Trudy Gold
Ben Hecht: Journalist, Screenwriter, and Zionist

Trudy Gold | Ben Hecht: Journalist and Screenwriter | 02.04.24

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- All right, good afternoon everyone from gloomy London. It’s good to be with you all again. And today I’m going to be talking more about Ben Hecht, as journalist and screenwriter, and also the play he wrote, “A Flag is Born”, which of course is about the birth of Israel. We’re still going to continue with his Zionist politics. Now, the best book on Ben Hecht is by far Adina Hoffman’s book. It’s just called “Ben Hecht”. It’s a wonderful read. And this is how she begins it. “Ben Hecht was a genius. Jean-Luc Godard says in 1968, he invented 80% of what is used in Hollywood movies today. Menachem Begin, who gave an oration at his huge funeral in 1966, he said, ‘He wrote stories, he made history.’ And early in 1918, when Ezra Pound was asked why doesn’t he go back to America, he said, ‘There’s only one intelligent man in the whole of the Americans to talk to, and that is Ben Hecht.’” He himself called himself the child of the century, which was the title of his autobiography. He’s most famous for his scripts. Now just listen to this.

He had a hand in more than 140 films. Pauline Kael, who of course, who’s one of the greatest of the critics, she pronounced him the greatest American screenwriter. He won the first ever Academy Award for “Underworld”, which is the beginning of the gangster genre. That’s for best story. He then made “Scarface”, “Nothing Sacred”, “Gunga Din”, “Notorious”, “The Front Page”, “His Girl Friday”. He also had a hand in “Gone with the Wind”, “Foreign Correspondent”, “Gilda”, “Roman Holiday”. Richard Corliss, the Hollywood screenwriter who personified Hollywood itself, the Shakespeare of Hollywood. There was always a surprising number of Hechts in operation. And of course, don’t forget what Ben Hecht said when we were looking at him and his politics. “I became a Jew in 1939, and I looked at the world with Jewish eyes.” Now just to recap for you, he won the first ever Oscar for his Best Original Story for “Underworld”. He also won it again for “The Scoundrel”, and he was nominated for “Wuthering Heights”, “Angels over Broadway” and “Notorious”. He was, I think he, along with Billy Wilder, are, as far as I’m concerned, the absolute two greats.

So who was the man? Let’s have a look at his face. That’s Ben Hecht. He was born in New York City. His father, Joseph, worked in the garment industry. His parents are married in 1892. They immigrated from Eastern Europe. They actually came from Minsk. His mother was a woman called Sarah Swernofsky. So it’s the normal pattern of Eastern European Jews moving to the Lower East Side. The family then moved to Wisconsin so that the father could find work. The father attended, he attends high school and his bar mitzvah present from his parents was a crate of books. They just bought him this crate of books, Shakespeare, Dickens, Mark Twain. He spent his summer then with an uncle in Chicago because his father was a travelling salesman. He was on the road too much and his mother was managing their store, so Ben was often on his own. He was a child prodigy. At 10, he wanted to, at that stage, to be a concert violinist. He was a brilliantly gifted musician. Two years later, he wanted to be an acrobat. There weren’t many things that young Ben Hecht couldn’t turn his hand to. He graduated in 1910. He went to the University of Wisconsin for three whole days. He hated it, and then he left for Chicago at 16.

So he goes on, he wrote of the books that he studied and read from that crate, the first one, and he wrote beautifully. “The first to emerge was a 15-volume set of Shakespeare, maroon coloured, flat-backed and bearing gold letters. There followed 52-volume history of the world. Next appeared Charles Dickens in 30 green volumes. 30 brick-colored volumes of Mark Twain appeared, extracts from , Plutarch, Boswell, and biographies of the great musicians, painters, scientists, courtesans, prime ministers. The last to emerge was world-famous orators in 15-inch tall grey volumes.” So here you get a boy with an incredible brain, a bit of a loner, and he now has this incredible treasure trove of books. This is what he said about Shakespeare. “I lay in my attic at night, eyes held to the blurring pages. I met and recognised the nobility and precision of language. The words kept from flipped from the page and seemed to hang in the air like feats of magic. The magic of words still remains with me. I prefer them to ideas. They are a more precious currency. Phrases, not ideas, are the tools for recreating life. When we describe with accuracy a mood, a mountain, a desire, when we put down with that combination of diligence and dream the words that are the true souls of things observed, we add to the stream of life.”

So basically from a young age, he wants to write, and he’s a hustler. And he begins at the age of 17. He gets a job on “The Chicago Daily News”. Let’s see the next slide, please. And there you see “The Chicago Daily News” and he becomes a tough crime reporter. And then he’s, then let’s have a look at his next assignments. He’s sent to Berlin in 1920. He comes back and he writes his first book, “Erik Dorn”. Can we see? “Erik Dorn”, and it’s the story of the revolutionaries in Berlin. Remember what was happening at Berlin, the collapse of the German Empire, the abdication of the tsar, communist revolutions, and it fascinated Hecht. And he gets back to the States and he writes about it. And he’s so good, he becomes, “Erik Dorn” makes him a huge success. So he’s very young and he’s very successful. And in 1921, he has his daily news column, “1,001 Afternoons in Chicago”. Let’s have a look at the next slide. It becomes incredibly influential. And that’s where he meets up with another, he meets up with another brilliant writer who I’ve already introduced you to, Charles MacArthur. Let’s see Charles MacArthur. And of course, Charles MacArthur came from a very WASP background. His father was an evangelical, he didn’t want that world.

