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A Child of the Century
Ben Hecht was brilliant, coruscating, gallant, and outrageous and never dull. His works uniquely reflect the man, and this is the landmark work of the journalist and co-author of plays, The Front Page and Twentieth Century.
As Sidney Zion observes in his introduction: "To write a great autobiography, you have to live it. And while most writers are lucky to life half a life and are seldom comfortable doing it, Ben Hecht lived a dozen worlds, enjoying them as if he were a citizen of each. Acrobat, magician, poet, newspaperman, author, screenwriter, propagandist---Hecht was all of these and then some. He lived with passion and wit This book is loaded with marvelous tales of Chicago, New York and Hollywood, of H.L. Mencken, Charles MacArthur, John Barrymore, Harpo Marx, Sherwood Anderson, Fanny Brice, Dorothy Parker..."
654 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1954
35 people are currently reading
888 people want to read
About the author
Ben Hecht
204 books55 followersBen Hecht, an American, wrote short stories, novels, such as
Erik Dorn
in 1921, dramas, including
The Front Page
in 1928 with Charles MacArthur, and screenplays, such as
Gunga Din
in 1938.
Ben Hecht, a journalist, directed and produced movies. A journalist in his youth, he went to 35 books and entertained most people. He received credits alone or in collaboration for seventy films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hecht
Ben Hecht, a journalist, directed and produced movies. A journalist in his youth, he went to 35 books and entertained most people. He received credits alone or in collaboration for seventy films.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Hecht
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
February 4, 2025
Buttered popcorn -- a junk food you can't stop eating, that's the Ben Hecht movie version of his life. And why Hecht ? Coauthor w Charles MacArthur of Broadway hits, The Front Page and Twentieth Century, and scripter of Nothing Sacred, Spellbound and Notorious, among others, he's also the uncredited writer on just about every entertaining movie made during the 30s-40s. He shaped Hollywood and Hollywood defined America.
The School of Hecht : smart, independent babes duet w sardonic, wisecrackers who wouldn't dream of waxing their chest fur. Worldly, romantic and, at times, bracingly vulgar, his characters - like Hecht himself - loathe pretense and hypocrisy. They inhabit, w style, an aggressive milieu. It's Hechtian fantasy. Caution advised : he shovels on the salty schmaltz. "The heart too needs a little rouge," Hecht announces as if discovering a lost witticism by Mark Twain.
Hecht (1893-1964) got started, age 16, in the Chicago newspaper biz. Drowning in nostalgia, he recalls "the smell of ink, feet up on typewriters, hats tilted." But that's not enough, get ready:
"I sit and beam on the dim little harlequinade of my youth." (Izzit an intended parody of WC Fields comedy?) ~~ He and reporter pal are soon surprised to find they're living in a brothel. Did Hecht invent this cliche or izzit borrowed ? ~~ Of course, there's the madam who shot off her big toe accidentally. "She was white-haired, regal, profane, with a jutting lavender face and a limp to her massive body." Hecht, as the happy hack, spins a Hollywood yarn!
You can't hold back Ben Hecht and his bag of popcorn. Saluting the aging actress Constance Collier, once a great beauty, he begins : "Roll on, dark sea full of whales and flowers and wondrous fetuses." (Sweet Jessoo).
His circle includes Alexander Woollcott "who animates a room like a scandal" and Dorothy Parker who hides "a pretty garrote of phrases in her reticule." Scott Fitzgerald has a "sophomore face and a troubadour heart" while Helen Hayes (the wife of Chas MacArthur) enters a room "on the wings of Bernhardt with blazing eyes."
Well--.
Married twice, Hecht observes, "There are men and women who marry because they have nothing else to do. Some marry to be like everyone else." ~~~ On Hollywood : "The barrage of movie trash has conditioned the public to the acceptance of trash only."
