Word: hechts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
News Editor for This Issue: Spencer S. Hsu '90 Night Editor: Jennifer M. Frey '90 Brian R. Hecht '92 Matthew M. Hoffman '91 Lan N. Nguyen '93 Joseph R. Palmore '91 Editorial Editor: Joshua M. Sharfstien '91 Features Editor: Eric S. Solowey '91 Sports Editor: Michael R. Grunwald '92 Photo Editor: Soraya J.A. Obura '93 Business Editor: Raymond Nomizu '91 Copy Editor: Angela...
News Editor for This Issue: Ross. G. Forman '90 Night Editors: Colin F. Boyle '90 Ross G. Forman '90 Brian R. Hecht '92 Editorial Editor: John L. Larew '91 Feature Editor: Melissa R. Hart '91 Sports Editor: Michael D. Stankiewicz '90-'91 Photo Editor: Michael F. Koehler '92 Business Editor: Raymond Monizu '91 Copy Editor: Joshua W. Shenk...
...Hecht was not just a cog in America's great art industry. He was a one-man cottage industry, occasionally directing his own scripts but more often writing and rewriting for hire. The filmography in William MacAdams' brisk biography of Hecht lists 143 movie projects, on 77 of which he got no screen credit. The list includes many of Hollywood's sassiest entertainments (Scarface, Twentieth Century, His Girl Friday), but neither MacAdams nor any other scholar can isolate Hecht's contribution to each of them. Only this can be said with assurance: Ben Hecht did not work on Citizen Kane...
MacAdams doesn't come close to making his case for Hecht as "the most influential writer in the history of American movies." The racy dialect and hard-eyed urban fables associated with Hecht were in Hollywood's vocabulary virtually from the onslaught of sound in 1927. But MacAdams brings gusto to tales of Hecht's early days as a ruthless reporter and to his later, angry crusade as a pioneer Zionist. MacAdams also has a great source: Hecht's brio- filled 1954 autobiography, A Child of the Century...
Sturges should have written Hecht's biography; he loved brash charlatans and made comic art of their deceptions. Hecht should have written Sturges'; he would have wrung high irony from the story of a gallivanting rich boy who grew up to be the top writer-director in pictures. And one of the blithest. "All I do is wave a little wand a little," purred the orchestra conductor in Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours, "and out comes the music." For five glorious years, 1940-44, Sturges waved his wand and out came words and pictures. Nothing but Hollywood's most distinctive satires...