He married Helen Hayes, who became one of the great figures of the American theatre. And he and Charles, from their completely different worlds, they just made music together. And working in journalism, they began to work together. And this is what he wrote about “1,001 Afternoons”. “The idea that just under the edge of the news was commonly understood, as was commonly understood, the news often flatly, unimaginably told that in this urban life there dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote places either, but walking the Downtown streets, peering from the windows of skyscrapers, sunning itself in parks and boulevards. He was going to be its interpreter. His was to be the lens throwing a city into new life. And his microscope revealing the contortions of life and death.” In 1921, he broke a very important murder case. And this is what he himself wrote on that time. “I haunted streets, poorhouses, police stations, jails, saloons, slums, madhouses, fires, murders, riots, banquet halls and bookshops. I ran everywhere in the city like a fly, buzzing the works of a clock, tasted more than any belly, any fit belly could hold.

Turned not to sleep, learned not to sleep, and buried myself in a tick-tock of whirling hours that still echo in me.” So basically he is an extraordinary writer. He’s already established, he’s written a book. He is an incredibly keen observer of life. And as I said, he teams up with MacArthur and they move to New York to collaborate on the play “The Front Page”, which hits the, let’s have a look at “The Front Page”. It hits Broadway in 1925, and of course is made into a film in 1931. Whilst living in New York, he receives a telegram. Let’s have a look at the person he receives the telegram from. This is of course from his friend, Joe Mankiewicz, another great screenwriter. And he wrote, “Millions to be grabbed out here, and your only competition is idiots.” So basically he’s saying to him, “Come to Hollywood and you will find it very, very easy to make money out here.” And that’s exactly what he said. And this is what Hecht said about the movies. “Movies were seldom written.

In 1927, they were yelled into existence in conferences that kept going. And in poker schools, movie sets roared with arguments and organ music.” And the point about the talkie era, it puts writers at a premium because they could write dialogue in quirky, idiosyncratic way, which was the way of the common man. And that’s what actually gave him the edge. And this is what Sanford Sterling, who was one of the greatest critics, said of him. Because, so he has his break with “The Front Page”, but then he goes on to make movies. And his first movie was in fact the one he’s going to win the first-ever Oscar for. Let’s have a look at it. He makes it with the director Josef von Sternberg. And it’s “Underworld”. But I’ll come onto that in a minute because I just want to read you what Sanford Sterling said about him. “Ben Hecht was the enfant terrible of American letters in the first half of the 20th century. If Hecht was opposed to anything, it was censorship of literature, art, or film by either the government or self-appointed guardians of public morality. In his own lifetime, he became one of the most famous American literary and entertainment figures.”

But Norman Mailer said of him, “Hecht was never a man to tell the truth when a concoction could put life into his prose.” So he, having, he’s now in Hollywood, advised by Mankiewicz to come out and to make a fortune. Now, “The Front Page”, what “The Front Page” is about is it popularises the image of American journalists. So it’s very strong, it’s very wisecracking. It was made time and time again. But his break, his real break in Hollywood comes with “Underworld”, which is recognised as the first proper gangster movie. And then he’s going to go on and make “Scarface”. Now, who was Joseph von Sternberg? Because so many of these characters, they are so much larger. They’re so larger than life. And I think the kind of era we live in today, when the most people are kind of, you know, particularly people in public life, they are rather ordinary. But some of the characters who created Hollywood, some of the writers, they were just extraordinary people. And Joseph von Sternberg, I hope you note the von, just as there was von Stroheim, they were both Jewish.

Joe von Sternberg was born in Vienna. He came from a very poor, religious family. His father had been a former soldier in the Habsburg army. He actually went off to America to find work. His mother joined him later with his, with her five children. It wasn’t a very happy marriage. And in 1905, the mother and children returned to Vienna, which he said were the happiest in his life. So he’s in Vienna in the first decade of the 20th century. And you can just imagine that, kind of. If you think of the exciting periods of history you’d like to live in, it’s a game I often play with my family. And I would imagine turn of the century Vienna, turn of the century Paris, turn of the century Vienna, it must have been absolutely crackling. And he said, “It’s my happiest time.” Unfortunately, the parents’ marriage was very unhappy. The family do return to America and it meant that many of Sternberg’s later works were about trauma and about reconciliation of unhappiness.

But when he’s back in America, he has to leave school at 14. He has to earn money and so he goes into the rag trade. And that made him very, very aware of fabric. And if you think of some of his films, like “Catherine the Great” and the films he made with Dietrich later on, he was very familiar with ornate textiles that they were going to, and he had the most incredible, lavish set designs, and it was all his work. He, always mad about the movies. And he, as I said, he was probably at his greatest when he worked with Marlene. And he did actually go back to middle Europe for a while because the famous, great Max Reinhardt actually invited him to direct a stage production. But he didn’t want, it wasn’t for him, and he came back and Paramount arranged for him to actually direct “Underworld”. And that was Hecht’s story about gangsters.

