Submitted by sernabad on Tue, 11/15/2005 - 9:23pm.
David Westheimer, 1917-2005
David Westheimer, author of the Von Ryan’s Express (1964), died yesterday in Los Angeles.
The former WWII POW and later editor of the former Houston Post newspaper, used his wartime experience to pen Von Ryan’s Express which was made into a movie by the same name a year later, and starred Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard. In 1980, Westheimer wrote the sequel, Van Ryan’s Return.
Westheimer also wrote My Sweet Charlie (1965), which became a Broadway play in 1966 and which netted Patty Duke an Emmy for the TV adaptation in 1970.
David Westheimer was 88.
