Aug. 28th, 2010

randy_byers: (pig alley)
'Wrote Hecht in his autobiography, A Child of the Century: "I made up a movie about a Chicago gunman and his moll, called Feathers McCoy. As a newspaperman, I had learned that nice people -- the audience -- loved criminals, doted on reading about their love problems as well as their sadism. My movie, grounded on this simple truth, was produced with the title, Underworld. It was the first gangster movie to bedazzle the movie fans and there were no lies in it -- except for a half-dozen sentimental touches introduced by its director, Jo von Sternberg." Sternberg admits that Hecht was not pleased with the picture and asked that his name be taken off the screen. Yet when the first Academy Awards presentations was made for 1927-28, it was Ben Hecht who won the writing "Oscar" for the "Best Original Screen Story." The film went on to become an enormous box-office success, for which Paramount gave Sternberg a $10,000 bonus.'

-- Herman G. Weinberg, Josef von Sternberg (E.P. Dutton & Co, 1967)



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