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Alma Mahler-Werfel in Hollywood
1940
The Werfels flee Vienna in 1938 for France when Austria fell
to the German army. In 1940, the Werfels along with Heinrich
Mann and his nephew Golo Mann flee by foot over the rugged
Pyrenees to Spain, ultimately leaving Europe for the United
States on board the Nea Hellas, the last regular ship
from Lissabon.
13th of October: Arrival in New York. (”The landing
in New York Harbour was as grandiose an experience as ever.
At last we set foot on soil that was really free. If I had
not felt embarrassed before the others. I should have kissed
the American earth.”)
In California the Werfels lived in the Hollywood hills at
6900 Los Tilos Road between December 1940 and June 1942. In
September they moved to 610 North Bedford Drive in Beverly
Hills.
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| Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel in their house
in Beverly Hills, 610 Bedford Drive |
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| Franz Werfel, Jennifer Jones
& Lee G. Cobb |
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While in Southern California, Werfel completed his novel
”The Song of Bernadette” (1941) thereby fulfilling
his vow made in 1940 in Lourdes for a safe escape. This novel
was made later into the film ”The Song of Bernadette”,
Twentieth Century Fox wasted no time in buying the rights
to the book and developing a screen treatment that was to
be their most ambitious and expensive project of the year.
"The Song of Bernadette" opened in late December
of 1943 to qualify for the Academy Awards. It was an immediate
critical and commercial success and Jennifer Jones was a new
star. It was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, and won 4. Jennifer
Jones won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.
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"The song of Bernadette",
starring Bernadette Jones (1944).
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| Danny Kaye & Curd Jürgens |
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Werfel also wrote his final play, ”Jacobowsky and
the Colonel” (1944; filmed in Hollywood with Danny
Kaye and Curd Jürgens), while in Southern California.
Werfel's ability to work in the film industry made him one
of the few financially successful émigrés.
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Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel
visiting Errol Flynn
and Claudette Colbert at a Hollywood studio in the 40's |
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1945
Franz Werfel dies in Los Angeles during the summer of 1945
and is buried in Rosendale Cemetary. His body was later exhumed
and returned to Vienna for reburial.
1946
Alma Mahler-Werfel becomes an American citizen. On the occasion
of her
seventieth birthday, on August 31 1949, Alma is given a birthday
book at her
home in Pacific Palisades, California. The bound volume contains
seventy-seven letters from significant representatives of
European and
American cultural and intellectual history.
www.libraries.psu.edu/speccolls/FindingAids/mahlerwerfel/index.htm
In the early 1950s Alma moves to New York, hoping to leave
painful memories
behind in Los Angeles.
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