Ben Hecht, newspaperman, novelist, playwright and author of more than 70 movie scripts, co-authored "The Front Page," a play about newspapering that was adapted into a movie we'll watch in COMM 337. Robert Schmuhl, a journalism prof at Notre Dame who wrote about it for a
think tank called the Poynter Institute, says it's like a "a theatrical Rorschach test" for news people: "While most journalists and kindred spirits applaud the anarchic antics and comic cynicism involved in covering a big story, others find the irresponsibility and devotion to sensationalism an affirmation of their complaints about the press." Because it raises those issues, we'll study Hecht's play and a movie remake of the play called "His Girl Friday" starring Lillian Russell and Cary Grant.
But first, we'll take a look at Ben Hecht's newspapering. It raises the same issues, and the best way to start dealing with them is to read some of his stuff. He wrote a column for The Chicago Daily News that was collected under the title "One Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago" (1922). He said it was hack work, but it was a classic of Chicago journalism. Of journalism anywhere.
A short biography in the Gale Encyclopedia of Biography, available on line at
Answers.com, tells how he thrived in the rough-and-tumble of early 20th-century Chicago:
In 1910 he went to Chicago, where he got a job as a reporter for the Chicago Journal. At the time there were seven news-gathering organizations in the city, so the competition was cutthroat. Hecht proved himself one of the best at getting exclusives, although his methods were at least unorthodox. On one occasion he was sent by his city editor to get a photograph of a girl who had joined in a suicide pact with a married clergyman; of course, reporters from other newspapers had been given the same order. But the dead girl's mother and brothers barricaded themselves in their home and refused to have anything to do with the press. The newsmen waited all day with no developments, and the others left. Noticing that the family had lit a fire in their fireplace, Hecht secured a ladder and some boards, climbed up onto the roof, put the boards over the top of the chimney, waited until the resultant smoke had driven the residents from the house, dashed inside, and grabbed a photo.
But at the same time as he was establishing himself as one of the wilder members of a wild journalistic fraternity, Hecht had hopes of making a reputation as a serious writer. Among the literary figures he met and befriended were the leaders of the "Chicago Renaissance," Sherwood Anderson, Carl Sandburg, Maxwell Bodenheim, and Vincent Star-rett. He began to publish short stories in Margaret Anderson's The Little Review, the voice of the movement.
In 1914 he moved from the Chicago Journal to the Chicago Daily News, where he stayed for nine years, with a brief interval (1918-1919) spent as a correspondent in Berlin. It was during these years that he began to publish vignettes about Chicagoans, mostly the dispossessed and the downtrodden. These pieces purported to be about real people, but in his autobiography Hecht later confessed: "It was not my talents as a news gatherer that I offered my paper but a sudden fearless flowering as a fictioneer. … I made them all up."
But maybe he was making that up, too.
Hecht aways downgraded his work, movies and newspapering alike. "Hollywood held this double lure for me," he once said, "tremendous sums of money for work that required no more effort than a game of pinochle." When he won one of his Oscars for best picture, he used it for a doorstop. That's not entirely a bad thing. He had an old newspaper guy's unwillingness -- or inability -- to take himself too damn seriously. But it makes it hard for us to evaluate his career.
Translation: I like his stuff. And I don't think he made it up.
A least not all of it.
In "Front Page," Hecht (and/or co-author Charles MacArthur) had a character say:
Journalists! Peeking through keyholes! Running after fire engines like a lot of coach dogs! Waking people up in the middle of the night to ask them what they think of Mussolini. Stealing pictures off old ladies of their daughters that get raped in Oak Park. A lot of lousy, daffy buttinskis, swelling around with holes in their pants, borrowing nickels from office boys! And for what? So a million hired girls and motormen’s wives’ll know what’s going on.
But the character who talks about "lousy, daffy buttinskis" -- people who butt in on others -- obviously "both hates and loves" the newspaper business. That's what Schmuhl said for the Poynter Institute.
So, apparently, did Ben Hecht.
When Hecht's Daily News columns were collected in a book, editor Henry Justin Smith struggled with that love-hate ambiguity about his work in the foreword:
... It does not seem possible to support his theory that "One Thousand and One Afternoons," springing from a literary passion so authentic and continuing so long with a fervor and variety unmatched in newspaper writing, are hack-work, done for a meal ticket. They must have had the momentum of a strictly artistic inspiration and gained further momentum from the need of expression, from pride in the subtle use of words, from an ardent interest in the city and its human types.
