{"id":1603,"date":"2018-05-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.newyorkcafe.hu\/new-york-muvesz-paholy-molnar-ferenc-a-vilaghiru-szinpadi-szerzo-es-bonvivan\/"},"modified":"2026-11-06T13:41:27","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T12:41:27","slug":"new-york-muvesz-paholy-ferenc-molnar-the-world-famous-playwright-and-bon-vivant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/new-york-muvesz-paholy-molnar-ferenc-a-vilaghiru-szinpadi-szerzo-es-bonvivan\/","title":{"rendered":"New York M\u0171v\u00e9sz P\u00e1holy \u2013 Ferenc Moln\u00e1r \u2013 the world-famous playwright and bon vivant"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\nHe worked at night, often in the gallery of the New York Caf\u00e9. He held nothing back in his turbulent love life: he would strike out, then apologise to his wife through a play \u2013 although he gave the lead role to his mistress, with whom he had even fought a duel against his husband. He had his fair share of failures and disappointments, whilst at the same time being regarded as a celebrated author both at home and abroad.<\/strong>\n\n<\/div>\n
\n\nFerenc Moln\u00e1r was born on 12 January 1878 in Budapest as Ferenc Neumann into a Jewish family of German origin; his father was a doctor. Following his law studies in Geneva, in 1897 he became a journalist and a regular contributor to the *Budapesti Napl\u00f3*, *A H\u00e9t*, the *Est* newspapers and the *Pesti H\u00edrlap*. After his first play, *The Doctor*, was premiered in 1902, he produced a new play almost every year. His play *The Devil* also featured elements of Freudian psychology \u2013 a concept that was now gaining acceptance worldwide. This was the first Hungarian play suitable for export; nine months after its premiere, it was already being performed in Turin. Moln\u00e1r\u2019s plays were subsequently staged in Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris and America.\n\nFerenc Moln\u00e1r was a prolific writer, though the public were eagerly awaiting a new, significant masterpiece. It was at this time that a newspaper reporter tried to visit him. The young man rang the doorbell at Moln\u00e1r\u2019s flat around midday, and a dishevelled maid finally appeared in the doorway, informing him that Mr Moln\u00e1r was still asleep. She then added that it wasn\u2019t worth waiting for him, because once he woke up and got himself ready, he would go to the New York Caf\u00e9, then on to the F\u00e9szek Club, and wouldn\u2019t be home until dawn. The reporter asked: \u201eAnd when does Ferenc Moln\u00e1r write? At this, the writer replied grumpily, appearing in his dressing gown: \u201dMr Moln\u00e1r never writes. Mr Moln\u00e1r creates.\u201e\n\nMoln\u00e1r kept rooms in five hotels abroad and was married three times. He beat his first wife, Margit V\u00e9szi, who was a writer and painter, on several occasions. On one occasion, he struck her in public because he could not cope with her independent behaviour. According to his contemporaries, he was aggressive and an alcoholic, which was one of the reasons his wife left him. Moln\u00e1r wrote the play *Liliom* specifically for her, in which the rough-and-ready man from City Park regularly beats his gentle, quiet wife, who supports him financially. The production was a huge flop at the V\u00edgsz\u00ednh\u00e1z in Pest in 1909; as a result, the writer suffered a nervous breakdown and was treated in a sanatorium for a year, though the same play was a great success in Berlin. Meanwhile, he fell in love with Ir\u00e9n Vars\u00e1nyi, who was playing the female lead at the V\u00edgsz\u00ednh\u00e1z. As she was married, a duel ensued, and Moln\u00e1r was sent to prison. This was the last straw for his first wife, and she divorced him. As a result of these disappointments, he fell into a deep depression and attempted suicide.\n\nWhen S\u00e1ndor Br\u00f3dy, who was also suffering from depression, tried to lecture him on the methods of suicide at the New York Caf\u00e9, Ferenc Moln\u00e1r replied: \u201cUncle S\u00e1ndor, please, when it comes to suicide, I\u2019ll only take advice from someone who\u2019s actually managed it.\u201d\n\nIn 1940, he emigrated to the USA, and after his secretary and lover, Vanda Bartha, took her own life, the writer once again fell into a deep depression. Moln\u00e1r, who had become increasingly embittered, died on 1 April 1952 whilst undergoing surgery for stomach cancer.\n\nA masterpiece of young adult fiction, *The Boys of P\u00e1l Street* was first published in instalments in the 1905\u20131906 volume of *Tanul\u00f3k Lapja*. \u201cAt that time, of course, I didn\u2019t yet have a proper writing job, so I used to write the instalments each afternoon in the gallery of the artists\u2019 caf\u00e9 on the Grand Boulevard. The typesetter would come round in person to collect them and practically snatch the pages due that day right out of my hands. In any case, I liked working in the gallery because of the great silence; apart from the usual caf\u00e9 hubbub and the ceaseless military band, nothing disturbed my work.<\/i>\u201d The work, which was published in book form a year later, has been translated into countless languages, and the Hungarian-American co-production film based on it, directed by Zolt\u00e1n F\u00e1bri, was nominated for an Oscar. In 2005, the novel was voted Hungary\u2019s second favourite book in a television poll entitled *The Great Book*.\n\nAccording to one legend, on the day the New York Caf\u00e9 opened, it was Ferenc Moln\u00e1r who, together with his playful, bohemian journalist friends, threw the caf\u00e9\u2019s keys into the Danube so that it would remain open day and night. Whether the story is true or not, whether it actually happened or not, we still do not know for certain today, not least because Ferenc Moln\u00e1r was barely sixteen years old in 1896 \u2013 yet the legend stubbornly persists that it was his idea. It is a fact that Moln\u00e1r was passionate about New York.\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

He worked at night, often in the gallery of the New York Caf\u00e9. He held nothing back in his turbulent love life: he would strike out, then apologise to his wife through a play \u2013 although he gave the lead role to his mistress, with whom he had even fought a duel against his husband. He had his fair share of failures and disappointments, whilst at the same time being regarded as a celebrated author both at home and abroad.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-muveszek"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3923,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/3923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newyorkcafe.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}