Ben Hecht's critically acclaimed autobiographical memoir, first published in 1954, offers incomparably pungent evocations of Chicago in the 1910s and 1920s, Hollywood in the 1930s, and New York during the Second World War and after. "His manners are not always nice, but then nice manners do not always make interesting autobiographies, and this autobiography has the merit of being intensely interesting."--Saul Bellow, New York Times Named to Time's list of All-Time 100 Nonfiction Books, which deems it "the un-put-downable testament of the era's great multimedia entertainer.
With the vigor and gusto invariably associated with his personality and his works, Ben Hecht recreates in this volume the lusty Chicago of the early twentieth century, as seen from its underside by a cub reporter on a great metropolitan daily. He introduces the reader to a vast cast of eccentric characters-bums, criminals, prostitutes, politicians, and poets, not to mention the police. He conducts you to the scenes of the crimes. He invites you to the courtroom and the murderer’s solitary cell and to the gallows. He lets you sit around with him in the city room of a great Chicago newspaper, where he collected considerable material for that newspaper classic, The Front Page, which he wrote in collaboration with Charles MacArthur. Some of these stories are bizarre. Most of them are bawdy. But they are all imbued with lusty vitality and with a kind of innocent wonder that life is really so much stranger than fiction. The author looks back on the whole era with the consistently-unchanged fresh eye of youth. He is less concerned with nostalgia than reporting the way it was.
A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago is a compilation of more than 60 columns written for the Chicago Daily News that Ben Hecht's editor called "journalism extraordinary; journalism that invaded the realm of literature." The hardboiled audacity and wit that became Ben Hecht's signature as Hollywood's most celebrated screen-writer are conspicuous in these vignettes. Most of them are comic and sardonic, some strike muted tragic or somber atmospheric notes. . . . The best are timeless character sketches that have taken on an added interest as shards of social history. Ben Hecht's collection, as presented in a Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago, is a timeless caricature of urban American life in the jazz age. From the glittering opulence of Michigan Avenue to the darkest ruminations of an escaped convict, from captains of industry to immigrant day laborers, Ben Hecht captures 1920s Chicago in all its furor, intensity, and absurdity. Hecht's book offers scruffy time capsules of an earlier Chicago, an era that is long gone but still recognizable to readers'' imaginations. Michigan Avenue, Lake Michigan, street names such as Dearborn and Adams and LaSalle and Wabansia, places such as the Art Institute of Chicago--they''re all here. In Ben Hecht's words, Chicago is a razzle-dazzle of dreams, tragedies, fantasies, and his tales capture gorgeous scraps of it, vivid vignettes starring businessmen and hobos and cops and socialites and janitors. . . . Thanks to a Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago, Chicago of 1922 and the Chicago of 2009 bump into each other, shake hands, exchange greetings. Then, this being Chicago, they go for a drink and talk about old times.
An irresistible comedy with thrills and derring do set in the news room. Hildy wants to break away from journalism and go on a belated honeymoon. There is a jailbreak and into Hildy's hands falls the escapee as hostage. He conceals his prize in a rolltop desk and phones his scoop to his managing editor. Their job is to prevent other reporters and the sheriff from opening the desk and finding their story. Some hoodlums are enlisted to remove the desk, but they get mixed up with a Boy Scout troop and the mayor and a cleaning woman, among others. It's a whirlwind wrap up with Hildy finally making his breakaway, but the cynical managing editor has him arrested before he leaves town for having stolen a watch he planted on Hildy.
Unlocking the American Dream At a time when deep divisions headline the national discourse on equality, Reclaiming the American Dream: Proven Solutions for Creating Economic Opportunity for All uses real-world examples to illustrate how America can evolve to include everyone in its promise of opportunity. Living Cities President and CEO Ben Hecht has spent decades exploring how leaders take proactive measures to combat growing racial disparity, without relying on slow-moving policies or the whims of Washington, D.C., to make changes in their own backyards. The strategies highlighted in Reclaiming the American Dream offer a blueprint for how communities can rekindle the promise of the American Dream through improving educational opportunities, strengthening civic engagement, and providing a ladder to economic security. Each of us—whether as an elected leader, engaged neighbor, corporate CEO, philanthropist, or investor—can act right now to secure the economic future of our country and help level the playing field for struggling Americans everywhere.
Ben Hecht (1894-1964), was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, and novelist. Called "The Shakespeare of Hollywood," he received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some 70 films and as a prolific storyteller, authored 35 books and created some of the most entertaining screenplays or plays in America. According to film historian Richard Corliss, he was the Hollywood screenwriter, someone who "personified Hollywood itself. " The number of screenplays he wrote or worked on that are now considered "classics" is, according to Chicago's Newberry Library, "astounding, " and included films such as, Scarface (1932), The Front Page, Twentieth Century (1934), Barbary Coast (1935), Stagecoach, Some Like It Hot, Gone with the Wind, Gunga Din, Wuthering Heights, (all 1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Monkey Business, A Farewell to Arms (1957), Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), and Casino Royale (1967). In 1940, a film he wrote, produced, and directed, Angels Over Broadway, was nominated for Best Screenplay. Six of his movies overall were nominated for Academy Awards, with two winning.
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