Ben Hecht : fighting words, moving pictures / Adina Hoffman

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Prologue : the man -- The root -- The news -- The world -- The times -- The screen -- The rogues -- The Jews -- The cry -- The flag -- The child -- Epilogue : the end.

He was, according to Pauline Kael, "the greatest American screenwriter." Jean-Luc Godard called him a genius who "invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood movies today." Besides tossing off dozens of now-classic scripts - including Scarface,Twentieth Century, and Notorious - Ben Hecht was known in his day as ace reporter, celebrated playwright, taboo-busting novelist, and the most quick-witted of provocateurs. During World War II, he also emerged as an outspoken crusader for the imperiled Jews of Europe, and later he became a fierce propagandist for pre-1948 Palestine's Jewish terrorist underground. Whatever the outrage he stirred, this self-declared "child of the century" came to embody much that defined America - ecially Jewish America - his time. Hecht's fame has dimmed with the decades, but Adina Hoffman's vivid portrait brings this charismatic and contradictory figure back to life on the page.

English