CHILD OF THE CENTURY

Written by Scott Jacobs

Adapted from the book by Ben Hecht

(c) Scott Jacobs 2326 W. Medill Chicago, IL 60647 773-517-6008 Email: [email protected] March 12, 2020 ii.

CAST Principals:(6) Ben Hecht . . . Narrator Ben Hecht . . . writer/actor Rose Caylor . . . wife Charles MacArthur . . . co-writer Herman Mankiewicz . . . screenwriter Peter Bergman . . . activist Featured Players:(11) playing multiple roles Sherman Reilly Duffy Margaret Anderson Sherwood Anderson Carl Sandburg Adolph Hitler John Barrymore Charles Ort Mac McEvoy Franny Brice Stoolie Don DiMico Rabbi Chaim Levin Cameos/Extras/Other: Hecht’s Mother, Unicyclist, Bearded Lady, Silk Dancer, Deliveryman, Harry the Acrobat, Bursar, Frat Boys(3), Uncle Manny, John Eastman, Martin Hutchens, Henry Justin Smith, Brooks Beitler, Copyboy, Queen Lil, Whores(2), Malloy, Clarence Darrow, Neighborhood Jews(2), Keating, Cuban President, Cap’n Loftus, The Pinheads(twins), Captain Helpern, Rabbis(4), Harpo Marx, Helen Hayes, Bill “Mr. Bojangles” Robinson, David O. Selznick, Victor Fleming, Billy Rose, Marlon Brando. Act I

A relaxed Ben Hecht, the very picture of his picture, sits in a spotlight off to the side of an empty stage, a half-smoked cigar dangling from his fingers. The black background is a huge video scrim stretched across the span of the stage.

HECHT NARRATOR For a number of years, I have thought of writing a book about myself. I deferred believing that I might become brighter and better informed as I grew older. I was, in my dreams, never quite finished with becoming what I hoped to be.

But I have decided to put away such convenient humility because, obviously, if I keep postponing the task, no book at all will come to pass and the empire I call myself will vanish without any chronicle from the man most suited to provide it –– me.

VIDEO: On the scrim, a grainy 1908 film clip of downtown Racine includes a boy catching frogs in a creek bed, playing with friends and lying on his back watching clouds as described.

HECHT NARRATOR I grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. My mother had a store in Monument Square -- the Paris Fashion Shop -- where I would hang out every day. When I was not hunting frogs by the creek bed, or chasing make-believe Indians through the streets, I was laying out on the jetty staring at the cloud galleons overhead, imagining where they might take me.

SCENE ONE - PARLOR OF HECHT’S BOARDING HOUSE

Hecht boyhood home at 827 Lake Avenue. Dissolve to parlor backdrop. A young Hecht practices his violin while his mother watches silently in the doorway. An acrobat passes through on a unicycle, a bearded lady sits in a chair reading a newspaper, a silk dancer and strongman play backgammon at a table.

HECHT NARRATOR We lived in Mrs. Castello’s boarding house. She had once been a bareback-riding beauty in P.T. Barnum’s circus, and the place was filled with retired circus folk from the sawdust world.

My mother hoped I might grow up to be a great musician. But knowing my predilections, she didn’t trust me to practice so she made me play in the parlor where she could watch my every move. On my 13th birthday, four huge crates arrived with my name on them. They were a gift from my father. Inside were all the great books of literature, or so his professor friend had told him because, a tailor by trade, he had read none of them. 2.

Deliveryman goes off. Others exit carrying their props. Scrim dissolves to attic bedroom. Hecht reads on bed.

There were 15 volumes of Shakespeare, a complete set of Charles Dickens and Mark Twain, and a 52-volume History of The World in Literature. I read every one, thrilled by the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts and wishing I was there to help Perseus free Andromeda from Poseidon’s rock.

Scrim goes dark. A trapeze is lowered with Harry on it.

When I could read no more, I would slip out the window to the Castello’s barn where Mrs. Castello’s son Harry hung a trapeze to practice his act.

Silent tableau of Harry swinging and talking to Hecht about upcoming circus tour.

Harry had dreams too. He was organizing a one-ring circus to tour all the small towns in Wisconsin, and he invited me to tag along. My mother was skeptical, but she relented when Harry promised I would be doing a violin solo. I don’t think the violin ever came out of its case, but I had the time of my life –– what life I had –– until we hit Fond du Lac and the money ran out.

SCENE TWO - UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

A scenic shot of Bascom Hill.

HECHT NARRATOR Since I faced a summer of sitting around doing nothing, my father insisted I enroll at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

A now 16-year-old Hecht stands at the bursar’s desk. A gaggle of fraternity boys in stiff- collared suits sit around a darkened table.

BURSAR Name?

HECHT Hecht. Ben Hecht.

BURSAR First year?

HECHT Yup. 3.

BURSAR Major?

HECHT I’m 16. Is that major enough? (Hecht laughs. The bursar is not amused.) I’ll be 17 in February.

BURSAR That’s nice. But what’s your major? What do you want to study?

HECHT I want to study everything.

BURSAR

(non-plussed) Arts & Sciences.

HECHT Yeah, that sounds good. Arts & Sciences.

BURSAR

(Rounds up papers. Hands Hecht a catalog.) Here’s your catalog. Classes start Monday.

Young Hecht takes the material and walks over to the table.

HECHT NARRATOR I lasted all of three days at the university. Never even made it to the first class.

The frat boys are jovially drinking. Hecht sits and buries his head in the catalog.

I was staying in a fraternity with some of the most stiff-necked swells I ever met. They were so full of themselves I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. They seemed amused that I was taking classic literature courses. When I told them I wasn’t worried because I’d read most of the books, they accused me of snobbery.

FRAT BOY #1 Did’ya hear that boys? He thinks ole Snifflebeak’s class is going to be a breeze.

FRAT BOY #2 Maybe he should teach it. 4.

They laugh.

FRAT BOY #1 There’s a reason we call them freshmen. They’re fresh as baby poo when they come in.

FRAT BOY #2 Here’s a word of advice, freshman. Nobody likes a know-it-all. You’ve got to pay your dues before people will take you seriously. Think about it.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR I did think about it––for about a minute. Okay, ten minutes. Then I bolted down to the train station to catch the next train to Chicago.

VIDEO: Young Hecht sits alone in a train car. Historical footage of Chicago neighborhoods flash by in the window. The train arrives at Union Station. Hecht walks over to lie down on a bench in the waiting room..

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) I spent my first night in Chicago on a bench in Union Station. I had $50 in my pocket –– my university money –– and I planned to spend it all before going back to Racine.

SCENE THREE - MAJESTIC THEATER

VIDEO: State Street in 1910 ends on a street view of the Majestic Theater.

HECHT NARRATOR I went to take in a vaudeville show at the Majestic Theater and was standing outside when I heard someone call my name.

UNCLE MANNY Bennie! Bennie Hecht! What the hell are you doing here?

HECHT NARRATOR It was my Uncle Manny, my mother’s brother, who left Racine for the liquor business in Chicago.

HECHT I’m going to see a show.

UNCLE MANNY That I can see. But what are you doing in Chicago? 5.

HECHT Looking for a job.

UNCLE MANNY What kind of job?

HECHT One that pays.

UNCLE MANNY Any particular kind of job? (Hecht shrugs.) Are you trained in anything? Bookkeeping? Sales?

HECHT I worked as an acrobat once. . . And I can play the violin.

UNCLE MANNY That and a nickel will get you a cup of coffee. You drink? Nah, of course you don’t drink. You’re too young. But it never hurts to know people who do. Come with me. I’ll introduce you around.

SCENE FOUR - THE CHICAGO JOURNAL

Reporters stare as Uncle Manny leads Hecht into the newsroom of the Chicago Journal. John Eastman, the publisher, is happy to see them.

EASTMAN Manny, Manny, Manny . . . Where have you been? I told you my wife is throwing a big shindig tonight. What do you have for me?

UNCLE MANNY Only the best. 120 proof whiskey . . . and a bonus. My nephew here is new in town and looking for a job. I thought you could use some fresh eyes in this tired old place. (To Hecht.) Bennie, meet John Eastman, publisher of the esteemed Chicago Journal.

HECHT It’s a pleasure, Mr. Eastman.

UNCLE MANNY He’s a writer.

EASTMAN Everybody’s a writer, or so they say. What kind of writer are you because, right now, I need a poem for a toast tonight. 6.

HECHT I can do that.

EASTMAN You can, huh.

MANNY He’s a literary genius.

EASTMAN Okay, so there’s this bull out in a pasture who swallows a God damn bumblebee. It goes down his throat into his stomach and -- two days later -- comes out his ass in a big load of bullshit. The bumblebee is mad as hell, so he dusts himself off, jumps on the bull and stings the bejeezus out of him. Think you can make that into poetry?

UNCLE MANNY Give him a pencil. He’s your man.

EASTMAN And I want a moral at the end. Something like you never know what’ll come out of a bullshitter’s ass. Let us know when you’re finished.

Uncle Manny and Eastman go off. Hecht sits down at the end of a table to write. Martin Hutchens, the managing editor, notices Hecht and comes over.

HUTCHENS You work here?

HECHT No.

HUTCHENS Then what the hell are you doing here?

HECHT Mr. Eastman asked me to write a poem. For his party tonight.

HUTCHENS A poem? For his party? We’re a newspaper, for God’s sake, and our publisher has you taking up good air writing poetry! I’m the managing editor. I decide who gets one of these seats. But no, Eastman wants to give it to a kid in exchange for a poem? That better be one great poem because, in case you are wondering, it’s never going to appear in my newspaper. 7.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Apparently, it was. Because Mr. Eastman hired me -- for $12 a week -- although I never knew what exactly I was hired to do.

VIDEO of Journal Newsroom. Copyboy gets assignment. Street scenes as described. Copyboy returns.

I started out as a picture chaser, which means that if Mr. Hutchens had a murder or particularly salacious story for the front page, my job was to go get a picture of the victim. It didn’t matter how I got it. I would climb fire escapes . . . Shimmy through transoms . . . And if the story involved a woman caught in flagrante delicto, I couldn’t come back until I did.

SCENE FIVE - REPORTING DAYS

Newsroom photo backdrop. Hecht sits at desk on stage. Hutchens comes over.

HUTCHENS What are you doing tomorrow?

HECHT I thought I might spend it at the lake. Tomorrow’s the 4th of July.

HUTCHENS There are no holidays on a newspaper. You’re going on assignment.

HECHT And where would that be?

HUTCHENS I need you down at the cop shop. People do all kinds of crazy things on the 4th. Blow their fingers off. Get drunk and shoot their neighbor, get drunk and shoot themselves. The first stupid thing that comes across the desk, you get your ass to the scene. I want a scoop. Otherwise, all we’ll have tomorrow is the same old picture of kids sitting on a curb watching the flag go by.

HECHT I’m on it, sir. 8.

HUTCHENS And while you’re at it, try to pick up a few facts. It never hurts to have a fact or two in a story.

On the scrim, old photos of Chicago street scenes. On stage, a young Hecht with notebook interviews people.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) My newspapering took me to police stations . . . slums . . . the boardwalks and the boudoirs of some of Chicago’s finest whorehouses. I was like a fly buzzing around in the works of a clock. Everywhere I looked, there was a story. I hewed to Mr. Hutchens’ advice about finding a fact or two, but I wasn’t above a little embellishment. As Mark Twain once said, “Get your facts first––then you can distort them as much as you please.”

Presses roll/ overlapping newspaper headlines.

And if it was a slow news day, I wasn’t above ginning up a little drama on my own. I did a story featuring terrified pedestrians watching a runaway streetcar . . . staged a pirate attack on a Chicago river tugboat . . . and dug a crater in Lincoln Park to authenticate an earthquake ripping through Chicago. That last one earned me a banner on the front page -- and a two week suspension.

Spotlight on Hecht.

HECHT NARRATOR I came to know Chicago like 32 feet of intestines. Only a newspaperman ever achieves that kind of bug-in-a-rug citizenship. I remember seeing a man lying on the floor in Barney Grogan’s saloon with a knife sticking out of his belly; an ingenue kneeling over her lover’s body with a smoking gun in her hand; and police carting off a dentist who raped his patient -- immortalized in the headline, “Dentist Fills Wrong Cavity.”

SCENE SIX - THE CHICAGO JOURNAL

VIDEO of newsroom. Teletype clacking, people hunched over typewriters, Hecht and Duffy work together.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) There was no greater joy in life that walking into the newsroom every day. When I had time, I would help our sports editor Sherman Reilly Duffy with the sports scores. In return, he introduced me to some of Chicago’s finest establishments. 9.

SCENE SEVEN - QUEEN LIL’S

Two women lounge around the parlor waiting for customers. Queen Lil passes among them. Duffy and young Hecht stumble in after hitting the bars. Duffy falls into a chair, Hecht sits on a couch, and a woman snakes over his lap like a boa.

DUFFY Define your terms, young man, and stick to your meanings. That’s the secret of writing.

HECHT That’s your advice, huh?

DUFFY Damn straight. When you write, never get too fancy. Be sure your style is so honest you can put the word shit in any sentence without the fear of consequences.

Hecht lifts the girl and begins to make his way upstairs.

HECHT I’ll remember that. Maybe.

