Ferenc Molnár

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For the Megasztár (Pop Idol) winner, see Ferenc Molnár (singer).

Ferenc Molnár (originally Ferenc Neumann; b. Budapest, January 12, 1878; d. New York City, April 1, 1952) was one of the greatest Hungarian dramatists and novelists of the 20th century. His Americanized name is 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 which tells 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 is, internationally, perhaps the most famous Hungarian novel. It has also been made into a film several times. 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). The 1956 film version of The Swan (which had been filmed twice before) is famous for being Grace Kelly's last movie, and for being released the same year that she herself became a princess. She married Prince Rainier that same year.

Two of Molnar's other plays have been made into musicals, although these were film musicals rather than stage-to-film adaptations. The Good Fairy, filmed in 1935 with Margaret Sullavan, was turned into the 1947 Deanna Durbin vehicle, I'll Be Yours, and the film version of the operetta The Chocolate Soldier used the plot of Molnar's The Guardsman rather than its original plot. This was because the stage version of The Chocolate Soldier had been an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's antiwar satire, Arms and the Man, and Shaw had disapproved strongly of how the operetta had stripped the play of its message.

[edit] External links

• Works by Ferenc Molnár at Project Gutenberg (The Living Death)
• Biography