Noël Calef was born Nissim Calef in Bulgaria on September 29, 1907. He moved to France in the 1930s, and during the Second World War II, was arrested by the French police, interned and starved in Drancy camp before being deported to Italy. Returning to France, where he took the author name "Noël Calef,"? he published some twenty novels and short stories, including six detective novels. Calef is most famous for inspiring the film Elevator to the Gallows by Louis Malle, adapted from his novel Ascenseur pour l'échafaud and published in the U.S as Frantic. He continued to work in the film industry, and even made an appearance in Joseph Losey's A Man to Destroy. Calef died on May 10, 1968 in France.