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 and/or hecht:
“Much more frequent in Hollywood than the emergence of Cinderella is her sudden vanishing. At our party, even in those glowing days, the clock was always striking twelve for someone at the height of greatness; and there was never a prince to fetch her back to the happy scene.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)
“I spent my life mixin’ with your breed, and I don’t like it. Get me. You can hide behind a lot of red tape, crooked lawyers and politicians with the gimmes, writs of habeas corpus, witnesses that don’t remember overnight, but we’ll get through to you, just like we got all the rest.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)