He was born, as Franz Wiener, and educated in Brussels on 28 January 1877 into a prominent Belgian family that was distinguished in diplomacy and the army. His parents were Alexandre Jacques Wiener and Eugenie Bertha Wiener. After moving to France, where he spent most of his life, he had his name changed by Presidential decree. At age 17, he rebelled against his parents' wishes that he take up a military career, and ran away to Paris. The following year, his play The Chérubin was produced at the Comédie-Française where Cécile Sorel made her debut in it. Jules Massenet set Chérubin to music and, in 1904, Mary Garden sang it at the Opéra-Comique.
Career
He was a lawyer by profession, but de Croisset gradually devoted more and more time to the theatre, "until play writing became his vocation." His opera librettos include Massenet's Chérubin, based on his play of the same name, and Reynaldo Hahn's Ciboulette. In 1919, de Croisset came to the United States to study film for the French government. By 1927, his name was attached to more than fifty plays. In 1925, he collaborated with Somerset Maugham on Dr. Miracle, which was produced in New York City. Additional plays were produced in New York, including Pierre or Jack?.
Military service
Notwithstanding his aversion to a career in the military, upon the outbreak of World War I, he enlisted in the French Army as a private, serving for four years before mustering out as a Lieutenant. He was twice decorated for his gallantry, including being awarded the Croix de Guerre for his valor.
Personal life
In 1909, he was engaged to Mlle. Isola, the daughter of one of the directors of the Théâtre de la Gaîté. The engagement was broken off and, instead, he married wealthy widow Marie-Thérèse Bischoffsheim, in 1910. A daughter of Count and Countess Adhéaume de Chevigné, she was a descendant of the Marquis de Sade and her grandmother Laure de Sade was, in part, the inspiration for the character of the Duchess of Guermantes in Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past). From her first marriage to banking heir Maurice Bischoffsheim, she had a daughter, the arts patronMarie-Laure de Noailles. Together, Marie-Thérèse and Francis were the parents of two children:
Philippe de Croisset, who married Ethel Woodward, a daughter of American banker William Woodward, in 1941. After having two sons, they divorced and Philippe married Jacqueline de la Chaume. After his death in 1965, she became the third wife of actor Yul Brynner.
Germaine de Croisset, who married Marquis André Roger Lannes de Montebello, in 1933.
