Ben HechtFilmography

Switching Channels

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Kathleen Turner, Burt Reynolds, Christopher Reeve, Ned Beatty, Henry Gibson

Synopsis: The 1920s-era play The Front Page was about a Chicago reporter who wants to retire and get married but is tricked by his editor into doing one last story -- which proves to be complicated. It was made into a classic film in 1931 and inspired the 1940 hit movie His Girl Friday, in which the Read More

The Front Page

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, Carol Burnett, Susan Sarandon, Vincent Gardenia

Synopsis: This third film version of the 1928 Ben Hecht/Charlie MacArthur Broadway hit The Front Page was the first one permitted to utilize all the salty profanities in the original play. Director Billy Wilder cast his two favorite leading men, Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, as ace reporter Hildy Johnson Read More

Gaily, Gaily

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Beau Bridges, Melina Mercouri, Brian Keith, George Kennedy, Hume Cronyn

Synopsis: Ben Hecht's reminiscences from his youth as a cub reporter in 1910 Chicago makes an uneasy transition to the screen in this Norman Jewison production. During the Galena, Illinois, Independence Day celebration of 1910, Ben Young (Beau Bridges) determines that it is time to seek his fortune and sets Read More

Casino Royale

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Peter Sellers, Ursula Andress, David Niven, Orson Welles, Woody Allen, Joanna Pettet

Synopsis: Retired after years of international espionage, Agent 007 is lured back into action to battle the evil spy organization SMERSH in this notoriously incoherent parody of the James Bond films. David Niven portrays the aging Bond, who atypically rejects the advances of a variety of women, and agrees Read More

Circus World

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Wayne, Claudia Cardinale, Rita Hayworth, Lloyd Nolan, Richard Conte

Synopsis: Filmed in Cinerama and Technicolor, Circus World may have drawn the crowds for various reasons -- not the least, perhaps, for the big names. John Wayne stars as circus owner Matt Masters, who takes his show to Europe hoping to save it from financial ruin. Accompanying Matt, is young Toni (Claudia Cardinale Read More

Legend of the Lost

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Wayne, Sophia Loren, Rossano Brazzi, Kurt Kasznar, Sonia Moser

Synopsis: Produced and directed by Henry Hathaway, The Legend of the Lost boasted the one-time-only teaming of John Wayne and Sophia Loren. Location-filmed in the Sahara desert, the story concerns the efforts of Wayne, Loren and Rosanno Brazzi to locate a missing treasure in the ruins of ancient Timgrad. Read More

Queen of Outer Space

Crew: Short Story Author

Actors: Zsa Zsa Gabor, Eric Fleming, Laurie Mitchell, Paul Birch, Patrick Waltz, Barbara Darrow

Synopsis: This legendarily campy sci-fi epic (shot in color and CinemaScope, and rather lavish for a sci-fi film of this period) concerns a team of astronauts (all men -- this was 1958, you know) who are drawn off course and land on the planet Venus, only to discover it's populated entirely by beautiful Read More

The Fiend Who Walked the West

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Hugh O'Brian, Robert Evans, Dolores Michaels, Linda Cristal, Stephen McNally

Synopsis: This off-beat western is a freely-adapted remake of the violent film noir Kiss of Death. The story centers on a naive thief, Dan Hardy, who is captured after a bank robbery and placed in a jail cell alongside the maniacal, vicious Felix Griffin. O'Brian gets himself into deep trouble when he tells Read More

A Farewell to Arms

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones, Vittorio De Sica, Alberto Sordi, Kurt Kasznar, Mercedes McCambridge

Synopsis: Farewell to Arms is the second film version of Ernest Hemingway's World War One novel--and also the last film produced by David O. Selznick (Gone with the Wind). Rock Hudson plays an American serving in the Italian Army during the "War to End All Wars". Jennifer Jones is his lover, a Red cross Read More

The Iron Petticoat

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Bob Hope, Katharine Hepburn, James Robertson Justice, Robert Helpmann, David Kossoff

