Biography

Franz Werfel was born on September 10, 1890 in Prague, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary [now Czech Republic]. He was a writer, known for Juarez (1939), The Song of Bernadette (1943) and Embezzled Heaven (1958). He was married to Alma Mahler-Werfel. He died on August 26, 1945 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

During his flight from the Nazis, he and his wife stopped at Lourdes, the French city in which Bernadette Soubirous lived and reportedly saw the Virgin Mary. He vowed to write a book about her if he and his wife escaped safely. The result was the novel, "The Song of Bernadette", which became an international success and a film classic.

MGM wanted to make a film of Franz Werfel's international bestseller "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933) in the 1930s. Clark Gable was in talks to star in the big-budget epic. However, in 1934, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Munir Ertegun, protested to the State Department about the purchase by MGM of the film rights to Werfel's best-selling novel. Ambassador Ertegun threatened that if the film were released, Turkey would consider it a hostile act that would damage relations between the two countries and result in a Turkish boycott of American films. After a series of exchanges between the two governments, the State Department yielded to Turkey's demand and got MGM to drop the project.

At the time of his demise, he resided at 610 North Bedford Drive, Beverley Hills, Calif.