 Okay, we're back. We're live 12 o'clock rock with this new show creative contributions My guest is Julian Gorbach from the school of journalism at UH Manoa We're gonna talk about his book. He's writing or has written about a guy named Ben Hecht. It's rarely interesting It's gonna be a biography of Ben Hecht who was a Jewish fellow who wrote plays and got to be a militant Zionist he's often spoken of today as a Shakespeare of Hollywood the films industry The film industry's most legendary screenwriter in those days back in the 30s I guess he's perhaps more important as the man who broke the silence in America about the Nazi slaughter of European Jews Beginning in the late 1930s. He became a lone voice in the wilderness Rebelling against his Jewish movie studio bosses when they refused to make films about the Nazi persecution While the American press remained oblivious to the reports that surfaced early in World War two of a German extermination plan Hecht launched a massive one-man publicity campaign that mobilized public pressure on the Roosevelt administration For an allied rescue program Then after the war this former Chicago crime reporter and gangster movie writer Ben Hecht became notorious Shocking and out raging people across the world by partnering with a real gangster Mickey Cohen, you know that name to arm the Jews in Palestine and calling for a terrorism in the fight for a Jewish state in those days Many now look back upon Hecht as a hero for his efforts at rescue But his support for Jewish militants made him infamous in his time The tough Jew a biography of Ben Hecht is the story of how Hecht earned admiration as a humanitarian and vilification as an extremist at this pivotal moment in history It's about the origin is beliefs in his varied experiences in the American media and about the consequences of all that our guest Like Ben Hecht our guest Julian Gorbach spend most of his years as a daily newspaper reporter on the police beat That's gonna be interesting to talk to him. He covered drive-by shootings and murder trials He published an investigative series on killings that remain unsolved because gangs had intimidated Witnesses into silence this courage there as a freelancer He contributed to the Boston Phoenix the timeout New York the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the New Orleans Gambit among other publications. He covered Hurricane Katrina for the Boston Globe He earned a doctorate in media history from the University of Missouri School of Journalism And he's now an assistant professor at the School of Communications the journalism program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa We are honored to have you have you here Julian. Thanks for coming down Fabulous my pleasure. Yeah, so why did you write a biography about Ben Hecht? I didn't know really very much about him at the beginning I mean, I knew him mostly because I knew he had written this Comedy called the front page where some people say is the best comedy ever written for the American stage Like Tennessee Williams Said that it had uncorceded American theater And what what time frame are we talking that came out in 1927? But it's been made and remade over and over and over again your guests the probably the most likely Thing that your guests or version of it your guests would have seen would have been his girl Friday with Kerry Grant Which is you know a hilarious version of it directed by Howard Hawks that was made in Like 41 I think But it's been made it was made into a movie by Billy Wilder in the early 70s With Jack Lemon and and it's a it you know to put it simply it created the image of the Fast-talking cynical reporter with the fedora yanked down over his head and the cigarette butter in his mouth and the flasco Whiskey, you know that image. Yeah, I'm kind of had more than today. Don't you think so somewhat They were a cynical breed and they they were not your New York Times reporter This was the the Chicago journalist It was tough and I wanted the scoop as far as uplifting the the public or enlightening the public that that was They were too cynical. Well, but you know stopping at that point just for a moment seems to me that Journalism, you know is a critical part of democracy. It's a critical part of the history of our country Yeah, and we see that in relief now, you know with Donald Trump trying to bypass the media and go directly to the public It's all very kind of threat and then the failure of print press journalism economically. This is all very threatening to in my view to our to our Democracy, yeah, but in those days This Chicago brand as opposed to the say the New York Times brand, which is at a higher level. All right It it was important for us to get to the bottom of what was going on It was a competition for the scoop. It was that hard-driving cynicism You know that that informed the public don't you think? Well, it was an argument about Two visions of journalism the New York Times was the respectable liberal enlightened vision that that Was kind of faithful to Thomas Jefferson's vision that the press should inform and engage the public and The Chicago journalist didn't give it a wit about trying to inform and engage I mean, they just didn't believe the public was smart enough to get it That the public really cared. I mean you have to realize like when the front page came out Al Capone was ruling Chicago He was