The Hollywood Legend Who Mobilized the English Language on Behalf of the Jews of Europe and Israel

“In [1939], I became a Jew and looked on the world with Jewish eyes.”
—Ben Hecht, A Child of the Century

When Ben Hecht died suddenly in 1964, at the age of seventy, the New York Times carried the news on its front page. The lengthy obituary was spread across four columns on an inside page. Buried near the end was only a brief description of Hecht’s Zionism.

Hecht wrote newspaper columns, novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, essays, and books that, in many ways, defined the times in which he lived. His sketches of life in Chicago and New York were collected in two volumes. His first novel made him a national literary figure. He co-wrote the Broadway sensation, The Front Page, and became Hollywood’s highest-paid screenwriter, composing such classics as Scarface, Wuthering Heights, Twentieth Century, Spellbound, and Notorious. He received six Oscar nominations and won two Oscars.