Pierre Boulle
Personal Information
Description
Pierre Boulle was a French novelist largely known for two famous works, The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1952) and Planet of the Apes (1963). David Lean made The Bridge over the River Kwai into a motion picture that won several 1957 Oscars, including the Best Picture, and Best Actor for Alec Guinness. Boulle himself won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay despite not having written the screenplay and, by his own admission, not even speaking English. (He gave what is said to be the shortest acceptance speech in Academy Award history, the single word "Merci".) Boulle had been credited with the screenplay because the film's actual writers, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, had been blacklisted as communist sympathizers. Pierre Boulle was neither a Socialist nor a Communist. The Motion Picture Academy added Foreman's and Wilson's names to the award in 1984.
Books
La planète des singes
Movie tie-in edition, features cover stills from the film.
Desperate games
A group of scientists dissatisfied with world conditions establish a global government that speedily banishes the world's ills, but other ills take their place.
Contes de l'absurde suivis de E=mc²
This is an omnibus of Contes de l'absurde (1953) and E=mc² (1957), however notice that the story "Le Règne des sages" from Contes de l'absurde is missing.
Great War Stories
Four Stories: - The Colditz Story by P. R. Reid, M.B.E., M.C. - The Bridge on the River Kwai by Pierre Boule - The Battle of the River Plate by Dudley Pope - The Dam Busters by Paul Brickhill