Frederick Kohner
| Frederick Kohner | |
|---|---|
| Born | Friedrich Kohner September 25, 1905 Teplitz-Schönau, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (modern Teplice, Czech Republic) |
| Died | July 7, 1986 (aged 80) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, screenwriter |
| Nationality | American |
Friedrich Kohner (September 25, 1905 – July 7, 1986), credited professionally as Frederick Kohner, was an Austrian-born novelist and screenwriter, both in Germany and the US.
He is best known for having created the "Gidget" novels, which inspired a series of movies, two television series, three telemovies and a feature-length animated film. He based the title character on his own daughter, Kathy Kohner-Zuckerman.
Having studied in Vienna and Paris, Kohner wrote his thesis titled "Film ist Dichtung", meaning "Film is Poetry". Subsequently, he worked as a journalist in Prague and Berlin. For a short while in 1929/1930 he was employed as a movie correspondent for German newspapers in Hollywood. He used his stint there for a minor role in Lewis Milestone's 1930 anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front.
Back in Berlin in 1930, Kohner began to work for the German film industry for real, starting with the comedy Seitensprünge - a production a young Billy Wilder also happened to be working on as a screenwriter - where he himself was assistant producer to István Székély. In 1932/33 Kohner supplied a full three movies of his brother's, Universal producer Paul Kohner, with screenplays, often in cooperation with other authors. Having been Jewish, he was pushed into isolation due to the ongoing worsening of the political climate. In 1934, Robert Siodmak, the director of his last German film Brennendes Geheimnis who had fled to Paris in the meantime, made it possible for him to contribute to the screenplay for the French piece La crise est finie. During the time of the National Socialism Friedrich Kohner only contributed (uncredited) to the screenplay Viktoria, an adaption of a novel by Knut Hamsun. In July 1936, together with his wife Fritzi and their four-year-old daughter Ruth, Friedrich Kohner finally managed to emigrate to the US.
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