His deepest passions were aroused when Hitler came to power. Scorning FDR, he blasts him as "the humanitarian who snubbed a massacre." The book's last 100 pages focus on anti-semitism, the holocaust and Hecht's role in the founding of Israel. This material is presented with the vividness of a screen treatment for Sam Goldwyn and gives his memoir substance.
Hecht realizes that the literary Establishment ignores him. He had a hand in too many mellers and made too much money, he says. After the 30s he never had another hit play, though he wrote three : Lily of the Valley, To Quito and Back, and Swan Song. (With titles like that is anyone surprised ?) He thrived in Hollywood where the moguls treated him like a famous surgeon who could save any ailing movie. He was an important presence there and nowhere else. He even directed a few duds like The Scoundrel, which gave Noel Coward his movie debut. If you can find a copy, this pic is truly awful. Hecht, you see, wanted to be an artiste.
Leaving California in 1952, pressured, he says, by "literary lust," he reflects now on "this strumpet [Hollywood] in her bespangled red gown, her coarsened laugh -- a wench with flaccid tits..covered with stink like a railroad station pissery..." James Agee has the last sobering word. "Hecht's taste is so often rancid," he wrote.
The School of Hecht : smart, independent babes duet w sardonic, wisecrackers who wouldn't dream of waxing their chest fur. Worldly, romantic and, at times, bracingly vulgar, his characters - like Hecht himself - loathe pretense and hypocrisy. They inhabit, w style, an aggressive milieu. It's Hechtian fantasy. Caution advised : he shovels on the salty schmaltz. "The heart too needs a little rouge," Hecht announces as if discovering a lost witticism by Mark Twain.
Hecht (1893-1964) got started, age 16, in the Chicago newspaper biz. Drowning in nostalgia, he recalls "the smell of ink, feet up on typewriters, hats tilted." But that's not enough, get ready:
"I sit and beam on the dim little harlequinade of my youth." (Izzit an intended parody of WC Fields comedy?) ~~ He and reporter pal are soon surprised to find they're living in a brothel. Did Hecht invent this cliche or izzit borrowed ? ~~ Of course, there's the madam who shot off her big toe accidentally. "She was white-haired, regal, profane, with a jutting lavender face and a limp to her massive body." Hecht, as the happy hack, spins a Hollywood yarn!
You can't hold back Ben Hecht and his bag of popcorn. Saluting the aging actress Constance Collier, once a great beauty, he begins : "Roll on, dark sea full of whales and flowers and wondrous fetuses." (Sweet Jessoo).
His circle includes Alexander Woollcott "who animates a room like a scandal" and Dorothy Parker who hides "a pretty garrote of phrases in her reticule." Scott Fitzgerald has a "sophomore face and a troubadour heart" while Helen Hayes (the wife of Chas MacArthur) enters a room "on the wings of Bernhardt with blazing eyes."
Well--.
Married twice, Hecht observes, "There are men and women who marry because they have nothing else to do. Some marry to be like everyone else." ~~~ On Hollywood : "The barrage of movie trash has conditioned the public to the acceptance of trash only."
His deepest passions were aroused when Hitler came to power. Scorning FDR, he blasts him as "the humanitarian who snubbed a massacre." The book's last 100 pages focus on anti-semitism, the holocaust and Hecht's role in the founding of Israel. This material is presented with the vividness of a screen treatment for Sam Goldwyn and gives his memoir substance.
Hecht realizes that the literary Establishment ignores him. He had a hand in too many mellers and made too much money, he says. After the 30s he never had another hit play, though he wrote three : Lily of the Valley, To Quito and Back, and Swan Song. (With titles like that is anyone surprised ?) He thrived in Hollywood where the moguls treated him like a famous surgeon who could save any ailing movie. He was an important presence there and nowhere else. He even directed a few duds like The Scoundrel, which gave Noel Coward his movie debut. If you can find a copy, this pic is truly awful. Hecht, you see, wanted to be an artiste.
