Rediscovering Ben Hecht : Selling the Celluloid Serpent

Rating:
Summary: A review of an unusual book, superbly edited and packaged.
Review: A most unusual book is one by Florice Whyte Kovan, Rediscovering Ben Hecht; Selling the Celluloid Serpent (Washington DC: Snickersnee Albuma, 1998), 100 pp., $59.95; ISBN 9667709-0-0; Snickersnee Press, 325 Pennsylvania Ave. SE, Washington DC 20003; [phone]. Fourteen of Hecht's short stories are compiled here with an introduction to each. Kovan enhances the book immeasurably by explaining the stories' characters and situations from her research, facts that would otherwise escape the reader, so that the stories are richer. These are parodies of Hollywood life and people which, in essence, convey a slight contempt for goings-on in the industry.

The book is of unusual production: text, photographs, and line art on colored paper; two pages are even ruled accounting paper, on which, in "The New Market," Hecht lists the movie types casting directors can use, and how much they are worth (e.g., "Type 12--One-armed man. Holds still at $8 a day. This is reliable type. With one eye, $2.50 extra.") Another unusual element of the book is the use of postcards pasted onto a page (Norma Talmadge, p. 63); Mack Sennett "looking pensive" (p. 44); a folded "consulting contract" for Broken Blossoms (p. 25); etc.

The parody at times reaches hilarious heights. In "The Movie Double," two men discuss a woman (Nettie Walker) they are waiting for who works in silents as a double. A Mr. Lewis describes her doubling for Mrs. Leslie Carter in The Heart of Maryland when she "gripped the tongue of the bronze bell in the steeple and swung back and forth out from the belfry, her heels hitting the pigeons, her skirts cracking at the rooster weather vanes, her eyes catching glimpses of the Maryland corn field far below." Kovan puts details in perspective when she informs us that Walker was the surname of an actress who appeared nude in a play, while "Nettie" was a one-act play of two men waiting for a woman who never shows up. In "Tears, Tears, Tears," Hecht satirizes emotional actresses who could cry on cue through his character Myrtle Platz (with an ironic ending).

There is even a photograph of Castello's octagonal barn, which sat across from Hecht's boyhood home in Racine WI.

Kovan's research has made accessible Hecht's work other than his screenplays, and the stories are good enough to induce further reading of his writings.

Hecht won the first Academy Award for Underworld (1928), another Oscar for The Scoundrel (1935), and worked on Nothing Sacred, Gone with the Wind, and other films. That he was a serious, proficient writer is without doubt; he was also able to characterize Hollywood's foibles into amusing tales that conjure up the press-agentry of a time gone by.

Readers of the time would have recognized the names and situations of the stories; Florice Whyte Kovan had made sure that we understand what the details of the parody actually were. This is a delightful book.

--Gene Vazzana (editor of The Silent Film Monthly).

Rating:
Summary: Unusual & creative if somewhat hokey
Review: Selling the Celluloid Serpent is an unusual book featuring the works of the quirky, witty journalist and film writer, Ben Hecht. Kovan publishes 14 of the 425 Hecht pieces gathered from the Library of Congress. These stories were written during his stint in Chicago before 1925. Some of the subjects of these short parodies include "Nettie Walker," the alleged body double to Mary Pickford; Moon Kwan who advised D.W. Griffith on the Chinese portrayal in Broken Blossoms; former middleweight boxing champion Kid McCoy ("In five years of being knocked out [in films] I've made about ten times the money I made knocking other people out."); Wallace Reid's over zealous male secretary who answered the many love letters to the silent heartthrob; press agent and Civil War biographer Lewis Lloyd; Mack Sennett and his view of "greatness"; Norma Talmadge's ability to cry in the film Love's Redemption; an unlikely loser in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest, "the first" Harrison Ford; and the feminist/anarchist views of Olga Petrova ("There will come a time when women will emancipate themselves from this ghastly ruse by which nature converts them into populating machines").

Kovan includes much-needed background information for each of the satires as well as related photographs and ephemera which she explains in captions. Some of the illustrations are turned at angles and one of the stories is printed on a grid backdrop. Perhaps the odd format is to represent the irreverent style of Hecht, but such is not made clear. The use of the grid paper on the cover and behind one of the articles is not explained. Some of the photos (especially one of Kid McCoy) are of poor quality. The author put a lot of care and creativity into this book; however, readers interested in the silent stars may be disappointed. Most of the stories have a redundant format: a dialog with some behind-the-scenes person's sob story, a mildly amusing ending, and Lloyd Lewis crying at the end. Hecht's parodies are also, no doubt, tongue-in-cheek, so it is difficult to know if one really learns anything about these players through Hecht's writings.