Synopsis: Lensed in England, The Iron Petticoat has been out of circulation for so long that it's difficult to determine whether it is a long-lost classic or the unmitigated disaster many have claimed it to be. Essentially a rehash of Ninotchka, the film stars Bob Hope as Chuck Lockwood, an American Read More

Miracle in the Rain

Crew: Book Author, Screenwriter

Actors: Jane Wyman, Van Johnson, Eileen Heckart, Fred Clark, Peggie Castle

Synopsis: The fate that brings lovers together can easily tear them apart as can be seen in this sentimental tragedy that centers on an ordinary-looking secretary's (Jane Wyman) lonely life. Other than working and spending some free time with a spinster (Eileen Heckart), who is her best friend, the woman Read More

The Indian Fighter

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Elsa Martinelli, Walter Abel, Walter Matthau, Diana Douglas

Synopsis: The Indian Fighter is trail guide Kirk Douglas, who agrees to shepherd a wagon train through Sioux territory. Douglas tries to convince the Sioux to leave his charges alone, but such hotheads as drunken white trader Walter Matthau and embittered Indian brave Harry Landers escalate the tensions. Douglas Read More

Ulysses

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Kirk Douglas, Silvana Mangano, Anthony Quinn, Rossana Podestà, Jacques Dumesnil

Synopsis: This very expensive Italian-made adaptation of Homer's "The Odyssey" stars Kirk Douglas as seafaring hero Ulysses. The story begins, as ever, with Ulysses leaving his faithful wife Penelope (Silvano Magnano) behind as he goes off to fight in the Trojan Wars. Having the poor taste to set himself Read More

Living It Up

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Janet Leigh, Edward Arnold, Fred Clark

Synopsis: The 1954 Martin-and-Lewis romp Living It Up is an amusing remake of the 1937 comedy classic Nothing Sacred. More specifically, it is the film version of the Broadway musical Hazel Flagg, which was based on Nothing Sacred. The heroine of the original undergoes a sex change to become feckless Homer Read More

Monkey Business

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, Charles Coburn, Marilyn Monroe, Hugh Marlowe

Synopsis: Howard Hawks hoped to capture the screwball comic fervor of his 1938 film Bringing Up Baby with his 1952 comedy Monkey Business. As in the earlier film, Cary Grant stars as an absent-minded professor involved in a research project. This time he's a chemist seeking a "fountain of youth" formula Read More

Actors and Sin

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Edward G. Robinson, Marsha Hunt, Dan O'Herlihy, Eddie Albert, Rudolph Anders, Tracey Roberts

Synopsis: At least half of the two-part Actors and Sin is well worth having. Part One, "Actor's Blood", is based on a Ben Hecht tale of theatrical intrigue. Edward G. Robinson plays a Barrymoresque Shakespearean actor whose obsessive control of the life and career of his actress-daughter Marsha Hunt results Read More

Perfect Strangers

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Ginger Rogers, Dennis Morgan, Thelma Ritter, Margalo Gillmore, Anthony Ross

Synopsis: The Ben Hecht-Charles MacArthur Broadway comedy Ladies and Gentlemen formed the basis of the Warner Bros. laughspinner Perfect Strangers. The title characters are Terry Scott and David Campbell, played by Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan. She's a divorcee, he's a husband and father. Terry and David Read More

Where the Sidewalk Ends

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Dana Andrews, Gene Tierney, Gary Merrill, Bert Freed, Karl Malden, Tom Tully

Synopsis: Dana Andrews is brutal metropolitan police detective Dixon, who despises all criminals because his father had been one. When the cops pick up two-bit gambler Ken Paine (Craig Stevens) as a murder suspect, Dixon subjects Paine to the third degree -- and accidentally kills him. In disposing of the Read More

Edge of Doom

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Dana Andrews, Farley Granger, Joan Evans, Robert Keith, Mala Powers, Paul Stewart

Synopsis: An unusually morbid film from producer Samuel Goldwyn, Edge of Doom stars Farley Granger as a sensitive young man trapped in an impoverished slum existence. Granger becomes unhinged when his beloved mother dies, and when an unfeeling elderly priest refuses to provide the woman with a lavish Read More