So you see how it develops. It develops from Hecht, the crime writer, Hecht being in Berlin and seeing the collapse of a civilization, Hecht smelling all the kind of, you know, he understood people, he could smell it. And “Underworld” portrays really criminal protagonist but as tragic. It was a silent film. But then as Hecht said after that, with the development of the sound, that’s when he really came into his own. Now let’s see, and let’s see the next page, the next clip. There you see “Underworld”. And now let’s come on to the first off, the first Oscar. Can we see the first Oscar? Hello? Hello?

• [Hannah] I’ll pull it back up, Trudy, the slideshow just crashed. I’m pulling it back up now.

• Thanks, sweetheart, okay, I’ll talk while we’re talking about the first Oscar. They were created by Louis B. Meyer and his friends in 1927. And the whole purpose of it was really to give presents to each other. And it all begins at a dinner for 250 people at the Blossom Hotel in New York. And it was the nickname Oscar, the, it’s the popular story was the executive director, Margaret Herrick looked at it and said, “That looks just like my Uncle Oscar.” And by 1930, of course, it’s going to be broadcast and it becomes this extraordinary event that is Hollywood today. And so he wins the first-ever screenwriting award for “Underworld”. And then he goes on to make “Scarface” and he soon becomes the most prolific and highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood. He earned, he hated Hollywood, by the way. The only one of the moguls he had any time for was David Selznick. He spent between two to 12 weeks every year on the West Coast, during which time he earned enough money, his record was $100,000 in a month, to, on two screenplays, to enable him to live in New York. And of course, MacArthur, who he wrote with much of the time, was, liked New York.

He was part of the Algonquin Circle, had an affair with Dorothy Parker. So New York was far more Hecht’s place than Hollywood. He didn’t think much of the moguls at all. And also when he made “Scarface”, this is before the Hays Code, and the staff at the “Scarface” starred Paul Muni, who he’s going to become very, very close to. He was a man of ideals. He organised campaigns against the Ku Klux Klan. Don’t forget that in the ‘20s, the Ku Klux Klan was a very huge organisation. At its height, there was something like 4 million members. And in June of 1923, I’m going back a bit, he collaborated on a Black musical for the Black newspaper “Chicago Defender”. It’d been founded in 1905. And at the time, it was the most important Black newspaper. And Ben Hecht was so against the Jim Crow laws, which enforced racial segregation in the South right up until 1965. Later on, he’s going to take on segregation in the military. He also broke all sorts of taboos by publishing a regular column by a Black writer, who he called the Black Belt Shadow. And I’m using the language of the time, this column is conducted by a Negro journalist, who was actually called William Moore.

So Hecht, like so many of these characters, he hated authority, he hated the norm. And he lived on the edge and always went against the norms of society. He hated the bourgeois. He worked on, later on, he is going to work on Frank Capra’s war film, “The Negro Soldier”, which was to convince Blacks to enter, enlist in the Army. And later on in July '41, he was one of those before America comes in the war, who signs that important petition to, and this is the actual wording, I think it’s very important, “Wanting utmost material assistance by our government to England, the Soviet Union and China, the protection of civil liberties and the rights of labour, the elimination of all forms of racial and religious discrimination from our public and private life, the worldwide defence of human liberty. There can be no victory over Hitlerism abroad if democracy is outraged at home.” So he goes on with his writing career, and again, he wins an Oscar for his next film. As I said, there were 140 contenders so I’ve really had to be very, very challenging. It was very challenging to choose. And “The Scoundrel”, it’s very interesting. It’s written by MacArthur and Hecht and it was, he directed it and he produced it. Can we see “The Scoundrel”, please, if you don’t mind, Hannah?

And it’s at this stage, he becomes very close to David Selznick and I’m going to talk about him in a minute. So could we see “The Scoundrel”? It stars Noel Coward. It’s his first real role in Hollywood. And again, he plays a publisher with an acid tongue who wants to ruin the life of everybody he encounters, an absolutely appalling character, but he is redeemed in the end by the woman whose life he destroys. And it’s a fascinating film if you can get hold of some of these films. Now, let’s go and have a look at David Selznick again, because Selznick, he’s now going to start working a lot with David Selznick. And he’s, the first production is going to be “Nothing Sacred”. Now, David Selznick had married, his father, Lewis Selznick, was meant to be the most unpleasant man in Hollywood. Evidently, Sam Goldwyn offered him $5,000 a week for life if he’d go and live in China. He was a huge mogul. And then it all collapsed on him and he had these three sons who he brought up as princes. His, one of his sons unfortunately was mentally impaired. But the other one went on to become the most important Hollywood agent. And David Selznick went to work for Louis B. Mayer, married his daughter, Irene.

It was said of him the son-in-law also rises. But he was a brilliant producer. And of course he and Ben Hecht are going to become very close. And later on, they’re going to write the final script of “Gone with the Wind”. And David’s going to play a huge part in Selznick’s career. And also when I talked about Selznick and about Ben Hecht’s fight for Bergson, Selznick helped a lot with that as well. And of course Selznick, his last great film of course was “The Third Man”. He probably ruined himself because after he left Irene, or rather she left him because of all his infidelities, he tied up with the beautiful Jennifer Jones on, he spent his life looking for vehicles for her. And in the end, when he became ill, it was Irene who took him back and looked after him. But “Nothing Sacred”, let’s have a look. This is his first time with David Selznick who, can we go on to “Nothing Sacred”? There you go. And it’s the famous Carole Lombard and the wonderful Fredric March. Carole Lombard was one of the great comic actresses of Hollywood. She was in “To Be or Not to Be”, which if you haven’t seen it, the image of the Jew in Hollywood, it’s a, I’m going to run a course on that. It’s very interesting.

