Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures (Jewish Lives)

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 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 contra