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Peter Viertel 1920 - 2007

Peter Viertel of Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA was born on November 16, 1920 at Dresden, Germany, and died at age 86 years old on November 4, 2007 at Marbella, Spain in Marbella, Málaga County, AL Spain.

Peter Viertel

Los Angeles, Los Angeles County, CA 90036

November 16, 1920

Dresden, Germany

November 4, 2007

Marbella, Spain in Marbella, Málaga County, AL, Spain

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Peter Viertel Peter Viertel (1920 - 2007)

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Peter Viertel's History: 1920 - 2007

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Introduction

Peter Viertel Born 16 November 1920 Dresden, Germany Died 4 November 2007 (aged 86) Marbella, Spain Spouse(s) Virginia Lee Ray (m. 1943; div. 1958) Deborah Kerr (m. 1960; died 2007) Parent(s) Berthold Viertel and Salka Viertel Peter Viertel (16 November 1920 – 4 November 2007) was an author and screenwriter. Biography Viertel was born to Jewish parents in Dresden, Germany, the writer and actress Salka Viertel and the writer Berthold Viertel. In 1928, his parents moved to Santa Monica, California, where Viertel grew up with his brothers, Hans and Thomas. The home in Santa Monica Canyon was the site of salons and meetings of the Hollywood intelligentsia and the émigré community of European intellectuals, particularly at the Sunday night tea parties given by Viertel's mother. However, Viertel identified more with Southern California youth culture than with the European millieu he was exposed to by his family. "The physical aspect of European intellectuals was so totally different from what an American kid wants to be," he told the International Herald Tribune in 1992. "I knew Bert Brecht was close to being a genius, but he was a funny-looking man to me." Viertel graduated from Dartmouth College in 1941. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a private, but after being assigned office work in California (in his memoirs he joked he was a "Remington Raider" in reference to the typewriters they used), he applied for officer training and eventually was accepted by the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, where his recruiters were impressed that he had already published at 19 the highly acclaimed novel The Canyon (1940), and had written a screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock, Saboteur (1942), as well as the script for The Hard Way (1943). His obvious high intelligence, native German language skills, good looks and athleticism were useful in Nazi-controlled Europe. He finished the war as a second lieutenant. Based on his experiences, Viertel wrote the play The Survivors with his friend Irwin Shaw. It premiered in New York City in 1948, and was turned into an episode for the US Studio One TV series in 1950, and a BBC television movie in 1957. Some of his war experiences found their way into the screenplay for Anatole Litvak's highly acclaimed movie Decision Before Dawn (1951). He found it difficult to turn his OSS experiences into a novel and struggled with it for several decades, and a draft was found after his death, but as of 2018 there has been no news of potential publication, nor of the second volume of his autobiography. Viertel was best known for his novel White Hunter Black Heart, which was made into a film starring Clint Eastwood in 1990.[5] It is a thinly-disguised account of Viertel's experiences working with film director John Huston while they were making The African Queen. The central character is scriptwriter Pete Verrill while the Huston character is called John Wilson. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote in 1999 that White Hunter was “still the best Hollywood novel I’ve ever come across — and it isn’t even set in Hollywood.” Viertel's opinion of the finished film was tempered by his idea that Huston himself would have preferred a portrayal with more sarcasm. Viertel's looks and personality were an inspiration for Robert Redford's character Hubbell Gardiner in The Way We Were. Of his screenwriting work for Hollywood productions, Viertel said that it was primarily a vehicle for income so that he could continue to write novels. Though he worked closely with movie professionals that he liked such as Billy Wilder and Huston, Viertel said there was always creative tension. Viertel is recognized for introducing surfing in Europe. In 1956, while on location in Biarritz for the filming of The Sun Also Rises, Viertel was so impressed by the waves that he sent for his surfboard from California and soon afterwards started Europe's first surf club. Viertel was twice married. His first wife was Virginia Ray "Jigee" Schulberg, the ex-wife of the novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg; she was pregnant with their only child, Christine, when Viertel abandoned her to live with the fashion model Simone Micheline "Bettina" Bodin. Varying sources show that Viertel and Jigee divorced in 1958, 1959, or were still separated but legally married upon her death in January 1960. Bettina left him for Prince Aly Khan in 1955, and was pregnant with Khan's child when he died in May 1960. Viertel's second wife was the actress Deborah Kerr, marrying her on 23 July 1960. Viertel was widowed by Kerr on 16 October 2007, just 19 days before he died from lymphoma while living in Marbella, Spain; he was 12 days shy of his 87th birthday. Through Kerr he had two stepdaughters, Melanie and Francesca Bartley. A filmed documentary by director Michael Scheingraber was in production at the time of Viertel's death. Titled Peter Viertel – Between the Lines, the film is based upon over 400 minutes of recorded interviews with him.
11/16