Whirlpool

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer, Charles Bickford, Eduard Franz, Barbara O'Neil

Synopsis: In this compelling and unusual psychological melodrama Ann Sutton (Gene Tierney), a woman tormented by her secret kleptomania seeks help from a unscrupulous hypnotist David Korvo (Jose Ferrer). Although she is married to a successful psychiatrist (Richard Conte), and has no need to steal the Read More

Rope

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: James Stewart, John Dall, Farley Granger, Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Collier

Synopsis: Rope, Alfred Hitchcock's first color film, was adapted from Patrick Hamilton's stage play Rope's End by no less than Hume Cronyn. Loosely inspired by the Leopold-Loeb case, the plot concerns two implicitly homosexual college chums, played by Farley Granger and John Dall. Their heads filled with Read More

The Miracle of the Bells

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Philip Ahn, Lee J. Cobb, Fred MacMurray, Charles Meredith, Veronika Pataky

Synopsis: Casting Frank Sinatra as a Pennsylvania priest is but one of the many miscalculations made by the producers of Miracle of the Bells. Adapted by Ben Hecht and Quentin Reynolds from the best-selling novel by Russell Janney, the story revolves around an aspiring actress named Olga Treskovna (Alida Valli Read More

Ride the Pink Horse

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Montgomery, Wanda Hendrix, Thomas Gomez, Rita Conde, Iris Flores, Fred Clark, Andrea King, Art Smith

Synopsis: Robert Montgomery directed and starred in this exotic film noir set during a New Mexico fiesta. Montgomery plays a secretive ex-GI who plans to extort money from a prominent gangster (Fred Clark) as retribution for the death of Montgomery's best friend. An FBI man (Art Smith) would like the Read More

Her Husband's Affairs

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Lucille Ball, Nana Bryant, Franchot Tone, Edward Everett Horton, Mikhail Rasumny, Gene Lockhart, Jonathan Hale

Synopsis: Lucille Ball offers a seminal version of her Lucy Ricardo TV character in Her Husband's Affairs. Ball is cast as Margaret Weldon, the wife of advertising executive William Weldon (Franchot Tone). Though Weldon is successful, Margaret can't help but feel that he'd be more successful if she were to Read More

Kiss of Death

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray, Richard Widmark, Karl Malden, Taylor Holmes

Synopsis: Based in part on a true story, Kiss of Death is given a veneer of reality by being filmed on location in New York, with a bare minimum of studio work. In one of his best performances, Victor Mature plays a cheap crook who is sent up the river for 20 years for robbery. District attorney Brian Donlevy Read More

The Specter of the Rose

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Judith Anderson, Michael Chekhov, Ivan Kirov, Viola Essen, Lionel Stander

Synopsis: Ben Hecht wrote and directed this bizarre comedy/suspense/dance film, featuring a discordant musical score by George Antheil. The film concerns a love affair between young, innocent ballerina Haidi (Viola Essen) and her psychotic genius dance partner Andre Sanine (Ivan Kirov). The crux of the tale Read More

Notorious

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, Louis Calhern, Leopoldine Konstantin

Synopsis: Though Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious was produced by David O. Selznick's Vanguard Films, Selznick himself had little to do with the production, which undoubtedly pleased the highly independent Hitchcock. Ingrid Bergman plays Alicia Huberman, who goes to hell in a handbasket after her father, an Read More

Spectre of the Rose

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Synopsis: Writer/director Ben Hecht brings "art" to the artless environs of Republic Pictures in the one-of-a-kind melodrama Spectre of the Rose. The film is set in the rarefied world of the Ballet, featuring a curious blend of ballet artists and veteran Hollywood character actors. Ivan Kirov plays Andre Read More

Spellbound

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck, Jean Acker, Rhonda Fleming, Leo G. Carroll, Donald Curtis, Norman Lloyd, Regis Toomey

