Goodbye to a writer in, and about, Hollywood
There's something sweetly romantic about a couple that has been married for decades, and when one dies the other follows close behind.
Peter Viertel died Sunday at the age of 86, less than three weeks after the death of his wife of 47 years, the English-born actress Deborah Kerr.
Viertel was a screenwriter, novelist and memoir writer, and his associations with legendary figures - such as Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, James Cagney, Frank Sinatra and John Huston - filtered into his writing.
Viertel's credits include co-writing "Saboteur" (1942) for Alfred Hitchcock and the noir classic "The Hard Way" (1943) starring Ida Lupino. He also wrote adaptations of two Hemingway classics, "The Sun Also Rises" (1957) and "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958).
But it's a work he didn't get credit for that may have cemented Viertel's personal legend as a raconteur. He did a polish on the screenplay for "The African Queen," and traveled on location with director Huston and stars Bogart and Hepburn. The clash of those titanic egos provided the fodder for Viertel's 1953 novel White Hunter, Black Heart. Viertel later collaborated on the screenplay adaptation of his book, which Clint Eastwood directed (and played the Huston-esque character) in 1990.
Peter Viertel died Sunday at the age of 86, less than three weeks after the death of his wife of 47 years, the English-born actress Deborah Kerr.
Viertel was a screenwriter, novelist and memoir writer, and his associations with legendary figures - such as Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, James Cagney, Frank Sinatra and John Huston - filtered into his writing.
Viertel's credits include co-writing "Saboteur" (1942) for Alfred Hitchcock and the noir classic "The Hard Way" (1943) starring Ida Lupino. He also wrote adaptations of two Hemingway classics, "The Sun Also Rises" (1957) and "The Old Man and the Sea" (1958).
But it's a work he didn't get credit for that may have cemented Viertel's personal legend as a raconteur. He did a polish on the screenplay for "The African Queen," and traveled on location with director Huston and stars Bogart and Hepburn. The clash of those titanic egos provided the fodder for Viertel's 1953 novel White Hunter, Black Heart. Viertel later collaborated on the screenplay adaptation of his book, which Clint Eastwood directed (and played the Huston-esque character) in 1990.
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