DUFFY

(waves Hecht off. To himself) Ah, whores are the best. Damn their souls if you must, but they never hurt you. It’s when you grab the marrying kind, you got trouble. A whore’s heart in a lover’s smile––that’s what makes men shoot themselves.

SCENE EIGHT - LAKE MICHIGAN BEACH

Hecht and Duffy walk and talk. The scrim is a lake scene that moves with them as they walk.

HECHT NARRATOR Duffy took me to baseball games, the opera, and Floyd Dell’s writers’ salon down in Hyde Park. Then one night, he took me for a walk on the Lake Michigan beach.

DUFFY So how’s the novel coming, kid?

HECHT How did you know I’m writing a novel?

DUFFY Everybody in the newsroom is writing a novel. 10.

HECHT Well, I’m not writing a novel, you’ll be happy to hear. But I have sent off a couple short stories to H.L. Mencken.

DUFFY Doesn’t matter. Whatever you write, in the end you’re always writing about yourself.

Moving scrim brings them to an encampment of tents along the beach.

HECHT What’s that?

DUFFY Someone I want you to meet.

Margaret Anderson sits in front of a tent pitched along the lakefront. She is poring over a manuscript. She is “blond, shapely, with lean ankles and a Scandinavian face. . . Always wearing the same suit, a tailored affair in robin’s egg blue.” Duffy and Hecht approach.

DUFFY (CONT’D) Hello Margaret. Still haven’t paid the rent I see.

ANDERSON Domesticity is over-rated. I’m quite comfortable here, Sherman, in God’s little garden.

DUFFY God never went through a Chicago winter. I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Ben Hecht. This is Margaret Anderson, Keeper of the Literary Gate to Heaven.

HECHT And editor of The Little Review. I read it all the time.

ANDERSON You should write for it. Or are you only in the game for money?

DUFFY Be gentle with the boy. He’s got a good heart.

HECHT And an appreciation for beauty.

ANDERSON So what brings you around, Sherman? All the whorehouses closed? 11.

DUFFY I’m giving young Bennie here an introduction to the finer things in life: music, literature, the arts, and the patrons of the arts. He thinks he has a novel in him, but he needs a midwife to get it out.

ANDERSON Then you better get him out of that newsroom. Nothing but blowhards and drunkards there. (To Hecht) You’ll never get a novel out of a bottle.

HECHT It’s what I find on the street that fascinates me. But I can write about more lofty things if I can break into the upper crust.

DUFFY Margaret knows all the right people.

ANDERSON I like to think they know me. But it’s true, I provide the patina of respectability for the society crowd. If you can behave yourself, I might take you along sometime.

HECHT I’d like that.

ANDERSON I’m sure you would. Meanwhile, bring over another log and tell me something I don’t know.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR In the swarm of young men and women who populate a great city, there are only a handful who make the declaration they are artists. They loot their brain of whatever riches it holds and offer these up as spoils to mankind. It’s a harmless enough power and a harmless fame. No one suffers from the success of a symphony, no one has been lessened by its birth. And yet, the artist always believes he is the first to find magic in the human soul.

SCENE NINE - HECHT APARTMENT

A small apartment. Hecht and Anderson sit at separate desks with their typewriters.

HECHT NARRATOR I fell in with a crowd of writers that came to be known as The Chicago Renaissance: Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters and the crazy poet Max Bodenheim. (MORE) 12. HECHT NARRATOR (CONT'D) The first to rope me into a collaboration was Sherwood Anderson, an adman by day who desperately wanted to make magic at night.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON This is going to be great, Bennie! When this play opens, people will be clamoring to know more about Benvenuto Cellini.

HECHT Clamoring might be a poor choice of words. The guy made candlesticks and crucifixes for a living . . . 350 years ago . . . in Italy. And, did I mention, he was a notorious embezzler and murderer?

SHERWOOD ANDERSON He’s no worse than the riff-raff you write about. Have you read his speeches?

HECHT All of them? Swatty, you’ve got 100 pages of them in this thing alone. That’s longer than any of the plays Ken Goodman writes, and he went to Princeton.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

(scoffs) Goodman. He’s just another daddy’s boy pretending to be poor.

HECHT But he’s got big plans. When we have enough plays, he’s going to build a People’s Theater down on Maxwell Street to bring drama to the people.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON With his father’s money. I’ll bet you dimes to donuts it winds up at the Art Institute. The masses have enough drama in their lives without you and Goodman trying to make it seem artistic.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Cellini, it turned out, was safe from our scrutiny. After three weeks, we gave up on the project. Collaboration is a tricky act . . . like two tightrope walker on the same line, you have to bounce together. So to preserve our friendship, we made a pact not to see each other again for 20 years––and we didn’t. Until we did.

I could go on about the characters I met in Chicago. Some say I’ve made a career of it. But let me tell you one more story before I move on. 13.

SCENE TEN - CRIMINAL COURTS PRESS ROOM

Duffy, Hecht and another reporter lounge around the Criminal Courts pressroom.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Eventually, The Daily News hired me away from the Journal to cover the Criminal Courts. That is where Charlie MacArthur and I would later set our play Front Page. And it was every bit as nutty as we depicted it.

When I told Mr. Eastman they were offering $45 a week, he said, “Anybody who thinks they are worth $45 a week doesn’t deserve to work on my paper.”

So we were sitting around doing nothing––as we usually do––when Jack Malloy came in with this lean, smoky-faced kid in tow.

MALLOY Listen up, you dirt bags. I want you to meet someone who is too fine a man for these precincts. Gentlemen, meet Carl Sandburg.

HECHT NARRATOR The response was underwhelming.

SANDBURG I don’t mean to intrude. I’m a reporter for the Day Book. I just want to borrow a phone.

DUFFY The Day Book! That newspaper is so small you can put it in your breast pocket without folding it.

REPORTER #1 My dad calls it the Bolshevik Bugle. If you want to know all the sins of Capitalism, read the Day Book.

DUFFY I once got an offer from the Day Book, but they wanted me to wear a red armband to all the press conferences.

MALLOY Forgive these parasites. They are the scum of letters. Read them one of your poems.

HECHT Yeah, read a poem. That’s how I got my start. 14.

Embarrassed, Sandburg unfolds a piece of paper and begins reading.

SANDBURG I’m still working on it, but it goes something like this:

Chicago, City of the Big Shoulders

Hog butcher for the World,

Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler,

Stormy, husky, brawling,

. . . etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

The reporters sit silent.

HECHT Read another.

Sandburg pulls a second paper from a pocket stuffed with newspaper clippings, paper scraps, and poems he is working on.

SANDBURG Three muskrats swim west in the Des Plaines river . . .

The tableau goes dark with Sandburg still reading.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR The boy had such an intriguing voice I was pulled to his lines like a fish yanked to the pier. So I convinced my editor to hire him. Big mistake. Henry Justin Smith, the managing editor, couldn’t figure out what to do with him, so he put him on the labor beat and sent him off to an AFL convention in Minneapolis.

SCENE ELEVEN - DAILY NEWS NEWSROOM

VIDEO: Daily News Newsroom. Teletypes clacking. Two editors send off stories by pneumatic tubes (10 sec). Dissolve to wire room backdrop. Smith and City Editor Brooks Beiler enter with their noses buried in wire copy. 15.

SMITH Any word from Sandburg?

BEITLER Not a peep. But I’m sure we’ll get something. The AP says the delegates are fighting in the aisles.

SMITH And you sent Sandburg?

BEITLER He’s a Day Book alum. He knows those people.

They go off. Fade down and up to show another day has passed.

SMITH Still no word from Sandburg?

BEITLER Nah. But Kaiser Wilhelm is on the move again. We’ve got plenty of war news for the front page.

SMITH We’ve always got war news. But we don’t always have our own reporter on the scene.

Fade down and up to show another day has passed. SFX: Bing, bing, bing, bing to indicate a big story is moving. Beitler rips it from the machine.

BEITLER

(Reads) Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat! The AP says they’re shooting each other up in Minneapolis. Some delegate shot a guy on stage, then a dozen more pulled out their guns. Five people are in the hospital.

SMITH And what’s Sandburg reporting?

BEITLER Nada.

SMITH Then tell that ne’er do well to get his ass home. So I can fire him!

A copyboy comes over to hand Beitler a telegram. 16.

BEITLER Wait a minute. We’ve got something. (He reads it and frowns.) It’s from Sandburg.

SMITH What’s he say?

BEITLER “Dear boss. Can’t leave now. Everything too important and exciting – Sandburg.”

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR While we romped around our little playground in Chicago, the world was engaged in a grand conflagration we called The Great War. History has since renamed it World War I because an even greater war was to come. I will speak more about that later, but I can tell you that when the Great War ended in 1918, the Daily News, for reasons that still perplex me, decided to send me to Berlin as a foreign correspondent.

SCENE TWELVE - BERLIN

VIDEO: Clips of street scenes in Berlin. Men in fedoras, fashionable ladies, breadlines, goose-stepping officers. Dissolve to scenes of debauchery in an old style cabaret.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) The Germany I found was a disheartened nation. After Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated, the country found itself at odds over who would control the empire he left behind. Out-of- commission officers, still in uniform, goose-stepped through the streets or hung out in the clubs, their noses stuffed with cocaine, eyeing the perfumed ladies while the remnants of their old army lined up at soup kitchens for a handout.

Scrim shows military men in the streets.

They called themselves the Freikorps, a loose collection of militarists who sold themselves to The West as Germany’s last defense against the Bolsheviks. But they were, more often than not, a lawless mob trying to salvage the old order from a popular revolt.

Scrim dissolves to a snowy day in Weimar, Germany. Scenes of a chaotic convention.

HECHT NARRATOR I went to Weimar in the Spring of 1919 to cover the first assembly of the new German Republic. It was a chaotic first attempt to replace a century old empire with a democracy – a job made no easier by hyper-inflation, exorbitant reparations and para-militaries on all sides. Sure enough, no sooner had the assembly disbanded than the Bolsheviks staged a revolt in Munich. 17.

Scrim dissolves into fighting in the streets. SFX: Sound of gunfire, screams.

I went there when the rival factions––all of which seemed to have socialist in their name––were staging competing rallies. I was drawn in by the idealism of the Independent Socialist Party, but it was hard not to notice the short, comical leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. With the symbol of his newly formed Nazi party behind him, Adolph Hitler was drawing ugly crowds with his fiery words.

Hitler stands in front of a Nazi flag at a rally on February 24, 1920.

HITLER Our swastika represents the victory of Aryan man and the victory of the idea of creative work, which is eternally anti-Semitic and will always be anti-Semitic. (Applause.) The Jews have produced the profiteers and Bolsheviks responsible for the defeat of the fatherland and the strangulation of our economy. They are bacilli infecting the arts, the press, and the government. Pogroms are not good enough for them. The final aim must unquestionably be the irrevocable removal of the Jews. (Applause.) I am and will remain a German national socialist. I have my program in front of me, and I will pursue it to the last spark of my strength and the last breath in my lungs. Germany awake!

AUDIO: The crowd erupts in a long, resounding, and frightening cheer followed by German band music that fades with the lights.

HECHT NARRATOR Suddenly, the world was a lot more serious place.

End of Act I 18.

Act II

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR I can’t believe I’ve gone a whole act without mentioning my favorite topic –– women. I have loved many women and married two of them. And all I can tell you is it’s complicated.

Scrim shows a portrait of Marie Armstrong.

My first wife Marie was what you’d call a real prize. I first glimpsed her in the newsroom, another of Mr. Eastman’s unlikely finds, reading poetry at her desk––in French, no less––and I felt like my Hamlet had found his Ophelia.

She came from a wealthy family, went to the finest schools––and laughed at all my jokes. Inside of a year, we were married. I was 21, still on the first rung of the literary ladder, when my first daughter Teddy came along.

Scrim shows Marie at a dinner party in a lavish apartment.

Marie took to domesticity like a cat to a window sill, as long as it came with a cook, a maid, a nanny, and a membership at the Saddle and Cycle Club. Her dinner parties were legend, her tastes impeccable, and the bills through the roof.

Scrim shows house in North Shore.

When we got back from Europe, she insisted we buy a house on the North Shore as big as a small hotel. I found myself living a $1,000-a-week life on a $100-a-week reporter’s salary, so it wasn’t hard to leave the Daily News when my friend Richard Little invited me to join him in a fast-growing new business –– public relations.

SCENE ONE - PR OFFICE

VIDEO (3 sec) of 1920s LaSalle Street entrance to the Willard office building. Dissolve to interior. Hecht sits at his desk casually folding a sheet of paper into a paper airplane. Little stands beside him trying get him to focus on business.

19.

HECHT NARRATOR Business was booming in America. Corporations that had grown rich on the war were paying top dollar to get their names in the newspapers, and nobody was better at it than me.

LITTLE Remember, the meeting with Chrysler is at three. We’ve got Alcoa tomorrow at 10––

HECHT Why does a mining company need publicity?

LITTLE Ever hear of aluminum foil? Wave of the future . . . How are we coming on the Kiwanis Club parade?

Hecht takes his now-folded paper airplane and sails it through the office.

HECHT Everything is on track. I’ve got three bands, ten floats––Oh yeah, and I borrowed a circus elephant from the Ringlings. All they need to do is to supply the Kiwanis.

LITTLE What if they can’t get a city permit?

HECHT

(shrugs) It’s news, buddy. Just spell the name right.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR The job left me a lot of free time. I finally finished Eric Dorn, my first novel. When it came out, the critics in New York heralded the arrival of “the biggest luminary on the literary firmament.”

