21 Facts About Pierre Boulle

Pierre Francois Marie Louis Boulle was a French author.

Pierre Boulle is best known for two works, The Bridge over the River Kwai and Planet of the Apes, that were both made into award-winning films.

Pierre Boulle used these experiences in The Bridge over the River Kwai, about the notorious Death Railway, which became an international bestseller.

The film, named The Bridge on the River Kwai, by David Lean won seven Academy Awards, and Pierre Boulle was credited with writing the screenplay, because its two actual screenwriters had been blacklisted.

Pierre Boulle studied at the prestigious Ecole superieure d'electricite where he received an degree in engineering in 1933.

Pierre Boulle met a Frenchwoman at a dinner held at his supervisor's residence, The White Palace, who was separated from her husband.

Pierre Boulle was to become the love of his life, to whom he would write tender love letters.

Pierre Boulle later chose to return to her husband, an official in French Indochina.

At the outbreak of World War II, Pierre Boulle enlisted with the French army in Indochina.

Pierre Boulle served as a secret agent under the name Peter John Rule and was sent on a mission to help resistance movements in China, Burma, and French Indochina.

Two years later, Pierre Boulle managed to escape from Saigon, and joined Force 136 of the Special Operations Executive in Calcutta.

Pierre Boulle was later made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur and decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the Medaille de la Resistance.

Pierre Boulle described his war experiences in the non-fiction My Own River Kwai.

Pierre Boulle had a daughter, Francoise, whom Pierre helped raise, but plans for him to officially adopt the girl never materialized.

Pierre Boulle outlined the reasoning which led him to conceive the character of Nicholson in an interview which forms part of the 1969 BBC2 documentary Return to the River Kwai made by former POW John Coast.

Pierre Boulle himself won the award for Best Adapted Screenplay despite not having written the screenplay and, by his own admission, not even speaking English.

Pierre Boulle had been credited with the screenplay because the film's actual screenwriters, Carl Foreman and Michael Wilson, had been blacklisted as communist sympathizers.

In 1963, following several other reasonably successful novels, Pierre Boulle published his other famous novel, La planete des singes, translated in 1964 as Monkey Planet by Xan Fielding, and later re-issued as Planet of the Apes.

Pierre Boulle, who had thought his novel to be unfilmable, was taken by surprise at the worldwide success and impact of the film.

Pierre Boulle wrote a script for a sequel titled Planet of the Men, but the producers of the original film turned it down.

Pierre Boulle died in Paris, on 30 January 1994, at the age of 81.