![]() He found work as a reporter, first for the Chicago Journal, and later with the Chicago Daily News. He lived with relatives, and started a career in journalism. Film author Scott Siegal wrote, "He was considered a child prodigy at age ten, seemingly on his way to a career as a concert violinist, but two years later was performing as a circus acrobat."Īfter graduating from high school in 1910, at age sixteen Hecht moved to Chicago, running away to live there permanently. On the road much of the time, his father did not have much effect on Hecht’s childhood, and his mother was busy managing the store outlet in downtown Racine. When Hecht was in his early teens he would spend the summers with an uncle in Chicago. The family moved to Racine, Wisconsin, where Ben attended high school. ![]() His father and mother, Sarah Swernofsky Hecht, had immigrated to New York from Minsk, Belarus. His father, Joseph Hecht, worked in the garment industry. Hecht was born in New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. In 1983, 19 years after his death, Ben Hecht was posthumously inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame. Ben Hecht.Īccording to his autobiography, he never spent more than eight weeks on a script. The boycott was a response to Hecht's active support of paramilitary action against British forces in Palestine and sabotaging British property there (see below), during which time a supply ship to Palestine was named the S. Of his seventy to ninety screenplays, he wrote many anonymously to avoid the British boycott of his work in the late 1940s and early 1950s. He became an active Zionist shortly before the Holocaust began in Germany, and wrote articles and plays about the plight of European Jews, such as, We Will Never Die in 1943 and A Flag is Born in 1946. In total, six of his movie screenplays were nominated for Academy Awards, with two winning. Film historian Richard Corliss called him "the Hollywood screenwriter", someone who "personified Hollywood itself." In 1940, he wrote, produced, and directed, Angels Over Broadway, which was nominated for Best Screenplay. He also provided story ideas for such films as Stagecoach (1939). Many of the screenplays he worked on are now considered classics. The Dictionary of Literary Biography - American Screenwriters calls him "one of the most successful screenwriters in the history of motion pictures." Hecht received the first Academy Award for Original Screenplay, for Underworld (1927). In the 1920s, his co-authored, reporter-themed play, The Front Page, became a Broadway hit. In the 1910s and early 1920s, Hecht became a noted journalist, foreign correspondent, and literary figure. ![]() He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films.Īt the age of 16, Hecht ran away to Chicago, where in his own words he "haunted streets, whorehouses, police stations, courtrooms, theater stages, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls, and bookshops". A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and some of the most entertaining screenplays and plays in America. Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/ (Febru– April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist.
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