Mark Hellinger

Early life

Hellinger was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in New York City, although in later life he became a non-practicing Jew. When he was fifteen, he organized a student strike at Townsend Harris High School and was expelled for his actions. This proved to be the end of his formal education.^[1]

In 1921, Hellinger began working as a waiter and cashier at a Greenwich Village night club in order to meet theatre people. He later was employed by Lane Bryant to write direct mail advertising for clothing for larger and pregnant women.

Journalist

The following year he began his journalistic career as a reporter for Zit's Weekly, a theatrical publication, where he remained for eighteen months.^[1]

In 1923, Hellinger moved to the city desk of the New York Daily News. He wrote a play None Are So Blind (1923).

Short Story Writer

In July 1925, he was assigned About Town, a Sunday column his editors intended him to fill with news and gossip about Broadway theatre. Instead, he filled the space with short stories in the style of O. Henry. When his columns drew a considerable amount of fan mail, he was permitted to continue in this vein. Three years later he graduated to a daily feature called Behind the News. He numbered such personalities as Walter Winchell, Florenz Ziegfeld, Texas Guinan, Dutch Schultz, and Legs Diamond among his friends.^[1]

In November 1929, Hellinger moved to the New York Daily Mirror. While continuing to write daily and Sunday columns, he contributed sketches to the Ziegfeld Follies, wrote plays, published magazine articles, produced two collections of short stories, Moon Over Broadway (1931) and The Ten Million (1934),^[1] and co-wrote the screenplay for Broadway Bill with Robert Riskin.

Some films were based on his works including Justice for Sale (1932), the short I Know Everybody and Everybody's Racket (1934), Broadway Bill (1934), and Walking Down Broadway (1938).

Writer

By 1937, Hellinger was a syndicated columnist featured in 174 newspapers. That same year he was hired as a writer/producer by Jack L. Warner.

He worked on the story for Racket Busters (1938) and Comet Over Broadway (1938) and provided the story for the 1939 Jimmy Cagney/Raoul Walsh gangster film The Roaring Twenties, basing it on his own experiences during that decade. In his onscreen foreword to the film, he wrote:

It may come to pass that, at some distant date, we will be confronted with another period similar to the one depicted in this photoplay. If that happens, I pray that the events, as dramatized here, will be remembered. In this film, the characters are composites of people I knew, and the situations are those that actually occurred. Bitter or sweet, most memories become precious as the years move on. This film is a memory - and I am grateful for it.

Producer

Hellinger began worked as a producer on B pictures such as The Adventures of Jane Arden (1939), Women in the Wind (1939), Hell's Kitchen (1939) and The Cowboy Quarterback (1939).

Hellinger also helped produce The Roaring Twenties (1939), his first "A" film. He produced Bs for a little bit longer: Kid Nightingale (1939), and British Intelligence (1940).

Then Hellinger established himself as a top level producer with It All Came True (1940) starring Ann Sheridan. He followed it with Torrid Zone (1940) starring Cagney and Sheridan, and Brother Orchid (1940) with Edward G. Robinson, Bogart and Sheridan.

Burial site of Mark and Gladys Hellinger

Hellinger made two classics with Raoul Walsh: They Drive by Night (1940) with Bogart, Sheridan, George Raft and Ida Lupino; and High Sierra (1941) with Bogart and Lupino. He made a comedy, Affectionately Yours (1941) with Merle Oberon, then did a melodrama with Raft and Robinson, Manpower (1941).

Hellinger went over to 20th Century Fox to make two films: Rise and Shine (1942), a musical, and Moontide (1942) with Lupino and Jean Gabin.

Due to a congenital heart condition, Hellinger repeatedly was rejected for active service during World War II. Instead, he briefly worked as a war correspondent, writing human interest stories about the troops.^[2]

Back at Warners, he produced the all-star musical revue Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and made Between Two Worlds (1944), The Doughgirls (1944), and The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945).

Universal

Hellinger set up at Universal, where he had his own producing unit. He had a big hit with The Killers (1946) which made a star of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. He followed it with Swell Guy (1946) with Sonny Tufts, The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947) with Bogart back at Warners,Brute Force, and The Naked City, which he also narrated. The film was released several weeks after Hellinger's death, and in his review for the New York Times, Bosley Crowther called it "a virtual Hellinger column on film" and "his appropriate valedictory" and observed, "The late Mark Hellinger's personal romance with the City of New York was one of the most ecstatic love affairs of the modern day — at least, to his host of friends and readers who are skeptics regarding l'amour. Before he became a film producer and was still just a newspaper scribe, Mr. Hellinger went for Manhattan in a blissfully uninhibited way — for its sights and sounds and restless movements, its bizarre people and its equally bizarre smells. And he made quite a local reputation framing his fancies in flowery billets doux which stirred the hearts and the humors of readers of the tabloid press." ^[3]

Hellinger won the 1947 Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture for The Killers.