Gorbach may be the weaker stylist, at times insightful while at other times too reliant on academic jargon and theory, but his is the deeper dive, and he comes up with a surprising amount of fresh material on Hecht’s activism.īy focusing on his politics, both biographies create a richer portrait, yet still struggle to fully explain Hecht. “Action - Not Pity Can Save Millions Now!” was a typical headline. In order to make an end-run around the political and media establishment and bring the story directly to the American people, the Bergson group bought full-page ads in major newspapers, usually written by Hecht himself. These were, Gorbach says, “the only substantive coverage” of the Holocaust “to appear in mass-circulation magazines.” “That’s what we need,” Groucho wrote, “a little more belligerency, professor, and not quite so much cringing.”) Hecht also wrote a long exposé in The American Mercury called “The Extermination of the Jews,” later excerpted in Reader’s Digest. (His friend Groucho Marx congratulated him after one particularly angry screed. Hecht wrote furious columns for the short-lived liberal newspaper PM, excoriating the passivity of American Jews. Jewish-owned newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post agreed, burying news of Hitler’s Final Solution. Their efforts were fought not only by Roosevelt and the State Department, but also by establishment Jewish groups, fearful that Judaizing the war would trigger more anti-Semitism. Later, galvanized by news of the mass exterminations taking place in Europe, the team mounted a bold campaign to pressure the United States government to make the rescue of European Jewry a wartime priority. She describes Hecht’s awkward lunch at the “21” Club in New York with a young Irgunist, a Palestinian Jew named Peter Bergson, who persuaded Hecht to help him create a Jewish army to fight against Hitler. What follows is a brisk, readable tour through Hecht’s wartime alliance with the right wing of the Zionist movement - the Revisionists led by Ze’ev Jabotinsky - and his support for the Irgun, their clandestine paramilitary affiliate, led by Jabotinsky’s young lieutenant Menachem Begin. Jean-Luc Godard said “he invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood movies today.” He helped establish the ground rules for entire genres, including the gangster film, the newspaper picture, the screwball comedy and postwar film noir. Uncredited, he script-doctored countless others, including “Stagecoach,” “Gone With the Wind,” “A Star Is Born” (1937) and “Roman Holiday.”Īcross four decades, Hecht worked on about 200 movies. The year was 1927.) “Scarface,” “The Front Page,” “Twentieth Century,” “Design for Living,” “Wuthering Heights,” “His Girl Friday,” “Spellbound,” “Notorious.” And that’s just films with his name on them. (Not his first Academy Award, the first Academy Award ever given for best story. And why wouldn’t they? Consider a few of his credits: “Underworld,” directed by Josef von Sternberg, for which Hecht won the first Academy Award. THE NOTORIOUS BEN HECHT Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist By Julien Gorbachįor understandable reasons, biographies about Ben Hecht have focused almost exclusively on his screenwriting career in Hollywood. BEN HECHT Fighting Words, Moving Pictures By Adina Hoffman
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