ruling the politicians and he was and it didn't matter what the newspapers published as far as Scoops about corruption or whatever. It didn't seem to change the politics. So there was an argument between the two at the time a lot of editors had gotten together because they thought Journalism was getting out of control and so they tried to create a rule book the association of newspaper editors tried to say look we need to be objective and Maybe we should license journalists Maybe let journalists should be licensed the way doctors or lawyers are licensing means the government has to make a judge Right. Oh, that's that's so they stop back from that But they did that that's when they did draft a code of ethics it's when journalism schools were developed and everything and The Chicago brand was kind of this old school that had developed in the early 20th century of Fighting there were there's something like 12 different newspapers in Chicago and they're all fighting for circulation They literally got violent and that's a whole story I tell in the book of the way that the thugs who ended up the Capone thugs used to beat up Newspaper dealers on the street So the they got their training as thugs and they were first on the payroll of newspapers in a bloody newspaper war boy before Before they became Capone's gunmen with the passage of the Volstead Act that the prohibition in 1919 and that by that time the newspaper reporters of that era graduated to like heck They had started coming from Chicago to New York writing plays about gangsters for for Broadway And then starting with heck writing movies about gangsters for Hollywood when movies went to talk and Which was right around 1927 so he started in Chicago Sort of like you I guess well as a crime reporter. Yeah, sort of like you I guess yeah Well, I started as a crime reporter. I didn't start in Chicago. I'm from Boston, but I could tell yeah But he you know was it was it's important today because My my book is about a cynicism that hacked out about the public and about the nature of mankind It's a cynicism about human beings that he learned both from being a newspaper reporter in Chicago And from being a crime reporter and seeing the darkest side of human beings on death row you know from interviewing killers and psychopaths and and and from interviewing corrupt Stoogey politicians and It's a story of where cynicism will take you Into international politics through the rise of Nazism into the establishment of the state of Israel and You know, it's a it's a two-sided story because on the one hand Hect had a very deep understanding of our problems in American society and in our world civilization He was right about a lot of it, but if you entirely surrender yourself to cynicism Where does that ultimately take you? What do you become? Oh, yeah, well, but you know query whether going from Chicago crime reporting to writing plays for Broadway is an expression of cynicism and Query also whether writing plays in broad making going from writing plays in Broadway to being a Zionist in Israel at the time of You know, perhaps the most idealistic Metamorphosis of you know of what was going on in the holy land into the state of Israel Yeah, that was very that was very idealistic. Don't you think especially after the war? So is that cynicism or is that just metamorphosis? Well, you know Hect was was an idealist when it came to art and storytelling and individual people when it came to politics and People as masses he was intensely cynical and and actually in order to be a classic liberal in the sense that that you and I might be You have to have a certain amount of idealism about people collectively and about our politics because you have to believe in things like the government of the people and The the notion that it's possible for the press or the media like the TV. He didn't believe that. No What is a cynic Julian well in his case it was He he went beyond thinking that people are a little bit dim, okay, so it wasn't so much that he said that Oh people would read the newspaper and they wouldn't quite get it about corruption It wasn't that he thought people were dumb, although he thought he did think people were pretty dumb It was cynical. Yes It was more that he thought that when you look globally at people as like if you look at them as ants on an anthill collectively That they're driven to a large extent by really scary primordial passions that those are always latent in us I mean, I guess a lot of people understand it as the Hobbesian view It's the view that that people have certain ugly prejudices certain impulses towards violence And you just have to poke it with a stick and it'll come out I don't think like what what's happened with donald trump over the last Year or so would surprise him at all in fact The thing that made Hacked such a strong voice when the nazis were rising to power was that before anyone else saw it He saw where this was going. He wrote an incredibly horrifying vivid short story describing the extermination of the jews in 1938 When this was beyond the imagination and the germans hadn't even started their extermination program No, it wasn't it wasn't even a plan yet. It wasn't even a nazi policy yet The policy then was to make germany juden rein which meant rid of jews. Yeah In fact at the time there was kind of an upside down world where the germans were trying to push jews out