1920

Birthday

November 16, 1920

Birthdate

Dresden, Germany

Birthplace

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Ethnicity & Family History

German Jewish parents.
Early Life & Education

California for grade school and high school. Viertel graduated from Dartmouth College in 1941.
Religious Beliefs

Jewish.
Military Service

He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a private, but after being assigned office work in California (in his memoirs he joked he was a "Remington Raider" in reference to the typewriters they used), he applied for officer training and eventually was accepted by the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, where his recruiters were impressed that he had already published at 19 the highly acclaimed novel The Canyon (1940), and had written a screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock, Saboteur (1942), as well as the script for The Hard Way (1943). His obvious high intelligence, native German language skills, good looks and athleticism were useful in Nazi-controlled Europe. He finished the war as a second lieutenant.
Professional Career

Writer and Author. Films Saboteur (1942) The Hard Way (1943) The Search (Draft – uncredited) (1948) We Were Strangers (1949) Roughshod (Story) (1949) The Survivors (Studio One TV series episode) (Story) (1950) Decision Before Dawn (1951) The African Queen (Uncredited) (1951) Beat the Devil (Screenplay collaboration – uncredited) 1953 The Village (1953) The Hard Way (Lux Video Theatre TV series episode) 1957 The Survivors (TV movie) (with Irwin Shaw) 1957 The Sun Also Rises (1957) The Night Heaven Fell (Uncredited) (1958) The Old Man and the Sea (1958) Five Miles to Midnight (1962) White Hunter Black Heart (1990) Books The Canyon (1940) Line of Departure (1947) White Hunter Black Heart (1953) Love Lies Bleeding (1964) Bicycle on the Beach (1971) American Skin (1984) Dangerous Friends: At Large with Huston and Hemingway in the Fifties (1992) Loser Deals (1995) Play The Survivors, (with Irwin Shaw) New York, Playhouse Theatre, January 1948.
Personal Life & Family

Screenwriter Peter Viertel was friends with Ernest Hemingway.
11/4

2007

Death

November 4, 2007

Death date

Cancer.

