Greenhorn: From Europe to New York City and Beyond, an Immigrant's Adventures in the Roaring Twenties (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780999158708)

Pál Királyhegyi (pron. Pahl Keer-rye-hedyee; AKA Paul King, 1900-1981) was a Hungarian writer, journalist, humorist, TV personality, and screenwriter and perhaps the most quotable Hungarian of the twentieth century. He was the author of several novels and books of nonfiction. As he relates in Greenhorn and, later, in My First Two Hundred Years, in 1920 he and a fellow Hungarian stowed away on a ship bound for New York City. There, after years of hardship, hard work, and adventures aplenty, they moved to Hollywood and began working in the film industry. His friend went on to become a major director under the Americanized name Charles Vidor, while Királyhegyi wrote this autobiographical novel, Greenhorn, published under the pen name Paul King. In 1931, homesick, he moved back to Hungary, where he worked as a journalist and theatre critic. In 1938 he moved to England, where he worked for the Daily Telegraph and in the film industry and remained until 1941. He returned again to Hungary, only to eventually be sent to an internal labor camp, and before long, in 1944, to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, where he nearly perished. After he was liberated by the US Armed Forces, in 1945 he returned to Budapest, where he wrote pieces for cabaret theatres. As a writer and an intellectual who had lived abroad, he found it increasingly difficult to find work after Hungary became a one-party, communist state, and in 1951 he was sent to the countryside for a time in internal exile. One of many quotes attributed to Királyhegyi: "He who has a sense of humor knows everything. He who doesn't is capable of anything." Alluding to his diminutive stature, he even proposed his own epitaph: "Here lies Királyhegyi. Well, where is he?"