Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht (
February 28,
1894 –
April 18,
1964) was a prolific
Hollywood screenwriter, even though he professed disdain for the
motion picture industry. He was also a
Zionist and
human rights activist.
Hecht was raised in
Racine, Wisconsin, and as a young man moved to
Chicago, where he became a reporter and, eventually, a short-story writer and novelist. He eventually landed in
New York, where he met movie mogul
David O. Selznick. The two were to be lifelong friends and frequent collaborators.
Early in his career, he worked as a reporter for the
Chicago Daily News. There he published the sensational column
1001 Afternoons in Chicago. While working at the newspaper, he met and befriended
Maxwell Bodenheim. They would remain lifelong friends.
While at the Chicago Daily News, Hecht famously broke the
Ragged Stranger Murder Case story. Army war hero
Carl Wanderer and his wife had been assaulted by a ragged stranger. His wife and the stranger were killed in the struggle. Hecht's investigation revealed that the stranger was actually a drifter named Al Watson whom Wanderer had hired to stage a holdup. Wanderer admitted he was a homosexual and had planned the murder of his pregnant wife. He was sentenced to death by hanging and was executed on March 19, 1921.
While in New York in 1926, he received a telegram from friend
Herman J. Mankiewicz, who had recently arrived in Los Angeles. "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only competition is idiots," it read. "Don't let this get around."
Hecht eventually moved to Hollywood, where he scripted
Josef von Sternberg's gangster story
Underworld in
1927, and won an
Oscar for his work at the first Academy Awards presentation. His most famous work was the stage comedy
The Front Page, which he wrote with frequent collaborator
Charles MacArthur. It was first translated to film in
1931 and three more times, most notably as
Howard Hawks'
His Girl Friday in
1940. Much of Hecht's later work was uncredited, as he worked as a "
script doctor".
Hecht had an early
talk show on
television in the New York metropolitan area in the
1950s and
1960s.
Ben Hecht was a great supporter of
Zeev Jabotinsky and the right-wing
Revisionist Zionism movement of
Menachem Begin. He subsequently wrote the book
Perfidy, dramatizing the failure to rescue
Hungarian Jews during
the Holocaust, and the roles of the Zionist leader
Rudolf Kastner and others in leadership positions in the Hungarian Jewish community. This issue was the subject of a famous
libel trial, when the Israeli government sued a writer who accused Kastner, at the time a government minister, of having collaborated with the Nazis during the
Holocaust. Although the court initially held that these accusations were correct, on appeal it was unanimously held that they were largely untrue or unfair and the verdict was reversed. The case remains controversial [
1] [
2] [
3] [
4] and it is not universally accepted that Hecht's account can be accepted as fair.
Hecht also opposed the
social-democratic policies of Israel's first two prime ministers
David Ben-Gurion and
Moshe Sharett, and of the
Jewish Agency for what he regarded as their complicit silence and co-operation with the British during
World War II in not doing more to rescue Jews and open the doors of Palestine to
Jewish refugees from
Nazi Germany and occupied Europe. He spoke out against the lack of interest in saving the
Jews trapped in
Europe during
the Holocaust. He purchased newspaper advertising in New York's newspapers to publicize the fate of
Hitler's victims. In one such "advertisement" with the
headline: "FOR SALE: 70,000 JEWS AT $50 APIECE GUARANTEED HUMAN BEINGS" explaining that three and a half million dollars would rescue the then trapped
Romanian Jews (quoted in his work
Perfidy, pp. 191-192). However,
Stephen Wise made a public statement in the name of the
American Jewish Congress denying the "confirmation" of the offer from the Romanian government.
