"Von Ryan's Express" Novelist David Westheimer 2005 Westwood Village Cemetery

David Westheimer (April 11, 1917 in Houston, Texas – November 8, 2005) was an American novelist best known for writing the 1964 novel Von Ryan's Express which was adapted as a 1965 movie starring Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard.

Westheimer, a Rice University graduate, worked as an assistant editor for the Houston Post from 1939 to 1946 except for those years spent with the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. As a navigator in a B-24 he was shot down over Italy on December 11, 1942 and spent time as a prisoner of war in Stalag Luft III. His first novel, Summer on the Water, was published in 1948.

 David Westheimer's ashes are scattered in the rose garden at Westwood Village Cemetery.

 Fiction

Summer on the Water, Macmillan, 1948
The Magic Fallacy, Macmillan, 1950.
Watching Out for Dulie, Dodd, 1960.
Von Ryan's Express, Doubleday, 1964.
My Sweet Charlie, Doubleday, 1965. (Adapted into a 1970 television movie.)
Song of the Young Sentry, Little, Brown, 1968.
Lighter than a Feather, Little, Brown, 1971.
Over the Edge, Little, Brown, 1972.
Going Public, Mason and Lipscomb, 1973.
The Olmec Head, Little, Brown, 1974.
The Avila Gold, Putnam, 1974.
Rider on the Wind, London: Michael Joseph, 1979.
Von Ryan's Return, Coward, 1980.
Delay en Route, 2004.

Nonfiction

Sitting it Out: A World War II POW Memoir, Rice University Press, 1992.