SOURCE: McGilligan, Patrick. Review of Writers in Hollywood, by Ian Hamilton. Film Quarterly 45, no. 1 (fall 1991): 46-7.

In the following essay, McGilligan discusses Hamilton’s Writers in Hollywood, and Ben Hecht, by William MacAdams. McGilligan offers a scathing review of Writers in Hollywood, asserting that Hamilton simply rehashes other books about Hollywood screenwriters while adding little new information or insight.

Ben Hecht was one of those American literary half-geniuses who spent part of his amazing life, as a scriptwriter of noteworthy films, writing his way into Hollywood history, and another, longer part, when he was mostly doctoring mediocre movies, trying to write his way out. Partly because he was so colorful and swaggering and extra-paradoxical, Hecht has probably had more critical bouquets tossed in his direction than all of the other screen scribes of his era combined; just for example, publicity material for the MacAdams book catalogs the effusive...