Harold Hecht

First Hollywood career

Beginning at RKO

In October 1931 Richard Boleslavsky invited Hecht to join him in Hollywood to choreograph the dance numbers on an upcoming project he was set to direct at RKO Radio Pictures. Chi Chi and Her Papas, a 1924 German comedic play originally written by Armin Friedmann and Fritz Lunzer under the title Sie und ihr Zimmerherr, had been translated into English by Max Steiner in a single day. Steiner also composed three original songs and the score for the film adaptation, while the movie's producer, William LeBaron, wrote the lyrics. Humphrey Pearson was brought in for additional dialogue but eventually re-wrote the entire screenplay. Chi Chi and Her Papas was to be a starring vehicle for actress Lili Damita, her third film at RKO. Her leading man was scheduled to be John Warburton, loaned out from Fox Films, with Hugh Herbert as a singing supporting character. Other supporting roles were scheduled for George Frank, Tiny Sandford and Gertrude Astor.

Hecht left by plane from New York City to Hollywood on Monday, November 2, his position on the film already confirmed. Once in California, he interviewed 200 girls and 150 men, in order to find the twelve girls and six men necessary for the dance numbers. Hecht hired Frances Grant (stage/screen name of the actress, dancer, and dance teacher Stella McCarron), fresh from assisting Larry Ceballos at Fanchon and Marco, to help him with the new routines on Chi Chi and Her Papas. But a week after Hecht's arrival, the film was put on hold. Earlier that fall, RKO had acquired the Pathé Exchange film studio and a number of issues had come of it. New studio head, David O. Selznick clashed with equally positioned Charles Rogers and similar arguments went on between producer William LeBaron and former vice-president Joseph I. Schnitzer. Not only were crew positions scheduled to be cut (as the two studios merged into a single location), but some of the pictures too were cancelled. As part of the agreement, all 20 Pathé pictures in production at the time of the acquisition were to be made at RKO's studio. However, the 16 films on RKO's production schedule were not given the same security and for a variety of reasons, Chi Chi and Her Papas was one of the few to get shut down. LeBaron had already spent $100,000 within the four weeks of pre-production but neither Selznick nor Schnitzer liked the idea of the film and felt it was too racy and non-conducive to the American taste.

A few weeks later Hecht found work in the Los Angeles theater business. LeRoy Prinz was producing and directing the Edmunt Joseph and Nat Perrin story Lucky Day with financial backing from Rodney Pantages, Arthur Silber and Harold Morehouse. Prinz had clashed with the original choreographer, Billy Grant and Hecht came in to replace him. Other crew members included Earl Dancer staging the choir with music by Otis René and Leon René and lyrics by Ben Eilleon. Lucky Day opened at the Mayan Theater in L.A. on December 27 starring Alex Lovejoy, Eddie Anderson, Alma Travers, LeRoy Broomfield and Aurora Greeley. The play was relatively successful, gaining interest from RKO as a potential property.

Contract choreographer at Paramount

In mid-March 1932 Hecht signed a one-year agreement and became a contract choreographer and dance director for Paramount Pictures. Stories exist that it was his friend Busby Berkeley who helped him get in touch with the right people at Paramount, where the two are said to have worked on films together. Hecht's first assignment at Paramount was directing two dance ensembles in the Marx Brothers' college football comedy film Horse Feathers. One of the numbers Hecht directed was I'm Against It, a scene where Groucho Marx, playing Quincy Adams Wagstaff, is first installed as the new headmaster of Huxley College. Hecht trained Groucho alongside twenty elder actors, aged 61 to 77 years old, with naturally grown beards and dressed in academic gowns. Considering that his first known assignment at Paramount Pictures was a Marx Brothers film, it is quite possible that Hecht found his way to that studio through Nat Perrin, whom he had just worked with on Lucky Day and was Groucho's close friend and collaborator. Hecht was reported to have worked on additional Marx Brothers films, though no specific titles have surfaced to confirm this (i.e.: "Hecht worked on Marx Brothers films", in plural form). If he did work on additional Marx Brothers films, the only plausible ones that were made during the remainder of his first venture in Hollywood were Duck Soup at Paramount in 1933 and A Night at the Opera at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1935. The exact shooting dates for Duck Soup have not been established, but it is known to have been filmed during the summer of 1933, after Hecht's contract at Paramount had expired. It is always possible that the studio reached out to Hecht, though no screen credits were provided for the dance numbers (no screen credits were provided for Horse Feathers either). As for A Night at the Opera, it was filmed at M-G-M Studio in the summer of 1935, during a time when Hecht was associated with the studio. However, the film gives screen credits to Chester Hale for the choreography. Whether Hale worked alone or if Hecht had any input in the film is unknown.

