fbpx

Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures

$22.95

Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures

SKU: 9780300251814 Category: Product ID: 77632

Description

Temporarily out of stock

Title: Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures
Author: HOFFMAN ADINA
Format: PAPERBACK
Publication date: 15/04/2020
Imprint: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Price: $22.95
Publishing status: Active

Besides a prolific screenwriting career, encompassing dozens of now-classic scripts including Scarface, Twentieth Century and Notorious Ben Hecht was known in his day as ace reporter, celebrated playwright, taboo-busting novelist and the most quick-witted of provocateurs. During World War II, he also emerged as an outspoken crusader for the imperiled Jews of Europe, and later he became a fierce propagandist for pre-1948 Palestines Jewish terrorist underground. Whatever the outrage he stirred, this self-declared child of the century came to embody much that defined America especially Jewish America in his time.

Hechts fame has dimmed in the decades since his death, but Adina Hoffmans vivid portrait brings this charismatic and contradictory figure back to life on the page. Hecht was a renaissance man of dazzling sorts, and Hoffman critically acclaimed biographer, former film critic and eloquent commentator on Middle Eastern culture and politics is uniquely suited to capture him in all his far-flung modes.biographical portraits, accomplishes a great deal in a relatively compact form” —Michael Phillips, TheStarspost.com


“Adina Hoffman’s vivid portrait brings [Ben Hecht] back to life in absorbing style” —Rebecca Taylor, Jewish Renaissance (Best Spring Books)

“Hugely readable” —Danny Leigh, Financial Times

“Thoroughly absorbing, compulsively readable, Adina Hoffman’s book gives a critical but sympathetic account of the pugnacious, brilliant Ben Hecht. A highly gifted storyteller, Hoffman shows just how important Hecht was in his day, and why he matters now.”—Noah Isenberg, author of We’ll Always Have Casablanca

“Ben Hecht and the American movie business grew up together, trading punches. Adina Hoffman captures this often destructive force of nature in all his cynicism and fervor, and is especially incisive dealing with his long struggle to find a Jewish identity that could fit his cantankerous personality. This book makes you wish you’d known the guy, if only to watch the sparks he threw off.”—John Sayles

Series: Jewish Lives
ISBN: 9780300251814
Pages: 264