, because it’s a real part of that arc of history.
The Contending: Patrick, your great-granddad, is thought of as an adventurer, a journalist, and a novelist, and he was a part of the film industry, writing screenplays. He is a gigantic and titanic figure in American history, but there was also a lot of fragility in him. You mentioned his depression before. As you were watching this production, seeing how his life played out over this time, tell me about how it made you feel to see this representation.
Patrick Hemingway Adams: For everything we talked about how it props him up as this larger-than-life figure, there’s a sort of opposing element where it’s a much tighter view on him. John’s story gets very personal at times about what’s happening to all these characters, and Hemingway especially. Here’s a guy who has set out to do a job. He’s having a divorce during a war, which I’m sure a lot of people can relate to. But he’s trying. His friends are dying. You’re meeting people, and they’re being killed the same day. And you’re just trying to buck them up. He’s sending dispatches back to the magazine. He’s trying to tell the story of individuals. Ernest Hemingway, in general, didn’t care for politicians on any side. He was very outspoken. He was very against politicians and extremely critical of them, but he was always on the side of the soldier and the individual, the underdog. So many of his characters that he has written about take that perspective. His dispatches, his nonfiction work, deals with individual characters. He was really invested in that. When I watch, I can’t help but consider him the same way. He’s an individual character in a bigger story, and it was really just humanizing to me. I never met him, I missed him by several decades, but here are the tangible effects of his existence literally on the face of history. It will give you chills if you even have a passing interest in it. It’s amazing.
The Contending: This show was shown on PBS, and PBS is currently under siege by the current administration. Would any of you like to speak to the importance of PBS and why we should keep it?
Patrick Hemingway Adams: I’ve got a topical one for you. Last night at the wrap party for the World War I show, I was pulled aside by a group of women who identified themselves as public school English teachers in New York City. One of them said that if I had that show, a lecture like that, I think I could break through to these kids. They said that was enough to deal with their attention span issues and break through the iPads. These teachers were like, “These are the kinds of things that we need.” I’ve been thinking about that for the last two nights. So all I can say is that platforms that share that kind of content, which is so historically significant and important for the future, seem to deserve our support.
John Monsky: Absolutely. The content on PBS can be pulled down by the public school systems across the country, and that’s so important. I think all of us, whatever political party we’re in, know education at the core is key to the future of this country. And the key to us, historically, is to know our history. People take different things from it, but there’s a reason 10,000 graves are sitting at the American cemetery in Normandy, and I think we tell part of that story and the values that matter to this country. PBS is an educational outlet that is pretty unique. For the public school system to be able to pull this content out, to put it on there, and have a way to show history in a more emotional format is important. PBS is pretty special.
Meredith Wagner: In terms of the importance of PBS in telling these stories, let me just say this: if this show were available to me when I was in high school, I would be a much smarter person than I am today. Any platform that enables people to see this kind of programming is incredibly valuable and beneficial to us as individuals and as a country, and so we really value our place there.
![We Could Go See BOOP! And Predict the Tony Awards! [PODCAST]](https://thecontending.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/tonys-120x86.png)
