Ferenc Molnár
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Ferenc Molnár (originally Ferenc Neumann; 12 January 1878, in Budapest
1 April 1952, in New York City
) was a Hungarian
drama
tist and novel
ist. His Americanized name was Franz Molnar. He emigrated to the United States
to escape the Nazi
persecution of Hungarian Jews during World War II
.
As a novelist, Molnár is remembered principally for The Paul Street Boys
, the story of two rival gangs of youths in Budapest. The novel is a classic of youth literature, beloved in Hungary and abroad for its treatment of the themes of solidarity and self-sacrifice. It was ranked second in a poll of favorite books as part of the Hungarian version of Big Read
in 2005 and has also been made into a film
on several occasions. The most notable production was a Hungarian-U.S. collaboration released in 1969
.
Molnár's most popular plays are Liliom
(1909, tr. 1921), later adapted into the Rodgers and Hammerstein
musical play Carousel
(1945); The Guardsman
(1910, tr. 1924), which served as the basis of the film of the same name
(1931); and The Swan (1920, tr. 1922). His Hungarian film from 1918, The Devil
, was later adapted for American audiences in 1921 and starring George Arliss
in his first nationally released film. The 1956 film version of The Swan
(which had been filmed twice before) was Grace Kelly
's next to last movie, and was released on the day of her wedding to Prince Rainier
.
Two of Molnar's other plays have been adapted for other media: The Good Fairy
, was adapted by Preston Sturges
and filmed in 1935
with Margaret Sullavan
, and subsequently turned into the 1947 Deanna Durbin
vehicle, I'll Be Yours
. (It also served as the basis for the 1951 Broadway
musical Make a Wish, with book by Sturges.) The film version of the operetta The Chocolate Soldier
used the plot of Molnar's The Guardsman
rather than the plot of its original stage version, which was based on George Bernard Shaw
's Arms and the Man
. (Shaw disliked the operetta adaptation of his work, and would not let his plot be used for the film version.)
Molnar's play Olympia was adapted for the movies twice - as His Glorious Night (1929 - the notorious talkie which allegedly ruined John Gilbert
's career), and as A Breath of Scandal
(1960), starring Sophia Loren
. In 1961, Billy Wilder
and I.A.L. Diamond turned Molnar's one-act play Egy, kettő, három into the film One, Two, Three
starring James Cagney
and Horst Buchholz
.
Finally, Molnar's play The Play at the Castle has twice been adapted into English by writers of note: by P. G. Wodehouse
as The Play's the Thing and by Tom Stoppard
as Rough Crossing
.
Ferenc Molnár (originally Ferenc Neumann; 12 January 1878, in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
1 April 1952, in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
) was a Hungarian
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
tist and novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist. His Americanized name was Franz Molnar. He emigrated to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to escape the Nazi
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
persecution of Hungarian Jews during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
As a novelist, Molnár is remembered principally for The Paul Street Boys
The Paul Street Boys
The Paul Street Boys is a youth novel by the Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár , first published in 1906.-Plot outline:...
, the story of two rival gangs of youths in Budapest. The novel is a classic of youth literature, beloved in Hungary and abroad for its treatment of the themes of solidarity and self-sacrifice. It was ranked second in a poll of favorite books as part of the Hungarian version of Big Read
Big Read
The Big Read was a survey on books carried out by the BBC in the United Kingdom in 2003, where over three quarters of a million votes were received from the British public to find the nation's best-loved novel of all time...
in 2005 and has also been made into a film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
on several occasions. The most notable production was a Hungarian-U.S. collaboration released in 1969
The Boys of Paul Street
The Boys of Paul Street is a 1969 American-Hungarian co-production film directed by Zoltán Fábri and based on the youth novel The Paul Street Boys by the Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film...
.
Molnár's most popular plays are Liliom
Liliom
Liliom is a 1909 play by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnár. It was very famous in its own right during the early to mid-20th century, but is best known today as the basis for the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.- Plot :...
(1909, tr. 1921), later adapted into the Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
musical play Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
(1945); The Guardsman
The Guardsman
The Guardsman is a 1931 film based on the play Testőr by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and ZaSu Pitts...
(1910, tr. 1924), which served as the basis of the film of the same name
The Guardsman
The Guardsman is a 1931 film based on the play Testőr by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and ZaSu Pitts...
(1931); and The Swan (1920, tr. 1922). His Hungarian film from 1918, The Devil
The Devil (film)
The Devil Hungarian film directed by Michael Curtiz. Later, the film was shot for American audiences by "Franz" Ferenc Molnar, in 1921 and starring George Arliss, in his film debut.This film was considered to be a lost film...
, was later adapted for American audiences in 1921 and starring George Arliss
George Arliss
George Arliss was an English actor, author and filmmaker who found success in the United States. He was the first British actor to win an Academy Award.-Life and career:...
in his first nationally released film. The 1956 film version of The Swan
The Swan (film)
The Swan is a 1956 remake by MGM of a 1925 Paramount film with the same title. . The film is a romantic comedy directed by Charles Vidor, produced by Dore Schary from a screenplay by John Dighton based on the play by Ferenc Molnár...