of europe And the british and the americans and everything were trying to keep them in here See this is a bit upside down, you know, all those were strange and ugly days. Yes. Yeah So that that's somewhere along the line. There was a metamorphosis with him Don't you think I mean because instead of you know doing crime or doing, you know, what he was doing about gangsterism Now he's talking about If not saving the world then saving global jewelry, isn't he? He's talking about stopping the nazis from what, you know, he perceived they would be doing Well, I think with the rise of nazism he he did have a couple of transformations But you have to ask yourself whether those were complete reversals or whether those were part of an evolution because of course as a journalist and and even as an artist Politics was beneath him to be actively engaged to be an activist was Something he didn't ever want to sell his hands with And at the same time He wasn't much of a jew. I mean he he was a I guess he called second generation jews parents had come here from Eastern europe And he he said it and one of his Many writings and memoirs that he spoke yiddish until the age of eight or nine, but he essentially Yeah, he essentially he grew up in wisconsin and in rural wisconsin in the midwest and this sort of Yeah, I mean he the the family had moved when he was very young From the lower east side and from the the jewish ghetto to the rural wisconsin He'd had this very idyllic american upbringing Very midwestern and he'd forgotten about being jewish. He didn't think it was important and so two two transformations really with the rise of Nazism one was He suddenly started to realize he was a jew and that it mattered being a jew in america and second of all He he decided that he didn't want to be a do nothing see nothing newspaper net as he put it in one of his plays That he he felt that he gets to a point where people of conscience have to act I love that that goes for everyone all of us every single one We have to see our conscience and act. Let's take a short break and ruminate on that We'll come back in one minute julian goreback from the school of journalism at uh minoa Aloha, my name is jacine espiritu and i co-host hawaii farmers series with matthew johnson of oahu fresh We talk about hawaii's local farmers and their supporters in order to have a Vibrant and sustainable local food system Farmers are always the foundation, but there's so many other people Involved in the community that help support those farmers So we bring those folks onto our show every thursday at 4 p.m We get their backstory their history find out a little more about them And we find out why they love what they do and their perspective and their advice on how we can continue to have A dynamic and vibrant and sustainable local food system So we again we broadcast live every thursday at 4 p.m And you can also catch us on thinktex youtube channel as well as alelo 54 So we hope you tune in and join us. Thank you Okay, we're back. We're live with julian goreback of the school of journal program and journalism at the school of communications at uh minoa assistant professor there and he's Been writing a book about ben hecht and you really need to know about ben hecht for many reasons But what you said a little while ago before the break was that he didn't want to sully himself ben hecht Didn't want to sully himself with having opinions or showing through opinions That that that's a matter of journalistic ethics or the ethics of the time, isn't it Well, he didn't want to sully himself with being actively engaged in politics up to a certain point That's beyond just showing opinions. That's actually Interfering with with the course of actually be involved in history Yeah, going journalists would watch history report on history, but not be involved in history Yeah, even the opinion-writing journalists A lot of times stopped short of actually getting in the middle of the riot or whatever Parade yeah, and he he he crossed that line as far as the the the line you're talking about between opinion and What we call objectivity in journalism He just never believed In the notion of objectivity, which is a flawed notion if you think about it I mean, it's the idea that That when you report on things You can somehow be above a point of view a personal point of view and that you're not You know that you somehow rise above that it's it's not a very philosophically sound position You know what I agree with you everybody who reports Everybody who's you want to put in the ambit of journalism has a message has a view and it comes out if you watch It always comes out. There's always there You spoke before about the Hobbesian view of the world The cynicism and all that as opposed to John Locke versus Hobbes whether yeah My view of the world by the way is the mammalian view of the world Is that everybody is a mammal right and everyone is driven by what drives mammals? And a lot of that is biochemistry over which we have no control at all Yeah, and it makes us do things regardless of our you know sense of Sense of civilization. Yeah, sometimes that simply doesn't prevail and we have plenty of proof about that Heck might argue that there's a little bit of the reptile mixed in Thank you The reptilian theory. Yeah, I mean that you know One thing that might be unclear to viewers that they're hearing me jump between His