Ben Hecht  

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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. 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.
 +==Screenplays==
 +* ''[[Kiss of Death (1995 film)|Kiss of Death]]'' (1995)
 +* ''[[Casino Royale (1967 film)|Casino Royale]]'' (1967) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Circus World (film)|Circus World]]''
 +* ''[[7 Faces of Dr. Lao]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Cleopatra (1963 film)|Cleopatra]]'' (1962) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Billy Rose's Jumbo (film)|Billy Rose's Jumbo]]''
 +* ''[[Mutiny on the Bounty (1962 film)|Mutiny on the Bounty]]'' (1962) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Walk on the Wild Side (film)|Walk on the Wild Side]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[North to Alaska]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[John Paul Jones (film)|John Paul Jones]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Gun Runners]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Queen of Outer Space]]''
 +* ''[[Legend of the Lost]]''
 +* ''[[The Sun Also Rises (1957 film)|The Sun Also Rises]]'' (1957)
 +* ''[[A Farewell to Arms (1957 film)|A Farewell to Arms]]'' (1957)
 +* ''[[Miracle in the Rain]]''
 +* ''[[The Iron Petticoat]]''
 +* ''[[The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film)|The Hunchback of Notre Dame]]'' (1956) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Trapeze (film)|Trapeze]]'' (1956) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Indian Fighter]]''
 +* ''[[The Man with the Golden Arm]]'' (1955) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Guys and Dolls (film)|Guys and Dolls]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Living It Up]]'' (based on his play ''Hazel Flagg'')
 +* ''[[Ulysses (1955 film)|Ulysses]]'' (1955)
 +* ''[[Light's Diamond Jubilee]]'' (television)
 +* ''[[Terminal Station (1953 film)|Terminal Station]]'' (1953) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Angel Face (1952 film)|Angel Face]]'' (1952) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Hans Christian Andersen (film)|Hans Christian Andersen]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Monkey Business (1952 film)|Monkey Business]]'' (1952)
 +* ''[[Actors and Sin]]'' (1952) (also directed and produced)
 +* ''[[The Wild Heart (1952 film)|The Wild Heart]]'' (1952) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Thing from Another World]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Secret of Convict Lake]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Strangers on a Train (film)|Strangers on a Train]]'' (1951) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[September Affair]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Where the Sidewalk Ends (film)|Where the Sidewalk Ends]]'' (1950)
 +* ''[[Edge of Doom]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Perfect Strangers (1950 film)|Perfect Strangers]]'' (1950)
 +* ''[[Love Happy]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Inspector General (1949 film)|The Inspector General]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Whirlpool (1950 film)|Whirlpool]]'' (1950)
 +* ''[[Roseanna McCoy]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Big Jack (film)|Big Jack]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Portrait of Jennie]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Cry of the City]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Rope (film)|Rope]]'' (1948) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Miracle of the Bells]]''
 +* ''[[Dishonored Lady]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Her Husband's Affairs]]''
 +* ''[[The Paradine Case]]'' (1947) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Ride the Pink Horse]]'' (1947)
 +* ''[[Kiss of Death (1947 film)|Kiss of Death]]'' (1947)
 +* ''[[Duel in the Sun (film)|Duel in the Sun]]'' (1946) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Notorious (1946 film)|Notorious]]'' (1946)
 +* ''[[A Flag is Born]]''
 +* ''[[Specter of the Rose]]'' (1946) (also directed and produced)
 +* ''[[Gilda]]'' (uncredited) (1946)
 +* ''[[Cornered (1945 film)|Cornered]]'' (1945) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Spellbound (1945 film)|Spellbound]]'' (1945)
 +* ''[[Watchtower Over Tomorrow]]'' (1945 [[United States Office of War Information|OWI]] film)
 +* ''[[Lifeboat (1944 film)|Lifeboat]]'' (1944) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Outlaw]]'' (1943) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[China Girl (1942 film)|China Girl]]'' (1942)
 +* ''[[Journey into Fear (1943 film)|Journey into Fear]]'' (1943) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Black Swan (film)|The Black Swan]]'' (1942)
 +* ''[[Ten Gentlemen from West Point]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Roxie Hart (film)|Roxie Hart]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Lydia (film)|Lydia]]''
 +* ''[[The Mad Doctor (1941 film)|The Mad Doctor]]'' (1941) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Comrade X]]''
 +* ''[[Second Chorus]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Angels Over Broadway]]'' (1940) (also directed and produced)
 +* ''[[Foreign Correspondent (film)|Foreign Correspondent]]'' (1940) (final scene-uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Shop Around the Corner]]'' (1940) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[His Girl Friday]]'' (1940)
 +* ''[[I Take This Woman (1940 film)|I Take This Woman]]'' (1940) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]'' (1939) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[At the Circus]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Lady of the Tropics]]''
 +* ''[[It's a Wonderful World (1939 film)|It's a Wonderful World]]'' (1939)
 +* ''[[Wuthering Heights (1939 film)|Wuthering Heights]]'' (1939)
 +* ''[[Let Freedom Ring (film)|Let Freedom Ring]]''
 +* ''[[Stagecoach (1939 film)|Stagecoach]]'' (1939) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Gunga Din (film)|Gunga Din]]'' (1939)
 +* ''[[Angels with Dirty Faces]]'' (1938) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Goldwyn Follies]]''
 +* ''[[Nothing Sacred (film)|Nothing Sacred]]'' (1937)
 +* ''[[The Hurricane (1937 film)|The Hurricane]]'' (1937) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Prisoner of Zenda (1937 film)|The Prisoner of Zenda]]'' (1937) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Woman Chases Man]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[King of Gamblers]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[A Star Is Born (1937 film)|A Star Is Born]]'' (1937) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Soak the Rich]]'' (also directed)
 +* ''[[The Scoundrel (1935 film)|The Scoundrel]]'' (1935) (also directed)
 +* ''[[Spring Tonic]]''
 +* ''[[Barbary Coast (film)|Barbary Coast]]''
 +* ''[[Once in a Blue Moon (1935 film)|Once in a Blue Moon]]'' (1935) (also directed)
 +* ''[[The Florentine Dagger]]''
 +* ''[[The President Vanishes]]'' (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Crime Without Passion]]'' (1934) (also directed)
 +* ''[[Shoot the Works]]''
 +* ''[[Twentieth Century (film)|Twentieth Century]]'' (1934) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Upperworld]]''
 +* ''[[Viva Villa!]]'' (1934)
 +* ''[[Riptide (1934 film)|Riptide]]'' (1934) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Queen Christina (film)|Queen Christina]]'' (1933) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Design for Living (film)|Design for Living]]'' (1933)
 +* ''[[Turn Back the Clock (film)|Turn Back the Clock]]''
 +* ''[[Topaze (1933 American film)|Topaze]]'' (1933)
 +* ''[[Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (film)|Hallelujah, I'm a Bum]]'' (1933)
 +* ''[[Back Street (1932 film)|Back Street]]'' (1932) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Rasputin and the Empress]]'' (1932) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Million Dollar Legs (1932 film)|Million Dollar Legs]]'' (1932) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Scarface (1932 film)|Scarface]]'' (1932)
 +* ''[[The Beast of the City]]'' (1932) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Unholy Garden (1931 film)|The Unholy Garden]]'' (1931)
 +* ''[[The Sin of Madelon Claudet]]'' (1931) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Monkey Business (1931 film)|Monkey Business]]'' (1931) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Homicide Squad]]'' (1931) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Quick Millions (1931 film)|Quick Millions]]'' (1931) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Le Spectre vert]]''
 +* ''[[Roadhouse Nights]]'' (1930)
 +* ''[[Street of Chance (1930 film)|Street of Chance]]'' (1930)(uncredited)
 +* ''[[The Unholy Night]]'' (1929)
 +* ''[[The Great Gabbo]]'' (1929)
 +* ''[[The Big Noise (1928 film)|The Big Noise]]'' (1928)
 +* ''[[The American Beauty]]'' (1916) (uncredited)
 +* ''[[Underworld (1927 film)|Underworld]]'' (1927)
 +* ''[[The New Klondike]]'' (1926) (uncredited)
 +
{{GFDL}} {{GFDL}}