Scrim shows Covici’s bookstore. Dissolve to Schlogl’s.

I wouldn’t go so far, but I was a pretty popular fellow down at Covici’s bookstore and, of course, Schlogl’s, the bar across from the Daily News. And I would do anything to keep from going home to the suburbs.

SCENE TWO - DAILY NEWS NEWSROOM

Daily News newsroom. Hecht and Smith stand in front of the scrim with Hecht doing all 20. the talking.

HECHT NARRATOR After a year or so, I convinced the Daily News to let me write a column I called “1001 Afternoons in Chicago.”

As Hecht speaks, his arms sweep through the air throwing images of the columns he is suggesting onto the scrim.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) Just under the surface of what we call news, I told them, lay the stuff of literature. It wasn’t hidden in remote places but walking down the street, peering from skyscraper windows and sunning itself in parks and boulevards. I would put them all together and paint the city as a vast, broken mirror giving back garbled images of itself.

The canvas Hecht has painted on the scrim shatters into a photo of Astor Street.

HECHT NARRATOR The column was an instant success, but I have to admit I spent a lot of those afternoons in a little apartment on Astor Street that I shared with the woman who would become my second wife.

Scrim shows formal portrait of Rose Caylor.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) Rose Caylor was 22, and as different from Marie as you can get. She’d come to America from Russia when she was nine, taught herself English by the age of 11, attended the University of Chicago, and was a rising star on the Daily News. Her grandfather had been a rabbi in the little village of Dubinki, and her mother’s memories of fighting the Czar with pike poles were ingrained in her soul. So too were the joyous Russian folk songs she would break into at the drop of a hat.

SCENE THREE - ASTOR STREET

Rose Caylor sits at her typewriter. Hecht enters. He kisses her and they sit back down at their dueling typewriters.

HECHT NARRATOR When she was thinking, she held her chin tucked down and her eyes upturned, like a matador contemplating a bull. When she was riled, she might pass for an Indian uprising. 21.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) Rose and I were two people alive and separate in each other’s presence. I would churn out my stories and she would write hers. But she was always there to read my manuscripts and, without hesitation, offer her corrections.

ROSE

(looks up) Were you down at the News today? I didn’t see you.

HECHT Only to drop off my column. I had to pick up some cloisonné floor lamps and run them out to Marie.

ROSE And are you going home tonight?

HECHT I haven’t decided.

ROSE This is getting tiresome.

HECHT I have a lot going on, Rose. My play’s opening this week. And Covici has offered me a contract for three more books. Let’s enjoy what we have, for as long as we have it.

ROSE Come on, Ben. You can’t keep burning the candle on both ends. Someday, you’re going to have to blow one out.

Rose looks at him, her chin tucked down and her eyes upturned like a matador contemplating a bull.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR As I bounced back and forth between Marie and Rose, I was becoming famous–– not only for my column, but my indiscretions. I had in my desk drawer a sexual fantasy I’d written called Fantazia Mallare about a menage a trois between an insane artist, a gypsy girl and a black hunchbacked dwarf named Goliath.

Interior of Covici’s bookstore. In front, a tableau of writers around a table. 22.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) One day down at Covici’s, we were sitting around debating the new Society for the Suppression of Vice in Chicago––needless to say, we were all against it––when Covic said our first book together should be Fantasia Mallare –– just to tweak their noses.

One by one, the writers go off. Hecht remains, scribbling on his ever present lapboard.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) “This dark and wayward book is affectionately dedicated to my enemies,” I wrote. “The curious ones who take fanatic pride in disliking me, the baffling ones who remain enthusiastically ignorant of my existence, and the moral ones upon whom Beauty exercises a lascivious and corrupting influence.”

SCENE FOUR - COURTROOM

Fade up on an empty courtroom. Hecht paces nervously while his lawyer, Clarence Darrow, shuffles paper.

HECHT NARRATOR My enemies, it turns out, were more numerous than I thought. The critics gave the book the cold shoulder. The Daily News cancelled my column. The only people who cared were the U.S postal inspectors, who charged us with conspiracy to circulate obscene material.

HECHT It’s empty. I thought there would be more people.

DARROW The practice of law doesn’t always benefit from the bright light of public scrutiny. This could work in our favor, Ben.

HECHT NARRATOR I hired Clarence Darrow to represent me, but an empty courtroom was obviously a waste of his talents.

HECHT Where are the newspapers? This trial is made in the shade for the Daily News.

DARROW I think you burned that bridge.

HECHT What should I do? 23.

DARROW Cut a deal. They’re offering a nolo contendere plea with a $1,000 fine.

HECHT Admit I’m guilty?

DARROW Think of it as Latin for “just kidding.” Take the deal and live to fight another day.

Hecht hesitates, then steps before the judge. Nods yes. They walk off.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR I started my own magazine to keep publishing my column. But I’d pretty much run out my string in Chicago. I left my wife and daughter, my grand piano, my cloisonné floor lamps, the Lillehan rugs and three thousand books to move in with the “other woman.” In the new world order, I’d come to realize marriage has a flyaway roof and an exit march. And divorce is more like a hurricane than a cleansing bath.

SCENE FIVE - UNION STATION

A Union Station platform. Hecht and Rose stand with luggage at their side.

HECHT NARRATOR I was 30 years old, and it was time to put an end to this game of pretending the city panorama fascinated me as it once did. My world was no longer in Chicago’s streets and friendships. It was at my side and I could carry it away with me. But as we pulled out of the station, the Herald-Examiner gave us a nice farewell salute.

News box inset zooms full screen to display the Herald-Examiner front page headline:

FLAGS AT HALF-MAST. BEN HECHT IS LEAVING CHICAGO.

Fade to black.

VIDEO of 1924 Greenwich Village (13 sec). Hustle, bustle, slow push into a tenement on 14th street.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) We lived on the top floor of a tenement on West 14th Street. Around us whirled the spokes of a new city. Street vendors hawked their wares on the sidewalk, old Jews played pinochle in the park. 24.

ROSE (OS)

(panting) How many more floors?

HECHT (OS) Just one, dear.

ROSE (OS) That’s what you said at the last one.

SCENE SIX - 14TH STREET

Hecht steps through the doorway into a sparsely furnished apartment carrying suitcases. Rose follows lugging a steamer trunk.

ROSE Man, that hall stinks.

HECHT NARRATOR Rose was out every day exploring the neighborhood while I stayed home to write. And for nearly a year, I made nothing.

Rose opens the door to welcome Mac McEvoy and Charlie MacArthur. Before it closes, Herman Mankiewicz and two local merchants––Hasidic Jews in beards–– slip in.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) Old friends from Chicago came by to see us. Mac McEvoy, Gene Fowler and Charlie MacArthur. New friends like the effervescent Herman Mankiewicz kept the good times rolling. And, of course, Rose invited her new friends from the neighborhood.

With Hecht on the violin, Rose sings. Friends and neighbors clap along. The song ends. Hecht passes among them pouring drinks.

ROSE Pour one for Moishe, will you dear? You know Moishe. He has the dry cleaning store down the block.

HECHT Of course. I’m there all the time. 25.

ROSE

(pointing to Herman Mankewicz) You should get Mankie to go. He needs a good pressing.

MACARTHUR The day Herman Mankiewicz starts pressing his suits is the day you know he’s got too much money.

MANKIEWICZ

(to MacArthur) You don’t need a dry cleaner, Charlie. You can just have your butler do it.

ROSE Play nice, boys. (To Hecht) And Ben, let’s hear another.

Hecht plays his violin again.

Fade black.

VIDEO: Wild New York (43 sec)

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(spaced to accompany images) The New York I found in 1924 had the air of a fin de siecle city––even though the siecle wasn’t half over. It was a city that doted on its own charms . . . its chorus girls and Mad Hatters . . . its bootleggers . . . its sports . . . and its wags . . . It was a bold town devoted to pleasure –– particularly the pleasure of not giving a damn.

When I ventured out of my cubby hole, I noticed its skyscrapers were full of magazine offices and publishing houses. . . Its music and theaters came in seasons . . . And, curiously, most of the theaters and publishing houses were run by Jews . . . Jews gave most of its concerts, wrote a good share of its plays, staged New York’s most elegant soirees and comprised nearly all its laughmakers: The Marx Brothers . . . Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny . . . And the indefatigable Fanny Brice.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Behind the footlights capered a great Jewish cast of clowns and troubadours who were not only entertaining a nation but shaping its wit and its rowdy flair of dialogue. In their presence, Jewishness was not Jewishness. It was a fascinating Americanism. (MORE) 26. HECHT NARRATOR (CONT'D)

But I quickly learned it was not enough to be in New York, you had to be seen. So I joined the parade of celebrities who lived each day so they might merit an item in the gossip columns.

VIDEO: Algonquin Club

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) Charlie had fallen in love with a woman named Dorothy Parker who belonged to a round table of literary lights at the Algonquin Hotel. They were among the most convivial and witty people I ever met. But Charlie would soon have to move on when their affair led to an abortion – prompting her to quip, “Serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard.”

Spotlight.

For sheer entertainment, you couldn’t do better than to garner an invitation to a party by Fanny Brice.

SCENE SEVEN - FANNY BRICE PARTY

Fanny Brice’s living room. Harpo Marx cavorts around a woman in a chair. MacArthur is working his charm on the actress Helen Hayes. Hecht stands next to Mankiewicz. Brice (“fastidiously rigged out and bejeweled, manicured, scented and vivid”) approaches.

MANKIEWICZ You’ve done it again, Fanny.

BRICE What’s that?

MANKIEWICZ Another fabulous party. What’s your formula? I’d like to bottle it.

HECHT Fanny is one of a kind. You can’t bottle authenticity.

BRICE You got that right, kid, although you put it a little fancy. Just be yourself.

HECHT Be careful giving that advice to Mankie here. You don’t know what he’ll do. 27.

MANKIEWICZ Say Fanny, have you ever thought about being in the movies? I’ve got an offer to go out to California to write up my Marine memoirs. What do you know about Hollywood?

BRICE I know they don’t talk in the movies. It’s all silent. Imagine me getting on stage without talking.

HECHT You don’t have to talk. You’ll dazzle ‘em with your presence.

BRICE Harpo. He can talk just by mushing his face around. If I tried that, my make-up would crack.

They laugh.

BRICE (CONT’D) But you give it a shot, Mankie. The way you write might be perfect for those little cards they stick in between the scenes.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR After a year in New York, I’d written more than 50 stories and started two novels. But every dime I made was going back to Marie in alimony. Then McEvoy came to the rescue.

SCENE EIGHT - WOODSTOCK

VIDEO of country house outside Woodstock. Dissolving images of Hecht and friends in Woodstock.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) He offered to let us use his cottage in Woodstock. I planned to hunker down there and finish Count Bruga while Rose worked on her own first novel–– a particularly vicious portrait of Marie. Until our friends came to visit.

MacArthur was the first to arrive. Mankiewicz came next, lugging two suitcases filled with Scotch. And the Marx brothers –– Harpo, Chico, Groucho and Zeppo –– showed up at all hours with a cavalcade of wives, girlfriends and children.

Dissolve to interior of cottage. Hecht is sitting with his pen and lapboard. MacArthur paces about. They spitball ideas back and forth, then retreat to play backgammon at a table on the side. 28.

HECHT NARRATOR Charlie stayed on to write our first play together. The Moonshooter was a comedy about a man who rescues a woman off death row then trundles her off to Honduras where they blunder into a war involving a coffee warehouse, the British navy and a California sheriff.

HECHT Why are we sending them to Honduras?

MACARTHUR We need a scene on a boat.

HECHT I’ve never been on a boat.

MACARTHUR A big boat. A luxury liner. Fancy people walking the decks with parasols.

HECHT That’s a lot of people for one little scene.

MACARTHUR How else are they going to get to Honduras?

HECHT Why not Indiana? It’s closer.

MACARTHUR And lose the British navy? No way. Just put it in. We can always change it later.

Hecht scribbles it down. Both stand and walk to the backgammon table.

MACARTHUR (CONT’D) Your move.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR The writing took two weeks. I still believe it was the best work we’ve ever done. When we finished, Charlie was so excited he got us an audience with Sam Harris, the Broadway producer. We went to see him in his Long Island home. After one reading, he pronounced it stage-ready––if we rewrote the last act.

Grand Central station. Hecht and MacArthur disembark full of energy. Dissolve to photo 29. of Times Square.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) To celebrate, we hopped a train into the city to see Mankiewicz. Always a bad idea.

SCENE NINE - STAGE DOOR ALLEY

Hecht, MacArthur and Mankiewicz sit on crates in a stage door alley off Broadway. They are drunk, and still drinking. Mankiewicz pours another round.

MANKIEWICZ

(offers toast) And the award for best play by two people who don’t know what they are talking about goes to . . . Moonshooter!

MACARTHUR

(holds up glass) By Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht.

HECHT You mean Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.

MACARTHUR Who cares? We’re going to be rich.

HECHT I’ll settle for breaking even. We still don’t have money for an apartment this fall.

MACARTHUR Don’t get anything too small. You’ll regret it when the moola starts rolling in.

HECHT You know the biggest problem with money?

MANKIEWICZ What’s that Ben?

HECHT You have to keep track of it. I love the writing. It’s the paperwork that kills you. First you have to pitch the story. 30.

