Before "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" was published in English, Irving Thalberg of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) secured the film rights from Werfel's publisher, Paul Zsolnay Verlag and had the novel translated for the studio scriptwriters. Despite reservations on the part of legal counsel, who felt such a film would offend the Turkish government, MGM started pre-production work in 1934 and tentatively cast a rising young star named Clark Gable to play Gabriel Bagradian. When reports surfaced in the Hollywood press about the film late in 1934, Turkey's ambassador to the United States, Mehmed Münir Ertegün, was ordered by his government to prevent it from being made. As the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey was intent on suppressing any mention of the Armenian Genocide.