Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht
Ben Hecht /ˈhɛkt/was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist and novelist. A journalist in his youth, he went on to write thirty-five books and some of the most entertaining screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth28 February 1894
CountryUnited States of America
atheism proof existence
That God has managed to survive the inanities of the religions that do Him homage is truly a miraculous proof of His existence.
way world forget
The only practical way yet discovered by the world for curing its ills is to forget about them.
men differences huffing
Out of the thousand writers huffing and puffing through movieland there are scarcely fifty men and women of wit or talent. The rest of the fraternity is deadwood. Yet, in a curious way, there is not much difference between the product of a good writer and a bad one. They both have to toe the same mark.
thinking stories television
The factors that laid low so whooping and puissant an empire as the old Hollywood are many. I can think of a score, including the barbarian hordes of Television. But there is one that stands out for me in the post-mortem.... The factor had to do with the basis of movie-making: 'Who shall be in charge of telling the story.'
valentines-day dream agony
I have written a raucous valentine to a poet's dream and agony.
hair lasts faces
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 acclaimed in odelike language.
art fall writing
Despite all our toil and progress, the art of medicine still falls somewhere between trout casting and spook writing.
summer love-life ants
He was in love with life as an ant on a summer blade of grass.
safety justice mind
Prejudice is a raft onto which the shipwrecked mind clambers and paddles to safety.
criticism news benefits
Criticism can never instruct or benefit you. Its chief effect is that of a telegram with dubious news. Praise leaves no glow behind, for it is a writer's habit to remember nothing good of himself. I have usually forgotten those who have admired my work, and seldom anyone who disliked it. Obviously, this is because praise is never enough and censure always too much.
honor cuffs tissue-paper
The honors Hollywood has for the writer are as dubious as tissue-paper cuff links.
party greatness glowing
Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.
writing people intellectual
The movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century.Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them - as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.
intellectual age dull
There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.