Ben Hecht
Actor, Playwright, and Author
It's All Greek Tragedy to Me - Gone with the Wind: 70th Anniversary Edition (1939) (Short Ends and Leader)...come to life) and a script agonized over by Selznick and several of the 1930s best writers - including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ben Hecht - Gone with the Wind is still dated, but it's a dynamite kind of antiquity. The new DVD (and... In this article: Scarlett O'Hara, Gone with the Wind, Rhett Butler, Clark Gable, Ashley Wilkes, Leslie Howard, Vivien Leigh, Melanie Hamilton, Gone With The Wind, and Olivia de Havilland |
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Playbill.com | November 15, 2009
Today In Theatre History: NOVEMBER 16
1935 Jumbo lumbers into the transformed Hippodrome. Billy Rose paid $340,000 for a circus motif and live acts to fill the stage. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur write the book, Rodgers and Hart the lyrics and music, Jimmy Durante stars, yet...
In this article: Theatre Guild, Jimmy Durante, Hamlet, George S. Kaufman, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Rich, Moss Hart, New York City, High Tor, and Evening Standard
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Columbia Daily Tribune | November 08, 2009
Extra! Papers could gamble on vice
...Hell's Kitchen at a corner desk taking bets as "wads of bills peeked from their pockets. " In his memoir, "Gaily, Gaily," Ben Hecht describes his years as a cub reporter at The Chicago Daily Journal starting in 1910. It was a time when...
In this article: Arthur Gelb, Mortimer Zuckerman, Barney Frank, The Front Page, First Amendment, Delusion, U.S. News & World Report, and USA Today
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New York Post | November 07, 2009
Wild is the 'wind'
...warner inc 16 Writers who toiled on the screenplay, credited solely to Sidney Howard, winner of a posthumous Oscar. They included Ben Hecht (who wrote the flowery opening titles), F. Scott Fitzgerald and producer David O. Selznick. 5...
In this article: Oscar, Lana Turner, Inflation, William Cameron Menzies, The Wizard of Oz, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and David O. Selznick
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Wikipedia | November 05, 2009
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht (last name pronounced Hekt; February 28, 1894 - April 18, 1964), was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in...
In this article: Hollywood, David O. Selznick, Charles MacArthur, Howard Hawks, Academy Awards, Chicago, Howard Hughes, Underworld, and Richard Corliss
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Times Online | October 28, 2009
Oxford English
...Night-Time is "a remarkable tour de force"; hagiography, a term "often now used to condemn uncritical biography"; the Harlem Renaissance; Ben Hecht; His Dark Materials, which, we are ambiguously told, "has attracted many enthusiastic readers";...
In this article: Hermione Lee, Oxford English, Robert Louis Stevenson, Suicide, Richard Carew, and Carroll John Daly
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Winston-Salem Journal | September 19, 2009
Spoofing Scarlett for the Fun of It Twin City Stage delivers the laughs
...With the Wind. Moonlight and Magnolias is set in 1939 when Hollywood mega producer David O. Selznick actually locked famous writer Ben Hecht and film director Victor Fleming in his office for five days to save his production of Gone With the...
In this article: Scarlett, Gone with the Wind, David O. Selznick, Banana, Victor Fleming, and Hollywood
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A Play about the Movie: Little Theatre takes a comedic view of legendary rewrite Kernersville native
...at what happened during the seven days when Hollywood giants producer David O. Selznick, director Victor Fleming and script doctor Ben Hecht locked themselves in Selznick's office to rewrite the screenplay for Gone with the Wind. Only Miss...
In this article: Gone with the Wind, David O. Selznick, Margaret Mitchell, Banana, Victor Fleming, and North Carolina
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NPR | September 13, 2009
Enter Leno, Exit Writers: The Crisis Continues
...necessary to make filmed entertainment. Way back in 1926, Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz seduced playwright and novelist Ben Hecht to Hollywood with a telegram that read: "Millions are to be grabbed out here and your only...
In this article: Jay Leno, Hollywood, Citizen Kane, Herman J. Mankiewicz, David Mamet, and Graham Greene
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L.A. Times - Patrick Goldstein | September 09, 2009
Army Archerd: Hollywood's last inside man
...all still alive and kicking, doing every day what put them in the history books -- Harry Cohn was still screaming at his underlings, Ben Hecht was still cranking out screenplays and Frank Sinatra was boozing and brawling and breaking up with...
In this article: Hollywood, Halle Berry, Marlon Brando, Army Archerd, Rock Hudson, Elia Kazan, AIDS, and Los Angeles Times
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chicagotribune.com - Books | July 11, 2009
Ben Hecht's Chicago: Stories around every corner
...usual stuff of pretty versifying -- flowers and sunlit glades and doomed love affairs -- but rather steel and glass and grit. Ben Hecht (1894-1964) knew how to write. He knew how to turn the raw material of a big, hearty, overgrown American...
In this article: Chicago, Henry Justin Smith, Chicago Daily News, Northwestern University, University of Chicago Press, Art Institute of Chicago, and Michigan Avenue
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Description from Wikipedia:
Ben Hecht (last name pronounced Hekt), (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964), was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of the most entertaining screenplays or plays in America. According to film historian Richard Corliss, he was "the" Hollywood screenwriter, someone who "personified Hollywood itself." The Dictionary of Literary Biography - American Screenwriters, calls him "one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures."
It is estimated that of the seventy to ninety screenplays he wrote, many were written anonymously due to the British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The boycott was a response to Hecht's active support of the Zionist movement in Palestine, during which time a supply ship to Palestine was named the S.S. Ben Hecht.
He could produce a screenplay in two weeks and, according to his autobiography, never spent more than eight weeks on a script. Yet he was still able to produce mostly rich, well-plotted, and witty screenplays. His scripts included virtually every movie genre: adventures, musicals, and impassioned romances. But ultimately, he was best known for two specific types of film: crime thrillers and screwball comedies. Despite his success, however, he disliked the effect that movies were having on the theater, American cultural standards, and on his own creativity.
- Birth Date:
- February 28, 1894
- Birthplace:
- New York City, New York
- Death Date:
- April 18, 1964
- Place of Death:
- New York City, New York
- Spouse:
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- Mary Armstrong (1916-1926)
- Rose Caylor (1926-1964)
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