But the trouble is, Hecht didn't talk about his work. And when he did, he underplayed it. His attitude came through in what he wrote. In the introduction, Smith said the columns collected in the book:
... were the first fruits of his Big Idea--the idea that
just under the edge of the news as commonly understood, the news often
flatly and unimaginatively told, lay life; that in this urban life there
dwelt the stuff of literature, not hidden in remote places, either, but
walking the downtown streets, peering from the windows of sky scrapers,
sunning itself in parks and boulevards. He was going to be its
interpreter. His was to be the lens throwing city life into new colors,
his the microscope revealing its contortions in life and death.
In class we'll read three of Hecht's columns and come to our own conclusions.
As you read, ask yourself: How did Hecht feel about the people he wrote about? Here's another: In his Nobel Prize speech in 1949, novelist William Faulker spoke ofthe "old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." Do you hear echoes of those truths in Hecht's columns? Be ready to post your answers to the class blog.
Here are three of Hecht's columns, from the Project Gutenberg EBook edition of
"One Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago" (2003). The original is in the public domain and the files are reproduced for educational purposes.
Also available at: http://www.searchengine.org.uk/ebooks/06/28.pdf THE MOTHER
She sat on one of the benches in the Morals Court. The years had made a
coarse mask of her face. There was nothing to see in her eyes. Her hands
were red and leathery, like a man's. They had done a man's work.
A year-old child slept in her arms. It was bundled up, although the
courtroom itself was suffocating. She was waiting for Blanche's case to
come up. Blanche had been arrested by a policeman for--well, for what?
Something about a man. So she would lose $2.00 by not being at work at the
store today. Why did they arrest Blanche? She was in that room with the
door closed. But the lawyer said not to worry. Yes, maybe it was a
mistake. Blanche never did nothing. Blanche worked at the store all day.
At night Blanche went out. But she was a young girl. And she had lots of
friends. Fine men. Sometimes they brought Blanche home late at night.
Blanche was her daughter.
* * * * *
The woman with the sleeping child in her arms looked around. The room was
nice. A big room with a good ceiling. But the people looked bad. Maybe
they had done something and had been arrested. There was one man with a
bad face. She watched him. He came quickly to where she was sitting. What
was he saying? A lawyer.
"No, I don't want no lawyer," the woman with the child mumbled. "No, no."
The man went back. He kept pretty busy, talking to lots of people in the
room. So he was a lawyer. Blanche had a lawyer. She had paid him $10. A
lot of money.
"Shh, Paula!" the woman whispered. Paula was the name of the sleeping
child. It had stirred in the bundle.
"Shh! Mus'n't. Da-ah-ah-ah--"
She rocked sideways with the bundle and crooned over it. Her heavy
coarsened face seemed to grow surprised as she stared into the bundle. The
child grew quiet.
The judge took his place. Business started. From where she sat the woman
with the child couldn't hear anything. She watched little groups of men
and women form in front of the judge. Then they went away and other groups
came.
The lawyer had said not to worry. Just wait for Blanche's name and then
come right up. Not to worry.
"Shh, Paula, shh! Da-ah-ah-ah--"
There was Blanche coming out of the door. She looked bad. Her face. Oh,
yes, poor girl, she worked too hard. But what could she do? Only work. And
now they arrested her. They arrested Blanche when the streets were full of
bums and loafers, they arrested Blanche who worked hard.
Go up in front like the lawyer said. Sure. There was Blanche going now.
And the lawyer, too. He had a better face than the other one who came and
asked.
"And is this the woman?"
The lawyer laughed because the judge asked this.
"Oh, no," he said; "no, your honor, that's her mother. Step up, Blanche."
What did the policeman say?
"Shh! Paula, shh! Da-ah--" She couldn't hear on account of Paula moving so
much and crying. Paula was hungry. She'd have to stay hungry a little
while. What man? That one!
But the policeman was talking about the man, not about Blanche.
"He said, your honor, that she'd been following him down Madison Street
for a block, talking to him and finally he stopped and she asked him--"
"Shh! Paula, don't! Bad girl! Shh!"
That man with the black mustache. Who was he?
"Yes, your honor, I never saw her before. I walk in the street and she
come up and talk to me and say, 'You wanna come home with me?'"
"Blanche, how long has this been going on?"
