Gorbach writes that Wise viewed Hecht and the Bergsonites "as irresponsible renegades whose cheap, inflammatory publicity stunts risked scuttling any real chance at rescue." Wise was so unhinged that he called Bergson "as great an enemy of the Jews as Hitler." Instead of rejoicing at this hugely talented, if unexpected ally, America's mainstream Jewish establishment, with Rabbi Stephen Wise in the forefront, reacted with outrage. 13, 1943, the New York Times reported that Romania was willing to transfer Jews for a fee, Hecht wrote a full-page ad that blared, "FOR SALE to Humanity / 70,000 Jews Guaranteed Human Beings at $50 a Piece." "Had it not been for Hecht, news of the Final Solution would also have been virtually absent from mainstream American magazines," Gorbach writes. Hecht proved a masterful propagandist, producing material at a furious pace. In 1942, as news of the slaughter of the Jews of Europe came in, the Bergson Group changed its focus to that of rescue. After some coaxing, Hecht joined their effort. In one, titled "My Tribe Called Israel," Hecht said, "I write of Jews today, I who never knew himself as one before, because that part of me which is Jewish is under a violent and ape-like attack." It was these columns that caught the attention of Peter Bergson, who led a small group of Palestinian Jews recently arrived in the United States to build support for a Jewish army to fight Hitler. Hecht wrote that he "turned into a Jew in 1939.… The German mass murder of the Jews, recently begun, brought my Jewishness to the surface." When he thought of the Jews being slaughtered in Europe, he thought of his own kin, cherishing the memories of his warm, Yiddish-speaking extended family, which "remained like a homeland in my heart."Īs Hecht became more politically aware, he wrote columns for the newspaper PM. The disproportion is warranted, both because the other aspects of Hecht's life have been well-covered by previous biographers and because, in the end, Hecht will be best remembered for his efforts to save Jews during the Holocaust and for his support of the Irgun, the underground organization in Palestine that deserves chief credit-as Winston Churchill himself attested-for driving the British from Palestine.įor most of his life Hecht was an assimilated Jew, indifferent although never hostile to his Jewish roots.
All the others, including Hecht's own autobiography A Child of the Century, devote no more than a fifth of their space to Hecht's "Jewish period." Gorbach turns the customary allotment on its head, devoting four fifths of his biography to this phase of Hecht's life.
Gorbach's focus is different from that of any other Hecht biographer.
(Gorbach's book has received far less attention than the first biography, Adina Hoffman's Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures, largely because she beat him to market.) Hecht is a more remarkable character than any he created in his hugely successful Hollywood career.
NOTORIOUS SCREENWRITER BEN MOVIE
Julien Gorbach's The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist is the second book to come out this year on the reporter, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, novelist, polemicist, and pioneer of the gangster movie and the screwball comedy.