Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures

A vibrant portrait of one of the most accomplished and prolific American screenwriters, by an award-winning biographer and essayist

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.