Hecht, Ben (1893–1964)

US dramatist, screenwriter and film director. His play The Front Page (1928) was adapted several times for the cinema by other writers. His own screenplays included Twentieth Century (1934), Gunga Din and Wuthering Heights (both 1939), Spellbound (1945), and Actors and Sin (1952). His directorial credits include Crime without Passion (1934).

Hecht was born in New York and raised in Racine, Wisconsin. He began his writing career as a reporter for the Chicago Journal and as a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Daily News. His first novel, Erik Dorn, was published in 1921. A collection of his newspaper feature stories, 1001 Nights in Chicago, appeared in 1922. He published the autobiography Child of the Century in 1954.