Leaving California in 1952, pressured, he says, by "literary lust," he reflects now on "this strumpet [Hollywood] in her bespangled red gown, her coarsened laugh -- a wench with flaccid tits..covered with stink like a railroad station pissery..." James Agee has the last sobering word. "Hecht's taste is so often rancid," he wrote.
August 5, 2018
Ben Hecht was a newspaperman, playwright and screenwriter who finished his writing career by placing his propaganda skills at the service of the Irgun freedom fighters helping to rid Palestine of the British.
His play and the movie version of "Front Page" is considered a twentieth century classic about tabloid journalists who had much more honor and character than today's PC wankers writing their soapy, pink gargle for the NYT, WaPo or CNN.
Hecht's memoir, "A Child of the Century," is jam-packed with an all-star cast of gangsters, writers, actors and studio bosses. It is mind-boggling for anyone with an inkling of twentieth century American cultural history, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Sherwood Anderson, Helen Hayes, Herman Mankiewicz, Kurt Weill, Billy Rose, David Selznick, John Barrymore, the Marx brothers, Dorothy Parker, Marilyn Monroe etc. etc. etc. The index of famous names runs almost ten pages.
This is the Chicago from the 1910's to the 20's. The Chicago of broad shoulders, slaughterhouses and gangsters, not the PC pansy parlor of Hillary Rodham or Barack Obama. This is Broadway and Hollywood from the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's.
Hecht closes the memoir with his role in the seldom-mentioned fight for Palestinian independence led by the Irgun whose uncompromising position fell out of favor after the UN's 1947 Resolution 181 that created the partition of Palestine along with all of its ongoing problems.
Unfortunately, this enchanting memoir of a much livelier America has fallen out of print. Maybe you can find a rare copy in your library? The 1954, five dollar edition that I scored in a collector's bookstore cost me $80. If they had let me read it first, I would have gladly given them $800!
His play and the movie version of "Front Page" is considered a twentieth century classic about tabloid journalists who had much more honor and character than today's PC wankers writing their soapy, pink gargle for the NYT, WaPo or CNN.
Hecht's memoir, "A Child of the Century," is jam-packed with an all-star cast of gangsters, writers, actors and studio bosses. It is mind-boggling for anyone with an inkling of twentieth century American cultural history, Carl Sandburg, H.L. Mencken, Sherwood Anderson, Helen Hayes, Herman Mankiewicz, Kurt Weill, Billy Rose, David Selznick, John Barrymore, the Marx brothers, Dorothy Parker, Marilyn Monroe etc. etc. etc. The index of famous names runs almost ten pages.
This is the Chicago from the 1910's to the 20's. The Chicago of broad shoulders, slaughterhouses and gangsters, not the PC pansy parlor of Hillary Rodham or Barack Obama. This is Broadway and Hollywood from the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's.
Hecht closes the memoir with his role in the seldom-mentioned fight for Palestinian independence led by the Irgun whose uncompromising position fell out of favor after the UN's 1947 Resolution 181 that created the partition of Palestine along with all of its ongoing problems.
Unfortunately, this enchanting memoir of a much livelier America has fallen out of print. Maybe you can find a rare copy in your library? The 1954, five dollar edition that I scored in a collector's bookstore cost me $80. If they had let me read it first, I would have gladly given them $800!
August 30, 2009
Guess it should come as little surprise that one of the greatest screenwriters of all time would write such a fascinating autobiography. Almost more a book of philosophy than a memoir, Hecht doesn't get to his time in Hollywood till, like, page 400-and-something. But who cares? By then he'd lived enough for seventeen lives. His accounts of post-WW I Germany were really fascinating, and I didn't know about all he did to champion the cause of Jews before, during, and after WW II. Full of more entertaining anecdotes than you can shake a whole bushel of sticks at, especially the ones about John Barrymore and John Gilbert. A lot of his views on society can be taken with a pound of salt, but nonetheless, this kept my attention for quite a while.
February 25, 2013
A very good and very interesting autobiography. The book starts with a bang--not the usual, I was born here and at this time stuff, but meditations upon god and self--that are punchy and interesting. Hecht then moves on to cover his life, relying more on anecdote than chronology. The stories are often quite good.