career in journalism and then his his career and as a writer and in Hollywood And then somehow how he gets mixed up in Zionism Is how all this is connected and I think what's been lost a little bit to to Contemporary readers and one of the things that I hope really comes through in the book Is there is a fundamental argument still going on about the ideals of the enlightenment So to a lot of people in hex generation the rise of nazism Was was proof that a lot of the ideals of thomas jefferson or whether you want to talk about the french philosophers Was was flawed Because in order to believe in things like the government of the people or really any of the age of reason stuff You have to first of all have a fundamental optimism about human nature And you secondly have to believe that reason will actually make people more tolerant And and and make people better at arguing things Whereas you know if you read uh the romantic view, which is sort of the opposite of the enlightenment view It's well reason will get you a machine to build a frankenstein You know reason will get you the technology to build a machine gun or an atom bomb Um, it won't necessarily make you an enlightened human being and as far as the enlightenment of human beings We've talked about that so so this fundamental disagreement about human nature and the role of reason Uh flows through Whether you're talking about his view of journalism or his view of What the jews needed to do to build a jewish state like the the more liberal jews You know, what's the holocaust that happened The more liberal jews want to do appeal to the united nations and take this kind of nonviolent political approach to You know, please let us have a state, you know vote on it as an international community And the the the militant zionist that hecht was a part of so screw that We're going to bomb and shoot the british out of out of palestine And then if the arabs come after us we'll we'll you know fight them off too There were a number of people who held that view in that time I don't I doubt it was the majority of prevailing group, but uh, these were those were tough times It wasn't entirely clear. It wasn't at all clear that there would be a state of israel. Yeah, there were two You know in israel's dna. There were two major groups vying for power One was under the leadership of nach and bagan, which was the ergun, which was an armed force and the other was uh, david ben gorean who ended up being israel's first prime minister and You know, he they of course had the haganah, which eventually became the israeli defense forces And uh, and so there were that that that contest between those two groups eventually came to bloodshed in an incident in 1948 Called between two groups of jews between two groups of jews in the middle of the arab israeli war There was an exchange of fire in an incident With a ship that that hecht's money had an armship that hecht's money had funded um, which was an ergun ship that was about to land on the coast of israel and the the david ben gorean ordered the is the brand new israeli defense forces to fire on the ship and it killed 20 of hecht's friends and associates and from that moment on and this is in the middle of the israeli war from that moment on Hecht turned his back on israel And really because because they fired on the ship because they killed some of the people who are his friends Have to turn you off But you know, I mean i'm just taking us back to that point in time. This is 1948 This was right after the war and and memories of what happened in in war saw in the ghetto and in the extermination camps are Fresh and i mean i think there were a lot of young jews who had survived that time Through wit and through violence that otherwise they would not have survived And i think there must have been a substantial contingent of people who Remember they used to say this never again We're not going to be you know killed We're not going to be marginalized abused harassed and killed ever again And so that that was that was the credo of the time right and i'm i'm guessing that's what he saw in it He he was among those who were saying we're not going to let this happen again Well, so there were there were two there's two never again There's the david ben gorean never again Which is let's establish a united nations. Let's create a united nations convention on genocide Let's introduce this term into the english language called human rights and let's let's introduce an idea called international law and let's establish a united nations so that if a country goes out to to Conduct a genocide like in a lepo or or you know or in the Balkans or anywhere else that there's a international force that will collectively reimpose civilization basic human rights and and their idea of never the Never again is hey the great democracies beat the nazis You know the human rights and and civilization won in that battle Well, the never again to the urgun and and to ben hecht was No, the nazis killed six million jews. The nazis essentially wiped out European jewelry the the the international community and the great democracies failed the jews And so never again means never again. Are we going to trust human conscience? To to stop a genocide or just to stop that's more the cynical view, isn't it? Yeah, it's it's who what rules is it the rule of law or the rule of the gun Survival, you know, but that's