How My Egoism Died,
From: A Child in the CenturyA simple fact entered my head one day and put an end to my revolt against the Deity. It occurred to me that God was not engaged in corrupting the mind of man but in creating it. This may sound like no fact at all, or like the most childish of quibbles. But whatever it is, it brought me a sigh of relief, a slightly bitter sigh. I was relieved because instead of beholding a man as a finished and obviously worthless product, unable to bring sanity into human affairs, I looked on him (in my conversion) as a creature in the making. And lo, I was aware that like my stooped and furry brothers, the apes, I am God's incomplete child. My groping brain, no less than my little toe, is a mechanism in His evolution-busy hands.Other famous quotes*
In Hollywood, a starlet is the name for any woman under thirty who is not actively employed in a brothel.*
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.*
People's sex habits are as well known in Hollywood as their political opinions, and much less criticized.*
When asked by his new wife's discomfited parents "Why didn't you tell us you were a Jew?", Hecht responded "I was afraid you would think I was bragging."*
One of the finest things ever done by the mob was the crucifixion of Christ. Intellectually, it was a splendid gesture. But trust the mob to bungle. If I'd had charge of executing Christ, I'd have handled it differently. You see, what I'd have done was had him shipped to Rome and fed to the lions. They never could make a Savior out of mincemeat! - A Jew in Love
*
Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.*
1947 Nominated
Notorious*
1941 Nominated
Angels Over Broadway*
1940 Nominated
Wuthering Heights*
1936 Won
The Scoundrel*
1935 Nominated
Viva Villa!*
1929 Won
Underworld*
Casino Royale*
Circus World*
Seven Faces of Dr. Lao*
Cleopatra*
Billy Rose's Jumbo*
Mutiny on the Bounty*
Walk on the Wild Side*
North to Alaska*
John Paul Jones*
The Gun Runners*
Queen of Outer Space*
Kiss of Death*
Legend of the Lost*
A Farewell to Arms*
Miracle in the Rain*
The Iron Petticoat*
Notre Dame de Paris*
Trapeze*
The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell*
The Indian Fighter*
The Man with the Golden Arm*
Guys and Dolls*
Living It Up*
Ulisse*
Light's Diamond Jubilee (
television)
*
Indiscretion of an American Wife*
Angel Face*
Hans Christian Andersen*
Monkey Business*
Actors and Sin*
The Wild Heart*
The Thing from Another World*
The Secret of Convict Lake*
Strangers on a Train*
September Affair*
Where the Sidewalk Ends*
Edge of Doom*
Perfect Strangers*
Love Happy*
The Inspector General*
Whirlpool*
Roseanna McCoy*
Big Jack*
Portrait of Jennie*
Cry of the City*
Alfred Hitchcock's Rope*
The Front Page*
The Miracle of the Bells*
Dishonored Lady*
Her Husband's Affairs*
The Paradine Case*
Ride the Pink Horse*
Duel in the Sun*
Notorious*
Specter of the Rose*
Gilda*
Cornered*
Spellbound*
Watchtower Over Tomorrow*
Lifeboat*
The Outlaw*
China Girl*
Journey Into Fear*
The Black Swan*
Ten Gentlemen from West Point*
Roxie Hart*
Lydia*
The Mad Doctor*
Comrade X*
Second Chorus*
Angels Over Broadway*
Foreign Correspondent*
The Shop Around the Corner*
His Girl Friday*
I Take This Woman*
Gone with the Wind*
The Marx Brothers at the Circus*
Lady of the Tropics*
It's a Wonderful World*
Some Like It Hot (1939)*
Wuthering Heights*
Let Freedom Ring*
Stagecoach*
Gunga Din*
Angels with Dirty Faces*
The Goldwyn Follies*
Nothing Sacred*
The Hurricane*
The Prisoner of Zenda*
Woman Chases Man*
King of Gamblers*
A Star Is Born*
Soak the Rich*
The Scoundrel*
Spring Tonic*
Barbary Coast*
Once in a Blue Moon*
The Florentine Dagger*
The President Vanishes*
Crime Without Passion*
Shoot the Works*
Twentieth Century*
Upperworld*
Viva Villa!*
Riptide*
Queen Christina*
Design for Living*
Turn Back the Clock*
Topaze*
Hallelujah, I'm a Bum*
Back Street*
Rasputin and the Empress*
Million Dollar Legs*
Scarface*
The Beast of the City*
The Unholy Garden*
The Sin of Madelon Claudet*
Monkey Business*
Homicide Squad*
Quick Millions*
Le Spectre vert*
Roadhouse Nights*
Street of Chance*
The Unholy Night*
The Great Gabbo*
The Big Noise*
American Beauty*
Underworld*
The New Klondike*
A Child of the Century 672 pp. Plume (May 30, 1985) ISBN 0917657411
*
A Guide for the Bedevilled 216 pp. Milah Press, Incorporated (September 1, 1999) ISBN 096468862X
*
Gaily, Gaily, Signet (November 1, 1969) ISBN 0451040821
*
The Front Page, Samuel French Inc Plays (January 1, 1998) ISBN 0573609128
*
1001 Afternoons in New York, 370 pp., Viking Press (1941) ASIN B0007E7X9K
*
Perfidy 288 pp. Milah Press, Inc. (April 1, 1997) ISBN 0964688638
*
Erik Dorn*
The Book of Miracles*
Count Bruga*
A Jew in Love*
Rudolf Vrba*
Rudolf Kastner*
Irgun*
History of the Jews in Hungary*
*
Ben Hecht 1893-1964: Biography with credits for many other works*
Summary: Perfidy and the Kastner Trial*
"Perfidy" Written by Ben Hecht: Reviewed by Michael Jacobs*
"Nirvana" by Ben Hecht*
Free ebook of Ben Hecht at
Project Gutenberg
