- Born
- Died
- The son of a minister, de Hartog ran away to sea twice in his boyhood. Later, after attending the Netherlands Naval College, he went back to sea as a sailor. During this time he wrote detective stories and then a popular novel about tugboat crews titled "Holland's Glory". During the Nazi occupation he found sanctuary in a house in Amsterdam. After the war he moved to England, began to write in English, and turned out a number of novels, some of which were filmed: L'homme de Bornéo (1962) with Rock Hudson, "The Inspector" with Stephen Boyd (released under the title L'inspecteur (1962)), and "Stella" with William Holden and Sophia Loren (released as La clé (1958)).
In 1951 his play, "The Fourposter", became a major Broadway success starring Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. A movie version followed with Rex Harrison and Lilli Palmer and then Broadway musicalized it as "I Do! I Do!" with Robert Preston and Mary Martin. De Hartog was briefly married as a young man in Holland. In England, in 1946, he married Angela Priestley, daughter of J.B. Priestley. In 1961 he married Marjorie Mein (who had earlier served as production secretary to Michael Powell on The Red Shoes) with whom he lived in Houston, Texas, during his later years. Two children from the first marriage, Sylvia and Arnold, still live in the Netherlands. Two children from the second marriage, Catherine and Nicholas, still live in England. With his third wife de Hartog adopted two Korean girls, Eva Kim and Julia Kim, who live in America.- IMDb mini biography by: Anonymous
- SpousesMarjorie Mein(1961 - September 22, 2002) (his death, 2 children)Angela Priestley(1946 - ?) (2 children)Lydia van Schagen(1934 - 1947) (divorced, 2 children)
- Won Broadway's 1952 Tony Award as Best Play for "The Fourposter."
- When he was 10 year old, de Hartog ran away to become a cabin boy on board a Dutch fishing boat. Despite his father having returned de Hartog home, when he was 12 years old, de Hartog ran away to a steamer in the Baltic.
- While de Hartog was lecturing at the University of Houston on playwriting, he and his wife volunteered at Jefferson Davis County Hospital.
- De Hartog and his wife transformed a 90-foot Dutch ship into a houseboat, which they made their home. During the floods in the Netherlands of 1953, The Rival was transformed into a floating hospital about which de Hartog wrote in The Little Ark.
- Jan de Hartog was born to a Dutch Calvinist minister and professor of theology, Arnold Hendrik, and his wife, Lucretia de Hartog, who was a lecturer in medieval mysticism.
- Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed.
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