Ben Hecht
He was a close and lifelong friend of screenwriter Ben Hecht, with whom he had co-written numerous screenplays. Hecht noted that Lederer was "half Jewish and half Irish," and soon after meeting him, wired Rose, his wife, "I have met a new friend. He has pointed teeth, pointed ears, is nineteen years old, completely bald and stands on his head a great deal. His name is Charles Lederer. I hope to bring him back to civilization with me." Hecht's 1963 autobiography, Gaily, Gaily, was dedicated, "For Charles Lederer, to read in his tub."
Lederer was famed on both coasts as a sardonic wit and "incessant practical joker," which endeared him to Hecht. Bennett Cerf's book Shake Well Before Using describes an incident during Lederer's career in the Army during World War II, when Lederer wreaked revenge on an Englishwoman who had been making rude remarks against Jews. Lederer was also great friends with Marx Brother Harpo Marx and the two constantly cooked up practical jokes at the balls and parties they attended at Hearst Castle, the estate of William Randolph Hearst, such as stealing all the female guests' fur coats and draping them over the statues outside the estate during a heavy snowstorm.
Read more about this topic: Charles Lederer, Personal Life, Friendships
Famous quotes containing the words ben hecht, ben and/or hecht:
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”
—Calder Willingham, screenwriter, Buck Henry, screenwriter, and Mike Nichols. Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman)
“Movies are one of the bad habits that corrupted our century. Of their many sins, I offer as the worst their effect on the intellectual side of the nation. It is chiefly from that viewpoint I write of them—as an eruption of trash that has lamed the American mind and retarded Americans from becoming a cultured people.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)