Synopsis: As Alfred Hitchcock's classic psychothriller opens, the staff of a posh mental asylum eagerly awaits the arrival of the new director. When the man in question shows up, it turns out to be handsome psychiatrist John Ballantine (Gregory Peck). But something's wrong, here: Ballantine seems much too Read More

The Black Swan

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Tyrone Power, Maureen O'Hara, Laird Cregar, Thomas Mitchell, George Sanders

Synopsis: Perhaps unintentionally, the 1942 Technicolor swashbuckler The Black Swan is a bondage fetishist's dream, with hero and heroine Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara taking turns being tied up and imprisoned throughout the film's brisk 85-minute running time. Very loosely adapted by Ben Hecht and Seton I. Miller Read More

China Girl

Crew: Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Gene Tierney, George Montgomery, Lynn Bari, Victor McLaglen, Alan Baxter

Synopsis: China Girl charts the exploits of two-fisted newsreel photographer Johnny Williams (George Montgomery), 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 (Gene Tierney Read More

Tales of Manhattan

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton

Synopsis: Tales of Manhattan is a sumptuous multipart film centered around a formal tailcoat. The coat is specially designed for stage actor Charles Boyer, who wears it during a rendezvous with his lady friend (Rita Hayworth). The lady's husband (Thomas Mitchell) shoots Boyer, thus the tailcoat is damaged Read More

Lydia

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Merle Oberon, Edna May Oliver, Alan Marshal, Joseph Cotten, Hans Yaray

Synopsis: Adapted from a French movie entitled Un Carnet de Bal, this is a story of love unrequited. In one of her best performances, Merle Oberon portrays an elderly woman who has spent her life waiting for a man whom she had a brief liaison with but who never returned for her as he had promised. Casting Read More

Angels over Broadway

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell, John Qualen, George Watts, Ralph Theodore

Synopsis: In the Ben Hecht-scripted Angels over Broadway. Douglas Fairbanks Jr. plays a poker hustler working in cahoots with good-time girl Rita Hayworth. Alcoholic playwright Thomas Mitchell, having saved embezzler John Qualen from suicide, decides to enter Fairbanks' high-stakes game, using Qualen as an Read More

Comrade X

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Clark Gable, Hedy Lamarr, Oscar Homolka, Felix Bressart, Eve Arden

Synopsis: A half-hearted derivation of Ninotchka, Comrade X stars Clark Gable as an American news reporter stationed in Russia. Gable is actually the mysterious Comrade X, who has been smuggling provocative stories about the crumbling Soviet government out of the country. Threatened with exposure by a hotel Read More

His Girl Friday

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Helen Mack, Porter Hall, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns

Synopsis: The second screen version of the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur play The Front Page, His Girl Friday changed hard-driving newspaper reporter Hildy Johnson from a man to a woman, transforming the story into a scintillating battle of the sexes. Rosalind Russell plays Hildy, about to foresake journalism Read More

Lady of the Tropics

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Robert Taylor, Hedy Lamarr, Joseph Schildkraut, Gloria Franklin, Ernest Cossart

Synopsis: It's "Never the Twain Shall Meet" time again in the MGM romantic melodrama Lady of the Tropics. The lady in question is half-caste Manon De Vargnes (Hedy Lamarr), a resident of prewar Saigon. American playboy Bill Carey (Robert Taylor) falls madly in love with Manon, but both have their crosses to Read More

It's a Wonderful World

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Claudette Colbert, James Stewart, Guy Kibbee, Frances Drake, Nat Pendleton

Synopsis: In this frothy screwball comedy, Guy Johnson (James Stewart) is a private detective who is dedicated to his job but still quite green and a bit of a bumbler. Guy is hired to keep a close watch on Willie Heyward (Ernest Truex), a footloose millionaire with a habit of getting into trouble. One Read More

Some Like It Hot

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Bob Hope, Shirley Ross, Una Merkel, Gene Krupa, Rufe Davis

