Ferenc Molnar, noted Hungarian Jewish playwright who was the second Jew in history to receive the Order of Crovin, the highest honor available to an Hungarian man of letters, died in Mount Sinai Hospital here after a long illness. He was 74 years old. The funeral will take place tomorrow.
Born in Budapest, he was the son of a well known Jewish physician. He was educated at the universities of Budapest and Geneva where he studied law. While a law student he contributed articles to various publications and in 1902 wrote his first play, “The Lawyer,” which attracted much attention. Since then he wrote more than 40 plays many of which were successfully performed in the United States.
His original name being Neumann, he changed it to Molnar as a gesture of his love for Hungary. He came to the United States in 1940, after escaping from the Nazis, and later became and American citizen. His reputation was established in New York back in 1908, when four companies simultaneously were performing one of his plays, “The Devil.” Two of the productions were in English, one in Yiddish and one in German.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
