Word: hecht
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...attacked it. Last week, in the midst of other duties, Harry Truman implored U.S. citizens to shush inflammatory Palestine talk of all kinds "in the interests of this country, of world peace, and of humanity." But it might take more than the President of the U.S. to shush Ben Hecht...
...Herd-Loneliness. At 53, stocky Ben Hecht could look down the rungs of a long, golden ladder. He had left Racine, Wis. in his teens with the idea of becoming a violinist. He became a boy-wonder newspaperman (Chicago Daily News) instead. In 1921 he wrote an involved but honest novel, Erik Dorn, but soon found his real bent in writing plays (like The Front Page, co-authored with Charles MacArthur) and dashing off lush Hollywood scripts for $5,000 a week. "I was always able to make large sums of money without giving money any thought," Hecht says...
...when Hecht's ego compelled him to write A Jew in Love, a gargoylized caricature of a Jewish publisher, Hecht was called antiSemitic. But Hecht says: "I lived 40 years in my country without encountering anti-Semitism or concerning myself even remotely with its existence." Then, one day, a luncheon companion asked Hecht, "Do you mind talking about Jews...
...close friends temper this estimate. Bernard Baruch, who has known Billy for 30 years, says solemnly: "This man, small in stature, is big and broad and fine in his viewpoints." Author Ben Hecht admits that "Billy has a genius for not making friends" and is "as wistful as a meat ax"; but he is also "a kind of frustrated poet . . . a kind of slum poet and Jack the Ripper rolled into...
...Rose's nightclub success only made his pinwheel imagination whir faster. Why not stage a circus in a Broadway theater? Billy hired Hecht and MacArthur to write the show, Rodgers & Hart to do the songs, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra to play them. Jimmy Durante as the star, and Broadway's biggest showcase, the Hippodrome, to house the spectacle. He called it Jumbo and induced Millionaire John Hay Whitney to back it with a down payment of $200,000. Cracked Rose: "This will either break Jock Whitney or make...