Ben Hecht

Ben Hecht was born in New York City in 1894. After a brief period at the University of Wisconsin he moved to Chicago where he became a journalist. Hecht became friends with other aspiring writers in Chicago such as Floyd Dell, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson and Carl Sandburg.

As well as working for the Chicago Daily News Hecht wrote novels and plays. His commercial successes included Erik Dorn (1921), Front Page (1928) and Twentieth Century (1932).

In the 1930s Hecht concentrated on writing film screenplays such as Nothing Sacred (1937), Wuthering Heights (1939), It's a Wonderful World (1939), Spellbound (1945) and Notorious (1946).

Ben Hecht died in 1964.