Rediscovering Ben Hecht: Selling the Celluloid Serpent [Hardcover]

Ben Hecht (Editor), Florice Whyte Kovan (Author, Editor)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Snickersnee Pr; 2nd edition (July 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0966770900
• ISBN-13: 978-0966770902
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,710,506 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A review of an unusual book, superbly edited and packaged., October 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Rediscovering Ben Hecht: Selling the Celluloid Serpent (Hardcover)

A most unusual book is one by Florice Whyte Kovan, Rediscovering Ben Hecht; Selling the Celluloid Serpent (Washington DC: Snickersnee Albuma, 1998), 100 pp., $59.95; ISBN 9667709-0-0; Snickersnee Press, 325 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington DC 20003; [phone]. Fourteen of Hecht's short stories are compiled here with an introduction to each. Kovan enhances the book immeasurably by explaining the stories' characters and situations from her research, facts that would otherwise escape the reader, so that the stories are richer. These are parodies of Hollywood life and people which, in essence, convey a slight contempt for goings-on in the industry.

The book is of unusual production: text, photographs, and line art on colored paper; two pages are even ruled accounting paper, on which, in "The New Market," Hecht lists the movie types casting directors can use, and how much they are worth (e.g., "Type 12--One-armed man. Holds still at $8 a day. This is reliable type. With one eye, $2.50 extra.") Another unusual element of the book is the use of postcards pasted onto a page (Norma Talmadge, p. 63); Mack Sennett "looking pensive" (p. 44); a folded "consulting contract" for Broken Blossoms (p. 25); etc.

The parody at times reaches hilarious heights. In "The Movie Double," two men discuss a woman (Nettie Walker) they are waiting for who works in silents as a double. A Mr. Lewis describes her doubling for Mrs. Leslie Carter in The Heart of Maryland when she "gripped the tongue of the bronze bell in the steeple and swung back and forth out from the belfry, her heels hitting the pigeons, her skirts cracking at the rooster weather vanes, her eyes catching glimpses of the Maryland corn field far below." Kovan puts details in perspective when she informs us that Walker was the surname of an actress who appeared nude in a play, while "Nettie" was a one-act play of two men waiting for a woman who never shows up. In "Tears, Tears, Tears," Hecht satirizes emotional actresses who could cry on cue through his character Myrtle Platz (with an ironic ending).

There is even a photograph of Castello's octagonal barn, which sat across from Hecht's boyhood home in Racine WI.

Kovan's research has made accessible Hecht's work other than his screenplays, and the stories are good enough to induce further reading of his writings.

Hecht won the first Academy Award for Underworld (1928), another Oscar for The Scoundrel (1935), and worked on Nothing Sacred, Gone with the Wind, and other films. That he was a serious, proficient writer is without doubt; he was also able to characterize Hollywood's foibles into amusing tales that conjure up the press-agentry of a time gone by.

Readers of the time would have recognized the names and situations of the stories; Florice Whyte Kovan had made sure that we understand what the details of the parody actually were. This is a delightful book.

--Gene Vazzana (editor of The Silent Film Monthly). <[e-mail]>