But she later tied up with Clark Gable. She was the love of his life. And unfortunately, she was killed early in a plane crash, raising bonds for the, war bonds for the American Army. And she was incredibly popular and “Nothing Sacred” becomes a great success. So it’s a screwball comedy. He got a bit of help from the writing of that with, from Dorothy Parker and George Kaufman. They were all friends. Additional music from, was by Max Steiner, who is also beginning an incredible career in Hollywood. And again, it’s about a New York reporter. That’s what he was good at. Now the next film we’re going to have a quick glance at was “Gunga Din”. I hope I’m echoing memories for you. If you haven’t seen these films, have a wallow. I dunno what it’s, the weather’s like wherever you are, but where it is, it’s dark and it’s grey and the outside world is dark and grey. And if you want the greatest escapism in the world, go back to some of these movies. This is a story by MacArthur and Hecht. It’s based on a Rudyard Kipling poem. It’s about three British soldiers played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Cary Grant.

You know, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was quarter Jewish, Cary Grant was half Jewish, and Victor McLaglen, who fight the Thuggee in India. Sam Jaffe, the great actor from the Yiddish Theatre plays Gunga Din. The female interest is the young Joan Fontaine, the sister of Olivia de Havilland. And in fact, the Khyber Pass, the scenes are shot where, they’re shot in the Alabama Hills. “Gunga Din” is a wonderful film. Now let’s go on and have a look at some of the other highlights. This is what a film he made with Sam Goldwyn. He was nominated with MacArthur for the best screenplay. And it stars Merle Oberon. Merle Oberon, who of course was married to the English impresario, Hungarian-born Jewish English impresario, Alexander Korda, and Laurence Olivier. Laurence Olivier was furious because he wanted his wife, Vivien Leigh, to play the part. It also stars David Niven, who I know, certainly my mother , and the wonderful Flora Robson. And it’s based of course on Emily Brontë’s great novel. The Brontë women, of course, were quite extraordinary, the three of them who wrote books, “Jane Eyre”, “Shirley”, “Wuthering Heights”, the only one by Emily, and “Tenant of Wildfell Hall” by Anne.

They had to write under pseudonym male names. And if you haven’t read all of those books, give yourself an incredible treat. Now I’m going to show you a clip from “Wuthering Heights”. It is overblown, but I love it. It’s a scene where Cathy, you, I’m sure you all know the story. Heathcliff is played by Laurence Olivier. He lives at the farm, but he’s not good enough for Cathy, but she escapes to be with him. And there’s a wonderful scene set on the wild Yorkshire Moors, but of course it’s not the wild Yorkshire Moors, it’s just outside Hollywood. But nevertheless, and let’s just revel in it. Can we have just a minute of it if you don’t mind, Hannah? She’s escaping, she’s escaping. Climb up. Okay, we’ll cut it there. You get the picture. It’s a wonderful wallow, the film. Okay, now remember, this is made in 1940. Think about his political life at the moment. He’s just discovered he’s a Jew. Remember what he said, “In 1939, I became a Jew.” And of course, his political work is going to run alongside some of the films I’m going to show you. Let’s just see the bill for “It’s a Wonderful World”. There you go.

Claudette, another screwball comedy with Claudette Colbert and James Stewart. A wonderful picture, he wrote that with Herman Mankiewicz against the backdrop of war in Europe, America’s still not in the war, and the films of 1939, 1940, 1941, in some level they are the greatest of the Hollywood films, but it’s pure escapism. So let’s go on to the films. Some of the two post-war films, one of my favourites, “Spellbound”. Now before we show the clip of “Spellbound”, it stars Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck. It’s directed by David, it’s produced by David Selznick. It’s directed by the brilliant Alfred Hitchcock, Hecht writes the screenplay, and it deals with trauma. Hecht is always fascinated by the dark side of the world. And the scene I’m going to show you is quite extraordinary because the set was designed by Salvador Dali. It had terrible trouble with the censors. Rhonda Fleming is in it, and she plays a woman who is suffers from nymphomania. And the censors had problems with Hecht’s words like frustration, libido, tomcat, sex menace, and that did lead to a lot of problems. But they actually stayed strong and went ahead with it. So let’s have a look at “Spellbound”, just a scene from “Spellbound”.

[Clip plays]

• I can’t make out just what sort of a place it was. It seemed to be a gambling house, but there weren’t any walls, just a lot of curtains with eyes painted on. A man was walking around with a large pair of scissors, cutting all the drapes in half. And then a girl came in with hardly anything on and started walking around the gambling room, kissing everybody. She came to my table first.

• [Person Off-Camera] Did you recognise this kissing girl?

• I’m afraid she looked a little like Constance.

• [Person Off-Camera] This is plain, ordinary, wishful dreaming. Go on.

