Customer Reviews

Ben Hecht: The Man Behind the Legend

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Ben Hecht, The Man Behind The Legend, William MacAdams; Charles Scribner's Sons (1990)


One of the great disappointments. Ben Hecht was a genius; "Ben Hecht" is garbage.

The story of Hecht's career as a legendary writer started beautifully, with a superb introduction. But never has a biography then gone off a cliff so swiftly.

The first eighty or so pages, about Hecht's Chicago audacious newspaper career - & his simultaneous adolescent, pretentious dabbling in Culture - were just horrible!

Then things improved somewhat after the story shifted to his having outgrown Chicago & moving to New York (& later, to Hollywood). But after another seventy pages, the writing disintegrated. I checked out of Hotel Hecht on p. 150.

Due to both its film & bibliography - thoughtfully arranged in chronological, instead of alphabetical order - BH was retained (unsurprisingly, the editor - if there actually had been one - isn't identified in the unalphabetized, chaotic list of acknowledgements).

The retired film director John Ford was initially quite hostile @ MacAdams taping his interview, but finally gave in abruptly: "Okay, go ahead, use it. You can misquote me more accurately that way."

He had nothing to worry about. No one made it to the later chapters that profiled Hecht's inspired collaboration with Ford.

Post Note (09/07/10): Pulped.