Following Horse Feathers, Hecht worked on Lady and Gent (at the time known under the title The Challenge), directed by Stephen Roberts and starring George Bancroft and Wynne Gibson, and Devil and the Deep, directed by Marion Gering and starring Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper, Charles Laughton and Cary Grant. In June and July 1932, Hecht was loaned out from Paramount to M-G-M for the Marion Davies film Blondie of the Follies (then known under the title Good Time Girl). The film was produced by Davies who sought out Hecht herself and was directed by Edmund Goulding, who would later reunite with Hecht. The film also starred Robert Montgomery, Billie Dove and Jimmy Durante.

Immediately after Lucky Day, Hecht started working on the play Hullabaloo, which took several months of preparation. Hecht co-directed it with Paul Gerard Smith and choreographed the Gilmor Brown production. The production featured music by Ralph Rainger and lyrics by Don Hartman. Hullabaloo opened on May 26 at the Pasadena Community Playhouse and ran until June 19, with a cast featuring Sterling Holloway, Frank Atkinson, Leonard Sillman and his sister June Carroll.

In the fall of 1932, Hecht worked on another theater play, a revised and modernized version of Franz Lehár's operetta, The Merry Widow. The play was brought up to date by J. Keirn Brennan with dance numbers by Hecht and vocal numbers by H. L. Heidecker. Karl Hajos composed and conducted the 30-piece orchestra and the cast included Herbert Evans, Ruth Gillette, Alex Callam, Florinne McKinney, Franklin Record, Roland Woodruff, Diane Warfield, Paul Sauter, Rolloe Dix, William Jeffries, Harold Reeves and Evelyn Cunningham. The play opened on Monday November 14 at the Columbia Theater in California.

In late November 1932 Hecht became involved in a series of Mae West projects, which all eventually culminated into a single picture. Earlier that year Paramount had signed Mae West to a contract and the actress was eager to step up from the lower-billed role she received in her first picture, Night After Night. She was billed fourth, after George Raft, Constance Cummings and Wynne Gibson. West was working to adapt her notoriously banned play, Diamond Lil, into a film, initially titled Honky Tonk. But the censors objected and Paramount worked quickly to change a few scenes, re-title the film to Diamond Lil and tried again to get it into production. The censors objected again, Paramount went back to work and, hoping to fool the censors into thinking they were submitting an all-new film, re-titled the project Ruby Red. But the censors found far too many similarities between Ruby Red and Diamond Lil and blocked the production completely. West and Paramount decided to merge Ruby Red into another West film in the writing stages, She Done Him Wrong, using the cast and crew already hired for Ruby Red. This final version of the script made it into production. Producer LeBaron, who had left RKO to work for Paramount, hired Hecht to work on She Done Him Wrong back when it was still a separate entity from Ruby Red. Hecht was also hired for dance routines on Ruby Red. Ultimately, all of Hecht's material was merged into a single film and used on She Done Him Wrong. The film was directed by Lowell Sherman and starred West, Cary Grant, Owen Moore and Noah Beery. Hecht was interviewed by Motion Picture Magazine in 1933, in response to Mae West's media comments regarding "curvy women being the new trend", to which he answered in her favor; "Dangerous curves are not only ahead, but actually with us. Present-day chorus girls must be slightly more round and more curved than those of a few years ago. Girls with thin, boyish figures definitely are out."

Following the Mae West projects, Hecht became one of the more prominent choreographers in Hollywood and was well-in-demand at Paramount and other studios. In January 1933, Paramount scheduled Hecht for three of their upcoming features: A Bedtime Story (at the time known under the title The Way to Love), directed by Norman Taurog and starring Maurice Chevalier and Helen Twelvetrees, International House, directed by A. Edward Sutherland starring W. C. Fields, Bela Lugosi and George Burns and the highly anticipated blockbuster College Humor. College Humor, another William LeBaron production, was proclaimed by Paramount's publicity department as "the most lavish musical picture since the advent of talking pictures". The film was directed by Wesley Ruggles and starred Bing Crosby, Richard Arlen, Mary Carlisle, Jack Oakie, George Burns and Gracie Allen. In addition to working with the main stars, Hecht trained The Ox-Road Co-Eds, a group of sixty chorus line dancers, for several original music sequences. He teamed up with Jack Oakie and Boris Petroff to create a new dance, the Fraternity Stomp, which Oakie and Lorna Andre performed in the film. The new dance was well advertised in newspapers and magazines with a depiction of steps and moves for people to learn it at home.

Hecht later stated that he worked with director Frank Tuttle during his days at Paramount. Though no evidence has been found, it is likely that the film he was referring to was The Big Broadcast, starring Bing Crosby, Stuart Erwin, Leila Hyams and George Burns. The Big Broadcast was produced by Benjamin Glazer, who had written A Bedtime Story, and featured music by Ralph Rainger, who had also worked on A Bedtime Story and International House, as well as Hecht's play, Hullaballoo.

