That’s Ben Hecht down there, a few years past the prime in which he forever defined the raucously romantic world of Chicago newspapers by writing “The Front Page” with his friend Charles MacArthur.
The legendary reporter and columnist left Chicago in 1924 and returned infrequently. But the city remained a deep influence. Before Hecht’s death in 1964, he wrote, “I have lived in other cities, but been inside of only one. I once wore all the windows of Chicago and all its doorways on a key ring. Salons, mansions, alleys, courtrooms, depots, factories, hotels, police cells, the lake front, the rooftops and the sidewalks were my haberdashery.”
His Chicago newspaper days gave him a quick and clever pen. He won the first 1927-28 Oscar for best original story for “Underworld.” But so unimpressed was he by the honor that he didn’t bother to show up at the ceremonies.
Hecht’s biographer, William MacAdams, pegs the number of films for which Hecht received writing credit at 65, including “Spellbound” and “Monkey Business,” but estimates that his uncredited hand is found in 146 films.
Hecht ran what MacAdams refers to as “kind of a writing factory, hiring others to work alongside him on his numerous projects.”
In this noisy atmosphere, which must have recalled the newsrooms of his youth, Hecht was prolific and profitable, earning as much as $125,000 a script, some of which he banged out in two weeks.
Hecht did eventually pick up that first Oscar and added another writing statuette in 1935 for “The Scoundrel,” which he co-wrote and co-directed with MacArthur.
The “Underwolrd” Oscar has been at the Newberry Library since 1979, when the library accepted the Hecht collection.
It’s on display through March 31. What a fine, rarefied place for it, since Hecht, bless him, used to use it as a doorstop.