• I was sitting there playing cards with a man who had a beard. I was dealing to him. And I turned up the seven of clubs. He said, “That makes 21, I win.” When he turned up his cards, they were blank. Just then, the proprietor came in and accused him of cheating. The proprietor yelled, “This is my place and if I catch you cheating again, I’ll fix you.” I’m sorry about that kissing bit.

[Clip ends]

• Let’s stop there, let’s stop there, I think. But that gives you a notion of the kind of range of this particular film, which I really, it’s a flawed masterpiece. I really recommended it to you. Another film he made in 1946, it was for Selznick, but by this time, Selznick and Hitchcock had had a terrible fight and it was taken over by RKO and it stars Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman and Claude Rains. And it, “Notorious” is fascinating because it’s actually about a group of Nazis in America. And Ingrid Bergman plays a German party girl who’s loyal to America. She falls in love with Cary Grant, who is an American agent. And he basically persuades her to seduce Claude Rains, who is head of the sort of Nazi spy ring, which she does. And the, he, she marries Rains. And the, you know, it’s very below the radar if you think about America and censorship at the time. The man who’s in love with the woman prostitutes her to marry another man to get information. But of course, there is a happy ending. So let’s see a shot from “Notorious”, where Ingrid Bergman is trying to steal keys so that she can look in her husband’s, so that Cary Grant, who’s come to a party, can look in her husband’s cellar. Let’s have a look at the gorgeous Ingrid Bergman. The lush sets, the music.

[Clip plays]

• [Person Off-Camera] I’m surprised Mr. Devlin coming tonight. I don’t blame anyone for being in love with you, darling. I just hope that nothing will happen to give him any false impression. Be with you in a minute. Darling. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but when you’re in love at my age, every man who looks at your woman is a menace. Will you forgive me for even talking about it? I’m very contrite.

[Clip ends]

• Okay, I think we’ll stop there. You get the idea. Now remember, whilst all this is going on, he is fighting. Can we see the next slide please? Because what is he fighting for? He is now involved and that of course is Irene Selznick. And her comment about David at the time was that everybody in Hollywood wanted to be David Selznick, wanted to be Ben Hecht, that he was the one who really, really understood Hollywood. But alongside everything that’s going on in the movie business, I need you to think about what he’d been doing with the Irgun, because of course, he was their main publicist. He was screaming at the American establishment for not taking, and the Jewish establishment for not taking seriously what was happening in Europe. And once the war is over, he decides he’s going to help raise money for the Bergson Group in America. Remember Peter Bergson, a.k.a. Hillel Kook, has come to America with his friends to raise money. It started for a stateless army of Palestinian Jews. It then became a group to bring the world’s attention to what was happening.

But once the war is over, the British do not change their policy on Palestine. And now the Bergson Group want to raise money to provide ships to run the gauntlet to Palestine and also to arouse public opinion, to pressurise the British government to alter the quotas. So can we have a look at the playbill for “A Flag is Born”? Okay, now it’s an extraordinary story. It centres on two elderly, ailing survivors on their way to Palestine, Tevye and Zelda. And Ben Hecht writes it, and it’s the American League for a Free Palestine. Tevye has a series of visions in which heroes from the Jewish past emerge. And they’re all, their stories are told. And it’s a platform for Hecht to demonstrate the Jewish claim to Israel. So it goes back to biblical times and the need for a Jewish state now. Now enters David, who’s going to be played by the young Marlon Brando. He’s a young survivor of Treblinka, and what happens is they meet up, they’re all devastated. The elderly couple die but David is inspired to join the underground and to go to Palestine. And he delivers a very strong Zionist speech, holding a Zionist flag, sort of, it’s made out of the character Tevye’s prayer shawl. It was directed by Luther Adler.

His, one of his sisters is in it, and his elder sister, Stella, who was not only an actress but one of the most important coaches in America, she manages to get an incredible amount of important people in the world of show business to back it. I mean, Paul Muni is going to star in it along with the other sister. Marlon Brando is going to play David, but who were recruited to the cause? Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Carl Reiner, Groucho and Harpo Marx, Paul Robeson, always at the centre of fighting. Don’t forget Robeson later on went to Russia and he tried to intervene for Itzik Feffer, who later on was of course killed by Stalin. Frank Sinatra, Perry Como. This is what Stella later said about her work with the Bergson Group. “One of the most important experiences of my life, that these people were men of value, aristocrats of the mind with social responsibility and the force to do something about it.” The score was composed by Kurt Weill, who was been, remember if you came to the last presentation, he’d been with Hecht all the way through. And in his memoirs, this is what Brando wrote as to why he agreed to the part. “What we were beginning to learn about, the true nature of the killing of Jews, and because of the empathy I felt for the Adlers and other Jews who had become my friends and teachers who told me of their dream of a Jewish state.”

And he was also attracted by working with the great Paul Muni, who was seen as one of the greatest stage actors ever, and now film actors. The cast accepted minimum wage in a gesture of solidarity with Zionism. The actors would spend their time relaxing at Hecht’s New York home. And he said basically the Palestinian underground movement kept on calling in. There were Russian spies, there were British spies, there were American spies. It was an extraordinary place to be. And of course, the Bergson group is Irgun. And David in the play gives this extraordinary speech written by Hecht. And this is what he says. He’s criticising the American Jewish community for failure to to pressure Roosevelt. “Where were your Jew? Where were you, Jews, when 6 million Jews were being burnt to death in the ovens?” And at the end of the first performance, Hecht comes on stage and he cries. He shouts for donations, “Give me your money and we will turn it into history.” A huge, huge success. It ran for 120 performances on Broadway. Bergson’s Group, they had a brilliant publicity machine, which was masterminded by Ben Hecht. He was a man of tremendous energy. It compared the Jewish fighters in Palestine to the heroes of the American Revolution. Quoting Jefferson, “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God. It’s 1776 in Palestine.”