where he had to be but you know what I get out of this And really until today I hadn't thought about it or known much about it But he started out as a reporter. He started out on the street He started out observing and reporting on human conduct and you know in the raw form Yeah, and he takes that now. He's sort of sensitized He takes that to larger issues issues that can write more than a story about crime on the street Now he's going to write a play in Broadway and he's going to try to get his message There's always a message, right? Yeah, he's trying to get his message out to larger groups of people because he understands At that time that writing a play would do that would get his message out Perhaps, you know, in the in the pre-television world Even when radio is, you know, still in an infancy that was the way you got your message out So now he's like globally aware Now he's looking at the Nazis in the 30s. He's got a sense of awareness This man had a sense of awareness and ultimately that drew him into being active You know an active militant Zionist Isn't that part of what happened here with him? Well, I mean two things about it one is that actually while he was a crime reporter while he was a young man in 1919 He was sent by the chicago daily news to germany Right in the aftermath of world war one And one of the things he witnessed was the the german government at the time machine gunning Either hundreds or thousands of people to death at a place called moabit prison And so What he in his memoirs what he describes is that he had kind of a jolly cynical view of the The hijinks in chicago all the corruption and and the crime and everything When he was a reporter in chicago But when he went to germany in 1919 He saw the same criminality On a government level Right exactly instant in the way that al capone would take over basically chicago municipal affairs You would have a criminal a gangster and organized criminal government And so when he saw both the allies and the nazis of the world war two era he saw global criminal activity And he he was deeply deeply cynical about the roosevelt administration and the british Which he held responsible for the massacre of jews He was trying to press them To have an allied rescue program and he saw Their failure to have an allied program to try and do something as anti-semitism As as aiding and abetting the greatest crime in history And and as far as his publicity campaign At the moment when a small group of activists from palestine came in 1941 and recruited him to their cause Right at the at 1941 at this crucial moment. He was the highest paid writer in hollywood He had incredible power in the media and he also had that cynicism that we're talking about about He didn't turn to muckraking or to investigative journalism. He turned to these big glitzy Propaganda efforts if you will to use his all the hollywood celebrities that that weren't in movies that were About the nazis because the the jews of hollywood were afraid to make those movies But to do these massive He was in a hurry to get his message out. Yeah, and really he had decided that he needed to do that We don't have much time left and i'd like you to read the part of the book That you chose to read to our audience today. Could you do that? Sure And I I should uh, I should say that this This is about the legacy of of to large extent of the israel that we see today and and and there's a broader implication I think in terms of american politics in the whole world, but uh I said hex remarkable polemics helped shape the public debate about what lessons to draw from the war On the one side were the humanists the mainstream zionists Who envisioned the jewish state as a liberal democracy and put faith in diplomacy Multilateralism and international law On the other side were hectic in the air gun who believed that jews could rely on and could be judged by No one but themselves the liberals saw the war as a victory of their ideology over fascism With the birth of the united nations the vote for partition the nuremberg trials the first declaration on human rights and a convention on genocide The 1940s were formative years for international law and jews could point to these achievements as assurances of their basic rights But conversely hectic in the air gun read the war as confirmation that the jews could not survive By the rules the world made for them While the mainstream zionists trusted in the united states and britain Hex faction maintained that even the world's great democracies had failed the jews in their hour of need Thus while both sides vowed never again, they disagreed about how to guarantee that vow The liberal zionists believed in the rule of international law while hectic in the air gun believed in the rule of the gun Very interesting provocative. You've done a lot of work on this. This is a great book How can i get the book? Well, uh, i'm just submitting the manuscript to uh, indiana university press So they're not we haven't signed a contract. They're not under obligation yet to publish it But uh, we've come along this far. They they want them the manuscript and I think it probably takes about a year To go through all the edits and everything we'll wait. We got to see this book This is an important book and relevant in our time. Yeah, thank you, julian goreback really appreciate you coming Thank you for inviting me. That was awesome