Inventory of the Ben Hecht Papers, 1879-1983 The Newberry Library Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections 60 West Walton Street Chicago, Illinois 60610-7324 USA Phone: 312-255-3506 Fax: 312-255-3646 E-Mail: specialcolls@newberry.org URL: http://www.newberry.org Machine-readable finding aid encoded by Alison Hinderliter, 2003. ©2003.

Administrative Information

Cite As

Ben Hecht Papers, Midwest Manuscript Collection, The Newberry Library, Chicago.

Provenance

Behest of Rose Caylor Hecht, 1979.

Processed by

Molly Green, 1980; Martha Briggs, Alison Hinderliter, Pamela Olson, and Monica Petraglia, 2003.

Acknowledgements

This inventory was created with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this inventory do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Access

The Ben Hecht Papers are open for research in the Special Collections Reading Room; 5 folders at a time maximum (Priority II).

Ownership and Literary Rights

The Ben Hecht Papers are the physical property of the Newberry Library. Copyright may belong to the authors or their legal heirs or assigns. For permission to publish or reproduce any materials from this collection, contact the Roger and Julie Baskes Department of Special Collections.

Biography of Ben Hecht

Chicago and New York journalist, novelist, playwright, and Hollywood screenwriter.

Ben Hecht was born on Feb. 28, 1893, in New York City, to Russian immigrants. His family moved soon after to Racine, Wisconsin, where Hecht went to school, read voraciously, learned to play violin, and joined a touring circus as an acrobat for a short time. In June of 1910, he enrolled at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, decided after three days that it wasn't for him, and left for Chicago. It was there he met up with his uncle, who introduced him to the publisher of the Chicago Daily Journal, for whom he wrote a poem and was hired immediately as a "picture chaser" (whose job it was to remove photographs from peoples' homes to be later published with scandalous articles of those individuals). In Chicago Hecht became one of the youngest participants in the celebrated Chicago renaissance of literature, befriending other luminaries such as author Sherwood Anderson, poets Carl Sandburg and Maxwell Bodenheim, author and critic H.L. Mencken, and Little Review editor Margaret Anderson.

In 1914, Hecht left the Chicago Daily Journal to work for the Chicago Daily News, and he married Marie Armstrong the next year. He worked for the Daily News for 9 years; in 1918 the newspaper sent him to Berlin for a year to be a post-World War I foreign correspondent, and when he returned he penned the columns entitled "1001 Afternoons in Chicago" for the paper. He was fired from the paper in 1923, due to the scandal he created in writing obscene literature (as his novel Fantazius Mallare was deemed by the U.S. Postal Service). After being let go from the paper, Hecht decided to write a paper of his own, and the short-lived Chicago Literary Times was born. For personal and financial reasons, the paper only lasted just over a year, and in 1924 Hecht left Chicago with Rose Caylor, to live in New York City; Rose became his wife after his divorce from Marie Armstrong Hecht in 1925. In New York Hecht collaborated with his friend, former Chicago Tribune reporter Charles MacArthur. The two had a fruitful partnership, the most famous product of which is the play The Front Page, completed in 1928.

On the encouragement of his friend Herman J. "Mank" Mankiewicz (screenwriter for the movie Citizen Kane), Hecht went to Hollywood and embarked on his next career as a movie screenwriter. In fact, he was the first screenwriter to ever receive an Oscar for original screenplay - the movie Underworld, in 1929. The number of screenplays he wrote or worked on that are now considered classics is astounding: Scarface (1930), A Star is Born (1937), The Goldwyn Follies (1938), Stagecoach, Some Like It Hot, and Gone With the Wind (all 1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Spellbound (1945), Notorious (1946), Rope (1948), Love Happy (1949), The Thing and Strangers on a Train (both 1951), Roman Holiday (1953), The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), A Farewell to Arms (1957), Walk on the Wild Side and Mutiny on the Bounty (both 1962), and Casino Royale (posthumously, in 1967). It is estimated that he wrote from seventy to ninety screenplays, many anonymously during the British boycott of his work in the late 1940's and early 1950's.

The boycott was a response to Hecht's active support of the radical Zionist movement in Palestine. Through his efforts to raise money for the beleaguered Jews of Europe, he won the friendship of Irgun tseva'i le'umi (Irgun Zvai Leumi) founders Menachem Begin, Peter Bergson (Hillel Kook), and others. A supply ship for Palestine was renamed the S.S. Ben Hecht, and millions of dollars earned by the proceeds of such pageants penned by Hecht as We Will Never Die(1943) and A Flag is Born (1946) helped to pay for it and its contents.