MACARTHUR

(Interjects) I’m great at that.

HECHT Then you have to get them to pay you for it. But the worst part? Getting them to pay you when they say they’re gonna pay you.

MANKIEWICZ

(Nods agreement) Cause your creditors sure aren’t going to wait.

HECHT Yup, the problem is Cash Flow Management. They teach that in all the business schools these days.

MACARTHUR Is that right, professor? (Pause.) Why don’t you just get an accountant.

HECHT And who’s going to watch him? What if he’s skimming? It’s a slippery slope.

MACARTHUR That’s why you have lawyers.

HECHT Like I said. It’s a slippery slope.

They laugh. Mankiewicz circulates with a bottle pouring another round. Hecht suddenly goes silent.

HECHT (CONT’D) You were kidding about the byline, right? It’s Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur.

MACARTHUR Tell you what, we’ll flip to see who goes first.

HECHT Okay by me.

Hecht pulls out a coin and flips it. But Mankewicz slides his foot over it before they can see the results. 31.

MANKIEWICZ It’s a moot point until the show is mounted. (He picks up the coin and stuffs it in his pocket.) I’ll tell you who won when you sign the contract.

MACARTHUR

(Exclaims) We’re going to have a show on Broadway. Can you believe it?

HECHT If we rewrite the end.

MACARTHUR

(Pulls out his copy of script) No problem. I know what he wants. Look. (He flips the script open and points at a page.) Here. I can move this around . . . And we don’t have to kill off the girl.

HECHT

(Pulls out his copy and peruses it) I’m thinking she turns on them both . . .

MACARTHUR . . . And runs off to New York.

They laugh, pull their crates closer and start collaborating on the rewrite right there.

MANKIEWICZ Okay, okay. You’ve got time enough for this back in Woodstock. Let’s go celebrate in style. Twenty-one, anyone?

HECHT There’s never enough time. The sooner we finish, the sooner we get paid.

MACARTHUR Well, that’s not going to happen tonight. Mankie’s right. Let’s hit the town.

Mankiewicz gathers the wine bottle and throws his arms over their shoulders. They both rise, leaving their scripts on the ground. 32.

MANKIEWICZ

(buoyant) The three Musketeers ride again. Athos, Porthos, and Aramis . . . Onward!

MACARTHUR Who you calling Ath-hole?

HECHT Just don’t think because you’re holding the coin, you get a share of the byline.

They exit arm in arm. The empty stage is littered with the crates, bottles, cups and scripts. THE STAGE DOOR JANITOR enters with a broom and scoops everything into the sack.

He exits.

Hecht and MacArthur come running back in a panic.

MACARTHUR/HECHT

(In unison) Where’s my script?

HECHT It’s gone, Charlie. All that work. Gone.

MACARTHUR Don’t worry. We can work off the carbon.

HECHT Your copy was the carbon.

MACARTHUR Well, Sam will have his copy.

HECHT Sam doesn’t have a copy. We didn’t give him one.

MACARTHUR You mean these were the only two copies?

HECHT Unless you’ve got a photographic memory.

MACARTHUR I remember most of it. All the good lines, at least. 33.

HECHT You mean your lines. This is a disaster. What are we going to do? Does the theater have a lost and found?

MACARTHUR For coats and gloves. Not plays, for God’s sake.

HECHT So what are we going to do?

MACARTHUR

(putting on an optimistic face) We’ll just write another one.

Fade to black.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR When we got back to Woodstock, I poked around some old drafts, hoping I could conjure up the excitement. But the moment was gone . . . And so was the money. That’s when McEvoy came to the rescue again.

VIDEO: Miami video (25 sec) set to Al Jolson’s “Miami.” 1925.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(after first lines of song establish) He invited Rose and I down to Miami on the pretext we’d be doing a little work on a script. But the place was a boomtown––and nobody was doing much work at all.

SCENE TEN - MIAMI BEACH

End of video is freeze of Ort billboard for Key Largo. Hecht and McEvoy enter in white suits and panama hats. Rose in a summer dress and flower hat tags along.

MCEVOY

(looking around.) This place is a goldmine, I tell you. People are snapping up lots like they’re beach chairs. We should get some, flip ‘em and we’ll all be rich.

HECHT Only one problem with that, Mac, we’d have to buy them. And that takes money. 34.

ROSE And those beach chairs are swarming with mosquitos.

HECHT Why don’t we just offer our services to somebody who’s already doing the development?

Hecht gestures to the Ort billboard.

HECHT (CONT’D) Like Ort here. Let’s do something we know. Promotion. Let him build the houses. We’ll create the demand.

MCEVOY I’ll give him a call.

HECHT Key Largo. Sounds like a pirate hideout.

ROSE Just remember. Don’t spend any money.

SCENE ELEVEN - ORT’S OFFICE

Ort Company offices look out on Lincoln Avenue. Hecht, McEvoy and Rose enter. Charles Ort, a portly, gregarious salesman, rises from his desk.

ORT Gentlemen. Ma’am. What can I do for you today? Are you looking for a little land in Florida’s newest, most luxurious beachfront community? Maybe adjoining lots? Key Largo is a treasure waiting to be discovered..

MCEVOY

(shakes hands) Mr. Ort, I’m Mac McEvoy. We spoke on the phone.

HECHT A treasure, you say. Interesting way of putting it.

MCEVOY This is my business partner, Ben Hecht, and his wife Rose.

ORT I’m sorry. Thank you for coming in. 35.

HECHT What if there were a real treasure on that island? People would come from all over to find it.

ORT It’s just a figure of speech meaning sun, fun and opportunity.

HECHT How do you know? There were pirates all over this place a century ago. There could be millions of dollars of treasure buried in that sand––doubloons, diamonds, gold.

MCEVOY Mr. Hecht has a great imagination.

HECHT All I’m saying is, without some distinguishing trait, your island is just another spit of land on the ocean. And as far as I can see, you got a lot of those down here.

ORT Key Largo is more than that. We’ve got casinos and resort hotels planned. All we need is critical mass, a couple brave pioneers to put up the first sub-divisions.

HECHT Pioneers? Sounds like work. You don’t need pioneers, you need dreamers. But you’ve got to plant the seed. Or in this case, a little treasure.

MCEVOY Mr. Hecht travels in some very heady circles in New York––

HECHT Don’t sell the steak. Sell the sizzle. We could organize a treasure hunt for you.

ORT How are you going to do that?

HECHT

(Enthused) We’ll make it an adventure. It’ll be fun. We’ll make everyone think all their friends are in on it. And if they don’t sign up, they’ll miss out.

MCEVOY I know a lot of people who’ll come for the fun of it. Sports figures, Broadway producers, society matrons–– 36.

HECHT We’ll rent a yacht and throw a party, hand them a map with Captain Kidd’s secret code.

McEvoy and Hecht are now bouncing ideas off one another in rapid succession.

MCEVOY But it’s got to be exclusive––

HECHT Absolutely.

MCEVOY No more than 50 couples. First come, first serve.

HECHT Is Kaiser Wilhelm’s yacht still in dry dock over in Jersey?

MCEVOY I can look into that.

HECHT Then we’ll publicize the hell out of it. My old legman, Henry Luce, just started Time. He’ll do a story.

MCEVOY And Harold Ross finally got out the first issue of The New Yorker. A society treasure hunt? This is perfect for him.

HECHT

(Chuckles.) We’ll send out press releases to every paper in the country. People will be chomping at the bit to come to Key Largo. (Pause) Can we change the name to Pirate’s Cove?

ORT Sounds great. Only one problem. We don’t have a treasure.

HECHT Leave that to me.

ORT And how many lots you want for this? One, two? You want a percentage? 37.

HECHT I’m a cash man. I was thinking--

MCEVOY $5,000 a week . . . Half down . . . Plus expenses. We’re going to need an office, desks, the yacht –– don’t forget the yacht.

ORT Enough. I get it.

HECHT Think of it this way. It’s cheaper than advertising. And who’s to say if you find one treasure, there’s not more? This is going to put Key Largo on the map.

ORT $5,000 a week?

MCEVOY For 10 weeks . . . Plus expenses.

ORT I like it. But I’ll have to run it by my board.

MCEVOY We’re ready when you are. Just say the word.

VIDEO footage of the Fleetwood Hotel.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) We took a suite in the Fleetwood Hotel. While Rose spent her days on the beach making new friends, Mac and I turned out brochures extolling the new Riviera.

Dissolve to promo materials.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) We took some cheesecake shots of girls on the beach and did with graphics what reality can never do –– stimulate the imagination.

Spotlight.

I would have done the job for a couple thousand a week. But McEvoy subscribed to the salesman’s code: Figure out what your services are worth, add up all your costs, allow for a reasonable profit––then look your client in the eye and double it.

And I’m glad he did. (MORE) 38. HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) Pretty soon, I was walking around Miami with so much cash in my pocket, I made my last alimony payment to Marie and took Rose down to the justice of the peace to get married the same day.

Everything was going great, until it wasn’t. There was a reason the Kaiser’s yacht was still in dry dock––something about war reparations––and the good ladies of Long Island had even more spectacular parties to attend than ours. Plus, real treasure is hard to come by.

SCENE TWELVE - HAVANA

Scrim shows opulent palace room in Havana. Keating and the Cuban president in a braided military uniform are talking. The president nods, he opens a treasure chest on the table to show the doubloons, and they shake hands.

HECHT NARRATOR Fortunately, I met a man named Keating, who headed up the Florida Ku Klux Klan. He was on his way to set up a new chapter in Cuba, and he somehow convinced the Cuban president to loan us some Spanish doubloons. Don’t ask me how. I didn’t want to know.

VIDEO shows a boat approaching Key Largo.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(over matching images) We took the treasure over to Key Largo on Ort’s yacht. My first view of the island showed our lies were not big enough. A few beach acres had been cleared and a wooden “construction headquarters” put up . . . A steam shovel lay about as if it had been abandoned by a routed army . . . And the beachfront promenade ran about 200 feet before it ended abruptly in a jungle . . . Snakes hung coiled from tree branches. Monkeys screeched overhead. A swarm of bugs, some as large as frogs, darkened the air.

Hecht, McEvoy and Cap’n Loftus (”with a droopy tobacco-stained mustache”) silently plod along carrying shovels and the treasure chest.

HECHT NARRATOR We found an old beachcomber, Cap’n Loftus, to help bury the treasure. Two hours into the jungle, we found the perfect spot. I buried the chest and scattered a few doubloons around the dirt. I’d staged photos before, so I knew what would catch a photographer eye. When we got back, I wired 200 city editors to ask how many words they would take on Cap’n Loftus finding of a half million dollars worth of pirate gold. Before I could get the story out of my typewriter, reporters from six states were clamoring to come down. (MORE) 39. HECHT NARRATOR (CONT'D)

VIDEO: An armada of small boats steam toward Key Largo.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) Soon enough, crafts of all sizes were chugging down the coast, their holds filled with tents and dynamite sticks. Ort let them put up a tent city. But before the Argonauts could dig, they had to buy a lot. And the Key Largo Company sold a million dollars of land in the first week.

Unfortunately, other forces were at work––chief among them, the hurricane of 1926––and no amount of imagination could hide the fact that the Florida land boom was about to go bust.

SCENE THIRTEEN - BEEKMAN PLACE

Hecht is lying in bed in a robe. Snow can be seen falling outside the window. SFX buzzer. Rose gets up to answer the door.

HECHT NARRATOR Back in New York, I was lying in bed––broke again––when a Western Union carrier arrived at the door. The Florida money was gone, I was two months behind on the rent, and Count Bruga was not exactly jumping off the bookstore shelves. The telegram was from Mankiewicz.

Scrim shows Mankiewicz telegram.

MANKIEWICZ (V.O.)

WILL YOU ACCEPT THREE HUNDRED PER WEEK TO WORK FOR PARAMOUNT PICTURES. ALL EXPENSES PAID. THE THREE HUNDRED IS PEANUTS. MILLIONS ARE TO BE GRABBED OUT HERE AND YOUR ONLY COMPETITION IS IDIOTS. DON’T LET THIS GET AROUND.

Hecht bolts out of bed and disappears.

HECHT NARRATOR How could I refuse?

Fade to black.

SCENE FOURTEEN - BEVERLY WILSHIRE HOTEL

Beverly Wilshire Hotel exterior. 40.

HECHT NARRATOR I loved Hollywood with all its claptrap splendors. I know I once wrote the movies reminded me of a lady suffering from adenoids about to be ravished by an unshaven fellow in a Mackinaw. But Mankie got me an audience with B.P. Schulberg, the head of production at Paramount Studios, who promised me $10,000 for the right script.

Dissolve to interior bar. Hecht enters and finds Mankiewicz at a table having a cocktail.

HECHT What do you suppose he’s looking for?

MANKIEWICZ A hit.

HECHT I don’t know how to write a hit.

MANKIEWICZ It’s easy. All you have to remember are three things. The hero is always clean cut. The heroines are all virgins. And the villain can be anything you want. He can lie, cheat, steal, shtoop women, or whip his servants –– as long as you shoot him in the end.

HECHT Easy for you to say. You’ve done this before.

MANKIEWICZ You’ll get the hang of it. (He looks at his watch.) But I have to go. There’s a thing out in Malibu I have to make an appearance at.

HECHT Can I come? I’m always up for a party.