Loan-outs to RKO

Shortly before Hecht's Paramount contract expired, producer Lou Brock at RKO borrowed him to direct the dance numbers on the musical Melody Cruise (at the time known under the title Maiden Cruise). Hecht put together a number that included a line of 36 girls for the Mark Sandrich film starring Charlie Ruggles and Phil Harris. However, after two weeks of working on Maiden Cruise, Paramount recalled him claiming the RKO production had been delayed and that Hecht's work on Paramount's own International House was a priority. Dave Gould took over Hecht's work on the RKO film and received screen credits for the dance routines.

Once Hecht was free from his Paramount contract in April 1933, RKO hired him again, this time to direct the dance numbers on Bed of Roses, a film directed by Gregory La Cava starring Constance Bennett, Joel McCrea, Pert Kelton and John Halliday. For this picture, Hecht trained two hundred girls for the dances and selected the best nine to appear in the film. One number in particular, which took place at the New Orleans Mardi Gras carnival in the film, was taken on the road to help promote the picture, with the girls performing it on stage.

Meanwhile, Hecht put on a new play for the "Symphonies Under the Stars", a week-long festival beginning on July 25. Skyscrapers opened on Saturday July 29 at the Hollywood Bowl to a cast of over one hundred dancers. Hecht directed the play and choreographed the dances to music originally composed by John Alden Carpenter. Hecht refashioned the work into an eight-scene ballet with the help of Blanding Sloane, who worked on the sets, lights and made the masks, and Kay Otteson who designed the costumes. Richard Lert, husband of Vicki Baum, conducted the orchestra.

Freelancing at Warner Brothers, Fox and Universal

In October 1933, Hecht was offered opportunities to direct dance numbers at Warner Brothers, Universal Pictures, Fox Films and Columbia Pictures within a short period of time. Hecht first went to Warner Bros. to choreograph a Vitaphone Technicolor two-reeler short, produced by Gordon Hollingshead. Morocco Nights was directed by Edward Cline and starred Fuzzy Knight, Shirley Ross and future Hecht client Francis McDonald. Morocco Nights was initially to be included in Warner's Broadway Brevities but was never added.

Scheduled to make an undisclosed Columbia film in 1934 (it has not been established if this plan was fulfilled), Hecht made plans to work at Universal in October 1933 with Stanley Bergerman on I Like It That Way. The film was directed by Harry Lachman and starred Gloria Stuart and Roger Pryor. But shortly before starting production on I Like It That Way in November, Hecht instead opted to go to work on Buddy DeSylva's film Bottoms Up at Fox. The large production was directed by David Butler and starred Spencer Tracy and Pat Paterson with music and lyrics by Gus Kahn. Hecht's numbers in the picture were lauded by critics.

In January 1934, Hecht was approached by Universal again, this time for Glamour a film produced by B. F. Zeidman, directed by William Wyler and starring Constance Cummings and Paul Lukas. In May he was approached by Stanley Bergerman for another Roger Pryor film, Romance in the Rain. This time Hecht provided the dances in the film directed by Stuart Walker.

Film directing at M-G-M

Hecht is said to have worked on the Edmond Goulding film Hollywood Party (at the time known under the title Star Spangled Banquet) at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in March 1934, though no official credit has surfaced to confirm this. In the fall of 1934 Hecht started working on a series of shorts, which he was to direct, under the title Goonies. The shorts were to be based on errors made by college students in filing out official forms, hence making them "goonies". Hecht's new production unit, formed for the purpose of making these shorts in December 1934, was called Goonies Inc. However, the Goonies shorts were never produced, for reasons unknown.

In January 1935, Hecht and his friend Josef Berne were given the go ahead to direct their own Technicolor (using the three-strip process) short at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The color process was still considered a novelty at the time, making this deal, for a new director, quite a generous one. Gypsy Night (known under the working title Song of the Gypsies) was produced by Harry Rapf from a story by Richard Goldstone. The short was filmed throughout March and April. Through cinematography and lighting Hecht and Berne "emphasized on particular colors which most effectively carried out the moods of the music in each scene", a concept that Disney somewhat recreated half a decade later in Fantasia.

The short was based on a romantic perspective of the Russian Gypsies' lives, with dance numbers by Hecht and music by Burton Lane and Harold Adamson. The cast featured Mary Jo Mathews, Perry Askam, Joseph Mario and Ilia Khmara. Gypsy Night opened on Friday, May 24, 1935, at the Capitol Theater in New York City. It was considered avant-garde by some but received generally praising reviews towards its artistic aspect.

Hecht later claimed that his initial departure from Hollywood was caused by a lack of work in the fast-paced, constantly evolving musical pictures business. His style of dances were refreshing when he arrived in 1931. But by 1935 they had been adapted and used by other choreographers and had been well-used at all the major studios.

