Miklós László (May 20,ósLászló 1903 – April 19, 1973; born Nicholaus Leitner) was a playwright and naturalized American citizen born in Budapest, Hungary. He is best known for his play Illatszertár, also known as Parfumerie, which was later used as the storyline for three movies: The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Old Summertime, and, most recently,You've Got Mail. The play was also adapted for the Broadway stage as the musical She Loves Me.
Early life
Leitner (László) was born in Budapest, Hungary, on May 20,1903 to a family of German Jewish descent. Emperor Franz Josef ruled the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Great War was still a few years away. The name "László" was chosen for the Leitner family. No particular reason is known other than that it was a well-known Hungarian name and that it was similar to the original family name "Leitner". Henrik and Ilona Fischer Leitner therefore gave to their infant son on his birth certificate the name Leitner László Nicholaus, last name first as is the custom in Hungary.
Nicholaus grew up in Budapest. His family was in the entertainment business, and he naturally gravitated toward a career in entertainment as well. He was a clever and witty lad, always amusing friends and family with his quips and characterizations. He rubbed elbows with the Hungarian literati of the day including the playwright Ferenc Molnár, whose most famous work Liliom is known to English-speaking audiences as the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel. It only made sense then that Niki was encouraged to put pen to paper and as a young adult began to produce his own little one-scene plays for the various small theatres and cabarets around the city. These “little plays” became his fame and provided spare income to support his “young man with possibilities” lifestyle. It even afforded him the time to work on some larger more comprehensive works which he would eventually complete as full multi-act plays.
Money was no issue for the young László. His father continued to do very well with his own business endeavors and at one point, anecdotal information describes the father as one of the wealthiest men in Hungary. But tragically, poor management, high living and wild spending brought the family to total destitution. And then unexpectedly his father died and Nicholas was left as the sole provider for his mother and eight siblings. Writing was not sufficient to feed a family and pay the bills, so Niki turned to a host of jobs, none too small to earn the pay that was necessary to keep the family afloat. As he told it, he worked as a candy-maker, collar salesman, necktie agent, script typist, clerk and even worked as a laborer in a petroleum factory while siblings grew up and gradually took responsibility for their own lives and livelihoods.
It came then as a great satisfaction that his first three-act play, A "legboldogabb" ember, The Happiest Man, a play about an embittered factory worker and the dream world to which he escapes for solace, won him the prestigious Hungarian Royal Academy Award for Literature in 1934, the Hungarian equivalent of the American Pulitzer Prize – quite an achievement for a man barely into his 30s.
Immigration to America
László could have stayed in Hungary, but World War II was approaching, and Hungarians of Jewish extraction knew that the smart money was on leaving the old world behind and heading to America. So in 1938, Nicholaus László pulled up his stakes and embarked for the USA.
He quickly established himself in the local Hungarian community on the Lower East Side of New York City, bringing his charm and reputation to an immigrant audience clamoring for all things Hungarian and, as everyone else, for relief from the Great Depression that was gripping the nation. He was, for a time, the "toast of the town", locally at least. He now called himself Miklós László, a purely Hungarian name giving him full acceptance and cachet within the community. But fame in the insular Hungarian language-speaking community of Yorkville, Manhattan, New York is not the same as making it as a playwright to a larger English-speaking American audience.
Miklós, that is "Miki", would need to further pursue his opportunities. In the fall of 1939 he married Florence Herman, an aspiring young actress and the daughter of a successful local entrepreneur, a Cunard Line travel agent, landlord and financial exchange merchant. On December 28, 1944, he completed the transition and became a fully naturalized American citizen and officially adopted the single name now most frequently referenced, Miklós László.