On the sponsoring committee you had characters like Leonard Bernstein, Leon , the mayor of New York, the Irish Mayor of New York, William O'Dwyer, and Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow, Eleanor Roosevelt. Some Jews opposed it, particularly Judah Magnes, who was President of the Hebrew University. He actually was a opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. He denounced the play as supporting violence in Palestine because by this time, the Irgun under Begin had basically declared war on the British. Not all the reviews were sympathetic, but I’m going to give you an example of some of the views. This is “Life” magazine, “Serves with wit and wisdom a mixture of bitter attacks on rich and powerful Jews, on world diplomats in the, in America, Russia, and with great malice, England.” This is a fascinating review from “The Hollywood Reporter’s” review. “Ben Hecht has written such a moving pageant that we’ve been moved to pen not only a congratulatory note, but to write a check to the US League for a Free Palestine.” Of course, the British press were absolutely furious. This is the “British Evening Standard”, “The most virulent anti-British play ever staged in America.” And after its run on Broadway, it goes to Detroit, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Chicago and Boston.

After six months’ tour in America, it goes to South America. It, of course, it wasn’t allowed in Palestine and it wasn’t allowed in any of the British-controlled territories, but there was a clandestine version of it in a detention camp in Cyprus in Hebrew, because the ships were being run to Palestine. And whenever the British caught them, because the British had imposed, kept the quota going after the war, anyone who was caught was sent to Cyprus, to a detention camp on Cyprus. And they staged “A Flag is Born” in Hebrew. It raised almost a million dollars. And also there was a New York dinner in honour of Paul Muni, which raised another $75,000. Now, part of the money went to buy a boat. Can we go on a bit and then go back? That’s Luther Adler, I’m going to talk about him in a minute because of course he plays Tevye. Can you go on a little bit? Marlon Brando at his most beautiful. And then go on to the next slide. Now, this is the SS Ben Hecht. Part of the money was used to buy the boat, which they changed the name to SS Ben Hecht. It ran 600 survivors to Palestine and it was crewed by members of the American Navy. They were Jewish American sailors.

Fascinating how many servicemen from America, Canada, Britain, who’d fought for the British in the war, went off to Palestine. Some fought for the Haganah, some fought for the Irgun. The majority, though, fought for the Haganah. Just to be clear, there are in the army of the Yishuv was the Haganah. The Irgun was a breakaway group and there was a breakaway group from that called the Lechi that was even more extreme. Anyway, what happened was 10 miles outside Palestine water, the Ben Hecht was taken over by the British. They towed it back to Haifa. The 600 Holocaust survivors were sent to Cyprus, to their detention centre. The American soldiers, American sailors were put in Acre jail, where they helped plan the breakout from Acre jail. You will know that the Irgun actually plotted this huge breakout from Acre jail. And what happened was they were deported before the breakout to America. But what happened was the American Attorney General, he refused to charge them. He said this would lead to a revolt in America. So by this time, there was so much sympathy for the Jewish state. The committee were taking out ads coast to coast, and also a lot of American Jews, as the horror of the Shoah was finally revealed, they thought, well what did we do? Why didn’t we do more? I mean, this is a terrible story.

And the point is, I think you’ve got to be very careful about ascribing blame here because it’s such a deep, troublesome issue that is not resolved to this day. And by the way, the SS Ben Hecht later became the flagship of the Israeli Navy. And of course reports from British diplomats bemoaned “Flag’s effectiveness in rallying US support for Zionism.” There was a real issue going on here. Britain was bankrupt at the end of the war. Bevin, who was the Foreign Secretary and Colonial Secretary, he would not alter the white paper, but Britain was dependent on American loans. You know, Britain may have won the war, but she was bankrupt. And you now have so much pressure being put on Harry Truman to help with Zionism that you are having rallies through New York, through Washington. And this is the kind of pressure and it’s characters like Ben Hecht who are really putting the pressure on. He also, now this is amusing, he enlisted the help of a mobster called Mickey Cohen to raise money for the Irgun. Now according to Hecht, Mickey Cohen turned up at Hecht’s house.

According to Cohen, Hecht sought him out. And this is, what Cohen wanted to know was how can I do something to help the Jewish cause in Palestine? Hecht said of them, “They acted like people I made up.” Cohen hosted a huge dinner on Wiltshire Boulevard and fitted, and this is how Hecht described it. “It was filled with 1,000 bookies, prize fighters, gamblers, and all sorts of lawless characters and their womenfolk.” Hecht made a moving speech urging them to buy “A stone for the slingshot,” talking about David and Goliath. Cohen got up and said, “There will be no welchers.” He told each one of the gangsters how much they had to give and they gave a huge amount. You know, this is another story, how much the gangsters, the mobsters in America actually helped fund the Irgun. Now, let’s go back a little because I want to mention Luther Adler to you because he’s also a fascinating character. Do you mind flashing back? He’d been born in New York. He was the only child, I beg your pardon, he was the only son of Russian Jewish immigrants. His father was one of the founders of the Yiddish Theatre. And his siblings also came into the theatre with him. He had his first acting job when he was five years old in a Yiddish production called “Shmendrik”.

