Celebrity Biographies
Peter Viertel
The German writer and screenwriter Peter Viertel died on November 4 at the age of 86 in Marbella, due to complications from a stomach tumor. Paradoxically, the event occurred on the same day that his colleagues began a strike, and only 22 days after his wife, the unforgettable actress Deborah Kerr, died, who had spent several years in a British hospital. Viertel himself was already hospitalized, in Spain, so he hadn’t been able to visit his wife for a long time, whom he used to see every month. His condition at that time was already so serious, so he could not even attend the funeral of the woman who has accompanied him for five decades.
Born on November 16, 1920 in Dresden, Germany, Peter Viertel seemed destined to write for the movies, as he was the son of screenwriters Salka Viertel ( Queen Christina of Sweden ) and Berthold Viertel ( Vogeloed Castle ). His mother was best friends with Greta Garbo , and she helped the family flee when Hitler came to power. Once established in the United States, the young Viertel tried to make a living selling his first novels, while he fell in love with Virginia Ray, better known as ‘Jigee’, a political activist. Apparently, the romance between Viertel and ‘Jigee’ inspired the movie The Way We Were , where Robert Redfordhe played a character with many points in common with Viertel. After marrying ‘Jigee’ and to support the child they had, Viertel decided to write screenplays. He got off to a good start, as his first original screenplay, Sabotage , co-written with Joan Harrison and the famous writer Dorothy Parker , was brought to the screen by Alfred Hitchcock himself .
His talent caught the attention of the charismatic filmmaker John Huston , who incorporated him into his circle of close collaborators. Huston commissioned him to adapt a Robert Sylvester novel that led to We Were Strangers . Huston was so happy with his work that he began to write with him and other collaborators the script for The African Queen , one of his best films. The adventures that Viertel himself had during the filming with John Huston, more interested in hunting elephants than in the film, gave rise to his famous novel White Hunter, Black Heart . He wrote the film adaptation himself, which was directed by Clint Eastwood . the character ofJeff Fahey in the film is a self-portrait of Viertel himself. This one also collaborated with the writer Truman Capote in the libretto of the famous tape of Huston The mockery of the devil .
Viertel was especially good at adapting novels by Ernest Hemingway , having scripted John Sturges ‘ version of The Old Man and the Sea , and Henry King ‘s Fiesta . After divorcing his first wife, he married Deborah Kerr on July 23, 1960 , with whom he lived in Marbella, until she had to be admitted to a center for Parkinson’s patients.