Peter's Quarter
Peter Viertel (born November 16, 1920 in Dresden ; † November 4, 2007 in Marbella , Spain ) was a German -born American writer and in particular a successful screenwriter .
Life
Peter Viertel was the second son of the actress and screenwriter Salka Steuermann and the writer and director Berthold Viertel . With his parents he went to the USA in 1928, where he grew up in Santa Monica with his two brothers Hans and Thomas.
During World War II , Viertel served with the Marines and was wounded in the South Pacific. He was then promoted to officer and worked for the secret service.
His first book The Canyon was published in 1940 - Viertel was just 19 - and had immediate success. Through his parents he had numerous contacts with writers and Hollywood . He began - also to earn money - to write scripts, with which he was very successful. He wrote his first in 1942 for the Hitchcock film Saboteurs . Viertel was close friends with Ernest Hemingway and wrote the scripts for the film adaptations of Hemingway's novels Fiesta and The Old Man and the Sea .
Viertel, who was also a close friend of the director John Huston , processed his experiences while filming African Queen in his most famous novel Mann im Dschungel , the German title of the first edition of White Hunter, Black Heart (1953). The book was filmed and reprinted in 1990 by Clint Eastwood under the title White Hunter, Black Heart .
Quarter was first marriage to Virginia Schulberg (first marriage to Budd Schulberg ) geb. Ray married, with whom he had a daughter. In 1960 he married actress Deborah Kerr . The two lived in Klosters in Switzerland and in Marbella, Spain until Kerr's death on October 16, 2007 .
Works
Books
- The Canyon , 1940
- Line of Departure , 1947
- White Hunter Black Heart , 1953 (German man in the jungle , 1954; later under the title White Hunter, Black Heart )
- Love Lies Bleeding , 1964 (German Fiesta brava , 1965)
- Bicycle on the Beach , 1971
- American Skin , 1984
- Dangerous Friends: At Large with Huston and Hemingway in the Fifties , 1992 (German: Dangerous friends on the way with Hemingway, Huston, Welles and other legends of the 20th century , Zurich, Rüffer and Rub, 2005, ISBN 978-3-907625-18 -7 )
- Loser Deals , 1995
Scripts
- 1942: Saboteurs (saboteurs)
- 1943: The Hard Way (The Hard Way)
- 1948: We were alien to us (We Were Strangers)
- 1949: Roughshod
- 1951: Decision Before Dawn (Decision Before Dawn)
- 1951: African Queen
- 1953: Our village
- 1957: Between Madrid and Paris (The Sun Also Rises)
- 1958: It's always night in their eyes (Les bijoutiers du clair de lune)
- 1958: The Old Man and the Sea (The Old Man and the Sea)
- 1962: The third dimension (Le couteau dans la plaie)
- 1990: White Hunter Black Heart (White Hunter Black Heart)
Web links
- Literature by and about Peter Viertel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Peter Viertel in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Peter Viertel - life, books, films (English)
- Interview with Peter Viertel (audio), 1992
- “Screenwriter Peter Viertel is dead” , Spiegel Online , November 5, 2007
Individual evidence
- ^ Jobst C. Knigge: Hemingway and the Germans , Kovac, Hamburg 2018
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Quarter, Peter |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American novelist and screenwriter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 16, 1920 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Dresden |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 4, 2007 |
| Place of death | Marbella , Spain |