Look, Blanche was crying. Shh, Paula, shh! The judge was speaking. But
Blanche didn't listen. The woman with the child was going to say,
"Blanche, the judge," but her tongue grew frightened.
"Speak up, Blanche." The judge said this.
* * * * *
She could hardly hear Blanche. It was funny to see her cry. Long ago she
used to cry when she was a baby like Paula. But since she went to work she
never cried. Never cried.
"Oh, judge! Oh, judge! Please--"
"Shh, Paula! Da-ah-ah-ah--" Why was this? What would the judge do?
"Have you ever been arrested before, Blanche?"
No, no, no! She must tell the judge that. The woman with the child raised
her face.
"Please, judge," she said, "No! No! She never arrested before. She's a
good girl."
"I see," said the judge. "Does she bring her money home?"
"Yes, yes, judge! Please, she brings all her money home. She's a good
girl."
"Ever seen her before, officer?"
"Well, your honor, I don't know. I've seen her in the street once or
twice, and from the way she was behavin', your honor, I thought she needed
watchin'."
"Never caught her, though, officer?"
No, your honor, this is the first time."
"Hm," said his honor.
Now the lawyer was talking. What was he saying? What was the matter?
Blanche was a good girl. Why they arrest her?
"Shh, Paula, shh! Mus'n't." She held the child closer to her heavy bosom.
Hungry. But it must wait. Pretty soon.
He was a nice judge. "All right," he said, "you can go, Blanche. But if
they bring you in again it'll be the House of the Good Shepherd. Remember
that. I'll let you go on account of her."
A nice judge. "Thank you, thank you, judge. Shh, Paula! Goo-by."
Now she would find out. She would ask Blanche. They could talk aloud in
the hallway.
"Blanche, come here." A note of authority came into the woman's voice. A
girl of eighteen walking at her side turned a rouged, tear-stained face.
"Aw, don't bother me, ma. I got enough trouble."
"What was the matter with the policeman?"
"Aw, he's a boob. That's all."
"But what they arrest you for, Blanche? I knew it was a mistake. But what
they arrest you for, Blanche? I gave him $10."
"Aw, shut up! Don't bother me."
The woman shrugged her shoulders and turned to the child in her arms.
"Da-ah-ah, Paula. Mamma feed you right away. Soon we find place to sit
down. Shh, Paula! Mus'n't. Da-ah-ah--"
When she looked up Blanche had vanished. She stood still for a while and
then, holding the year-old child closer to her, walked toward the
elevator. There was nothing to see in her eyes.
CLOCKS AND OWL CARS
As they say in the melodramas, the city sleeps. Windows have said
good-night to one another. Rooftops have tucked themselves away. The
pavements are still. People have vanished. The darkness sweeping like a
great broom through the streets has emptied them.
The clock in the window of a real estate office says "Two." A few windows
down another clock says "Ten minutes after two."
The newspaper man waiting for a Sheffield Avenue owl car walks along to
the next corner, listening for the sound of car wheels and looking at the
clocks. The clocks all disagree. They all hang ticking with seemingly
identical and indisputable precision. Their white faces and their black
numbers speak in the dark of the empty stores. "Tick-tock, Time never
sleeps. Time keeps moving the hands of the city's clocks around and
around."
Alas, when clocks disagree what hope is there for less methodical
mechanisms, particularly such humpty-dumpty mechanisms as tick away inside
the owners of clocks? The newspaper man must sigh. These clocks in the
windows of the empty stores along Sheffield Avenue seem to be arguing.
They present their arguments calmly, like meticulous professors. They say:
"Eight minutes of two. Three minutes of two. Two. Four minutes after two.
Ten minutes after two."
Thus the confusions of the day persist even after the darkness has swept
the streets clean of people. There being nobody else to dispute, the
clocks take it up and dispute the hour among themselves.
The newspaper man pauses in front of one half-hidden clock. It says "Six."
Obviously here is a clock not running. Its hands have stopped and it no
longer ticks. But, thinks the newspaper man, it is not to be despised for
that. At least it is the only clock in the neighborhood that achieves
perfect accuracy. Twice a day while all the other clocks in the street are
disputing and arguing, this particular clock says "Six" and of all the
clocks it alone is precisely accurate.
In the distance a yellow light swings like an idle lantern over the car
tracks. So the newspaper man stops at the corner and waits. This is the
owl car. It may not stop. Sometimes cars have a habit of roaring by with
an insulting indifference to the people waiting for them to stop at the
corner. At such moments one feels a fine rage, as if life itself had
insulted one. There have been instances of men throwing bricks through the
windows of cars that wouldn't stop and cheerfully going to jail for the
crime.