Revision as of 21:17, 1 May 2022

"In my youth there was no finer mental sport than could be found in the pages of Huneker, Brandes, Pollard, Hazlitt, Taine, France, Vance Thompson, Mencken, Francis Hackett, Arthur Symons and their like. The novelist and storyteller ..."--A Child of the Century (2020) by Ben Hecht

"The writer is a definite human phenomenon. He is almost a type – as pugilists are a type. He may be a bad writer – an insipid one or a clumsy one – but there is a bug in him that keeps spinning yarns; and that bulges his brow a bit, narrows his jaws, weakens his eyes and gives him girl children instead of boys. Nobody but a writer can write. People who hang around writers for years – as producers did – who are much smarter and have much better taste, never learn to write...."--Ben Hecht

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Ben Hecht (pronounced hekt), (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964), was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "the Shakespeare of Hollywood", who 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."

He was the first screenwriter to ever receive an Oscar for an original screenplay, for the movie Underworld, in 1927. The number of screenplays he wrote or worked on that are now considered "classics" is, according to Chicago's Newberry Library, "astounding," and included films such as, Scarface (1930), The Front Page, Twentieth Century (1934), Barbary Coast (1935), Stagecoach, Some Like It Hot, Gone with the Wind, Gunga Din, Wuthering Heights, (all 1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Monkey Business, A Farewell to Arms (1957), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), and Casino Royale (posthumously, in 1967). In 1940, a film he produced, directed, and wrote, Angels Over Broadway, was nominated for Best Screenplay. Six of his movies overall were nominated for Academy Awards, with two winning.

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.

Screenplays


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