Hecht died of a heart attack in New York City on April 19, 1964, leaving behind a wife (Rose), two daughters (Edwina "Teddy" Hecht, from his first marriage, and Jenny Hecht, from his second), and many grieving friends and admirers. He also left behind a vast output of plays, novels, essays, more than three hundred short stories, innumerable newspaper articles, and a highly entertaining autobiography, A Child of the Century.

Scope and Content of the Collection

Correspondence, works, subject files, personal papers, photographs, scrapbooks, sound recordings, film, video, artifacts, and miscellaneous ephemera documenting the life and literary output of Ben Hecht, his wife Rose, and his daughter Jenny. Hecht's wife Rose, a one-time actress and a novelist in her own right, was in integral part of Ben's career and life. Many of his works and letters include editions and annotations by Rose, and much of his fan mail and most of his financial and legal dealings were handled by her as well. Because of this inextricable connection, many series in the collection contain both Ben's and Rose's materials, identified and separated where possible. Series where Ben's and Rose's papers are filed together are Works, Incoming and Outgoing Correspondence, Subject Files, Publicity, Legal / Financial Files, Audio and Moving Images, Miscellaneous, and Art and Artifacts. Family Correspondence and Photographs involve all members of Hecht's immediate family and in-laws.

Jenny Hecht's materials, for the most part (except for the aforementioned Family Correspondence and Photographs), are in their own series since she had her own acting career separate from her father's career (although she did act in several of Ben Hecht's plays and movies, such as Concerning a Woman of Sin and Simone). The scrapbooks she kept are with her materials, since they consist of collections of her memorabilia or her artwork. Ben Hecht's scrapbooks are reviews and publicity about his books and plays.

This collection is also rich in artifacts and non-textual items that document the life of the Hecht family. From home movies and sound recordings of plays and interviews to press passes, I.D. cards, recipe books, pipes, reading glasses, writing desks, and an Academy Award, the collection provides a three-dimensional glimpse into the life of a man and a family very active in the literary, political, and popular circles of Chicago, New York, and Hollywood in the first half of the twentieth century.

Narrative descriptions of the subject matter, types of material, and arrangement of each series are available through the Organization section of the finding aid.

Papers are organized in the following series:

Series 1: Works, 1908-1983. Box(es) 1 - 54

Originals (mostly typescript), photocopies, printed, and reprinted versions of the literary output of Ben Hecht, Rose Hecht, and other writers who either collaborated with Ben Hecht or offered their writings to him for his consideration or amusement. This series includes novels, articles, essays, speeches, notes, scripts, poems, sketches, epigrams, and revisions. Untitled prose and poetry are identified with the first line of the piece. Unidentified materials are manuscript scraps and fragments, or items missing title pages. A few other writers wrote essays, articles, and eulogies about Ben Hecht; these works are included in the last section of the series.

Organized into three sections: Works by Ben Hecht, Works by Rose Hecht, and Works by Other Writers. Arranged alphabetically by title therein. Two boxes of oversize works are at the end of the series.

Series 2: Incoming Correspondence, 1914-1979. Box(es) 55 - 65

Letters, telegrams, cards, etc. to Ben and Rose Hecht, of both a business and personal nature. Since Rose Hecht annotated much of her husband’s incoming correspondence, and since she was highly involved in the critiquing and editing of Ben's writings and the management of his career, her incoming correspondence is interfiled with Ben’s. Topics of letters vary from friendly notes and congratulatory letters to correspondence relating to the business of publishing, screenwriting, and filmmaking. After the alphabetical run of correspondents there are several folders of letters grouped by similar subject, such as fan mail, requests of various kinds, permissions to quote material from Hecht’s works, and letters of notes and condolence after Ben Hecht’s death in 1964. A great deal of fan mail and requests pertain to Hecht's writings that address the Holocaust and Judaism (such as his Guide for the Bedevilled in 1944 and Perfidy in 1961), and the fan mail especially is rich in personal accounts from World War II veterans and Holocaust survivors. Some condolences, if they are from prominent celebrities and/or form part of a longer series of correspondence from the same person, are filed in the alphabetic run instead of at the end of the run.

For more correspondence, see also Series 7: Legal/Financial Files, Series 8: Jenny Hecht Materials (under Correspondence and in Scrapbooks), and Series 9: Scrapbooks (at the end of Volume 3, concerning A Child of the Century.

Arranged alphabetically by correspondent, with correspondence by subject filed alphabetically afterwards.