MANKIEWICZ I don’t know. It’s one of those Hollywood carousels of stars. You’re better off skipping it. Once you get on that merry-go-round, it’s hard to get off. You’re in their orbit, which isn’t so bad, as long as you realize they’re the sun and you’re just some piece of crap spinning around the edges.

Mankiewicz gets up to leave.

MANKIEWICZ (CONT’D) Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.

Mankiewicz goes off. Hecht takes another sip of his drink. But another shady character 41. standing in the background catches Hecht’s attention. He’s in full Mafia regalia – pin- striped suit, tie pin, handkerchief in his pocket. Hecht does a double take.

HECHT Stoolie Don? Donnie DiMico, is that you?

STOOLIE DON Hecht?

HECHT Hey, Stoolie. Come on over. What are you doing here?

Stoolie Don, now recognizing the face, come over enthusiastically.

STOOLIE DON I should ask you the same question.

HECHT I’m just trying to expand my repertoire. Get in the movie business.

STOOLIE DON Me too. What are you trying to be? Actor? Director?

HECHT Writer. And you?

STOOLIE DON Anything they want. Mostly, I’m on the producing end. Financing and distribution. I do a lot of troubleshooting for my boss Knuckles. You remember Knuckles.

HECHT Who can forget Knuckles Houlihan? How’s he like Joliet?

STOOLIE DON That was a misunderstand. It’s all good, now. All good.

HECHT Knuckles was a charmer, wasn’t he. Have a seat. Tell me what happened.

STOOLIE DON

(Looks around.) Sure. What are you drinking? 42.

HECHT Scotch and soda.

STOOLIE DON I’ll have one of those. You buying?

Lights fade on Hecht and Stoolie Don in animated conversation.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR By the next morning, I had my story. Ten days later, Schulberg had his script.

VIDEO: FILM CLIP of Underworld (40 sec). High points of the movie -- with insert cards.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed with movie dialog) It didn’t have any heroes or heroines. . . It was based on Knuckles –– although I changed his name to Bull Weed –– and I gave him an ingenue to fall in love with named Feathers McCoy . . . I didn’t know what would become of it . . . I was making it up as I went along . . . All I knew for sure was that I was going to kill off as many thugs as I could and, for the sake of convention, old Bull was going to get it in the end.

Scrim shows “The End.”

HECHT NARRATOR When Underworld opened in Times Square, I almost vomited.

Scrim shows shadowy scenes video of dark alleys and fog.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) I’d written it for my friend Arthur Rosson to direct, but Paramount gave it to this kid Jonas Sternberg––Excuse me, Josef Von Sternberg, as he now likes to be called––who filled it with so many smoky doorways, I thought I was swimming in an ashtray. My screenplay opened on a bright note. “A million alarm clocks were ringing in a million bedrooms.”

Dissolve to opening text.

His version was: “A great city in the dead of night––streets lonely, moon- flooded––buildings as empty as the cliff-dwellings of a forgotten age.” 43.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR How much schmaltzier can you get? But the pay was good. And something was about to happen that would change everything.

Sound.

Intermission 44.

Act III

VIDEO: Scarface clip. (48 sec) A rat-a-tat-tat condensation of the whole movie into car chases and gunfire -- where the villain gets it in the end.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) After the success of Underworld, gangster movies were all the rage.

Scrim shows posters for Little Caesar, Public Enemy.

Little Caesar. Public Enemy. I’d had my day in that sun. But for $1,000-a-day, Howard Hughes convinced me to write one more – about my favorite gangster, Al Capone.

Scarface lobby card.

One of the oddities of making a movie about gangsters is the extraordinary interest they take in how they are portrayed. Before the script was finished, Capone sent over two of his henchman to make sure I wasn’t writing anything that would damage his reputation. Then after the movie came out, he ordered up his own private copy to show his friends.

Dissolve to theater marquee photo with subtitle.

When Scarface opened, the morals police on the Hays Commission were so put off by the violence they insisted we subtitle it Shame of the Nation. But I didn’t care. By then, I was swimming in movie offers.

Zoom in on photo of idyllic Nyack, New York.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) To get over my disappointment with Underworld, Charlie invited me to join him in Nyack to try re-constructing Moonshooter. It was a fool’s errand. All we did was sit around telling jokes about our mutual love––Chicago journalism.

SCENE ONE - NYACK WOMEN’S COLLEGE

Hecht and MacArthur in an empty dorm cafeteria.

HECHT NARRATOR And that’s how . . . In some cafeteria at some abandoned women’s college we wrote Front Page. (Pause.) But the truth is it practically wrote itself.

MacArthur paces about. They are bouncing lines off each other. 45.

HECHT We need Hildy to say something that puts this whole journalism thing in perspective.

MacArthur snaps to attention with a character in mind.

MACARTHUR How about . . . ‘Journalists! Peeking through keyholes. Running after fire engines like a lot of coach dogs! Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them what they think of Mussolini?’

HECHT

(picks up on his energy) ‘Stealing pictures from old ladies of their daughters that got raped.’

MACARTHUR ‘A lot of lousy, daffy buttinskis swilling around with holes in their pants, borrowing nickels off office boys!’

HECHT That’s good. (Writes, looks up. Back in character.) ‘I don’t need anybody to tell me about newspapers. I’ve been a newspaperman for fifteen years.’

MACARTHUR ‘They’re a cross between a bootlegger and a whore.’

HECHT ‘And what do you get for it? You wind up on the copy desk, some gray-headed hump- backed slob, dodging garnishee notices from your ex-wife.’

MacArthur laughs.

MACARTHUR Perfect. Write that down.

Scrim shows opening night on Broadway for Front Page.

HECHT NARRATOR Front Page opened on Broadway in August 1928 and was an immediate hit. Charlie was down there every night. He loved the theater. I myself never put much stock in it. There are times when I think it’s an important form of human expression, and other times when I think it’s just a nursery for mind games.

Spotlight. 46.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) The truth is that a playwright is seldom part of the theater. Watch an old stage doorman letting the author in backstage and you can see how dubiously persona non grata he is. In his chair, writing away, he casts, acts, directs, runs the lights and paints the scenery. He weeps, chuckles, takes bows, writes reviews, and makes curtain speeches. But when the play goes up, he’s a Peeping Tom watching his sweetheart in the arms of another. It belongs to everyone connected with it more than him, chiefly the actors.

VIDEO shows classic shot of train traveling across the country to Hollywood. SFX: train whistle. Movie posters flit across the scrim – ending on Twentieth Century.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed) I was more impressed by Hollywood. Now that actors could actually say the words you wrote, there was no end to the stories you could tell. . . . I must of taken that train out to Hollywood 20 times and written 25 movies. . . Everyone’s train of choice was the 20th Century, and that’s where Charlie and I set our next big movie . . . It starred John Barrymore as a down-on-his-luck producer chasing his girlfriend across the country as she makes her way to Hollywood.

VIDEO clip ends with shot of dining car segueing into 20th Century film clip.

INSERT Film clip (18 sec):

VIDEO -Youngstown Ranch view of MGM.

HECHT NARRATOR

Charlie and I rented a house in an avocado orchard overlooking the MGM lot, and every night was a bacchanal. Barrymore was a frequent guest. He was witty, learned, wonderfully handsome, and––I should add––a prodigious drinker.

SCENE TWO - BARRYMORE BIRTHDAY

Hecht’s patio. Assorted characters – Hecht, David Selznick, MacArthur, Helen Hayes – Barrymore enters on the arm of John Dexter.

HECHT NARRATOR I remember once in the twilight of his career, we threw what would turn out to be his last birthday party. He arrived with his constant companion, the artist John Dexter, and immediately began to entertain. 47.

Barrymore finds a chair and plops into it.

HECHT Got everything, Jack? Anything you need?

BARRYMORE Everything but my cocktail.

Hecht goes off to fetch it.

BARRYMORE (CONT’D) Ah acting. It’s not an art. It’s a junk pile of the arts. But it’s better than living as a human being, isn’t it? You’re not stuck with the paltry fellow you are.

The guests laugh.

MACARTHUR What was your favorite role, Jack?

BARRYMORE In my early days, I used to prefer Romeo and Juliet. But as my ears dried, I began to detest the fellow. A sickly, mawkish amateur, suffering from Mogo on the Gogo. He really should be played only by a boy of fifteen with pimples and a piping voice.

All laugh. Hecht returns with a drink. Barrymore takes a sip.

BARRYMORE (CONT’D) The truth is he grew up and became Hamlet. There, if ever, was a scurvy, mother-loving drip of a man! A ranting, pious pervert. But clever, mark you, like all homicidal maniacs. And how I loved to play him. The dear boy and I were made for each other.

HELEN HAYES I saw you play Hamlet in London.

BARRYMORE Yes, I was a triumph. (Sips again.) You know, a couple days before it opened, I fell madly in love with a duchess. Pah. I forgot her name. But she invited me to lunch at her castle the day the play opened. It was 30 miles away, but a memorable afternoon. The duchess lowered the drawbridge and your actor, with gonfalon high, marched in. At 5 o’clock, I was lying exhausted in the lady’s bed trying to revive myself with a bottle of wine. Being a man of resource, I switched to Scotch and, with the help of her servants, made it to the theater a half hour before curtain time. 48.

MACARTHUR Couldn’t they have used an understudy?

BARRYMORE On opening night? Ha. My man whacked me with wet towels, shoved lumps of ice into my drawers and poured coffee down my gullet. (Sips) I was the first American to play Hamlet on a London stage (Sips) ––and the first drunk to play it on any stage in the world.

More laughter.

I was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch through all five acts. I reeled out of the wings barely able to stand. I had to lean on Polonius to keep from falling on my face and made several unrehearsed exits in order to vomit in the wings. I returned barely in time to give my soliloquy, which I recited sitting down to keep from blacking out.

HELEN HAYES The reviews were terrific. They called you the greatest Hamlet of the Age.

BARRYMORE Indeed, I’ve kept those reviews as a reminder of the foolishness of fame––and the lunacy of life in general––A song sung by an idiot running down the wind.

The admiring crowd applauds. Barrymore sets down his drink and sinks back into the chair––exhausted.

BARRYMORE (CONT’D) You better take me off, Johnny. I’m afraid I’ve used up all my lines.

Dexter lifts Barrymore out of the chair. They exit. Scene goes dark.

VIDEO of Hollywood Scenes (55 seconds) as Hecht mentions them.

HECHT NARRATOR

(interspersed to match images) Hollywood . . . What can I say?

I have written many stories about Hollywood . . . I have criticized its whirligig castration of the arts, and its triumphs over sanity. But in nearly all I have written there has been a lie of omission . . . I loved it.

How can you help doting on a town so daft . . . so dizzy . . . so tumbling with the delights of a fairy tale book? (MORE) 49. HECHT NARRATOR (CONT'D) I remember the sunny streets of Hollywood, full of amiable and antic destinations . . . I remember studios humming with intrigue and happy-go-lucky excitements . . . I remember fine homes with handsome butlers . . . Vivid people . . . Nights of gaiety . . . The excitement of being on set . . . Baseball . . . Badminton . . . Diamond-sparkling days on the beach . . . And a picnic of money-making.

Above all, I remember the camaraderie of collaboration.

Last image is push into white - backdrop for writer’s room.

SCENE THREE - WRITER’S ROOM

Hecht is at his typewriter. A director looks over his shoulder.

HECHT NARRATOR You wrote with the phone ringing like a firehouse bell, with the boss charging in and out of your office, and the director grimacing and grunting in an adjoining chair.

DIRECTOR (FLEMING) We have to change the ‘love is a cupcake’ line.

HECHT Why’s that?

DIRECTOR (FLEMING) Ingrid won’t say it. She says intelligent women aren’t cupcakes.

HECHT She’s not supposed to be intelligent.

DIRECTOR (FLEMING You tell her that.

PRODUCER

(ducks head in) Story conference in ten in the prep room.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Disaster circled your pencil. A star balks at her lines, you change them. The studio changes hands and production is stopped. (MORE) 50. HECHT NARRATOR (CONT'D) Or the studio head suddenly decides to change the locale from Brooklyn to Shanghai. Everything goes to conference. You listen to these alarms, debate them like a juggler spinning hoops on his ankles, and keep writing.

Scrim shows Hecht in Mexico.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) In 1933, I went to Mexico with Howard Hawks to scout out a movie about the outlaw Pancho Villa.

VIDEO of Viva Villa (22 sec)

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed with movie dialogue) It was one of the most inspiring vacations I ever took (”Cut ‘em Down!”) Especially when Howard came across a Mexican funeral with the six corpses lined up on the wall watching – a scene I managed to work into the movie to explain Villa’s outlaw code. (“But this is outrageous”) Gunfire. Man dies. Villa says, “This is the law of Pancho Villa’s court. Two for one. You understand?”)

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Working with Howard gave me a taste for directing. My agent, Leland Heyward, somehow convinced Paramount to give Charlie and me a stage in their Astoria studios in New York to write, produce and direct any four movies we wanted.

SCENE FOUR - ASTORIA STUDIOS

The rudiments of a movie set. A camera, a couple lights, a standalone door frame. Two Dada-esque banners hang from the ceiling. “CUT TO THE CHASE” says one. “BETTER THAN METRO ISN’T GOOD ENOUGH” reads the other. There’s a backgammon board and two chairs at the side. MacArthur, lying on the floor on his back, directs the crew.