(which had been filmed twice before) was Grace Kelly
Grace Kelly
Grace Patricia Kelly was an American actress who, in April 1956, married Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, to become Princess consort of Monaco, styled as Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, and commonly referred to as Princess Grace.After embarking on an acting career in 1950, at the age of...
's next to last movie, and was released on the day of her wedding to Prince Rainier
Rainier III, Prince of Monaco
Rainier III, Prince of Monaco , styled His Serene Highness The Sovereign Prince of Monaco, ruled the Principality of Monaco for almost 56 years, making him one of the longest ruling monarchs of the 20th century.Though he was best known outside of Europe for having married American...
.
Two of Molnar's other plays have been adapted for other media: The Good Fairy
The Good Fairy (play)
The Good Fairy is the English translation by Jane Hinton of the 1930 play A jó tündér by Ferenc Molnár. The Hungarian original premiered in Budapest, Hungary in October 1931, and the English translation was presented on Broadway with Helen Hayes playing "Lu" for 151 performances in...
, was adapted by Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges
Preston Sturges , originally Edmund Preston Biden, was a celebrated playwright, screenwriter and film director born in Chicago, Illinois...
and filmed in 1935
The Good Fairy (film)
The Good Fairy is a 1935 romantic comedy film written by Preston Sturges, based on the 1930 play A jó tündér by Ferenc Molnár as translated and adapted by Jane Hinton, which was produced on Broadway in 1931...
with Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Sullavan
Margaret Brooke Sullavan was an American stage and film actress. Sullavan started her career on the stage in 1929. In 1933 she caught the attention of movie director John M. Stahl and had her debut on the screen that same year in Only Yesterday...
, and subsequently turned into the 1947 Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin
Deanna Durbin is a Canadian-born, Southern California-raised retired singer and actress, who appeared in a number of musical films in the 1930s and 1940s singing standards as well as operatic arias....
vehicle, I'll Be Yours
I'll Be Yours
I'll Be Yours is a 1947 musical comedy film starring Deanna Durbin and directed by William A. Seiter. It was adapted by Felix Jackson from the screenplay for the 1935 non-musical film The Good Fairy by Preston Sturges, which was based on the play A jó tündér by Ferenc Molnár as translated and...
. (It also served as the basis for the 1951 Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical Make a Wish, with book by Sturges.) The film version of the operetta The Chocolate Soldier
The Chocolate Soldier
The Chocolate Soldier is an operetta composed in 1908 by Oscar Straus based on George Bernard Shaw's 1894 play, Arms and the Man...
used the plot of Molnar's The Guardsman
The Guardsman
The Guardsman is a 1931 film based on the play Testőr by Ferenc Molnár. It stars Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Roland Young and ZaSu Pitts...
rather than the plot of its original stage version, which was based on George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
's Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man
Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid in Latin:"Arma virumque cano" ....
. (Shaw disliked the operetta adaptation of his work, and would not let his plot be used for the film version.)
Molnar's play Olympia was adapted for the movies twice - as His Glorious Night (1929 - the notorious talkie which allegedly ruined John Gilbert
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert was an American actor and a major star of the silent film era.Known as "the great lover," he rivaled even Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw...
's career), and as A Breath of Scandal
A Breath of Scandal
A Breath of Scandal, known as Olympia in Italy, is a 1960 film adapted from Ferenc Molnár's stage play Olympia. It stars Sophia Loren, Maurice Chevalier, John Gavin and Angela Lansbury and was directed by Michael Curtiz. The film is set at the turn of the 20th century and features lush technicolor...
(1960), starring Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
. In 1961, Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
and I.A.L. Diamond turned Molnar's one-act play Egy, kettő, három into the film One, Two, Three
One, Two, Three
One, Two, Three is a 1961 American comedy film directed by Billy Wilder and written by him and I.A.L. Diamond. It is based on the 1929 Hungarian one-act play Egy, kettö, három by Ferenc Molnár, with a "plot borrowed partly from" Ninotchka, a 1939 film co-written by Wilder...
starring James Cagney
James Cagney
James Francis Cagney, Jr. was an American actor, first on stage, then in film, where he had his greatest impact. Although he won acclaim and major awards for a wide variety of performances, he is best remembered for playing "tough guys." In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked him eighth...
and Horst Buchholz
Horst Buchholz
Horst Werner Buchholz was a German actor, remembered for his part in The Magnificent Seven and Nine Hours to Rama. He appeared in over sixty films during his acting career from 1952–2002.-Life and work:...
.
Finally, Molnar's play The Play at the Castle has twice been adapted into English by writers of note: by P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
as The Play's the Thing and by Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
as Rough Crossing
Rough Crossing
Rough Crossing is a 1984 comedic play by British playwright Tom Stoppard, "freely adapted from Ferenc Molnár's Play at the Castle." Set on board the S.S...
.