But this car stops. It comes to a squealing halt that must contribute
grotesquely to the dreams of the sleepers in Sheffield Avenue. The night
is cool. As the car stands silent for a moment it becomes, with its
lighted windows and its gay paint, like some modernized version of the
barque in which Jason journeyed on his quest.
* * * * *
The seats are half filled. The newspaper man stands on the platform with
the conductor and stares at the passengers. The conductor is an elderly
man with an unusually mild face.
The people in the car try to sleep. Their heads try to make use of the
window panes for pillows. Or they prop their chins up in their palms or
they are content to nod. There are several young men whose eyes are
reddened. A young woman in a cheap but fancy dress. And several
middle-aged men. All of them look bored and tired. And all of them present
a bit of mystery.
Who are these passengers through the night? And what has kept them up? And
where are they going or coming from? The newspaper man has half a mind to
inquire. Instead he picks on the conductor, and as the car bounces gayly
through the dark, cavernous streets the mild-faced conductor lends himself
to a conversation.
"I been on this line for six years. Always on the owl car," he says. "I
like it better than the day shift. I was married, but my wife died and I
don't find much to do with my evenings, anyway.
"No, I don't know any of these people, except there's a couple of
workingmen who I take home on the next trip. Mostly they're always
strangers. They've been out having a good time, I suppose. It's funny
about them. I always feel sorry for 'em. Yes, sir, you can't help it.
"There's some that's been out drinking or hanging around with women and
when they get on the car they sort of slide down in their seats and you
feel like there was nothing much to what they'd been doing. Pessimistic?
No, I ain't pessimistic. If you was ridin' this car like I you'd see what
I mean.
"It's like watchin' people afterwards. I mean after they've done things.
They always seem worse off then. I suppose it's because they're all
sleepy. But standin' here of nights I feel that it's more than that.
They're tired sure enough but they're also feeling that things ain't what
they're cracked up to be.
"I seldom put anybody off. The drunks are pretty sad and I feel sorry for
them. They just flop over and I wake them up when it comes their time.
Sometimes there's girls and they look pretty sad. And sometimes something
really interestin' comes off. Once there was a lady who was cryin' and
holdin' a baby. On the third run it was. I could see she'd up and left her
house all of a sudden on account of a quarrel with her husband, because
she was only half buttoned together.
"And once there was a man whose pictures I see in the papers the next day
as having committed suicide. I remembered him in a minute. Well, no, he
didn't look like he was going to commit suicide. He looked just about like
all the other passengers--tired and sleepy and sort of down."
The mild-faced conductor helped one of his passengers off.
"Don't you ever wonder what keeps these people out or where they're going
at this time of night?" the newspaper man pursued as the car started up
again.
"Well," said the conductor, "not exactly. I've got it figured out there's
nothing much to that and that they're all kind of alike. They've been to
parties or callin' on their girls or just got restless or somethin'.
What's the difference? All I can say about 'em is that you get so after
years you feel sorry for 'em all. And they're all alike--people as ride on
the night run cars are just more tired than the people I remember used to
ride on the day run cars I was on before my wife died."
The clock in a candy store window says "Three-twelve." A few windows down,
another clock says "Three-five." The newspaper man walks to his home
studying the clocks. They all disagree as before. And yet their faces are
all identical--as identical as the faces of the owl car passengers seem to
the conductor. And here is a clock that has stopped. It says "Twenty after
four." And the newspaper man thinks of the picture the conductor
identified in the papers the next morning. The picture said something like
"Twenty after four" at the wrong time. It's all a bit mixed up.
THE MAN WITH A QUESTION
Late afternoon. An hour more and the city will be emptying itself out of
the high buildings. Now the shoppers are hurrying home to get dinner on
the table.
A man stands on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Adams Street.
Unwittingly he invites attention. A poorly dressed man, with a work-heavy
face and coarsened hands. But he stands motionless. More than that, he is
not looking at anything. His deep-set eyes seem to withhold themselves
from the active street.
In the sauve spectacle of the avenue his motionless figure is like an
awkward faux pas in a parlor conversation. The newspaper man on his way to
the I. C. station pauses to light his pipe and his eyes take in the figure
of this motionless one.
