SOURCE: “‘A Child of the Century,’ and ‘Gaily, Gaily’: 1945–1964” in Ben Hecht, Hollywood Screenwriter, UMI Research Press, 1985, pp. 1–24, 161–182.

In the following excerpt, Martin discusses Hecht's role in the Chicago Renaissance following World War I, and his screenplays, novels, and autobiographical work following World War II.

A Child of the Century

Ben Hecht's fifty-year career embraced a number of different professions. He was by turns a newsman in Chicago between 1910 and 1924 on The Journal and the Daily News; a novelist well known for Erik Dorn (1921) and prosecuted for Fantazius Mallare (1922); a success as both playwright and screenwriter during the Depression; a sufficiently visible propagandist for the Israeli guerilla organization, the Irgun Zwei Leumi, to be singled out by the British Empire as a national enemy in 1948; and finally, a memoirist of imagination and skill.

These were not a succession of activities for the protean Hecht: he worked at many...