New career as literary agent

In either July or August 1939 Hecht returned to Hollywood and found it difficult to secure employment. He was then living with writer Roland Kibbee and the two became good friends. Kibbee later collaborated with Hecht and Lancaster as a writer for their production companies, and became an equal partner of Lancaster's post-Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions venture, Norlan Productions. In late 1939, after months of unemployment, Hecht was hired by Nat Goldstone as a talent agent for the Goldstone Agency. The Goldstone Agency initially dealt with actors and Hecht established for them a literary department, first becoming head of the new division and then being promoted to a partner in the company. He worked two years for the Goldstone Agency, eventually handling up to thirty-six writers. Hecht hired one of these writers, George Willner, to be his assistant. Willner later formed his own literary agency.

Music industry venture

In July 1956, Hecht, his brother-in-law Loring Buzzell (brother of Hecht's first wife Gloria) and Lancaster formed two music publishing firms; Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music (copyrighting exclusively through ASCAP) and Calyork Music (copyrighting exclusively through BMI). The purpose of the new venture (a subsidiary of the Hecht and Lancaster Companies/Norma Productions) was to publish and copyright songs from their films' soundtracks and license them to record labels for release in the booming business of vinyls for the home market. The compositions published through Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music and Calyork Music have been released through Columbia Records, Warner Bros. Records, MGM Records, ABC-Paramount Records, Capitol Records, London Records, United Artists Records, Decca Records, Mercury Records, RCA Victor Records, Jubilee Records, Coral Records, Top Rank Records, Date Records, Kapp Records, Apollo Records, Maine Records and Cabot Records.

Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music and Calyork Music also published songs from non-film related composers, who in turn had their work adapted and recorded by musicians and gained royalties. One notable non-movie hit that Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell had was the McGuire Sisters's version of May You Always which peaked to No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 list in January 1959 and became the second best-selling sheet music in the United States. Some of the notable soundtracks published through Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music and Calyork Music include Trapeze, Sweet Smell of Success, Cry Tough and The Unforgiven. The soundtrack to Sweet Smell of Success was quite notable and critically important as it was the first film to feature two completely different soundtracks released on LP; one with Elmer Bernstein's score, the other with Chico Hamilton's jazz band.

Partial list of companies

Hecht has founded and co-founded a number of companies over the years.

Goonies (1934–1935)

Hecht-Rantz Agency (1945–1946) with Louis Rantz

Harold Hecht Productions (1946–1985)

Norma Productions (1947–1985) with Burt Lancaster

Halburt Productions (1950–1952) with Burt Lancaster

Hecht-Lancaster Productions (1953–1956) with Burt Lancaster

William Service Company (1953–1959) with Burt Lancaster

Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions (1956–1960) with Burt Lancaster and James Hill

Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music (1956–1957) with Burt Lancaster and Loring Buzzell

Calyork Music (1957–1958) with Burt Lancaster and Loring Buzzell

Clifton Productions (1957–1958) with Burt Lancaster and James Hill

Hecht & Buzzell Music (1959–1960) with Lu Ann Simms

Contemporary Productions (1960–1961) with Burt Lancaster

The Harold Hecht Corporation (1962–1985)

Harold Hecht Films (1964–1985)

Harold Hecht Company (1966–1985)

Marriage to Martine Millner

Hecht's second marriage was to English model-actress Martine Millner, née Margaret Truefitt. The couple took out a marriage license on Tuesday, October 30, 1962, in Los Angeles and were wed on Thursday, November 1 in San Francisco. They then embarked on a honeymoon in Rome, where part of Hecht's then production, Flight from Ashiya, was being filmed. At the time of their marriage, Millner was 26 while Hecht was 55. Millner had a cameo in Hecht's 1962 film, Taras Bulba. Harold and Martine also had three children together; Harold Jr., Adam and Rebecca.

Harold and Martine separated in September 1974, two months short of celebrating their twelve-year anniversary. This time the court ordered Harold to pay a $4,000 monthly allowance to Martine and she retained possession of the couple's $350,000 home and half of his $2,000,000 community property assets.

Harold Hecht Jr., born September 14, 1963, worked with director John Frankenheimer and is now a three-time Emmy Award-winning sports television producer.

Adam Arthur Hecht was born on August 6, 1965, at the UCLA Medical Center and worked as a tennis coach before mysteriously vanishing on July 7, 1989, from Beverly Hills, California at age 23. He has never been found, but the police do not suspect foul play and classify the case as a missing person. The story of Adam Hecht's disappearance was depicted on the American television series Unsolved Mysteries in 1990.

Rebecca was born in May 1970; her profession is a baking business.

Death

Hecht died in his home in Beverly Hills, of pancreatic cancer on May 26, 1985. It was six days before his 78th birthday. He was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.