Series 3: Outgoing Correspondence, 1931-1977. Box(es) 66 - 70

Letters from Ben and Rose Hecht to friends, business associates, and other correspondents. Similarly in the Incoming Correspondence series, Rose’s outgoing letters are interfiled after Ben’s.

Arranged alphabetically by addressee.

Series 4: Family Correspondence, 1915-1976. Box(es) 71-76

Letters and notes to and from Ben Hecht, Marie Armstrong Hecht Essipoff (Ben’s first wife), Rose Caylor Hecht (Ben’s second wife), Edwina “Teddy” Hecht Jackson Carneiro (Ben and Marie’s daughter, born 1916: listed in the files as “Jackson, Edwina (Teddy) Hecht”), Jenny Hecht (Ben and Rose’s daughter, 1943-1971), Sarah and Peter Hecht (Ben’s mother and brother), Minna Emch, Anita Libman (Nita) Lebeson, and Elizabeth (Lise) Libman (Rose’s sisters), and other relations. Relationships to Ben Hecht are listed on the lip of each folder.

Arranged alphabetically by the author of the correspondence.

Series 5: Subject Files, 1919-1981. Box(es) 77

Clippings, offprints, photographs, and other ephemeral material relating to people or topics collected by Ben or Rose Hecht. Most of the material is about people they knew, such as the poet Maxwell Bodenheim, the convicted gangster Mickey Cohen, or Rose’s sister Minna Emch, a published psychoanalyst. There is also a book order catalog from the Covici-Friede publishing company that lists books by both Ben Hecht and Rose Caylor, and a letter from and information about John D. MacArthur, the multi-millionaire philanthropist and brother of Hecht’s collaborator Charles MacArthur. Documents from Hecht’s stint as a postwar correspondent in World War I Germany are in the folder marked “Berlin” (see also Series 1: Works – Berlin Dispatches, and Series 2: Incoming Correspondence under individual names of correspondents, 1919, for more documents relating to this topic). Items relating to Ben and Rose’s involvement in the political movements for a state of Israel and Irgun are listed under the heading “Israel”. AKC papers and miscellaneous material concerning the family dog Google is listed under “Poodle.”

Arranged alphabetically.

Series 6: Publicity, 1920-1979. Box(es) 78-80

Reviews, clippings, magazine features, playbills, advertisements, and fliers relating to Ben Hecht or to his literary output. At the end of the series is a small group of folders about Rose Hecht and her literary output.

Organized into features about Ben Hecht (arranged chronologically), and reviews, clippings, and other material about his works (arranged alphabetically), with Rose Hecht materials following Ben Hecht materials.

Series 7: Legal / Financial Files, 1929-1979. Box(es) 81-91

Check books, correspondence, reports, figures, computations, blueprints, contracts, official documents, and some photographs. This series reflects the business enterprises of Ben Hecht and his family. There are day-to-day accounting files, such as checkbook stubs, account books, payroll information for the Hecht staff, hospital bills, and tax computations for the year. In addition, there are Insurance policies and correspondence, Mortgage and lease documents, Inventories and accounts of the houses (in Nyack, New York and Oceanside, California) and the apartment (New York City), Wills and settlements for Ben, Rose, and Jenny Hecht, and legalities concerning Ben Hecht’s Works. The last section of this series, Works, includes signed contracts, copyright information and permission letters for reprints, translations, adaptations and performances. There is a substantial amount of correspondence to and from book publishers (Doubleday & Co., Simon & Schuster), lawyers, agents (Lucy Kroll, Elisabeth Marton), and accountants. The works files are divided into pre-1964 and post-1964 sections, to reflect the legal battles during Ben’s life and after Ben had died. See also Series 2 and 3, Incoming and Outgoing Correspondence, under the names of individuals and organizations, for more correspondence from those parties.

Filed alphabetically by the subject of the materials: Checkbooks, Expenses, Insurance, Jenny Hecht-related, Pension and Social Security, Real Estate, Taxes, Wills and Estate Information, and Works.

Series 8: Jenny Hecht Materials, 1943-1973. Box(es) 92-102

Paintings, drawings, sketches, writings, correspondence, personal papers, diaries and notebooks, scrapbooks, and documents relating to the acting career of Jenny Hecht (prompt books, notes, publicity, reviews, etc.) Includes information about roles performed when Jenny was still a child (such as Midsummer, Simone, The Diary of Anne Frank, and Concerning a Woman of Sin), as well as her involvement as an adult actor in The Living Theatre. Artwork ranges from her drawings and paintings she did as a child, to a notebook of beautiful drawings of windows she drew while travelling around Europe, to her homemade deck of Tarot cards, which she consulted daily. Correspondence is from fellow actors and friends of her parents', as well as her friends Carol Fegte and Gerry Jedd (who died in 1962.) All of the scrapbooks were compiled by Jenny except the first, which is a keepsake scrapbook about Jenny's birth, filled with congratulatory letters, family photographs, and original poetry by both Ben Hecht and Carl Sandburg.