The newspaper man notices that the man stands like one who is braced
against something that may come suddenly and that his deep-set eyes say,
"We know what we know." There are other impressions that interest the
newspaper man. For a moment the motionless one seems a blurred little unit
of the hurrying crowd. Then for a moment he seems to grow large and his
figure becomes commanding and it is as if he were surveying the blurred
little faces of the hurrying crowd. This is undoubtedly because he is
standing still and not looking at anything.
* * * * *
"Can I have a light, please?"
The man's voice is low. A bit hoarse. He has a pipe and the newspaper man
gives him a match. Ah, the amiable, meaningless curiosity of newspaper
men! This one must ask questions. It is after work, but, like the
policeman who goes to the movies with his club still at his side, he is
still asking questions.
"Taking in the sights?"
The man, lighting his pipe, nods slowly. Much too slowly, as if his answer
were fraught with a vast significance.
"I like it myself," insinuates the newspaper man. "I was reading Junius
Wood's article on Bill Shatov, who is running things now in Siberia. He
quotes Bill as saying what he misses most in life now is the music of
crowds in Chicago streets. Did you read that?"
This is a brazen lead. But the man looks like a "red." And Bill Shatov
would then open the talk. But the man only shakes his head. He says, "No,
I don't read the papers much."
Now there is something contradictory about this man and his curtness
invites. He seems to have accepted the presence of the newspaper man in an
odd way, an uncity way. After a pause he gestures slightly with his pipe
in his hand and says:
"Quite a crowd, eh?"
The newspaper man nods. The other goes on:
"Where are they going?"
This is more than a question. There is indignation in it. The deepset eyes
gleam.
"I wonder," says the newspaper man. His companion remains staring in his
odd, unseeing way. Then he says:
"They don't look at anything, eh? In a terrible hurry, ain't they? Yeah,
in a rotten hurry."
The newspaper man nods. "Which way you going?" he asks.
"No way," his companion answers. "No way at all. I'm standin' here, see?"
There is a silence. The motionless one has become something queer in the
eyes of the newspaper man. He has become grim, definite, taunting. Here is
a man who questions the people of the street with unseeing eyes. Why? Here
is one who is going "no way." Yet, look at him closely and there is no
sneer in his eyes. His lips hold no contempt.
There you have it. He is a questioning man. He is questioning things that
no one questions--buildings, crowds, windows. And there is some sort of
answer inside him.
* * * * *
"What you talking to me for?"
The newspaper man smiles disarmingly at this sudden inquiry.
"Oh, I don't know," he says. "Saw you standing still. You looked
different. Wondered, you know. Just kind of thought to say hello."
"Funny," says the motionless one.
"I got a hunch you're a stranger in town."
This question the companion answers. "Yeah, a stranger. A stranger. That's
what I am, all right. I'm a stranger, all right. You got me right."
Now the motionless one smiles. This makes his face look uncomfortable.
This makes it seem as if he had been frowning savagely before.
"What do you think of this town?" pursues the newspaper man.
"Think of this town? Think? Say, I ain't thinking. I don't think anything
of it. I'm just looking at it, see? A stranger don't ever think, now, does
he? There, that's one for you."
"When'd you come here?"
"When'd I come here? When? Well, I come here this noon. On the noon train.
Say, don't make me gabby. I never gab any."
Nothing to be got out of this motionless one. Nothing but a question. A
pause, however, and he went on:
"Have you ever seen such a crowd like this? Hurrying? Hm! Some town! There
used to be a hotel over here west a bit."
"The Wellington?"
"Yeah. I don't see it when I pass."
"Torn down."
"Hm!" The deep-set eyes narrow for an instant. Then the motionless one
sighs and his shoulders loosen. His face grows alive and he looks this way
and that. He starts to walk and walks quickly, leaving the newspaper man
standing alone.
* * * * *
The newspaper man watched him. As he stood looking after him some one
tapped him on the shoulder. He turned. "Specs" McLaughlin of the detective
bureau. "Specs" rubbed his chin contemplatively and smiled.
"Know that guy?"
"Who?"
"No; just bumped into him. How come?"
"You might have got a story out of him," "Specs" grinned. "That's George
Cook. Just let out of the Joliet pen this morning. Served fourteen years.
Quite a yarn at the time. For killing a pal in the Wellington hotel over
some dame. I guess that was before your time, though. He just landed in
town this noon."
The detective rubbered into the moving crowd.
"I'm sort of keeping an eye on him," he said, and hurried on.