I remember my father used to call my brother Shmendrik. He was, in 1931, he was one of the original members of the Group Theatre, which was a collective based in New York. And one of the founders, of course, was Lee Strasberg, and his sister Stella was very, very involved. And the ideas come from Stanislavski and that’s going to develop into Actors Studio. And as they say, the rest is history. The group wanted to deal with important social issues. They believed in social justice. They were very left wing. The collective actually lasted for 10 years. It produced 20 plays. It was an inspiration for so many of the young actors, of course including the young Marlon Brando. Who was in it? Well, Adler and his sister, Stella, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Franchot Tone, Clifford Odets, Lee J. Cobb, and Adler was involved in many of their productions and he also starred in Kurt Weill’s anti-war musical, “Johnny Johnson”. It’s important to know that all these characters, so many of whom are going to fall foul of the blacklist later on, knew each other.

Many of the immigrants working with the socialists who were the children of immigrants in Hollywood, in the theatre world, they all knew each other. Later on, of course, Luther Adler was blacklisted. He directed “Flag is Born” for Hecht in 1946. He, which starred Muni and his sister. In 1965 after the blacklist, when Zero Mostel quit “Fiddler”, he took over the role and though his films were not his priority, he appeared in the wonderful film, “The Voyage of the Damned” in 1976, which is a kind of story of the St. Louis, but it isn’t. He was also in the brilliant film with Paul Muni, “Absence of Malice”. He acted, he had a very long career. Many of America’s favourite TV shows like “Hawaii Five-0”, “Streets of San Francisco”, “Route 66”, ‘Mission: Impossible", a great, great man. He was married to the actress Sylvia Sidney, whose real name was Sylvia Kosow. She was also a Jewish immigrant. So these are the characters. But after the, after “Flag is Born”, Hecht went further. He wrote an open letter to the Irgun in America, “Every time you blow up a British arsenal or wreck a British jail or send a British railway train sky high or rob a British bank or let go of your guns and bombs at British betrayers and invaders of your homeland, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.”

Now of course, this was extraordinarily inflammatory and caused incredible problems. Meyer Levin, who previously admired him, I don’t believe any phrase was more harmful to the Jewish people. Mankiewicz said, “It’s very simple. You see six-year-old Ben, he found out he was a Jew and now he behaves like a six-year-old Jew.” But he got a lot of support too. Now of course, Israel was then established and six months after the establishment, the Bergson Group was actually dissolved and Begin made a speech at that event. And he said this, “I believe that my people liberated and reassembled in its country will contribute its full share towards the progress of all mankind and that all of Palestine eventually will be free and that peace and brotherhood will prevail amongst Arab and Jew alike.” Now it has to be said that Hecht became very disillusioned with Israel over the Altalena Affair and it’s, I haven’t really got the time to describe it in depth now, but it is when the IDF actually fired on an Irgun ship. I will, we have made the decision that we are going to talk more about Israel and the creation of Israel in our next series, so you’ll have to bear with me on that.

But he became more and more disillusioned with Israel and later on of course wrote his book, “Perfidy”, where he did single out Jewish establishment, Kastner, gets tied up with the Kastner Affair, as betrayers of the Jews. He becomes more and more controversial. Now the other thing that happened, after his statement on the British, his films were banned in England till 1952, which meant that money began to become a problem for him. He could only, because moguls have to sell their films. So do you see what happens? He can only get half rates. Sometimes he has to write without his name or under a pseudonym and he becomes more and more bitter towards the end. Anyway, he is an incredible character, love him or hate him, and he was the kind of polarizer. I’ll stop there to give us time for questions.

Q&A and Comments

Thank you very much, Hannah. Let’s have a look at questions. Yes, yes, I hope I didn’t go too fast, Daphne. Yes, I’m afraid I had so much information. I get too excited. The film, “The Front Page” was remade, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. Yes, wonderful. The week after next, I’m going to talk. Oh yes, the invitation was written by Herman Mankiewicz, Joseph’s older brother. Yes, you are right, sorry, John. Oh Margarita, the film “The Scoundrel” is available on YouTube, great.

Q: Did Hecht marry and have children? A: Yes, he did marry. I don’t know if he had children. I’ll have to check that for you. That’s a very Jewish question, Michael.

Jack Benny, Carole Lombard, “To Be or Not to Be” is the one of the best films. Benny is remarkable. It’s also quite controversial because it’s a comedy about the war and it’s made in 1942. I’ve got to hold, do some sessions on this 'cause it’s important. Good point, Marcia. Yes, exactly, I said that. Salvador Dali worked on the film. That’s why I wanted to show you that. Oh, Cheryl said she saw Wendy in Heathrow. Oh yes, Wendy was coming back from Israel, bless her. And Monica tells us a lot of these movies are playing on AMC TV channel, just saw this.

Q: Was Hecht ever questioned by HUAC? A: No, he avoided HUAC, actually.

