During the half century of the dominant studio system, from roughly the 1920’s till the 1970s, no scenarist enjoyed a more prominent place than Ben Hecht (1894−1964). Inventor of the gangster picture with Underworld (1927) and Scarface (1932), he could co-write — in Hollywood’s perfect storm of 1939—Gunga Din and Wuthering Heights and Gone With the Wind (despite denying having read the best-selling novel).
Yet the emergence of Nazism pushed Hecht into an utterly unpredictable path, propelling him into a fierce effort to warn his fellow Jews and fellow Americans about the relentless threat of a genocidal and aggrandizing Third Reich. He became the chief creative and organizational force behind a pageant, We Will Never Die (1943), that was performed in Madison Square Garden and elsewhere. Hecht could call in his chips with movie stars like Paul Muni and Edward G. Robinson, who had played Hecht’s gangsters, and John Garfield, who lent glamor to the struggle to draw attention to the Final Solution. There had never been a production as spectacular (or as politically charged) as We Will Never Die, even if its sole effect was probably to corroborate the sense of helplessness to slow down the catastrophe.
Hecht was not done after V‑E Day. The survivors’ desperate dream of reaching Mandatory Palestine galvanized him to write A Flag is Born (1946), a searing play that made the case for a Jewish homeland. The actor who played a young Zionist militant would become famous the next year, in A Streetcar Named Desire: Marlon Brando. So emphatically did Hecht denounce the waning Mandate that the British government banned films that listed his name in the credits, a boycott that was not lifted until 1952.
So strikingly inconsistent a career sustains its fascination. Hecht’s scenarios were noted for their cynicism. He did not underestimate the human tendency to inflict harm out of egotism and irrationality. Born of Yiddish-speaking immigrant parents on the Lower East Side, Hecht wrote very little in Hollywood about Jewry — until he suddenly reversed himself. Garrett Eisler’s revised dissertation reveals a passionate commitment to neutralizing Jewish suffering, from, say, Kristallnacht to the birth of Israel exactly a decade later. Barely breaking stride, Hecht went from utter indifference to a loyalty and dedication that allowed for only one conclusion. He was an idealist.
A special value of Ben Hecht’s Theatre of Jewish Protest is its recovery and printing of the four works that were intended to advance Jewish rights and interests — including the dramatic texts of quite unfamiliar works: A Jewish Fairy Tale (1944) and The Terrorist (1947). Hecht invented many characters. But he was especially haunted, Eisler demonstrates, by Sholom Aleichem’s Tevye, for whom existence was a puzzle and moral stability a challenge. For Hecht, Jewish existence was terrifyingly precarious, and to defend it art might inspire action.
Stephen Whitfield is Professor of American Studies (Emeritus) at Brandeis University. He is the author of Learning on the Left: Political Profiles of Brandeis University (2020).
