Ben Hecht : fighting words, moving pictures
/ Adina Hoffman
- New Haven : Yale University Press , 2019
- 245 p. : illus. ; 22 cm.
- Jewish lives .
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
9780300180428
Hecht, Ben, (1894-1964.)
Screenwriters---United States -- Biography Jewish authors---United States----Biography Authors, American---21st century----Biography