Ernest Gebler

Ernest Gébler (31 December 1914 – 26 January 1998), sometimes credited as Ernie Gebler, was an Irish writer of Czech origin. He was a member of Aosdána.

Gébler was born in Dublin, one of five children of Adolf (or Adolphe) Gébler, a shopkeeper and musician of Czech Jewish origin who had married a Dublin theatre usherette. The family moved to Wolverhampton in 1925. In 1930 Adolf got a job with a Dublin light opera company and Ernest followed the rest of the family there in 1931. Ernest worked backstage in the Gate Theatre in the 1930s. He was first married to Leatrice Gilbert, daughter of the actors John Gilbert and Leatrice Joy, whom he met on a trip to Hollywood. The couple moved to Ireland, got married and had a son John Karl (called Karl by Ernest but John by his mother). They were divorced in 1952, and mother and baby returned to America. In Dublin in 1952 Gébler met future novelist Edna O'Brien, then working in a pharmacist's shop. After opposition from O'Brien's family, they moved to England, married in 1954, and had two sons, Karl (later Carlo) and Sasha, who became respectively a writer and an architect. O'Brien's literary career eclipsed Gébler's after her debut novel The Country Girls in 1960. The couple separated in 1964 and divorced in 1968, with O'Brien eventually getting sole custody of the children. Both O'Brien and Carlo Gébler later wrote about Ernest's cruelty to the family. Gébler returned to Dublin in 1970, and died there in 1998 of a bronchial infection, after several years with Alzheimer's disease.

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