MACARTHUR No, move it over a little to the left. And the lights. Bring ‘em up. Too much. Too little.

MacArthur stands to show the stagehand what he means.

Like this.

Spotlight. 51.

HECHT NARRATOR Neither Charlie or I had ever worked on a movie set. We knew nothing about casts, budgets, schedules, booms, unions, editing, lighting. But finding ourselves with all this unknowingness in sole and lofty charge of bringing movies into existence, we were not for a moment abashed.

Hecht enters.

HECHT How’s it going?

MACARTHUR Almost there.

HECHT Almost where?

MACARTHUR I’m ready to call the actors.

HECHT

(skeptical) That would be nice. It’s been three days. And we’re only budgeted for ten.

MACARTHUR You can’t rush genius.

CAMERAMAN Mr. MacArthur. Have you made any decisions on lenses? We have to let the rental house know at least a day in advance.

MACARTHUR I’m working on it.

Hecht goes to the phone, dials and waits.

HECHT Howard. . . It’s Ben . . . You have to come out. Nobody knows what they are doing . . . I know, but . . . I understand . . . How about an assistant? . . . Trust my instincts? . . . Sure, I trust my instincts. But I’m not sure about Charlie’s. . . . October? . . . I’m not sure we’ll make it to October.

Hecht hangs up. Walks to the backgammon board. 52.

HECHT (CONT’D) Charlie. Come over here a sec. I just spoke with Hawks.

MacArthur leaves the set to sit at the backgammon board. Moves a piece.

MACARTHUR What’d he say?

HECHT Trust your instincts.

Twin girls dressed as pixies poke their head through the fake stage door.

PINHEADS Mr. MacArthur, where do you want us?

MACARTHUR Just take a seat over there.

PINHEADS What do you want us to do?

MACARTHUR Look useless.

They sit on two director chairs.

HECHT Who are they?

MACARTHUR The Pinheads. I found them in a carny show at Coney Island.

HECHT What are they doing here?

MACARTHUR They’re our new executive producers. I thought they’d class up the place.

Hecht laughs and makes his next backgammon move.

HECHT You can never have enough executive producers. 53.

Hecht goes off. Charlie stands and continues to pantomime the role of director.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR We made four pictures, none of which are enshrined in the pantheon of great films. Two were plays Charlie and I wrote that never made it to Broadway. Another was a vehicle for my daughter Teddy. That didn’t work out so well for her––or the picture. And the last came out of a play Rose and I worked on together called The Scoundrel.

Inside of 18 months, we’d run through all the money, and more. While we were wrapping the last film, Rose called from Los Angeles to say my parents had been in a car accident. It was the low point of my career. The antidote for my depression, as always, was to write more––and faster.

I wrote or rewrote another couple dozen movie. Stagecoach, A Star is Born, Gunga Din and Wuthering Heights are a few you might have heard of. I had so much work coming in, I set up a script factory for young writers at my house in Oceanside. I came to be known as what they called a script doctor. Anybody who had a sick script came to see me. But the only time I can recall someone shutting down production to wait for my rewrite was Gone with The Wind.

Scrim shows slow push on Oceanside home.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) It was early on a Sunday morning. I was still in bed when David Selznick showed up. He was seven reels into shooting Margaret Mitchell’s Civil War classic when he realized his story was a mess.

SCENE FIVE - SELZNICK OFFICE

Selznick’s office. A secretary sets up a screen and projector and prepares a bowl of bananas and peanut dish.

HECHT NARRATOR I was under contract to MGM, so I told him I could only give him a week. He insisted we start that morning. He pulled Victor Fleming in off the set of The Wizard of Oz and hauled us both down to his office –– where we spent the next 18 hours watching film and trying to make sense of what we were looking at.

Hecht, Selznick and Fleming enter. 54.

SELZNICK It’s all in the book. We just have to pry it out.

HECHT I haven’t read the book.

SELZNICK You haven’t read the book! I have a million dollars of talent sitting around waiting for this script, and you haven’t read the book! It’s like 500 pages. We don’t have time for you to read the book. Vic and I will just have to feed you the good parts.

HECHT Yeah, just give me the good parts.

Hecht flops on the couch. The secretary brings around the peanuts and a bowl of bananas. She starts up the projector. Scenes from the movie play out on the scrim in a small rectangle as if projected.

VIDEO: GWTW clip #1: intro . . . starts with boys ringing bell, slaves in field, Tara mansion (37 sec)

HECHT (CONT’D)

(interspersed with movie action) Looks like a lot of scenery––and no story.

SELZNICK What do you mean no story? We’ve got Clark Gable. We’ve got Vivian Leigh. We’ve got the Civil War! We’ve got a whole way of life that’s in danger of disappearing.

HECHT

(dismissive) That’s a theme, not a story.

VIDEO: Scarlet flits into the party. Hecht talks over it.

HECHT (CONT’D) And that’s your girl what’s-her-name?

FLEMING Scarlett O’Hara.

Scarlett walks up the staircase and looks back at Rhett. 55.

HECHT And that, I presume––since it’s Clark Gable––is the object of her affection.

Projector runs out. The secretary threads up another reel.

SELZNICK Clark’s a gun runner from Charleston, so he’s a threat to the men. Here, take a look at this speech.

VIDEO: GWTW clip #2 (41 sec).

VOICE And what does the captain of our troops say?

ASHLEY (ON SCREEN) Well, gentlemen, if Georgia fights, I go with her.

VOICE Mr. Butler’s been up north, I hear. Don’t you agree with us Mr. Butler?

RHETT (ON SCREEN) I think it’s hard winning a war with words, gentlemen. I mean, Mr. Hamilton, there’s not a cannon factory in the whole south. I’m saying very plainly gentlemen that the Yankees are better equipped than we. They’ve got factories, shipyards, coal mines, and a fleet to bottle up our harbors and starve us to death. All we’ve got is cotton and slaves––and arrogance.

ASHLEY (ON SCREEN) We don’t have to listen to any renegade talk.

RHETT (ON SCREEN) I’m sorry if the truth offends you.

Projector runs out again. The secretary threads another reel.

HECHT I like that. (Reaches for peanuts.) Now, let me guess, Scarlett falls for him.

SELZNICK Well actually, she’s in love with the other guy, but he’s determined to marry his cousin.

HECHT It figures. 56.

FLEMING We’ve got a good scene shot where he breaks the news to Scarlett, and she’s so mad she throws a vase at him. But we can’t figure out how to get her into Clark’s hands.

MOVIE clip #3 (21 sec). Projector starts up again.

SCARLETT

(to Ashley) ‘You led me on, you made me believe you wanted to marry me.’

ASHLEY ‘Scarlett, be fair. I never at any time--’

SCARLETT ‘You did. I’ll hate you til I die. I can’t think of anything bad enough to call you.’

She slaps him. Looks down and grabs a vase that she flings against the wall.

HECHT Stop!

Hecht jumps off the couch with an idea.

HECHT (CONT’D) Stop it right there. Take it back. What if we do this? Here. I’ll be Rhett. (To Fleming) And you be Scarlett.

Hecht turns the couch so the back is towards the audience. He flops down out of sight.

HECHT (V.O.) Roll film!

GWTW clip #4 (54 sec) The movie clip resumes right where Scarlett throws the vase.

HECHT

(Rising from behind couch, in sync w/ Gable) ‘Has the war started?’ And Scarlett says––

He points at Fleming who pantomimes the words as Scarlett says them.

FLEMING/SCARLETT ‘Sir, you should have made your presence known. 57.

HECHT

(To Selznick) David, now you be Rhett and say––

Selznick pantomimes the words as Clark Gable says them.

SELZNICK/RHETT ‘In the middle of that beautiful love scene? That wouldn’t have been very tactful, would it? But don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.’

In sync with the movie clip -- Hecht points from one to the other, directing the scene.

HECHT

(To Fleming) And you say––

FLEMING/SCARLETT Sir, you are no gentleman.

SELZNICK/RHETT ‘And you, miss, are no lady. Don’t think I hold that against you. Ladies have never held any jaw for me.’

FLEMING/SCARLETT ‘First, you take a low common advantage, then you insult me.’

SELZNICK/RHETT ‘I meant it as a compliment. And I hope to see more of you when you are free of the spell of the elegant Mr. Wilkes. He doesn’t strike me as half good enough for a girl of your –– what was it? –– your passion for living.’

HECHT And you say . . .

FLEMING/SCARLETT ‘How dare you. You aren’t fit to wipe his boots.’

HECHT But Rhett gets the last word. 58.

SELZNICK/RHETT

(Laughs) ‘And you were going to hate him for the rest of your life.’

The projector flickers out. Silence.

SELZNICK That might work. Write it down.

HECHT Now you’ve got some tension. Now you’ve got a movie.

SELZNICK But it’s a love story.

HECHT Every love story needs a little hate.

Hecht turns the couch back around. Flops back down on it.

HECHT (CONT’D) More peanuts?

Hecht holds out an empty dish. Selznick blanches.

HECHT (CONT’D) What? I just want more peanuts. What’s the next scene?

The lights fade as Selznick mounts a new reel on the projector, Hecht scribbles and the secretary circulates with more bananas and peanuts.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR And that’s pretty much how the movie got finished. I guess it worked out okay. They always do. Gone with The Wind won eight Academy Awards when it came out. And I wasn’t even mentioned. But I got my share. My first Oscar, which I still use as a doorstop, was for Underworld. And I got another for the screenwriting in Scoundrel –– although I regret to this day I didn’t share it with Rose.

Scrim dissolves to slowly turning Oscar statue.

Spotlight. 59.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) I didn’t attend the ceremonies. Instead, I showed my regard in a little piece of doggerel I wrote called Prayer to The Bosses:

Good Gentlemen who overpay me Five times for every fart Who hand me statues when I bray And hail my whinnying as Art I pick your pockets every day But how you bastards break my heart.

Fade to black.

End of Act III 60.

Act IV

VIDEO: clip of typewriter collage. Slowly his book titles -- The Champion from Far Away, Actor’s Blood and Book of Miracles -- float across.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) I never stopped writing my stories. Under Rose’s influence, I was spending a lot of my time on the lower East Side in New York getting in touch with my Jewish roots. In Chicago, I was used to going to parties where Christians outnumbered Jews two-to-one. In New York, it was 10-1 in favor of Judea.

In Book of Miracles, I wrote about waking up one morning and opening the newspaper to read that a million European Jews were getting slaughtered, and another million were being driven from their homes into the forests and mountains.

VIDEO: Scenes of Hitler invading Poland.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) When Hitler invaded Poland in 1939, the nightmare became all too real. Ralph Ingersoll offered me a column in his PM tabloid to reprise “1001 Afternoons,” and I used it to expose the Nazi atrocities in Europe.

VIDEO: Jews herded and beaten in European countries.

I wrote about Gestapo agents lassoing Jews in the streets of Warsaw, German mobs plucking their beards out like chickens, and American politicians too timid to intervene.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) Then in the summer of 1940, Alfred Hitchcock came to me with a movie he was directing called Foreign Correspondent. I had a little experience in that arena. I identified with Joel Cray, the crime reporter caught up in a war, and gave Hitch a rousing finale I hoped would be a call to action for lethargic Americans.

VIDEO CLIP end of Foreign Correspondent (33 sec).

JOEL MCCREA (ON SCREEN) Hello, America! I’ve been watching a part of the world being blown to pieces. A part of the world as nice as Vermont and Ohio and Virginia and California and Illinois lies ripped up and bleeding like a steer in a slaughterhouse.

(The lights suddenly go out. Bombs fall in the distance. (MORE) 61. JOEL MCCREA (ON SCREEN) The Star-Spangled Banner starts playing in the darkness.)

Keep those lights burning! Cover then with steel, ring them with guns! Build a canopy of battleships and bombing planes around them. Hello, America! Hang on to your lights! They’re the only lights left in the world!”

Fade out/fade up.

VIDEO CLIP Movietone News - London Blitz.

COMMENTATOR Night after night, in the battle of Britain, the war machine of Nazi Germany has been crashing through the skies over England, seeking to break the still indomitable spirit of Europe’s last free people.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed) Four days after the movie opened, Hitler launched his blitz on London. It took another 14 months, but when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December, America finally joined the fight.

Spotlight.

For a while, I was a regular Yankee Doodle Dandy. I made propaganda films for the State Department, sold war bonds for The Treasury, and wrote plugs for Victory Gardens and scrap metal drives.

Scrim shows poster for Fun to be Free.

The craziest thing I did was help Billie Rose stage a patriotic pageant in Madison Square Garden called “Fun to be Free.”

SCENE ONE - FUN TO BE FREE - MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

Scrim suggest a cavernous empty space. A stagehand passes in the background pushing a dolly carrying stage props. A tap dancer in gold lame and ermine coat practices his moves on a coffin marked “Adolph Hitler.” Hecht, MacArthur and Billy Rose walk on stage during rehearsal.

HECHT NARRATOR We tried to talk everybody we knew into participating. 62.

HECHT Who do we have so far?

MACARTHUR

(looking at his clipboard) Let’s see. Ethel Merman’s going to sing . . . Eddie Cantor is going to wear a hoop skirt . . . Jack Benny, Leo Durocher, Betty Grable, George Jessel––

The dancer slips and falls loudly onto the floor.

HECHT (CONT’D) Who’s that?

