Harold Hecht

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 378-380. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.

Released in the summer of 1965, "Cat Ballou" earned over $20 million at the box-office - $162 million in today's dollars. It was one of the top-ten films of the year and won a ton of awards.

In 1962 Hecht solo produced "Birdman of Alcatraz," and hired the young John Frankenheimer to direct. Lancaster starred as Robert Stroud, a prisoner serving a life term for murder who taught himself ornithology and wrote books on bird medicine. While the film was shooting, no fewer than four film editors were hired and fired. The rough cut ran four hours. When the film wrapped, Lancaster himself spent months supervising the editing of the film. The result was Academy-nominated performances for Lancaster, plus Supporting Actor for Telly Savalas, Supporting Actress for Thelma Ritter and Cinematography for Burnett Guffey.

Hecht was one of four people sent to the Soviet Union by President Eisenhower in 1959, as part of a cultural exchange program.

Hecht was again nominated for his 1958 film, "Separate Tables".

But perhaps his best remembered film today is "Sweet Smell of Success," released in late 1957.

Hecht won the Academy Award for Best Picture ("Marty") in 1956 and produced the box office hits "Vera Cruz" and "Trapeze," the cult classic "Sweet Smell of Success," the award-winning "Separate Tables" and "Birdman of Alcatraz" and the wildly popular Western comedy, "Cat Ballou". He was a member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and the Screen Producers Guild.

""Trapeze" was a big-budget circus film with Tony Curtis and Gina Lollobrigida joining Lancaster, that became one of the three top grossing films of 1956. That year writer James Hill became a partner in the company.

Among the most notable Hecht-produced movies that followed, "Marty" was made in 1954 as a low-budget film, shot mostly on location in New York City, with a bank roll of just $250,000 and an additional $100,000 for advertising. No one in the company dreamed that a small, black & white film with unknown stars would win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but it did, beating out "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," "Mister Roberts," "Picnic" and "The Rose Tattoo.

From 1954 to 1959, as the Hollywood big studio system was failing, Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions became the most successful independent production company in Hollywood.

Though it was a flop at the box office when first released, it has since grown to become one of the most iconic cult films of the 1950's and has been referenced as a major influence by many critically-acclaimed directors, including Barry Levinson and Martin Scorsese. Following the end of the Hecht-Hill-Lancaster partnership, Hecht continued as one of the top three independent producers in Hollywood, a position he shared with Stanley Kramer and the Mirisch brothers for the next ten years.

Next Hecht revived an old property from the mid-1950s, Roy Chanselor's Western novel, "The Ballad of Cat Ballou". The plot centers around a young woman (Jane Fonda, in her movie debut) coming back to her homestead only to find her father's farm terrorized by local gunmen. She hires the legendary Kid Shelleen to defend the farm but finds out that he's now a washout, more interested in getting drunk.

In 1947, Hecht co-founded an independent film production company with Lancaster, Norma Productions. He soon co-produced an action-with-acrobatics movie at Warner Brothers, "The Flame and the Arrow" followed by a swashbuckler, "The Crimson Pirate," both starring Lancaster. Next came a widescreen Western, "Vera Cruz," pairing Lancaster with Gary Cooper, which grossed over $11 million, a huge box office success in that time.

In late1945 he learned about a sensational new actor starring in a Broadway play, "A Sound of Hunting". When Hecht saw Burt Lancaster he was sold instantly. Backstage, Lancaster said that the big agencies had all been courting him. Hecht opted for honesty: "If you sign with a big agency, you'll be represented by a junior agent who gets a salary and divides his time among 20 future stars. But if you sign with me, I'll work mostly for you and I have to eat so I'll keep you working. " The two men soon took the train to Hollywood and Hecht put him into his first two films, "The Killers," and "Brute Force".

Hecht was hired by Nat Goldstone in late 1939 as a talent agent. The Goldstone Agency initially represented actors and after Hecht established a literary department, he was promoted to partner in the company. He worked two years for the Goldstone Agency, eventually handling up to 36 writers.

During his first stay in Hollywood in the 1930s, Hecht was one of the leading dance directors in the movie industry, working with some of the biggest stars of the day: the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant, W. C. Fields, Gary Cooper, Maurice Chevalier and Marion Davies.