(Considered by many as the greatest adaptation of the Vict...)
Considered by many as the greatest adaptation of the Victor Hugo classic novel about the deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame who rescues beautiful gypsy woman and falls in love with her.
Bruno Frank was a German novelist, playwright, and poet, who left Nazi Germany and moved to the United States. He is best remembered today as a historical novelist and playwright who worked for a time as a Hollywood screenwriter.
Background
Bruno Frank was born on June 13, 1887, in Stuttgart, Germany. Persecuted by the government because of his Jewish heritage, he left Nazi Germany with his wife, Liesl, daughter of famed Jewish operetta diva Fritzi Massary and Count Karl Coudenhove.
Education
Frank attended Munich University, Strassburg University, and Heidelberg University. He received a Ph.D. in language and literature from Tübingen University in 1912.
Bruno Frank began his literary career as a poet, publishing three volumes of lyric poetry by the time he was in his early thirties that earned comparisons to Rainer Maria Rilke. He is best remembered today as a historical novelist and playwright who worked for a time as a Hollywood screenwriter. The historical context in which Frank worked exerted a profound influence over his life as well as his art - as a German-born Jew, the rise of the Third Reich in 1933 forced Frank to spend the last twelve years of his life in exile.
He published his first book, a collection of poems, at age 18. He soon moved to Munich - at the time considered the most cosmopolitan city in Germany--and got involved in the literary scene there. He became acquainted with such authors as Frank Wedekind, Rainer Maria Rilke, Wilhelm Speyer, and Lion Feuchtwanger. and struck up what became a lifelong friendship with Thomas Mann. When World War I broke out Frank enlisted in the German army and saw action on the Russian front. He was severely wounded there, was sent back to Germany and spent several years recuperating at his home in Bavaria. After his recovery, he embarked on a very successful career as a novelist and playwright, and also adapted and translated plays for the German stage by such foreign authors as Marcel Pagnol, Noël Coward, and Sacha Guitry.
Frank had been alarmed by the growing power of the Nazi movement led by Adolf Hitler, and after the notorious Reichstag fire of 1933 - in which Nazis burned down the German parliament building and blamed it on "Communists and Jews" - Frank, who was Jewish, saw the writing on the wall and he and his family left Germany, landing in England after spending periods in Austria, Switzerland, and France. Four years later, Frank found himself working in Hollywood. Interestingly, his residence in America - along with his German birth and status as an author - created a unique place for Frank in the history of the United States during World War II.
Frank wrote the screenplay for the popular movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film), directed by William Dieterle and starring Charles Laughton, based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Frank's play, Sturm im Wasserglas, was posthumously made into a movie directed by Josef von Báky in 1960.