MACARTHUR Bill Robinson. Mr. Bojangles to you.

BILLY ROSE Maybe the coffin is a little much.

MACARTHUR He’ll get it. And it’s symbolism. You can’t have enough symbolism in the theater.

BILLY ROSE You have the script finished?

HECHT It’s gonna be great. We start with a Patrick Henry speech . . . Then air raid sirens. Then a radio newscaster announces Nazi bombers are approaching New York, Texas, and LA.

Searchlights and parachutes flicker across the scrim as Hecht imagines them.

Then searchlights crisscross the balconies and thousands of little parachutes drop from the ceiling.

BILLY ROSE Where are we getting the parachutes?

HECHT Rose is home working on that now. She’s got all her friends tying little cardboard cutouts to Kleenex tissues.

BILLY ROSE And the finale? 63.

HECHT MacArthur is handling that.

MACARTHUR I’m thinking something about what it means to be an American. It’s not just lollipops and apple pie. It’s railroad ties, wheat fields and steel mills, manhole covers––

BILLY ROSE Keep working on it. People aren’t going to rise up to defend manhole covers.

HECHT But don’t be afraid of schmaltz. It’ll remind people why we’re doing this.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Seventeen thousand people came to the show, but I’m afraid we wound up doing it mostly for ourselves.

Montage (10 sec) of PM columns and ads. “My Tribe is Israel” is Photoshopped overlay.

I kept up the drumbeat of outrage in my column. But the event that changed my life took place in New York outside the 21 Club. That’s where I bumped into history.

SCENE TWO - THE 21 CLUB

Night outside the 21 Club. Hecht is a man in a hurry to get a drink when two men in trench coats accost him.

BERGSON Mr. Hecht. Mr. Hecht, do you have a minute?

HECHT Who wants to know?

BERGSON I’m Peter Bergson. (Shakes hand.) And this is Captain Helpern. He’s the commander of the Hebrew navy.

HECHT

(Jovial.) A man in uniform, and a commander no less. Well, that calls for a drink.

They step inside. Dissolve to the interior of the club. Helpern is roughly Hecht’s age, 50, 64. but Bergson is a handsome and fast talking 26.

BERGSON We’ve just arrived from Palestine and saw your “My Tribe is Israel” column. Our tribe is Israel too. The Captain here has been secretly ferrying Jews out of Gdansk and Marseilles to escape the Nazis.

HECHT Noble work. How many ships in the fleet?

HELPERN

(Chagrined) One . . . . But we’ve made ten trips so far.

BERGSON That’s why we’re here –– to raise money for more. We’re setting up a Committee for a Jewish Army of Stateless and Palestinian Jews––

HECHT You might want to shorten the name. (Pause.) At least take the “committee” out of it.

BERGSON Why? That’s what we are. Why hide the fact?

Hecht shrugs.

BERGSON (CONT’D) Anyway, with your influence and reputation, we’re hoping you’ll head up the effort.

HECHT I’m afraid you got the wrong guy. I don’t have causes. I’m a terrible public speaker. I have no interest in Palestine. I don’t stoop to politics – except for entertainment – and I can’t think of anything more distasteful than getting involved in a money-raising campaign.

BERGSON But you’ll hear us out?

HECHT There’s no harm in listening.

BERGSON You know there are 200,000 Jews in Egypt, Syria and Palestine who are ready and eager to fight the Nazis. (MORE) 65. BERGSON (CONT'D) Put a gun in their hands and they’ll die on the battlefield before they give it up. And you don’t have to ship them across oceans. They’re a bus ride from the front.

Hecht take a sip from his high ball and starts taking notes.

HECHT Tell ‘em to enlist.

BERGSON It’s not that easy. We have a list of names that we’re prepared to hand over to the commander of the African campaign. But we want them to fight together, as a unit . . . as Jews.

HECHT So why do you need me?

BERGSON Money. They need weapons, guns, tanks, ships––

HECHT

(skeptical) I thought the commander here has a ship.

HELPERN It’s just a training ship. And it’s kind of old.

HECHT I’m telling you. The British have more guns than I’ll ever have. Talk to them. I’m sure they’d welcome the help.

BERGSON You don’t know much about Palestine, do you? The British run it as a mandate . . . under martial law. Their job is to keep the Arabs happy because the Arabs control the oil. For all the talk of Jews returning to the homeland, we’re less than 5 percent of the population. And anything we do to build the Jewish community is considered disturbing the peace. Palestine is run under what they call the Law of Parity. For every Jew that comes in, an Arab must be admitted as well.

HECHT You mean all those Jews fleeing Hitler, if they want to go the Palestine, the British won’t let them in? 66.

BERGSON Precisely.

HECHT Well, that’s not right. So how many people are there in your army?

Bergson checks with his companions, who look away.

BERGSON Three hundred so far.

HECHT

(smiles) I like the odds.

BERGSON But if we can just make our case, I’m sure people will rally to the cause.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR When they left, I though of something Mencken once said. The leader of every cause is a scoundrel. But I’d bellowed enough on the massacre taking place in Europe. Even if we could get Jews out from under Hitler’s terror, where would they go? I decided to make a few calls. And write a few more columns.

Scrim fills with more newsprint and overlapping headlines. “Time Races Death - What Are We Waiting For?” “Action –– Not Pity Can Save Millions Now” and “FOR SALE TO HUMANITY - 70,000 Jews. Guaranteed Human Beings at $50 a piece.”

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.) Bergson belonged to a radical group in Palestine known as the Irgun, but he had sources all over Europe. He kept feeding me stories of Nazi barbarity. Boxcars full of Jews being shipped off to concentration camps. A Rumanian dictator’s offer to exile 70,000 Jews to Switzerland -- for $50 a head.

In the summer of 1942, he leaked me a secret State Department report that confirmed over 2 million Jews had already been killed and millions more were in danger of extermination. The New York Times waited until November to report it –– on page 10 no less, next to a whisky ad–– but I was screaming it from the rooftops –– in a piece that Reader’s Digest picked up and home at night in bed with Rose. 67.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Billy Rose and I decided the best way to publicize the plight of the Jews would be another pageant, grander and more serious than anything we’d ever done. Billy found 100 singers from the Yeshiva College in Brooklyn––I didn’t even know there was a Hebrew college in Brooklyn––50 cantors and a cast of celebrities that included Paul Muni, Edward G. Robinson, Sidney Lumet, Sid Caesar, Frank Sinatra, and Leonard Bernstein. All we needed was a rabbi.

SCENE FOUR - KATZ’S KOSHER RESTAURANT

The rabbis gather in the back room of Katz’s Kosher Restaurant. Hecht and Bergman sit at a speaker’s table. The rabbis are old, with long white beards, sitting in black skullcaps and alpaca coats or standing around kibitzing, eating, arguing––anything but acknowledging Hecht.

HECHT NARRATOR Rabbis never perform on stage, but Rose came up with the idea of bringing all the rabbis of New York together in the private dining room of Katz’s Kosher Restaurant for one desperate plea, and I, unfortunately, had to do the pleading.

BERGSON You know, you’re asking a lot.

HECHT

(sullen, head down) I know.

BERGSON Do you know what you’re going to say?

HECHT Don’t rush me. I’m waiting for something to come to me. A miracle maybe.

BERGSON Miracles don’t happen in Katz’s Restaurant.

One of the rabbis comes up to the table.

LEVIN I am Rabbi Levin from Czechoslovakia. I see you are hesitating. If you wish, I can speak for you. (He smiles.) To come on the stage like actors is a sinful thing. (MORE) 68. LEVIN (CONT'D) But maybe I can convince them they should for once in their lives do a sin for the Jews. They’ve done everything else.

HECHT If it’s not too much of a strain, I’d appreciate it.

LEVIN What isn’t a strain? It’s a strain to be alive. But now that you mention it, a few drops of schnapps would help.

Hecht pours out a glass. The rabbi slugs it down and steps to the microphone.

LEVIN (CONT’D) Fellow rabbonim. Instead of the young man who invited us here, I, Chaim Levin of Podbrotz, am going to talk to you. But what can I tell you that you don’t know? About Jews.

The rabbis laugh and nod.

LEVIN (CONT’D) About Jews, you know as much as I do. About God, you also know as much as I do. So I will tell you about Podbrotz, where I studied the Torah. Long ago in Podbrotz, I was young and happy. We built a theater in Podbrotz, a fine theater with wide steps, and people came from miles away to attend -- except for one, our beggar.

He was an old beggar with an accordion, and he sat on the wide steps of the theater watching the people enter. He sat alone and waited for them to start coming out. So one day, he pulled the sleeve of one of them and said, “Please, happy man, out of the kindness of your soul would you tell me what went on in the theater tonight?”

“What went on,” answered the man, “was we paid two rubles to hear a man sing. And you can believe me it was worth every heller.”

“Two rubles to hear a man sing? What are the names of those wonderful songs?”

“Who knows the names,” he answered. “They were beggar songs. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Like this?” The beggar sang a song he liked to sing in the rain.

“Yes,” the man said.

(MORE) 69. LEVIN (CONT’D) “How about this?” And again, the beggar squeezed his accordion and sang another of his favorites.

“Yes, he sang that too,” the man said.

Rabbi Levin pauses, then smiles.

LEVIN (CONT’D) Dear fellow rabbis from all over, we are the beggar on the theater steps with the true song, and this young man is inviting us to come inside the theater and sing it to the world. Is there anyone here who will take him up on the offer?

All the rabbi hands shoot up.

LEVIN (CONT’D) I thank you, and God thanks you.

VIDEO: Clip from the recorded performance of We Will Never Die. Audio is clear.

HECHT NARRATOR In the end, we used them all. But only one got to sing. We Will Never Die opened in Madison Square Garden and toured to sold out crowds in Washington, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles.

VIDEO of Jewish Brigade fighting in World War II (30 sec).

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O) (CONT’D) All the money we raised went into equipping a Jewish Brigade that finally got into the war –– under British command – in the Italian campaign. They fought bravely with a Jewish star on their uniforms and were part of the last Allied push into Germany.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) But nine days after the last performance in the Hollywood Bowl, Rose had her own production to attend to. Eighteen years after we were married––and without any medical interventions––she had a baby, a darling bundle of joy we called Jenny. Little Jenny took up a good amount of my time over the next year––not that I minded––and the cause went on without me.

Scrim shows picture of Hecht with baby.

Fade to black.

Spotlight. 70.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) I don’t know how many of you have had children in your fifties, but new life gives you a whole new perspective on the old life you’ve been leading. With Jenny underfoot, I threw myself back into screenwriting with one of my favorite directors, Alfred Hitchcock. The war was coming to an end, and Hitch was already thinking about war crime trials for Hitler’s generals.

VIDEO CLIP: Notorious trailer (1st 18 sec) - music low - ending in title.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed with clip) With Ingrid Bergman, Cary Grant and Claude Rains on board, we crafted a love story for the ages. It pitted Grant as a CIA agent against Rains, a Nazi fugitive in Brazil, for the affection of a mysterious woman caught in the middle . . . We called it Notorious.

VIDEO CLIP #2. Grant and Bergman find uranium in wine cellar. Rains walks in on them kissing.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed with clip) We were writing and rewriting to the very last minute . . . The subject of their intrigue was hidden in wine bottles Rains had smuggled out of Germany . . . When Truman dropped the atom bomb on Japan, we filled the bottles with uranium . . . But the real bomb was the chemistry between Grant and Bergman.

Notorious won the Oscar for best picture and, today, it is still considered one of the 100 best movies ever made.

SCENE FIVE - THE COMMITTEE OFFICE

Scrim shows office with new name “The American League for a Free Palestine” etched on the door. Inside, a beehive of activity. SFX: mimeograph machines running “faster than the treadles on the sewing machines in Uncle Joe’s sweatshop.”

HECHT NARRATOR After it came out, I went down to see my old friends at The Committee. There was a new name on the door –– The American League for a Free Palestine –– but Peter had the same demand. More guns!

BERGSON Welcome back, Ben. You’re just in time. 71.

HECHT That’s what I was afraid of. Isn’t the war over?

BERGSON Your war, maybe. But we have a new enemy – actually an old enemy. Britain. They’re up to their old tricks again. Captain Helpern is bringing in more Jews from Europe every day. The ranks of the Irgun are growing. But the British are doing everything they can to keep us out.

HECHT How many are in Palestine now?

BERGSON 400,000, 500,000. Enough so the British can’t ignore us.

HECHT I thought the British were pulling out. Isn’t the United Nations working on a plan to partition Palestine?

BERGSON

(harrumphs) That’s what Ben Gurion says. Have you seen a plan? I haven’t seen a plan. The British mandate runs out in two years –– and what happens when they leave? If we want a Jewish state, we’ll have to fight for it. This is our Irish Uprising, our Lexington and Concord.

HECHT Blowing up buildings. Wiping out Arab settlements. That’s terrorism.

BERGSON If you want to call it terrorism, fine. We’re fighting for a new nation, and that fight will only get harder after the British leave.

HECHT I’m a little old to fight.

BERGSON Then write. Keep writing. Keep the pressure on. How about another pageant? Money buys bullets, and power comes from the barrel of a gun.

HECHT Let me think about it. 72.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR I thought about it all the way back to Nyack. I was pretty pageanted out. But something Peter said about the American revolution struck a nerve. How about a play? A grand allegory showing why the Jews deserve a Jewish state. I sat down that night to start writing.

