
Writing
Ben Hecht
Born — Died
1894-02-28 — 1964-04-18
Place of birth
New York City, New York, USA
Known for
Writing
Credits
45 titles
Ben Hecht (February 28, 1894 – April 18, 1964) was an American screenwriter, director, producer, playwright, journalist, and novelist. A successful journalist in his youth, he went on to write 35 books and some of the most enjoyed screenplays and plays in America. He received screen credits, alone or in collaboration, for the stories or screenplays of some seventy films. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ben Hecht, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Known for
7.5Tonight Starring Jack Paar is an American talk show hosted by Jack Paar under The Tonight Show franchise from 1957 to 1962. It originally aired during late-night. During most of its run it was broadcast from Studio 6B inside the RCA Building. The same studio would also host early episodes of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, and Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Its theme song was an instrumental version of "Everything's Coming Up Roses", and the closing theme was "So Until I See You" by Al Lerner.
Tonight Starring Jack Paar
1957
7.9The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
Gone with the Wind
1939
7.7In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.
Notorious
1946
7.2Young orphan Heathcliff is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Cathy. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Cathy, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Edgar Linton, a man of means who befits her stature. Heathcliff vows to win her back.
Wuthering Heights
1939
7.4Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife. She’s threatening to quit and settle down with a new beau, but, as Walter knows, she has a weakness: she can’t resist a juicy scoop.
His Girl Friday
1940
7.4In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
Scarface
1932
Film credits
1930s · 2 titles
5.9Caddish lawyer Lee Gentry is going out with Katy Costello, but carrying on an affair with dancer Carmen Brown. When he wants to end the dalliance with Carmen, she is so distraught that she becomes suicidal. Seizing the gun from Carmen, he accidentally shoots her, and thinking she's dead, concocts a series of increasingly outlandish alibis to cover his tracks under the guidance of a ghostly apparition that is his alter ego.
Crime Without Passion
1934
6.3A ruthless, cynical, hated publisher is killed in a plane crash, doomed to be a "restless" spirit for being unloved. A heavenly power gives him a month on Earth to find one person to shed a tear for him before his fate is sealed.
The Scoundrel
1935
Series credits
Behind the camera
7.9The spoiled daughter of a Georgia plantation owner conducts a tumultuous romance with a cynical profiteer during the American Civil War and Reconstruction Era.
Gone with the Wind
1939
7.7In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.
Notorious
1946
7.2Young orphan Heathcliff is adopted by the wealthy Earnshaw family and moves into their estate, Wuthering Heights. Soon, the new resident falls for his compassionate foster sister, Cathy. The two share a remarkable bond that seems unbreakable until Cathy, feeling the pressure of social convention, suppresses her feelings and marries Edgar Linton, a man of means who befits her stature. Heathcliff vows to win her back.
Wuthering Heights
1939
7.4Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife. She’s threatening to quit and settle down with a new beau, but, as Walter knows, she has a weakness: she can’t resist a juicy scoop.
His Girl Friday
1940
7.4In 1920s Chicago, Italian immigrant and notorious thug, Antonio 'Tony' Camonte, aka Scarface, shoots his way to the top of the mobs while trying to protect his sister from the criminal life.
Scarface
1932
6.5When notorious pirate Henry Morgan is made governor of Jamaica, he enlists the help of some of his former partners in ridding the Caribbean of buccaneers. When one of them apparently abducts the previous governor's pretty daughter and joins up with the rebels, things are set for a fight.
The Black Swan
1942
6.7Research chemist Barnaby Fulton works on a fountain of youth pill for a chemical company. One of the labs chimps gets loose in the laboratory and mixes chemicals, but then pours the mix into the water cooler. When trying one of his own samples, washed down with water from the cooler, Fulton begins to act just like a twenty-year-old and believes his potion is working. Soon his wife and boss are also behaving like children.
Monkey Business
1952
7.4When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man's murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.
Spellbound
1945
6.7Scientists and US Air Force officials fend off a blood-thirsty alien organism while investigating at a remote arctic outpost.
The Thing from Another World
1951
6.4Beautiful half-breed Pearl Chavez becomes the ward of her dead father's first love and finds herself torn between her sons, one good and the other bad.
Duel in the Sun
1946
6.6A retelling of Homer's The Odyssey, focusing on Ulysses's ten-year journey home to Ithaca following the Trojan War, where he faces various mythical challenges while his wife Penelope fends off suitors.
Ulysses
1954
7.2Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.
A Star Is Born
1937
6.4The wife of a psychoanalyst falls prey to a devious quack hypnotist when he discovers she is an habitual shoplifter. Then one of his previous patients now being treated by the real doctor is found murdered, with her still at the scene, and suspicion points only one way.
Whirlpool
1950
6.1A television news chief courts his anchorwoman ex-wife with an eleventh-hour story.
Switching Channels
1988
7.1Ambulance driver Frank Jessup is ensnared in the schemes of the sensuous but dangerous Diane Tremayne.
Angel Face
1953
6.0An English nurse and an American soldier on the Italian front during World War I fall in love, but the horrors surrounding them test their romance to the limit.
A Farewell to Arms
1957
6.5After striking gold in Alaska, the romantic George sends his womanizing partner Sam to bring his fiancée up from Seattle. When Sam finds that she has already married, he returns instead with Angel, a dancer originally from France.
