MGM wanted to make a film of
Franz Werfel's international bestseller "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933) in the 1930s.
Clark Gable was in talks to star in the big-budget epic. However, in 1934, the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Munir Ertegun, protested to the State Department about the purchase by MGM of the film rights to Werfel's best-selling novel. Ambassador Ertegun threatened that if the film were released, Turkey would consider it a hostile act that would damage relations between the two countries and result in a Turkish boycott of American films. After a series of exchanges between the two governments, the State Department yielded to Turkey's demand and got MGM to drop the project.