He is a dripping misogynist, but fortunately his thoughts on women do not undermine the structure of the autobiography. Surprisingly, he's fairly conservative, too--he is very much for the rich and in support of capitalism. The artists's natural enemy, it seems, is the mob--not society or the economy. Very often he looks down on the mass of people.
He is a dripping misogynist, but fortunately his thoughts on women do not undermine the structure of the autobiography. Surprisingly, he's fairly conservative, too--he is very much for the rich and in support of capitalism. The artists's natural enemy, it seems, is the mob--not society or the economy. Very often he looks down on the mass of people.
January 16, 2009
This is an amazing book, and it's a crime that it's out of print. It's not perfect--Hecht could have done with a tough editor and there are a few passages that can be skipped, but Child is packed with great stories and truly astonishing prose. Full of mystery, beauty and history, this book will take you places...
November 16, 2007
well, if you're a fan of the great Ben Hecht, you'll love this book. He was a wise, funny and prolific writer. Nice blurb in there about himself, David O Selznic and Victor Flemming writing the screenplay to Gone With The Wind. Locked in Sleznic's office eating peanuts and bananas for 5 days. Great insight to a great man.
Read
October 31, 2011Not sure how much of this is literally true, and how much is embellishment, but there's no doubt Ben Hecht was a heckuva writer and a keen observer of some fascinating times. His tales of big city newsrooms and his reporting on post WW1 Germany; his immersion in the world of New York intellectuals and artists in the 1920s, and in golden-age Hollywood; and his inside account of the formation of the nation of Israel are all gripping.
May 10, 2010
Really excellent even outside his reluctant time in Hollywood. He only scratches the surface regarding his friend Charles MacArthur, so I think I'll read Hecht's biography of him next.
November 21, 2014
Remarkable memoir from maybe the greatest screenwriter of all-time. He lived such an interesting life that Hollywood is covered in a single chapter.
October 5, 2016
So interesting. Especially the newspaper days in Chicago.
April 21, 2023
A hefty 600+ page autobiography by someone who most will have experienced via his screenwriting for 'Gone With Wind', 'Scarface', Hitchcock's 'Spellbound' and 'Rope'.
Those with my literary tastes may remember that he wrote the (prosecuted) 20's decadent novel 'Fantasius Mallare' and it was this that made me pick it up as the book includes some anecdotes relating to (and a dark photo of) its illustrator Wallace Smith.
Hecht was a journalist and thus knows how to tell a tale to the best effect even if it wasn't always quite the truth. Even if only half of what he says in this book is accurate it's still a great rollercoaster of incredible tales because he knew so many people of all walks of life. How he got a WWI flying ace to steal him a bomber (and the fuel for it) so that he could report on Germany during the Weimar period. How he got much of the US to believe an earthquake had rocked Chicago. How he and his pals had a sweepstake on how many steps up to a long gallows platform a murderer would climb before he faltered. How he promoted worthless land in Florida by telling the world that pirates had buried gold there and thus started a gold rush until it all went wrong South Sea bubble stylee. How he organised a party for the drunken John Barrymore during the latter's drunken wilderness years (and what happened at it) and so on and so forth for 500 or so pages.
However the latter part of the book takes a more serious turn and details his work as a leading advocate of the overthrow of the British in Palestine to create a self-governing Jewish state, activities for which he was made persona non grata in Hollywood and declared an enemy of the State in the UK (he was immensely proud of the latter) and shows that beneath his hard-drinking, hard-living devil-may-care persona there he was able to risk a lot for a cause that he would never have believed in earlier.
It is a book with some issues for todays readers. His views on women (especially lesbians and whores- there is a lot of the 'w' word in this book) are misogynistic and patriarchal although his cynical views on literature and especially film are still amusing if perhaps wrong. I would have preferred a bit less of the Hecht philosophy and more anecdotes.