North to Alaska
1960
6.9Popular monarch Queen Christina of Sweden must choose between love and loyalty to her nation when she unexpectedly falls for a Spanish envoy.
Queen Christina
1934
5.9Police Chief Jim Fitzpatrick is after gangster Sam Belmonte. He uses his police detective brother Ed to watch over Daisy who is associated with Belmonte but things don't go as planned.
The Beast of the City
1932
7.2In Depression-era New York, painter Eben Adams despairs at his lack of success. One cold winter evening in Central Park, he meets enigmatic, old-fashioned Jennie Appleton, who captures his fancy when she asks him to wait for her to grow up. Soon after, Eben sells a sketch of Jennie to kindly art dealer Miss Spinny and, as he meets the oddly mutable Jennie in fleeting moments, begins to realize they share a special destiny.
Portrait of Jennie
1948
6.3A pair of men try to perform the dangerous "triple" in their trapeze act. Problems arise when the duo is made into a trio following the addition of a sexy female performer.
Trapeze
1956
5.7Captain Vinka Kovalenko defects from Russia, but not for political reasons. She defects because she feels discriminated against as a woman. Captain Chuck Lockwood gets the order to show her the bright side of capitalism, while she tries to convince him of the superiority of communism. Naturally, they fall in love, but there's still the KGB, which doesn't like the idea of having a defected Russian officer running around in London.
The Iron Petticoat
1956
7.1An ex-con trying to go straight must face a crazed criminal out for revenge.
Kiss of Death
1947
7.5Childhood chums Rocky Sullivan and Jerry Connelly grow up on opposite sides of the fence: Rocky matures into a prominent gangster, while Jerry becomes a priest, tending to the needs of his old tenement neighborhood.
Angels with Dirty Faces
1938
7.5A kingdom's ascending heir, marked for assassination, switches identities with a lookalike, who takes his place at the coronation. When the real king is kidnapped, his followers try to find him, while the stand-in falls in love with the king's intended bride, the beautiful Princess Flavia.
The Prisoner of Zenda
1937
7.4During World War II, a small group of survivors is stranded in a lifeboat together after the ship they were traveling on is destroyed by a German U-boat.
Lifeboat
1944
6.2American ne'er-do-well Joe January is hired to take Paul Bonnard on an expedition into the desert in search of treasure.
Legend of the Lost
1957
5.4Two-fisted newsreel photographer Johnny Williams is stationed in Burma and China in the early stage of WW II. Captured by the Japanese, he escapes from a concentration camp with the aid of beautiful, enigmatic 'China Girl' Miss Young. The two arduously make their way back to friendly lines so that Johnny can deliver the vital military information he's managed to glean from his captors.
China Girl
1942
5.4Two-fisted newsreel photographer Johnny Williams is stationed in Burma and China in the early stage of WW II. Captured by the Japanese, he escapes from a concentration camp with the aid of beautiful, enigmatic 'China Girl' Miss Young. The two arduously make their way back to friendly lines so that Johnny can deliver the vital military information he's managed to glean from his captors.
China Girl
1942
7.2A con man tries to blackmail a Mexican gangster.
Ride the Pink Horse
1947
5.8Danny O'Neill and Hank Taylor are rival trumpeters with the Perennials, a college band, and both men are still attending college by failing their exams seven years in a row. In the midst of a performance, Danny spies Ellen Miller who ends up being made band manager. Both men compete for her affections while trying to get the other one fired.
Second Chorus
1941
7.2A police detective's violent nature keeps him from being a good cop.
Where the Sidewalk Ends
1950
6.9Wartime romance about a lonely man and woman who meet one rainy afternoon in New York.
Miracle in the Rain
1956
6.0While on vacation in Rome, married American Mary Forbes becomes entangled in an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni Doria. As she prepares to leave Italy, Giovanni confesses his love for her; he doesn't want her to go. Together they wander the railroad station where Mary is to take the train to Paris, then ultimately reunite with her husband and daughter in Philadelphia. Will she throw away her old life for this passionate new romance?
Indiscretion of an American Wife
1953
6.8A temperamental Broadway producer trains an untutored actress, but when she becomes a star, she proves a match for him.
Twentieth Century
1934
6.6At a 1930s New Orleans bordello, Hallie is the main attraction for both clients and the shrewd madam. The arrival of Dove Linkhorn, her lovesick sweetheart from three years ago, disrupts the normal and triggers a chain of events involving a number of people, including the young woman he travelled with, who is now the Doll House's newest employee.
Walk on the Wild Side
1962
5.5The story of corrupt, power-hungry, manipulative Grigori Rasputin's influence on members of the Russian Imperial family and others, and what resulted.
Rasputin and the Empress
1932
6.5American playboy Bill Carey woos a half-caste beauty in French Indochina, but her second-class legal status makes a formidable barrier to their happiness.
Lady of the Tropics
1939
6.2Circus owner Matt Masters is beset by disasters as he attempts a European tour of his circus. At the same time, he is caught in an emotional bind between his adopted daughter and her mother.
Circus World
1964
5.8An industrialist and a pianist meet on a trip and fall in love. Through a quirk of fate, they're reported dead in a crash though they weren't on the plane. This gives them the opportunity to live together free from their previous lives. Unfortunately, this artificial arrangement leads to increasing stress.
September Affair
1950


