Filmmaker who helped bring Hemingway papers to light dies

BOSTON – A documentary filmmaker and therapist who played a key role in getting a trove of Ernest Hemingway’s papers hidden in Cuba made available to the public has died.

Jenny Phillips apparently drowned Monday off Nantucket after jumping from her sailboat to swim to shore. She was 76.

Her husband, Boston Globe Statehouse bureau chief Frank Phillips, tells the paper she was an experienced swimmer and it wasn’t an unusual move.

During a 2001 trip to Cuba, the couple was touring Hemingway’s home when Jenny Phillips asked to see letters between the writer and her grandfather, Maxwell Perkins, Hemingway’s friend and editor.

After being told they weren’t available, the couple worked to get thousands of documents made public.

Her films focused on prison reform.

The Concord residents had been married since 1966.