Geza Herczeg

Hungarian-American playwright and screenwriter Geza Herczeg was also a newspaper publisher and covered the Balkan Wars and later World War I as a correspondent. In 1926 he was granted an interview with Benito Mussolini in Rome; in 1936 he was invited back, and asked to translate and produce a play Mussolini had written about the last days of Napoleon. To the surprise of many, "The Hundred Days" turned out to be a hit. Herczeg's first big success had been his 1927 musical score "Wonder Bar", later adapted to the screen, the German libretto "Kaiserin Josephine" (1936). He shared the Academy Award for Best Writing and Screenplay with Heinz Herald and and Norman Reilly Raine for the biopic The Life of Emile Zola (1937). He also served as chief of the press department for the Hungarian Ministry of State. During World War II he served with the US Office of War Information. Though an author of many successful plays, his reputation in America was based primarily on his work in Hollywood, but he continued to work for the stage (1948's "The Vicious Circle", later filmed as The Vicious Circle (1948)) and screenplays abroad (Sangue sul sagrato (1950) and Decameron Nights (1953)). Shortly before his death he was planning to write a book and screenplay on the life of Mohandas K. Gandhi.