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How a Principled Hollywood Screenwriter Defied an Anti-Israel Boycott

(Tablet) Rafael Medoff - In autumn 1948, the British declared a boycott of Ben Hecht, the highest-paid screenwriter in Hollywood, for his fiery newspaper ads denouncing England's Palestine policy. Hecht's career included 65 film scripts (including "Gone With the Wind"), 25 books, 20 plays, and hundreds of short stories and magazine articles. "The German mass murder of the Jews...brought my Jewishness to the surface," Hecht later recalled. After the U.S. entered the war, he forged an alliance with the maverick Jewish activists known as the Bergson Group. Employing tactics that are commonplace today but seemed shocking back then, the Bergsonites used rallies, newspaper ads, and Capitol Hill lobbying to plead for the rescue of Jewish refugees from the Nazis. Hecht authored memorable newspaper ads with headlines such as "Time Races Death-What Are We Waiting For?" and "Help Prevent 4,000,000 People from Becoming Ghosts." After the war, Hecht drew national attention to the Zionist cause with his Broadway play "A Flag Is Born" (starring 22-year-old Marlon Brando), which compared the Jewish revolt to colonial America's own rebellion against England. Popular syndicated columnist Walter Winchell defended Hecht's ads for exposing the British, who, he wrote, were harshly suppressing [Jewish] "Palestinian patriots" who were no different from "our Minute Men." The writer is director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies in Washington.
2014-02-28 00:00:00
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