SCENE SIX - A FLAG IS BORN

Scrim shows poster for A Flag is Born.

HECHT NARRATOR By the next morning, I had most of it written, at least in my head. “Two Jews, two remnant Jews of Europe plod slowly through the dark night. Their feet drag, for they carry a heavy burden . . . But they are moving toward a land of love, of milk and honey, of holy song, called Palestine.”

Okay, maybe I got a little too melodramatic, but it was better than MacArthur talking about manhole covers.

Scrim dissolves to Broadway marquee.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) A Flag is Born opened on Broadway for a four-week run and was extended seven months.

Scrim shows publicity shots, the last is Brando holding a Jewish flag.

BRANDO Don’t you hear our guns, David? We battle the English––the sly and powerful English. We speak to them in a new Jewish language, the language of guns. We fling no more prayers or tears at the world. We fling bullets. We fling barrages.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed) I like to think it was the stirring message. But it might have had something to do with the handsome 22-year-old we cast in the role of David who would go on to some acclaim as Marlon Brando.

SCENE SEVEN - BROOKLYN SHIPYARD - NIGHT

Scrim shows night scene on the dock with the huge hull of the S.S. Abril looming. A 73. foghorn sounds in the distance. Hecht and Bergson on stage.

BERGSON What do you think?

HECHT Of what? It’s a little cold out here to be playing games, Peter.

BERGSON Of the latest addition to our Hebrew Navy. It’s an old luxury liner we picked up at auction.

HECHT This rusty tub? Is this what you did with all the money I raised?

BERGSON You need more vision, Ben. It can hold 800 passengers . . . and carry five tanks, a hundred howitzers and a ton of ammunition.

HECHT If you can get it out of New York harbor.

BERGSON We’ve tested it. The boilers work. With a little luck, we’ve got an American crew that can get it to Marseilles. Then we load her up and it’s off to Palestine.

HECHT Where the British navy will pop you in a New York minute. This thing couldn’t outrun my dog.

BERGSON So what? Think about the publicity. We put a photographer on board, maybe a couple reporters. All the refugees will be Americans. It’s a great story.

HECHT I think a little of me has rubbed off on you, Peter. But you’ll have to rename it. Nobody can spell Abril.

BERGSON We’ve thought of that.

HECHT What are you going to call it? 74.

BERGSON We’re thinking the S.S. Ben Hecht.

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR I have never been to Israel. I was so busy writing my polemics and screenplays the idea of visiting the homeland never occurred to me. But the news from Palestine was hard to escape.

VIDEO: British Movietone News “Palestine Trouble Continues.” Photos of SS Ben Hecht being seized. Refugees in custody. Overlay “Letter to the Terrorists of Palestine.”

BRITISH COMMENTATOR Palestine continues to present one of the most obstinate problems of the day. And in view of the insistent threats of terrorist outrage, Jerusalem now presents as a picture of a city of barbed wire. (Audio fades.) Tension is most marked, nor does a solution to the problem appear to be in sight—as yet.

HECHT NARRATOR (V.O.)

(interspersed) Even my own ship, the SS Ben Hecht, made it into the newsreels when the British seized it, just as Peter predicted . . . Terrorism is a dangerous occupation. But sometimes, patriotism calls for it . . . So I published a letter to my brave friends in Palestine that haunts me to this day. “The Jews of America are for you,” I wrote. “Every time you blow up a British arsenal, or wreck a British jail, or send a British railroad train sky high, the Jews of America make a little holiday in their hearts.”

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR Of course, not all the Jews were with me on this. The American Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency, even President Truman denounced me as a blood-thirsty renegade. The London Daily Mail called me “a vitriolic Zionist volcano with a touch of the carnival huckster” and the Associated Press reported I was “Public Enemy #1” in Britain.

Scrim shows Variety headline: Hecht Banned in Britain.

To put an exclamation on the point, the British Movie Exhibitors voted to ban any movie carrying my name on all 3500 screens it controlled.

Spotlight. 75.

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) I wore that ban as a badge of honor, but I can’t say it didn’t hurt my career. The calls from the studio heads tapered off. The big commissions dried up. I never stopped working––I was always working ––and I made a few good movies.

Walk on the Wild Side, Guys and Dolls, The Man with the Golden Arm, Mutiny on the Bounty posters float across the screen.

But people look at you different when you reach a certain age––if they look at you at all.

SCENE EIGHT - NYACK STUDY

Hecht study. He sits in pajamas on a chaise lounge with his writing board and pencil. Rose enters.

ROSE Are you getting up today?

HECHT I’m thinking about it. My editor wants me to go into the city to talk about the book.

ROSE Which one?

HECHT Good question. Last time I was there, he had this kid––a new editor I think––who kept asking me about my career –– like he was an archeologist poking at a fossil. I think he wants me to write an autobiography.

ROSE Aren’t you working on another polemic?

HECHT Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh, dear? I haven’t written about Palestine since the ceasefire. That doesn’t mean I won’t––if things keep going the way they’re going––but I have a lot of things I want to write. This might surprise you, but there are a lot of me’s in me.

ROSE That’s good because I was talking with Helen the other day and she says you’ve become a pariah out in Hollywood. They’re calling you Don Quixote, tilting at windmills in the desert. 76.

HECHT

(laughs) You know what Mankie says? Six years ago, Ben found out that he was a Jew; now he’s behaving like a six-year-old Jew.

Hecht doodles on his pad. Rose hovers in the background.

ROSE Have you heard from anybody at the studios?

HECHT Paramount called the other day. They want me to do a rewrite––uncredited, of course––for a script Dalton Trumbo wrote––uncredited, of course––because he’s on The Blacklist. It’s called Roman Holiday.

ROSE If things keep going this way, pretty soon the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood will be Anonymous.

HECHT Selznick says it’s all changing. The studios are crumbling. The bookkeepers are running the show. And everything is being written by formula.

ROSE

(indignant) But it’s your formula.

HECHT Yes, that’s true. (Pause.) So I guess I’ll just have to do something else.

ROSE Well, something has to give. We’ve got one house in Oceanside and another one here in Nyack. Five house servants and a dog we’re ferrying back and forth between them. And you’re running off all the time to God-knows-where chasing some whim. Where was it last time? San Francisco? To interview Marilyn Monroe?

HECHT She wants me to write her memoir. What can I say? 77.

ROSE I’m just saying you’re spread all over the place. I don’t care how many me’s are in you, pick one that makes money, and let’s go with him for a while. Think about us. And little Jenny. She doesn’t care what you did in the war, Daddy. She needs a father, not an icon. (Pause) What happened Ben?

HECHT I’ve been thrown off the merry-go-round. Spit up and tossed out like some used up old whore. They’ve got new baubles to play with now.

Hecht shrugs. But he’s thinking. Rose busies herself as he does. He looks up and playfully beckons Rose over to sit on his lap.

HECHT (CONT’D) I grow old … I grow old … I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

ROSE So now you’re back to poetry?

HECHT It’s not mine. It’s T.S. Eliot. But he was on to something. (Recites.)

There will be time, there will be time To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet; There will be time to murder and create, And time for all the works and days of hands That lift and drop a question on your plate; Time for you and time for me, And time yet for a hundred indecisions, And for a hundred visions and revisions, Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Fade to black.

VIDEO CLIP - This is Your Life (15 sec)

HECHT NARRATOR On television, I was becoming a caricature of myself, a punched-up icon of celebrity paraded across the airwaves to entertain and amuse.

RALPH EDWARDS (ON SCREEN) Yes, one of the greatest newspapermen of our time, from Nyack, New York and Hollywood, California, the fabulous Ben Hecht. 78.

(Applause.)

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR I appeared on late night TV shows with Jack Paar and Johnnie Carson. I hosted my own nightly talk show––The Ben Hecht Show. I found a new home for my stories in Playboy –– which, of course, you only read for the articles––and I took to the college lecture circuit – Harvard no less – where dinosaurs are revered.

Scrim show animation of TV theater logos: The Schlitz Playhouse, Chrysler, Ford and GE Theater (with Ronald Reagan).

HECHT NARRATOR (CONT’D) To keep the wolf from the door, I started taking television assignments –teleplays, they called them – for The Schlitz Playhouse, Chrysler, Ford and GE Theater. Anybody who sold cars, or beer, or lightbulbs for that matter, seemed to have a TV showcase. And they all needed stories.

VIDEO CLIP (3:41) from the Mike Wallace Interviews show (Feb. 15, 1958).

MIKE WALLACE Good evening, Tonight a special live telecast from Hollywood, our guest is Ben Hecht, a flamboyant social critic, novelist, playwright and Hollywood screenwriter. . . . (dip audio)

HECHT NARRATOR That’s me with Mike Wallace in 1958.

MIKE WALLACE Ben, here in Hollywood I think that it’s common knowledge that you’ve made an awful lot of money writing for films. Yet, in your autobiography, you wrote this. You said, “The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century, an eruption of trash that has lamed the American minds and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.” Now, quite seriously, why, why do you regard movies as such trash?

HECHT (ON SCREEN) First, it wasn’t I that made the money, it was Uncle Sam and my bosses. They made all the money. I wound up broke, mortgaged my house last week, uh –

MIKE WALLACE You’re not suggesting that we hold a ‘tag day’ for Ben Hecht? 79.

HECHT (ON SCREEN) I wouldn’t mind – it might help. The – My reason for disliking the movies is a little odd. I really don’t dislike them. I have no interest in them, anymore than a plumber has any vital interest in his product. He has to know how to make his stuff, do it well, collect his money – he doesn’t have to admire what he makes.

MIKE WALLACE Ben, we hear so much about Hollywood, as an American institution – to some people it’s kind of a Sodom and Gomorrah with swimming pools – what is it to Ben Hecht?

HECHT (ON SCREEN) A place where I’ve earned a living for thirty years, done some fairly good work – off and on. . . When you got off the train in the old days – I was told you – pockets filled with gold before you got to the hotel. Everybody was young, everybody had the world by the tail, everybody was going to be a wizard, a success, and oddly enough, everybody turned out to be that.

MIKE WALLACE Is it possible that you’re just looking back on your youth through rose colored glasses? Do you mind very much growing old, Ben?

HECHT (ON SCREEN) It’s – uh – horrid . . . People who say they don’t mind growing old are just telling sad little lies to you. Everybody minds growing old.

MIKE WALLACE Ben, you’re on television tonight, what do you think of television?

HECHT (ON SCREEN) Well, television excites me because it seems to be the last stamping ground of poetry – the last place where I hear women’s hair rhapsodically described – women’s faces told in odic language – the commercials are for me the most thrilling and exuberant poetry that is left in the United States.

MIKE WALLACE Well, you’ll have a chance to hear one in just about a minute, Ben, but you’ve said that it’s a babysitting industry cooing at the crowds, it threatens to turn us all into furniture.

HECHT (ON SCREEN) It will when it gets matured. When you get your screen eight by ten feet picture on the wall and color and three dimensions, I’m afraid America will lose the use of its legs. 80.

MIKE WALLACE

(first lines of cigarette commercial)

Spotlight.

HECHT NARRATOR As I write this, I feel like an old reporter walking backwards down memory lane trying to get back to my youth. But I have no one to share it with. My old friends are dying off. The first to go was Mankiewicz, not a surprise since he’d been drinking himself to death from the day I met him. Then Mencken . . . Gene Fowler, a newspaperman’s newspaperman . . . George Grosz, the dada genius I first met in Berlin . . . And Max Bodenheim, tragically stabbed to death in a Bowery flophouse. Finally, we laid MacArthur to rest in 1956.

(Laughs to self) I don’t know why I miss them. In the end, all we did was sit around and talk about our ailments. But when a friend dies, you lose a little piece of yourself.

For a while, you still hear the echo of their voices in your ear. You hear a laugh, a knowing phrase or a certain quality of enunciation ––I’ll always remember Billy Rose saying, “Let’s make something happen.” And we did –– Then, nothing. (Pause.) Lose enough friends, and you too will be sitting around someday talking to yourself.

SCENE NINE - NYACK STUDY

Lights up on empty Nyack study. Hecht Narrator rises from his stool and walks into the scene. Young Hecht starts coming into the scene, but the narrator brushes him off.

HECHT NARRATOR (To young Hecht) I’ll play this one myself. (Pause. To audience.) So I’ve finally made my way back to that day when a soft wind blew cloud galleons across the sky carrying my dreams.

A softly lit film begins to glow in the windows of the study and resolves into black & white home movies of Jenny.

It was a day as bright and gentle as my Jenny’s forehead, and I can see her now running through the yard chasing the fire engine in the Memorial Day Parade.

SCENE TEN - RACINE

Rear Screen dissolves to Hecht’s Racine home. Mankiewicz, MacArthur, Rose and Sherman Reilly Duffy sit on the curb in front. 81.

HECHT NARRATOR And all my old friends are sitting on the curb with me watching. The ghosts of my mother and father, McEvoy, Jack Barrymore, Harpo, and all the friends any one man could ever ask for come back to me.

Other actors walk in from both sides as he mentions them.

And here comes young Jenny, a heart with no baggage of yesterday and a smile that explodes at the touch of the sun, leaping into the air at every fifth step.

I have written more endings than I care to remember––play endings, movie endings, book and story endings––but I won’t presume to know where she is headed. All I know is my story is done. And hers is just beginning.

Fade to black.

Scrim. -30-