The home in Santa Monica Canyon was the site of salons and meetings of the Hollywood intelligentsia and the émigré community of European intellectuals, particularly at the Sunday night tea parties given by Viertel's mother.
[3] He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps as a private, but after being assigned office work in California (in his memoirs he joked he was a "Remington Raider" in reference to the typewriters they used), he applied for officer training and eventually was accepted by the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, where his recruiters were impressed that he had already published at 19 the highly acclaimed novel The Canyon (1940), and had written a screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock, Saboteur (1942), as well as the script for The Hard Way (1943).
His obvious high intelligence, native German language skills, good looks and athleticism were useful in Nazi-controlled Europe.
He finished the war as a second lieutenant where he served with the Seventh United States Army in Southern France where he recruited several female agents.
[6] It is a thinly-disguised account of Viertel's experiences working with film director John Huston while they were making The African Queen.
In 1956, while on location in Biarritz for the filming of The Sun Also Rises, Viertel was so impressed by the waves that he sent for his surfboard from California and soon afterwards started Europe's first surf club.