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Ben Hecht : fighting words, moving pictures / Adina Hoffman.

by Hoffman, Adina, author.

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New Haven : Yale University Press, [2019]

Hecht, Ben, 1894-1964.

Screenwriters -- United States -- Biography.

Jewish authors -- United States -- Biography.

Authors, American -- 21st century -- Biography.

9780300180428 (hardcover) :

030018042X (hardcover)

Jewish lives (New Haven, Conn.)

x, 245 pages : illustrations, portraits ; 22 cm.

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--especially Jewish America--in 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. Hecht was a renaissance man of dazzling sorts, and Hoffman--critically acclaimed biographer, former film critic, and eloquent commentator on Middle Eastern culture and politics--is uniquely suited to capture him in all his modes"--Jacket.

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