Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend

Book by MacAdams, William

Hecht (1893-1964) may be "the most influential writer in the history of American movies," as MacAdams, a freelance journalist, claims, but this brisk biography, rich in Hollywood anecdotes, does not explain why. An ace crime reporter in gangland Chicago, Hecht took part in the city's literary renaissance, writing stories and novels that are now all but forgotten. Driven by debt and a taste for high living, the brash, voluble newspaperman transformed himself into Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter. He wrote or worked on over 100 film scripts, among them Notorious , Gone with the Wind and A Farewell to Arms , becoming Hollywood's highest-paid scenarist but, to detractors, an "aesthetic Babbitt." An early and outspoken opponent of the Nazi slaughter of Jews, Hecht later grew disillusioned with politics. This detailed yet strangely impersonal biography is studded with glimpses of Orson Welles, Carl Sandburg, John Barrymore, Kurt Weill, David Selznick, Ring Lardner, many more.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Years of research have obviously gone into this definitive biography of prolific writer Ben Hecht. As a journalist in Chicago, novelist, dramatist (best known for The Front Page , in collaboration with Charles MacArthur), and screenwriter, Hecht was always an iconoclast whose prose was often vitriolic. His largest success came as a screenwriter in Hollywood where he wrote or worked on (often without credit) most of the best movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Not an admirable personality, Hecht was an egomaniac whose autobiography, A Child of the Century (1954), is full of exaggerations and outright untruths, according to those who knew him. MacAdams appears determined to use every scrap of information he had about Hecht and all those who knew him. Detailed, full of quotations, this is a biography that only the most determined reader will slog through.
- Marcia L. Perry, Berkshire Athenaeum, Pittsfield, Mass.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.