The lost scene from Nothing Sacred

"Writing a good movie brings a writer about as much fame as steering a bicycle. It gets him, however, more jobs. If his movie is bad it will attract only a critical tut-tut for him. The producer, the director and stars are the geniuses who get the hosannas when it's a hit. Theirs are also the heads that are mounted on spears when it's a flop.

"The movie writer is a stranger to these ups and downs. A man could even brag about being a bad script writer. It was a sign he was possibly a genius who couldn't bend to lowly tasks. Neither Charlie (partner Charles MacArthur) nor I was of this kind, but we met them.

"I've written it was easy money -- and that's a misstatement, if you examine the deed. Writing cheaply, writing falsely, writing with 'less' than you have, is a painful thing. To betray belief is to feel sinful, guilty -- and taste bad. Nor is movie writing easier than good writing. It's just as hard to make a toilet seat as it is a castle window. But the view is different."

-- Ben Hecht, Charlie, 1957

SCENES FROM THE ORIGINAL PRODUCTION OF "THE FRONT PAGE" by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur: Lee Tracy stars as as Hildy Johnson, star reporter of the Herald-Examiner, with Osgood Perkins playing Walter Burns, the managing editor. Below are some images from a book of "The Front Page" in the collection of the author:

Ben Hecht wrote or co-wrote Scarface, The Front Page, Monkey Business (Marx Brothers), Twentieth Century, Hurricane, The Prisoner of Zenda, Nothing Sacred, A Star Is Born, Gunga Din, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, It's a Wonderful World, Gone With the Wind, His Girl Friday, Foreign Correspondent, Lifeboat, Spellbound, Gilda, Notorious, Rope, The Thing, Strangers On a Train, Roman Holiday, Guys and Dolls, The Man With the Golden Arm, and hundreds of other films... ... And just think -- that's when he was writing down.

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