Arranged alphabetically by type or subject of document, with large-size scrapbooks at the end of the series.

Series 9: Scrapbooks, 1920-1954. Box(es) 103-106

Three volumes of reviews, clippings, and some correspondence relating to Ben’s works. The first volume is a collection of reviews and advertisement clippings for Ben’s novels and plays from 1921 to 1928; namely, Erik Dorn, The Poseur (play), Gargoyles, Under False Pretenses (play starring Leo Ditrichstein), Count Bruga, and The Front Page. The second volume contains reviews for Gargoyles, and seems to have been compiled by the Boni & Liveright publishing company, who published Gargoyles. Articles from around October 22 in this volume cover the suit brought by the U.S. Postal Service charging Ben with sending obscene literature through the mail. The third volume consists of both clippings and correspondence concerning Hecht’s autobiography A Child of the Century. The clippings are reviews and advertisements combined with a few features on Hecht. The correspondence is acknowledgements and thank-yous for complimentary books, as well as comments and congratulations from people mentioned in the books. Correspondents include H.L. Mencken’s secretary, Adolph Kroch (with a manuscript reply by Hecht), Herbert Bayard Swope (with a manuscript reply by Hecht), Larry Vinick and Jack Goodman of Simon & Schuster, Stuart Brent (with a manuscript reply by Hecht), Ned Griffith (to Gene Fowler about the book), Noldi (Arnold Emch; with a manuscript reply by Hecht), Charlie MacArthur (with a manuscript reply by Hecht), George Jessel, Walter Wanger (with a manuscript reply by Hecht), Irving Paul “Swifty” Lazar, Herman Kogan of the Chicago Sun-Times to Rose, Carl Sandburg, Robert Thoeren, and Margaret Anderson.

Arranged chronologically.

Directly after this series is a box containing oversize items from the following series: Series 5 - Subject Files; Series 6 - Publicity; Series 7 - Legal/Financial Files; and Series 10 - Photographs.

Series 10: Photographs, 1879-1977 . Box(es) 107-114

Prints and a few negatives of Ben Hecht, his family, his friends, his dogs, his homes in Nyack, New York, and Oceanside, California, and on the sets of plays and movies he worked on. Includes many prints that were published in Hecht's autobiography, A Child of the Century. Hecht was a fan of the actress Sarah Bernhardt, and collected a few photographs of her, including one from 1879.

Arranged alphabetically by subjects of photographs: Ben Hecht by himself and with others, Family, Homes, Motion Pictures and Plays, People, Travel, and Miscellaneous.

Series 11: Audio and Moving Images, 1937-1970. Box(es) 115-131

Audio reels, audiocassette tapes, 45, 33 1/3, and 78 rpm vinyl records (10", 12" and 16"), 16 mm film reels, and videocassettes on various topics. Audio reels are read-throughs or productions of Ben or Jenny Hecht (Winkelberg, The Ben Hecht Show, and Diary of Anne Frank, respectively); audiocassettes are a preservation copy of Hecht’s We Will Never Die, the originals of which are on 16” vinyl records, and a radio interview with Hecht from 1956. Vinyl records include commercial recordings collected mainly by Rose Hecht or autographed by the artists (George Antheil, Harpo Marx), as well as noncommercial recordings of the same type as on the audio reels.

Within this collection are audio snippets (on reel tape and on 33 1/3 rpm record) from Ben's short-lived television show, called "The Ben Hecht Television Show," which ran from September 15, 1958 to Jan. 30, 1959. The recording was compiled by the producers of the Ben Hecht Show, and narrated by Mike Wallace. On the show, Hecht expounded on various controversial subjects, including his views on Germany, prostitution, and evangelism. He brought in provocative guests such as the director Otto Preminger, artist Salvador Dali, the Executive Editor of the New York Herald-Tribune Luke Carroll, and illustrator / author Alexander King.

The reels of 16 mm film are mostly home movies of Jenny Hecht as a young girl, but also include some footage of Ben Hecht. Film footage also includes official footage of the 1940 New York World’s Fair and a fragment of a black and white cartoon. Videocassettes are copies of commercial productions for His Girl Friday (Howard Hawks, 1940), Jenny Hecht's last movie The Jesus Trip (1971) and The Front Page (Billy Wilder, 1974).

