HECHT Ben
Date of birth : February 28, 1893, New York City.
Date of death : April 18, 1964, New York City ().
Profession writer, screenwriter.
Address
1940 : 40 Perry Lane, Nyack, New York ().
Story
His parents were Joseph Hecht (1870, Russia-October 5, 1938, Los Angeles)() and Sarah Swernofsky (1876, New York-October 14, 1935, Los Angeles). They married in 1892.
On November 30, 1915 he married in Chicago Mary Armstrong (June 6, 1892, Detroit-1956).
They had a daughter Edwina (November 14, 1916, Chicago-1991) who became an actress ().
They divorced in 1925.
Nyack, New York)(). They had a daughter Jenny (July 30, 1943, New York-March 25, 1971, Los
Angeles) who became an actress and died young from an overdose (,,
He worked on more than 100 productions, among them "The Front Page" in
collaboration with Charles
MacArthur, "Queen Christina", "Twentieth Century", "Nothing Sacred", "Wuthering Heights", "Whirlpool".
He also contributed
to the definitive screenplay of "Gone With the Wind", even if had
worked a lot on it and if he hadn't been credited. He also wrote and
modified several movies of Alfred Hitchcock, among them "Foreign
Correspondant", "Spellbound", "Notorious","The Paradine Case","The
Rope" and "Strangers On a Train".
In 1929
he received an Academy Award for "Underworld".
Link with
Marilyn
In 1954
Charles
Feldman,
Marilyn's agent contacted him and asked him to write Marilyn's first
autobiography. He had already met her 2 years before, on the set of "Monkey Business" (1952).
Marilyn's agents (Charles Feldman and Hugh French) then contacted Jacques Chambrun, himself Ben Hecht's agent, reporter, novelist and prolific screenwriter : they struck a deal.
Contract between Marilyn and Ben Hecht, dated March 16, 1954 .
Marilyn and Hecht
who had met with much warmth while the movie inspired on Hecht's
scenario, "Monkey Business" was on preparation, agreed on regular
appointments, several times a week and often on Marilyn's specific
request, in the presence Sidney Skolsky.
Hecht worked quickly (in regard for the recording material at that time) and suggested a preliminary draft at the end of April.
In April 1954 he passed his work on Marilyn; some pieces of the text were sold under a form arranged by Hecht's agent, Jacques Chambrun, with nor Marilyn's permission, neither Hecht's one.
Letter from Lloyd Wright dated June 1, 1954 ,.
Actually it was a collection of anecdotes about Marilyn's life, told by her and Sidney Skolsky, organized by Ben Hecht and later revised by Milton Greene.
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