Ferenc Molnar Biography and List of Works

Hungarian-American playwright, director, novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. Molnár wrote about forty plays in all, in which he combined realism and romanticism, cynicism and sentimentality. His earliest works show the influence of the Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler.

Ferenc Molnár was born in Budapest as Ferenc Neuman into a well-to-do Jewish merchant family. At the age of eighteen he started a career in journalism and then studied law in Budapest and Geneva. Molnár joined the editorial staff of the Budapest newspaper Budapesti napló and changed his German name, to be known as a Hungarian writer.

After writing a number of short stories Molnár published at the age of twenty-two his first novel, AZ ÉHES VÁROS (The Hungry City). Molnár's early plays were comedies, such as A DOKTOR ÚR (1902) and JÓZSI (publ. 1904). In 1907 he gained fame as a novelist with A PÁL UTCAI FIÚK (The Paul Street Boys), an engaging story about two rival boy's gangs on the streets of Budapest. Molnár's depiction of the young people's psyches is expressed in poetic style, drawing parallels between gang life and the contemporary problems.

A ZÖRDÖG (1907, The Devil) was staged in New York a year after its Hungarian premiere. LILIOM, perhaps Molnár's most enduring play, failed at first but it soon gained international success. It was produced in 1909 and become later familiar as the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel (1944). Molnár wrote the play after his first wife upbraided him for slapping their daughter - the event becomes a key to the play, in which it is justified.

Influenced by Oscar Wilde, Pirandello, and George Bernard Shaw, but with his own touch of wit and grace, Molnár fused in Liliom naturalistic scenes with mystical symbolism. Liliom, a barker and a bouncer, is the main attraction at the Widow Muskat's carousel. Mrs Muskat is jealous of the young housemaid Julie, and when Liliom defends her, he is fired. He moves with Julie in the home of a relative. Liliom suffers because he cannot work at the carousel and in his anger he strikes Julie. After an unsuccessful robbery Liliom commits suicide. Two "heavenly policemen" take Liliom to a celestial court. Liliom refuses to admit his love for Julie and shows no regret for his sins. He is sentenced to sixteen years in the fiery pit. In the last scene Liliom appears before Julie and their daughter disguised as a beggar. When his daughter refuses his gift, a stolen star, he strikes her in desperation. The girl asks the mother if it is possible to have been hit hard and yet feel as though one had been caressed. Julie guesses the identity of the stranger, and Liliom is taken away as a hopeless case by two detectives.

During World War I Molnár was a war correspondent. His reports were published in book form in 1916 under the title EGU HADITUDÓDITÓ NAPLÓJA (The Diary of a War Correspondent). Molnár's reputation reached its peak between the wars. Among his plays in the 1920s was JÁTÉK A KASTÉLYBAN (1926, The Play's the Thing), which followed a Pirandellian theme of reality and illusion through a discussion of how a play should be written. A HATTYÚ (1921, The Swan), a comedy about a girl being groomed to marry a prince, was filmed in 1956 with Grace Kelly. In OLIMPIA (1928) Molnár assailed the cruelty of aristocracy toward the common man.

"It is a pity, that there are not more Fontannes, Lunts and Molnárs to help out the screen, for then this medium of entertainment would be in a far higher plane."
(Mordaunt Hall in The New York Times)

In 1936 Molnár moved to the United States, where he had a number of plays published and produced. His plays were known for their sparkling dialogue that at the same time expressed a sense of humanity and decency. He held court in his suite at the New York Plaza Hotel, and continued writing - sometimes in English. Molnar died on April 2, in 1952. Because of a superstitious fear that in preparing a will he would hasten his death, Molnár died in testate. He was married three times, first briefly and unhappily with Margit Vészi, secondly to the actress-singer Sádi Fedák, who became a Nazi, and thirdly to the actress Lili Darvas, who left him.

P.G. Wodehause adapted Game of Hearts from a text by Molnár, and also The Play's the Thing. Tom Stoppard adapted a Molnár play, Rough Crossing in 1985, and The Guardsman was adapted for radio in 1947 by Arthur Miller. Several of Molnár's plays and novels were adapted for the screen, among them No Greater Glory (1934), a tale of schoolboys and their war games, Liliom, filmed three times, and The Swan, filmed two times.

Billy Wilder's satirical film One, Two, Three was based on Molnér's play EGY, KETTO, HÁROM. From 1930. Wilder made the film in Germany. Originally Molnár's single act play took place in the office of a frenzied capitalist, Mr. Norrison, but Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond practically left none of the dialogue intact in their screenplay. Norrison's young female houseguest, Lydia, the daughter of an important banking client, announces that she is going to marry a Socialist taxi driver. The cabbie, Anton, is turned into a nobleman before the day is through with the help of tailors, barbers, and shoe salesmen. "It must be very wonderful, sir, to be as you are and have almost all mankind at your disposal," says Norrison's aged servant. He answers: "But as regards mankind, after what was just done here, I think mankind - or as you so carefully put it, almost all mankind - should damn well be ashamed of itself."

For further reading: World Authors 1900-1950, ed. by Martin Seymour-Smith and Andrev C. Kimmens (1996, vol. 2); Ferenc Molnár and the Austro-Hungarian Fin de Siècle by I. Varkonyi (1992); Ferenc Molnár: A Bibliography by E.M. Rajek (1986); McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Drama, ed. by Stanley Hochman (1984); Ferenc Molnár by C. Györgyey (1980); "Molnár Ferenc színpada" by P. Nagy (1978, in Iradalomtörténet 1); Molnár Ferenc by I. Vécsei (1966); Companion in Exile by Ferenc Molnár (1950).

MAGDOLNA ÉS EGYÉB ELBESZÉLÉSEK, (1898)
Farewell My Heart, (1945)
SZIVDOBOGÁS, (1947)
ÚTITÁRS A SZÁMÜZETÉSBEN, JEGYZETEK EGY ÖÉLETYRAJZHOZ, (1950)
Romantic Comedies: Eight Plays, (1952)
SZÍNHÁZ, (1961)