Synopsis: Rhythm Romance is the television title for the 1939 Bob Hope comedy Some Like It Hot (the change was made to avoid confusion with the 1959 Billy Wilder film of the same name). Hope plays a penny-ante carnival concessionaire with both eyes on the Main Chance. Exploiting the musical talents of his Read More

Let Freedom Ring

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Nelson Eddy, Virginia Bruce, Victor McLaglen, Lionel Barrymore, Edward Arnold

Synopsis: Originally filmed in Sepiatone, Let Freedom Ring is a satisfying Nelson Eddy musical with patriotic overtones. Set in the years following the Civil War, the story focuses on the battle of wills between Harvard-educated idealist Steve Logan (Eddy) and bullying railroad magnate Jim Knox (Edward Arnold Read More

Gunga Din

Crew: Play Author, Short Story Author

Actors: Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Sam Jaffe, Eduardo Ciannelli, Joan Fontaine

Synopsis: Though Rudyard Kipling's poem Gunga Din makes a swell recital piece, it cannot be said to have much of a plot. It's simply a crude cockney soldier's tribute to a native Indian water boy who remains at his job even after being mortally wounded. Hardly the sort of material upon which to build 118 Read More

Wuthering Heights

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, David Niven, Flora Robson, Geraldine Fitzgerald

Synopsis: William Wyler's Wuthering Heights is one of the earliest screen adaptations of the classic Emily Brontë novel. A traveler named Lockwood (Miles Mander) is caught in the snow and stays at the estate of Wuthering Heights, where the housekeeper, Ellen Dean (Flora Robson), sits down to tell him the Read More

The Goldwyn Follies

Crew: Screen Story, Screenwriter

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, The Ritz Brothers [Al, Jimmy, Harry], Vera Zorina, Kenny Baker, Andrea Leeds

Synopsis: A longtime admirer of Broadway impresario Flo Ziegfeld, Hollywood producer Sam Goldwyn hoped to emulate the success of The Ziegfeld Follies by producing an annual movie-musical revue. Goldwyn's dream began and ended with 1938's Goldwyn Follies, a film centering on Goldwyn-like movie producer Read More

A Star Is Born

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou, May Robson, Andy Devine

Synopsis: A Star is Born came into being when producer David O. Selznick decided to tell a "true behind-the-scenes" story of Hollywood. The truth, of course, was filtered a bit for box-office purposes, although Selznick and an army of screenwriters based much of their script on actual people and events. Janet Gaynor Read More

Nothing Sacred

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger, Walter Connolly, Sig Rumann

Synopsis: "This is New York, Skyscraper Champion of the World...Where the Slickers and Know-It-Alls peddle gold bricks to each other...And where Truth, crushed to earth, rises again more phony than a glass eye..." With this jaundiced opening title, scripter Ben Hecht introduces his classic comedy Nothing Sacred Read More

Soak the Rich

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Walter Connolly, Mary Taylor, John Howard, Alice Duer Miller, Ilka Chase

Synopsis: In the print ads for Soak the Rich, writers/producers/directors Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur were shown singing "We're the boys who wrote the yarn/ And here's what it's about/ Class ideas don't mean a thing/ When love kicks 'em out." The film pokes broad fun at New Deal liberalism and 1930s Read More

Once in a Blue Moon

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Nikita Balieff, Cecilia Loftus, Whitney Bourne

Synopsis: Hecht and MacArthur's Once in a Blue Moon was an unsuccessful attempt to fashion a film vehicle for legendary Broadway comedian Jimmy Savo. The pixieish star is cast as Gabbo the Great, a circus performer in pre-Revolutionary Russia. A sensitive soul, Gabbo is afforded an opportunity to prove his Read More

The Barbary Coast

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Miriam Hopkins, Edward G. Robinson, Joel McCrea, Walter Brennan, Frank Craven

Synopsis: It's the wild and woolly waterfront world of San Francisco in the late 1800s in this rambling tale of an outrageous nightclub owner (Edward G. Robinson) and his efforts at wooing lovely Mary Rutledge (Miriam Hopkins), a lovely Eastern lass left to her own devices in the rowdy port city. The Read More