But this is still a lot of fun and generally speaking a rollicking read. I just wish I had bought the biography of him I saw at the same time I bought this book so find out if it is all true...
Those with my literary tastes may remember that he wrote the (prosecuted) 20's decadent novel 'Fantasius Mallare' and it was this that made me pick it up as the book includes some anecdotes relating to (and a dark photo of) its illustrator Wallace Smith.
Hecht was a journalist and thus knows how to tell a tale to the best effect even if it wasn't always quite the truth. Even if only half of what he says in this book is accurate it's still a great rollercoaster of incredible tales because he knew so many people of all walks of life. How he got a WWI flying ace to steal him a bomber (and the fuel for it) so that he could report on Germany during the Weimar period. How he got much of the US to believe an earthquake had rocked Chicago. How he and his pals had a sweepstake on how many steps up to a long gallows platform a murderer would climb before he faltered. How he promoted worthless land in Florida by telling the world that pirates had buried gold there and thus started a gold rush until it all went wrong South Sea bubble stylee. How he organised a party for the drunken John Barrymore during the latter's drunken wilderness years (and what happened at it) and so on and so forth for 500 or so pages.
However the latter part of the book takes a more serious turn and details his work as a leading advocate of the overthrow of the British in Palestine to create a self-governing Jewish state, activities for which he was made persona non grata in Hollywood and declared an enemy of the State in the UK (he was immensely proud of the latter) and shows that beneath his hard-drinking, hard-living devil-may-care persona there he was able to risk a lot for a cause that he would never have believed in earlier.
It is a book with some issues for todays readers. His views on women (especially lesbians and whores- there is a lot of the 'w' word in this book) are misogynistic and patriarchal although his cynical views on literature and especially film are still amusing if perhaps wrong. I would have preferred a bit less of the Hecht philosophy and more anecdotes.
But this is still a lot of fun and generally speaking a rollicking read. I just wish I had bought the biography of him I saw at the same time I bought this book so find out if it is all true...
March 28, 2021
Nonstop anecdotes from the era of classic Hollywood and Hecht's newspaper days in Chicago, where no holds were barred as reporters chased stories. Hecht co-wrote the Broadway play that was the genesis of the films The Front Page and His Girl Friday, two of the funniest movies ever about newspapers. The book ends with Hecht's late-in-life support of the Irgun and the founding of Israel, quite out of character for him (as he readily admits). Missing is anything about the McCarthy era, very odd considering his Hollywood connection and the book's publication in 1954. He was a conservative and a cynic, and skeptical of both the left and the right, which might explain the omission. A very entertaining read.
Want to read
April 8, 2025Found in the Bibliography of A.K. Chesterton's New Unhappy Lords under Section C of the books "written by authors either unaware of the implications of the policy-pattern described in "The New Unhappy Lords" or aware of the implications and approving of them."
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
Interestingly Hecht later in life broken with the Zionists and published a book exposing them called Perfidy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
Interestingly Hecht later in life broken with the Zionists and published a book exposing them called Perfidy https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
July 24, 2025
Three amusing vignettes:
[My Tante Chasha] horrified my mother by informing me in Yiddish during a lull on the hotel porch that I should always shun small women because they had large vaginas.
"Jumping H. Sebastian God!"
And there was a dentist arrested for raping a patient during office hours whose crime was immortalized (for one edition) by the headline "Dentist Fills Wrong Cavity."
[My Tante Chasha] horrified my mother by informing me in Yiddish during a lull on the hotel porch that I should always shun small women because they had large vaginas.
"Jumping H. Sebastian God!"
And there was a dentist arrested for raping a patient during office hours whose crime was immortalized (for one edition) by the headline "Dentist Fills Wrong Cavity."
July 8, 2019
A fantastic, fantabulous read!
October 7, 2019
Please see comment. The roughly 110 pages on the Committee has the makings of a great film -- and not what the "party line" of historians other than Raul Hilberg has been.
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