Arranged by format.

Series 12: Miscellaneous, 1885-1974. Box(es) 132-134

Awards, certificates, address books, appointment books, stationery, personal items, official membership cards and some legal documents. Includes identification cards for movie sets (Twentieth Century Fox and Metro Goldwyn Mayer) as well as press identification cards, such as the one Ben carried when he was on assignment in Germany in 1919. One of the earliest items is a violin recital program featuring Benjamin Hecht performing Accolay's Concerto in A minor, from 1907 when Ben was 14 years old. There is a folder documenting Rose Hecht's activities in the early World War II years, when she received certification in aircraft mechanics at the Nyack Vocational School and became a Cyclone builder.

Arranged alphabetically by type of document; Ben Hecht's items first, and then Rose Hecht's.

Series 13: Art and Artifacts, 1899-1963. Box(es) 135---

Paintings, prints, sketches, sculpture, and three-dimensional objects belonging to the Hecht family. Artworks are drawings by Ben Hecht as well as art collected and displayed in his homes. Many of the portraits that were originally framed and displayed are of famous artists, writers, great thinkers, and historic figures Hecht admired. Some of the artworks are by friends and collaborators of Hecht's, including Georg Grosz and Herman Rosse (who painted a backdrop for Jenny, possibly for play-acting or puppet plays). Yet others are gifts (such as David Selznick's portrait by Don Bachardy, inscribed to Hecht) or commissions (such as portraits of Jenny Hecht by Lawrence Beall Smith and Stanley Parke) Artifacts include the "Oscar" statuette Hecht won for best original screenplay for Underworld, presented to Hecht in 1929, as well as many of his writing utensils, pipes, glasses, and other personal effects.

Arranged by size and type of material. Three-dimensional objects and framed works of art are assigned Newberry Library Artifact numbers, listed by item below (e.g. NL 1106), and registered in the Newberry Library's Artifact Register. Oversize art is shelved at the end of the series.

Series 14: Rose Hecht Notes and Annotations, [n.d.]. Box(es) 141-163

Thoughts, ideas, and reminders, jotted down on scraps of paper and on Rolodex cards, envelopes, notepads, in notebooks, and on newspaper clippings. Nature of the jottings includes opinions of people, writer’s notes, legal and tax issues, health issues, home decorating ideas, memories of Ben and of Jenny, and other editorial comments. Notes are not arranged or processed. Presumably most of the notes were created after Ben's death, ca. 1964-1978. There are also over 20 boxes of books annotated by Rose in the collection; a list of those titles is available in the Newberry Library's Special Collections Reading Room after the printed inventory of the collection.

Selected Search Terms

The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the Newberry Library's public catalog. Researchers desiring additional materials on a particular topic should search the catalog using these headings.

Names

• Anderson, Margaret C.
• Anderson, Sherwood, 1876-1941
• Antheil, George, 1900-1959
• Begin, Menachem, 1913-
• Bodenheim, Maxwell, 1893-1954
• Brent, Stuart
• Caylor, Rose
• Chicago Daily Journal.
• Chicago Daily News, Inc.
• Doubleday and Company, inc.
• Essipoff, Marie Armstrong, 1892-
• Fowler, Gene, 1890-1960
• Hart, Moss, 1904-1961
• Hecht Family
• Irgun tseva'i le'umi
• Jessel, George, 1898-1981
• Kogan, Herman
• Kook, Hillel, 1915-
• Kroch, Adolph, b. 1882
• Lenya, Lotte
• MacArthur, Charles, 1895-1956
• Mankiewicz, Herman J. (Herman Jacob), 1897-1953
• Marx, Harpo, 1888-1964
• Mencken, H. L. (Henry Louis), 1880-1956
• Sandburg, Carl, 1878-1967
• Simon and Schuster, inc.
• Wallace, Mike, 1918-
• Weill, Kurt, 1900-1950

Subjects

• Artifacts
• Authors, American--20th century
• Chicago (Ill.)--Intellectual life--20th century
• Clippings
• Dramatists, American
• Manuscripts, American
• Moving images
• Novelists, American--Illinois--Chicago
• Photographs
• Scrapbooks
• Screenplays
• Screenwriters, American
• Sound recordings
• World War, 1939-1945--Jews--Palestine
• World War, 1914-1918 -- Aftermath--Germany--Berlin

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