Spring Tonic

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Lew Ayres, Claire Trevor, ZaSu Pitts, Jack Haley

Synopsis: It is said that former gagman Clyde Bruckman spent most of his directing days sitting in his canvas chair quietly nursing a hangover. Well, someone must have directed Spring Tonic, and if it was Bruckman (as credited), he certainly sobered up long enough to deliver the goods. Claire Trevor walks Read More

The Florentine Dagger

Crew: Book Author

Actors: Donald Woods, Margaret Lindsay, Henry O'Neill, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert H. Barrat

Synopsis: A descendant of the notorious Borgias begins to believe that he has inherited their murderous tendencies in this thriller. The trouble begins after he visits his ancestral castle in Italy. After he finds success as a playwright, he begins to suspect that he, too, is a killer. The delusional writer Read More

The Scoundrel

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Noël Coward, Julie Haydon, Stanley Ridges, Martha Sleeper, Hope Williams

Synopsis: This modern "Flying Dutchman" story stars actor/playwright Noel Coward as a class-A heel. Coward uses his position as a powerful publisher to break as many hearts as is humanly possible. When Coward does his usual hatchet job on poet Julie Haydon, she plants a curse on his head, praying that he'll Read More

Twentieth Century

Crew: Play Author, Screenwriter

Actors: John Barrymore, Carole Lombard, Walter Connolly, Roscoe Karns, Etienne Girardot

Synopsis: Flamboyant, egomaniacal theatrical impresario Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) transforms chorus girl Mildred Plotka (Carole Lombard) into leading lady Lily Garland, the toast of Broadway. Once she's ascended to stardom, Mildred/Lily cannot abide Jaffe's obsessive control of her life and career. When Read More

Upper World

Crew: Short Story Author

Actors: Warren William, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Andy Devine, Dickie Moore

Synopsis: Written by the prolific Ben Hecht, Upper World is a clash-of-class melodrama set in New York City. Railroad tycoon Alexander Stream (Warren William) is neglected by his social-climbing wife Mary Astor. Quite unintentionally, through a chance encounter, he strikes up a reasonably chaste friendship Read More

Viva Villa!

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Wallace Beery, Leo Carrillo, Fay Wray, Donald Cook, Joseph Schildkraut, Stuart Erwin

Synopsis: A far from factual filmed biography of Mexican patriot Pancho Villa, Viva Villa! was written by lengendary screenwriter Ben Hecht. We first meet the young Villa when his father is beaten to death after protesting Diaz' seizure of the Mexican peons' land. Pancho exacts a temporary revenge by Read More

Shoot the Works

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Jack Oakie, Ben Bernie, Dorothy Dell, Arline Judge, Alison Skipworth

Synopsis: The Ben Hecht-Gene Fowler Broadway flop The Great Magoo formed the basis of the 1934 Paramount comedy Shoot the Works. Jack Oakie stars as seedy sideshow barker Nicky, who uses everyone he meets to get ahead. Nicky isn't even above exploiting his singing sweetheart Lily (Dorothy Dell) to suit his Read More

Crime Without Passion

Crew: Director, Producer, Screenwriter

Actors: Claude Rains, Margo, Whitney Bourne, Stanley Ridges, Paula Trueman

Synopsis: Crime Without Passion is an odd, almost existential murder yarn. Famed attorney Claude Rains, incensed that his mistress (Margo) has been seeing other men, kills the girl--or at least thinks he does. Rains believes he is "above" such irritations as conscience and morality, and calmly arranges to Read More

Turn Back the Clock

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Lee Tracy, Mae Clarke, Otto Kruger, George Barbier, Peggy Shannon

Synopsis: Lee Tracy is a middle-aged, middle-class man dissatisfied with his life. If he'd only married the girl he wanted to and had been a smarter businessman (he believes), things would have been better. One morning, Tracy wakes up and discovers he's been transported twenty years in the past. Armed with Read More

Design for Living

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Miriam Hopkins, Edward Everett Horton, Franklin Pangborn

