Born Lebovics Menyhért, Lengyel started out as a correspondent for Hungarian newspapers in Switzerland and became a well-known journalist, author, and critic in Germany and Austria where he published numerous plays and established friendships with Ernst Lubitsch and other German theater greats with whom he later worked in Hollywood. He visited the US twice in 1921 and 1924, where he maintained a diary of American theater life and met Eugene O'Neill whose work he later produced in Germany. He moved to England in 1933 as a correspondent for the Budapest "Pesti Naplo" and then followed Lubitsch to America in 1935. He moved to Italy in 1960 and then returned to Hungary in 1970 where he died at 94.

His credits include Typhoon, Silk Stockings, the Czarina, Angel (which he directed and produced), Antonia (which he-co-directed with George Cukor) and quadruple Oscar nominated "Ninotchka" in which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. He lost to none other than "Gone With the Wind". Other spin-offs of the Ninotchka theme include MGM's Comrade X (1940) with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr (in the Soviet Union), and The Iron Petticoat (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope (in London).

The storyline also became the foundation for the Broadway (Cole Porter) stage musical Silk Stockings - that was later filmed by director Rouben Mamoulian in a 1957 film version with Cyd Charisse in Garbo's role opposite Fred Astaire. Less known is that he wrote the libretto for Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin and To Be or Not to Be which Lubitsch turned into a classic film comedy.

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Melchior Lengyel

Writer

Actor

Script and Continuity Department