There’s Thelma, “Flag is Born” is not a movie. It’s a play. It’s a play, I’m afraid. I dunno if you can get hold of the script. Compared to today, who are the stars speaking for Israel? Notwithstanding Netanyahu, of course. Margarita, “The Hollywood Reporter” shared an open letter signed by some 700 notable Hollywood figures including Gal Gadot, Jerry Seinfeld, Jamie Lee Lewis, Chris Pine, Mayim Bialek, Liev Schreiber, Amy Schumer and Michael Douglas who are standing in support of Israel. We are not alone. You know, enough, look, it’s early days yet, but I do believe gradually and gently the tide is turning. An MP for a constituency just near me has had to resign because there have been arson attacks and he’s being, 'cause he’s very pro-Israel, and it’s leading to an incredible backlash in this area where a lot of English folk are getting very, very angry.

Look, the situation in Israel is absolutely appalling. And when you think of those hostages, it is beyond heartbreak. But if you’re talking about the other issue, how the world is, look, of course it’s a shanda, what’s been going on, but there do seem to be, it’s not as black as it was a week ago in terms of how they’re seeing us. Of course the situation is still black. American League for a Free Palestine, now there’s a title. I love that, Jerry, that’s great, yeah. There was also the Palmach. Yes, but the Palmach was an arm of the Haganah. It was within the framework of the Haganah. And Galaxy, and in Acre you can see the gallows where the British hang the prisoners. Yes, yes, yes. And now how things change. Now celebrities and actors can’t wait to condemn Israel. But as has just been pointed out, there are stars who are standing up for Israel.

Gloria, I was on a university tour of Europe with Jodi Adler. Jodi was a very sad person, I believe. Difficult for someone to be a child of Luther Adler and Sylvia Sidney. I only saw him once more in New York, very unhappy. Yeah, yes, that’s another whole psychological issue, the child of the greats. It’s a big burden.

Q: What is my view of Hecht’s book “Perfidy”? A: Oy, David, I’ll tell you a personal story. My partner of 35 years, Jerry, we didn’t speak for over a week over “Perfidy”. Some couples have rows over certain things. At some stage we will deal with it, but I can’t deal with it in two or three minutes. It’s an extraordinary book. I don’t believe it’s that fair, actually. I think it’s very one-sided, but it has certain points. Okay, I hope that it answers you. It’s a cop-out a bit, but it was, I think the worst were, I mean other, when you think about it, it was a very strange thing for a couple to argue over, but we didn’t speak for over a week. It was the worst row we ever had.

Thank you, Margarita. Ah, Stewart tells us Ben had two children by different wives. Ellie says Ben Hecht’s “Perfidy” was a hit job on Kastner. He basically coined the concept of a deal with the devil. But Kastner saved over 1,700 people and sometimes that what it takes. “Perfidy” was banned for some time. Ellie, yes, and I promise you we are going to have to deal, I, a long time ago, and I think you can get it, I did deal with the Kastner Affair. But you see in the end, all these issues take away from the perpetrators, the Germans, the Nazis were the perpetrators, aided and abetted by people from every country of occupation. That’s the tragedy of it. Ellie’s saying he wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Kastner. Yes, I’ve, there’s a professor who also survived Kastner, because of Kastner. Yes, yes, that’s the tragedy. It turned Jew against Jew. Look, even in the Warsaw Ghetto, we didn’t come together until after the deportations, did we? The Bund should fight with the revisionists. We’re a strange, quarrelsome people. People talk about Jewish conspiracies. If only we did unite, who knows what we could achieve.

Frank, Ben Hecht wrote a scathing attack against the British for the hanging of the Irgunist Dov Gruner, the second Jew to be hanged at Acre. Yes, of course, because Dov Gruner was a hero of the Irgun. Yes, Anglo Jewry had a terrible time in this period. It’s interesting because I was teaching in the '70s and I met lots of people who’d been adults at that period. And they told me some extraordinary stories. There were riots in Liverpool. The Jewish community was completely divided. But I had a couple of uncles who went to Palestine. One joined the Irgun and the other one joined Haganah. They’d been soldiers. Oh, Susan says my husband and I had the same quarrel over “Perfidy”. I read “Perfidy” and a man who survived in our town from Hungary said every word was true. But Michael, I think a lot of Hungarian Jews did believe that. But it is so much more complex than that. And it’s awful that, look, we’re all human and isn’t it awful that the real culprits, so many of them got away scott free?

That’s what really makes me angry, that at the end of the war, the Allies never really sought justice from the Nazis. I think of characters like Wernher von Braun. It’s just beyond imagination. 90% of those guilty never, were never brought to justice. Some of the people at Wannsee survived on state pensions, SS pensions in Germany. And I suppose that’s a note to finish on. I hope you found the presentation interesting. I find Ben Hecht a fascinating man. Flawed, but aren’t we all? I wish you all goodnight. And actually there’s, Dale is lecturing next and she’s a new historian to us, but she’s absolutely brilliant and she is a social historian of America, so I really advise you to have supper and get back on at seven o'clock.

Anyway, thank you so much, Hannah, for the slides and I’ll see you all next week. Next week I’m going to give you a Valentine presentation on Paul Newman. I’m opting out and we’re going to have a whole hour on Paul Newman. Take care, God bless.