Synopsis: Design for Living was based on the stage comedy by Noel Coward, though little of his dialogue actually made it to the screen. Playwright Fredric March and artist Gary Cooper both fall in love with Miriam Hopkins, an American living in Paris. Both men love the girl, and the girl can't make up her Read More

Topaze

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: John Barrymore, Myrna Loy, Albert Conti, Luis Alberni, Reginald Mason

Synopsis: Producer David O. Selznick's adaptation of Marcel Pagnol's satirical play Topaze stars John Barrymore, delivering a peerless comedy performance a full year before Howard Hawks allegedly "discovered" Barrymore's comic potential in Twentieth Century. Barrymore plays a French science teacher who is Read More

Hallelujah, I'm a Bum

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Al Jolson, Madge Evans, Frank Morgan, Harry Langdon, Chester Conklin

Synopsis: Al Jolson's "comeback" picture Hallelujah, I'm a Bum is an offbeat Depression-era concoction with script by Ben Hecht and S.N. Behrmann and music and lyrics by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Jolson plays a genial hobo who wanders happily around Central Park, neither seeking nor accepting honest Read More

Scarface

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Paul Muni, Ann Dvorak, Karen Morley, George Raft, Boris Karloff

Synopsis: Completed in mid-1930, Scarface, based on Armitage Trail's novel of the same name, might have been the first of the great talkie gangster flicks, but it was held up for release until after that honor was jointly usurped by Little Caesar and Public Enemy. Paul Muni stars as prohibition-era mobster Read More

The Front Page

Crew: Play Author

Actors: Adolphe Menjou, Pat O'Brien, Mary Brian, Edward Everett Horton, Walter Catlett

Synopsis: This first of four film versions of the Ben Hecht/Charlrd MacArthur Broadway hit stars Adolphe Menjou as explosive Chicago newspaper-editor Walter Burns and Pat O'Brien as his star reporter Hildy Johnson. Hildy is on the verge of getting married and retiring from Burns' dirty little tabloid, but Read More

The Unholy Garden

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Ronald Colman, Fay Wray, Estelle Taylor, Tully Marshall, Warren Hymer

Synopsis: A clever, slyly self-satirical screenplay by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur helps to make The Unholy Garden seem better than it is. The title refers to a Saharan oasis where a group of international crooks have converged, free from prosecution. Ronald Colman stars as gentleman thief Barrington Read More

Roadhouse Nights

Crew: Short Story Author

Actors: Helen Morgan, Charlie Ruggles, Fred Kohler, Jimmy Durante, Eddie Jackson

Synopsis: Jimmy Durante made his movie debut in Roadhouse Nights, a strange amalgam of musical comedy and gangster melodrama. In truth, Durante is a special added attraction, together with his nightclub partners Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson. The film's nominal star is Helen Morgan, a nitery chanteuse whose Read More

The Great Gabbo

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Erich Von Stroheim, Betty Compson

Synopsis: After the disastrous failure of Queen Kelly, the great silent film director Eric Von Stroheim began to parcel himself out as an actor-for-hire, his directing career in tatters. His first post-Queen Kelly acting job was in this early sound film curio, with Von Stroheim playing The Great Gabbo, a Read More

The Unholy Night

Crew: Short Story Author

Actors: Ernest Torrence, Roland Young, Dorothy Sebastian, Natalie Moorhead, Sidney Jarvis

Synopsis: A group of Londoners gather at the home of their host in order to solve the murders of two company officers. Once assembled the host announces that half of one of the deceased's fortune will go to the guests and if anyone should die, that person's share would go to the others. Before any money is Read More

Underworld

Crew: Short Story Author

Actors: George Bancroft, Clive Brook, Evelyn Brent, Larry Semon, Fred Kohler

Synopsis: Underworld opens with a series of title cards setting its mood, telling of "a great city in the dead of night...streets lonely...moon clouded...buildings as empty as the cave dwellings of a forgotten age." Suddenly an explosion shatters the façade of a bank building, and the title cards announce Read More