The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist
Ben Hecht had seen his share of death-row psychopaths, crooked ward bosses, and Capone gun thugs by the time he had come of age as a crime reporter in gangland Chicago. His grim experience with what he called "the soul of man" gave him a kind of uncanny foresight a decade later, when a loose cannon named Adolf Hitler began to rise to power in central Europe. In 1932, Hecht solidified his legend as "the Shakespeare of Hollywood" with his thriller Scarface, the Howard Hughes epic considered the gangster movie to end all gangster movies. But Hecht rebelled against his Jewish bosses at the movie studios when they refused to make films about the Nazi menace. Leveraging his talents and celebrity connections to orchestrate a spectacular one-man publicity campaign, he mobilized pressure on the Roosevelt administration for an Allied plan to rescue Europe's Jews. Then after the war, Hecht became notorious, embracing the labels "gangster" and "terrorist" in partnering with the mobster Mickey Cohen to smuggle weapons to Palestine in the fight for a Jewish state. The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist is a biography of a great twentieth-century writer that treats his activism during the 1940s as the central drama of his life. It details the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at this pivotal moment in history, about the origins of his beliefs in his varied experiences in American media, and about the consequences. Who else but Hecht could have drawn the admiration of Ezra Pound, clowned around with Harpo Marx, written Notorious and Spellbound with Alfred Hitchcock, launched Marlon Brando's career, ghosted Marilyn Monroe's memoirs, hosted Jack Kerouac and Salvador Dalí on his television talk show, and plotted revolt with Menachem Begin? Any lover of modern history who follows this journey through the worlds of gangsters, reporters, Jazz Age artists, Hollywood stars, movie moguls, political radicals, and guerrilla fighters will never look at the twentieth century in the same way again.
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"In The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist, Julien Gorbach highlights the character, the motivations, and the involvement of an engaged intellectual, crossing from the world of words into that of assertive advocacy on behalf of a cause deemed too narrow for the milieu in which he was a major element. In focusing on this facet of the life of one who was a borderline American Jew, Gorbach not only details the personal biography of Hecht as Hollywood screenwriter, playwright, and novelist, but in his treatment of Hecht's activities on behalf of the Jewish resistance in Mandate Palestine against the oppressive British rule, he retrieves that period of Israel's history shunted aside due to ideological and political bias, the years of the national liberation struggle prior to the establishment of the state that have been subjected to a campaign of purposeful neglect and which affected Hecht as well."
--Yisrael Medad, Research Fellow: Menachem Begin Heritage Center, Jerusalem"With storytelling skills equal to his subject's, Julien Gorbach shows the nuance and complexity of Ben Hecht's transformation from secular and cynical Hollywood script doctor to committed Zionist activist attempting first to save the Jews of Europe during World War II, and then to found the state of Israel. Gorbach's deeply researched and vivid depiction of Hecht's work on behalf the Jewish survival and freedom features a compelling cast of characters, from stateside intellectuals and entertainers to American Jewish gangsters and Irgun rebels against British rule. The Notorious Ben Hecht rewards readers as much as Hecht's own films, plays, and novels do."--Bill Savage, Professor of Instruction: Northwestern University
"Julien Gorbach's well-researched and lively biography of Ben Hecht delves into both his remarkable careers: as Hollywood's most prolific and, arguably, most talented screenwriter, and as a participant in and chronicler of some of America's wildest journalism. The book is chockablock with marvelous Hechtian sentences and exuberant Hechtian tales, some of which are actually verifiable. And Gorbach's book also presents readers with a much more serious facet of its subject's life--his desperate and unsuccessful campaign, beginning in 1939, to rescue Europe's Jews."
--Mitchell Stephens, Author of A History of News and The Voice of America and Professor of Journalism: New York UniversityThis meticulously researched biography . . . focuses on two aspects of writer Ben Hecht (1894-1964): his remarkable versatility--he produced journalism, novels, criticism, screenplays, plays, and memoirs--and his vocal support, prior to Israel's founding, for a Jewish homeland. . . . Suggesting that Hecht's self-conscious persona as a "tough Jew" equally shaped his literary output and political ideology, Gorbach leaves readers with a richly provocative and original take on an influential writer.
From the Twenties through the Fifties, Ben Hecht was a force of nature. An award winning playwright (The Front Page), prolific Hollywood screenwriter (The Unholy Night; Scarface; Notorious), journalist, and novelist, he seemed destined for posthumous fame. But ask today how many people recognize his name, or how often his books are read and the answer is few and seldom. Hecht's political views were a litmus of his times. Progressing from cynic to critic of Adolf Hitler and then militant Zionist, he worked in the 1940s with gangster Mickey Cohen raising money to buy guns for the paramilitary organization Irgun in British occupied Jerusalem. Hecht's support for the Irgun could easily be labeled fascist, but labels don't fit well here. Journalist Gorbach (communications, Univ. of Hawaii, Manoa) traces Hecht's views back to an old debate over human nature: are we amenable to reasoned argument (the Enlightenment view) or coerced to change only through force? Mainstream Zionism embraced the Enlightenment perspective. Hecht's outlook was darker. VERDICT This thoughtful and thorough study of a largely forgotten writer will interest literary and film buffs and anyone curious about the debates going on in the Zionist community in the 1930s-40s.
