A E Hotchner

A.E. Hotchner, a novelist, playwright, biographer, literary bon vivant and philanthropist whose life was shaped and colored by close friendships with two extraordinarily gifted and well-known men, Ernest Hemingway and Paul Newman, died on Saturday February 15 2020 at his home in Westport, Conn. He was 102. His death was announced by his wife, Virginia Kiser. Hemingway, for whom Mr. Hotchner was a friend, editor and traveling companion from 1948 until the novelist’s death in 1961, and Coco Chanel, among others, appear as characters in his 1981 novel, “The Man Who Lived at the Ritz.” Perhaps most famously, he was, with actor Paul Newman, his neighbor in Connecticut, a founder of Newman’s Own, the purveyor of salad dressing, lemonade and other delectables that was hatched in a backyard barn one Christmas and grew into a multimillion-dollar charitable enterprise. Aaron Edward Hotchner was born in St. Louis on June 28, 1917. He studied playwriting and law at Washington University in St. Louis — where Tennessee Williams was a classmate — and went on to law school there, passing the Missouri bar in 1941. He served in the Army Air Forces during World War II. Mr. Newman had made it a holiday ritual to make batches of homemade salad dressing in his barn, pour it into wine bottles and drive around his neighborhood giving them away as Christmas gifts. Just before Christmas 1980, Mr. Newman was stirring up an enormous batch, with a canoe paddle, when he invited Mr. Hotchner to join him. Out of their small adventure came the idea for Newman’s Own. Founded in 1982, the company has given away hundreds of millions of dollars through its charitable arms. In 1988, Mr. Hotchner and Mr. Newman furthered their charitable work by founding the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp in northeastern Connecticut for children with life-threatening diseases. Mr. Hotchner’s first marriage, to Geraldine Mavor in 1949, ended in divorce. (She died in 1969.) He and Ursula Robbins married in 1970 and divorced in 1995. In addition to Ms. Kiser, whom he married in 2007, he is survived by two daughters, Holly and Tracie Hotchner, and a son, Timothy. He had homes in Manhattan and Westport.