Cause of death

Marbella, Spain in Marbella, Málaga County, AL Spain
Death location

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Obituary

Peter Viertel, 86, Author and Screenwriter, Is Dead By Douglas Martin Nov. 6, 2007 Peter Viertel, a noted author and screenwriter who plumbed his relationships with the aristocracy of Hollywood — starting with Greta Garbo, his mother’s best friend — and literary lions like Hemingway to produce provocative works of fiction and memoir, died on Sunday in Marbella, Spain. He was 86. The cause was lymphoma, said Adam Shaw, a friend. The author of at least 9 novels and 11 feature films, Mr. Viertel deftly used his movie work to fuel and enhance his literary output, and vice versa. He turned his experience as on-scene script doctor for the movie “The African Queen” (1951) into grist for a novel about the making of a very similar movie in Africa, “White Hunter, Black Heart” (1953). The novel, in turn, became a 1990 Clint Eastwood movie of the same name, for which Mr. Viertel helped write the screenplay. Pauline Kael wrote in Salon in 1999 that “White Hunter” was “still the best Hollywood novel I’ve ever come across — and it isn’t even set in Hollywood.” Mr. Viertel was preceded in death last month by his wife, the actress Deborah Kerr. He is survived by his daughter, Christine Viertel of Austin, Tex., and his brother, Thomas, of Los Angeles. Mr. Viertel may have name-dropped, but his friends had names worth dropping. His 1992 book “Dangerous Friends: At Large With Huston and Hemingway in the Fifties,” tells of Bogart and Bacall, Tracy and Hepburn, Cagney, Sinatra, Monroe, Orson Welles and many others. But he did it with grace, often making himself the butt of the joke, as when he told of taking a pratfall down the steps of Hemingway’s house in front of a party of guests. Many reviewers noted that his abstinence from alcohol provided an unusual perspective in his jet-set crowd. Mr. Viertel’s popularity with older luminaries came partly from his well-reviewed literary output, but his personality helped. Scott Donaldson wrote in The Washington Post in 1992, “Most of the nights between 1948 and 1960 he slept in hotel rooms or in the homes of others, a kind of champion house guest invited for his charm and his talent as a storyteller.” The author Irwin Shaw, Adam’s father, was a best friend, while Ernest Hemingway was something of a touchstone. When Hemingway wrote a book about one of Spain’s leading matadors, Mr. Viertel wrote one, called “Love Lies Bleeding,” about the matador’s rival. He wrote screenplays for two movies made from Hemingway novels, “The Sun Also Rises” (1957) and “The Old Man and the Sea” (1958). Hemingway once offered to write a novel with him to make enough money to free Mr. Viertel from having to demean himself — in Hemingway’s view — by writing screenplays. (Mr. Viertel declined.) Peter Viertel was born in Dresden, Germany, on Nov. 16, 1920. Six years later, he moved to Hollywood, where his father, Berthold, worked as a film director and screenwriter. Christopher Isherwood’s fictional first-person account of filmmaking, “Prater Violet” (1945), grew out of the time Mr. Isherwood, as a screenwriter, worked with Mr. Viertel, as the director, on the film “Little Friend” (1934). Peter Viertel’s mother, the former Salka Steuermann, was screenwriter for many of Garbo’s movies and was known for her Sunday afternoon salon in Santa Monica, at which Garbo and Charlie Chaplin rubbed elbows with Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann. Mr. Viertel attended Dartmouth College and the University of California, Los Angeles. At 19, he wrote his first novel, “The Canyon” (1940), which The New York Times called “a first novel of unusual quality.” In World War II, he served as a Marine in the Pacific and with the Office of Strategic Services in Europe. He quickly put his military experiences to literary use by selling a screenplay on the siege of Bataan to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He earned a Silver Star and three battle stars. Critics often suggested that Mr. Viertel’s capacity for noting detail made his writing shine. A real life example came when Hemingway committed suicide in the summer of 1961, but initial reports said he had had a hunting accident. Mr. Viertel wrote in “Dangerous Friends” that he knew a hunting accident was impossible because the partridge season would not begin until September. In the same book, Mr. Viertel told how he nervously approached John Huston to discuss the barely disguised description of him in the filming of “The African Queen” for “White Hunter.” He had portrayed the fictionalized director as obsessed with hunting elephants at the expense of the movie, not to mention common sense. Not only did Mr. Huston not object, he offered to sign a release without even reading the unpublished book. After reading it, Mr. Huston proposed an ending that made the director appear even crueler than in Mr. Viertel’s original ending. Mr. Viertel used it. His first wife was the former Virginia Ray Schulberg, former wife of the writer Budd Schulberg. Mr. Viertel wrote that he abandoned her when she was pregnant for Bettina, a famous French model of the 50s. After Bettina dropped Mr. Viertel for Aly Khan, Mr. Huston offered consolation, saying, “Aly Khan is one swell guy.” Mr. Viertel wrote that Mr. Huston’s wife was later romantically involved with the same Mr. Khan. Mr. Viertel could not resist. “John, you’re not going to like what I’m about to say,” he said, “but Aly is one swell guy.”

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Peter Viertel lived 10 years longer than the average family member when died at the age of 86.

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