Ben Hecht Biography & Works 

Some Like It Hot

Given that Ben Hecht was a writer for the 1939 swing band movie comedy, Some Like It Hot, we are sometimes asked if he was inspired by Virgil Whyte's All Girl Band. He should have been. It was from his childhood haunt in Racine, Wisconsin that the World War II all-women swing band with a hot musical style toured some 400 military installations. If you know the problem with the question, please be patient and read on.

Above, publicity photo for Virgil Whyte's All-Girl Band. Trombones: Trudy Gosieski Whyte and Alice "Smoo" Jacoby; Trumpets: Dorothy Reigart, Virginia Schumacher and Jeannette Cramer. Alice Whyte is seen on drums. The itineraries of The Virgil Whyte All-Girl Band, now a U. S. Department of Defense World War II Commemorative Community, are available. Scroll to bottom of page for ordering information. The papers of the band are at the Smithsonian Museum of American History Archive Center.

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In the first scenes of the 1946 film Spectre of the Rose, one Hecht wrote and directed, his road-weary impresario character played by Michael Chekov complains about his recent tour with "tall crazy blonde women." He wails about lost luggage in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This was Hecht's reference to Virgil Whyte's All-Girl Band of nearby Racine. "Tall crazy blonde women" referred to the Scandinavian heritage of some of the members and their youthful exuberance.

A bit about the band: Tens of thousands and thousands (and thousands, and thousands) of World War II GI's and civilians heard Virgil Whyte's All-Girl Band between 1944-1948. Reviewed as a band with sock and punch, it mustered out of the house on Lake Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin across the street from Ben's, where he played as a boy.

Hecht did not have to rely on Racine informants to know a women's swing band had exploded into the homefront scene out of his old neighborhood. If he was at home in Manhattan, he heard about its performances at the US Military Academy, at Brooklyn, Sampson, Lakehusrt and Newburgh. If he was at home in Oceanside, California he knew they played at nearby Camp Pendleton. The band was everywhere on the American map in the late war and the critical demobilization era. It played USO concerts in 47 states. Hecht was well networked to the vaudeville scene, whose most savvy organizers were pressed into arranging a continual stream of entertainment for GIs languishing in homefront camps of World War II.

In the first scenes of the 1946 film Spectre of the Rose, one Hecht wrote and directed, his road-weary impresario character played by Michael Chekov complains about his recent tour with "tall crazy blonde women." He wails about lost luggage in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This was Hecht's reference to Virgil Whyte's All-Girl Band of nearby Racine. "Tall crazy blonde women" referred to the Scandinavian heritage of some of the members and their youthful exuberance.

A bit about the band: Tens of thousands and thousands (and thousands, and thousands) of World War II GI's and civilians heard Virgil Whyte's All-Girl Band between 1944-1948. Reviewed as a band with sock and punch, it mustered out of the house on Lake Avenue in Racine, Wisconsin across the street from Ben's, where he played as a boy.

Hecht did not have to rely on Racine informants to know a women's swing band had exploded into the homefront scene out of his old neighborhood. If he was at home in Manhattan, he heard about its performances at the US Military Academy, at Brooklyn, Sampson, Lakehusrt and Newburgh. If he was at home in Oceanside, California he knew they played at nearby Camp Pendleton. The band was everywhere on the American map in the late war and the critical demobilization era. It played USO concerts in 47 states. Hecht was well networked to the vaudeville scene, whose most savvy organizers were pressed into arranging a continual stream of entertainment for GIs languishing in homefront camps of World War II.

Virgil Whyte, a symphony and pop music percussionist aspiring to take the Phil Spitalny "all girl" band concept into the swing and bee-bop era, initially recruited home town musicians from Racine. He expanded his union band, recruiting in Chicago and nation-wide through classified ads in Downbeat Magazine. After a successful summer of 1944 at the Riviera at Lake Geneva, the band auditioned in Chicago with booker Ralph Williams. He immediately engaged them for a combination camp tour and theater tour, primarily one nighters and well neigh impossible skips arranged by Joe Glaser of New York and Ted Kemp's Southern Attractions of Charlotte, North Carolina. Then Williams booked the band for its rigorous USO tour 1945-46. Organizers in New York added specialty acts like "Schlepperman" and the Wilfred May (Mae) Trio of hoop throwing acrobats to create a lively variety show rooted in the vaudeville tradition but well sparked with the latest pop and jive music sounds. The young band members were so exposed to the comedy of Sam Hearn, aka Shlepperman of the Jack Benny radio show, they committed his routine to memory. One of the band members, Alice Smaus of Kenosha, Wisconisn corresponded with Hearn and reprised his routines on local stages until her death in 2001.

Sam Hearn animated Hecht's knowledge of the Racine band of his childhood haunt with anecdotes. He was for a time a character actor in Hollywood, appearing in Hecht's 1940 film Angels Over Broadway. Hecht later heard details about the "tall crazy blonde women" from Hearn and incorporated a remark about the blondes and about losing luggage in Kenosha into Spectre of the Rose.

Back to the band: When an astonished Virgil Whyte was drafted off the tour-- USO service was supposed to be exempt--his sister, drummer Alice Whyte, with whom he concluded many shows with vigorous sibling drum battles, took over the musical direction of the band. General management was handled by USO assigned tour manager Alan Bode, while Trudy Whyte managed the bookwork in Racine, where she was looking after the author of this web site, then a kintergarder.  Virgil Whyte served in th 75th Qm. Trg. Co, 14th Battalion at Fort Lee Virginia and the 443 ASF Band at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. Upon discharge in 1946, Whyte returned to his band and continued to maintain the pace and the geographical sweep of his band, touring as Virgil Whyte's Musigals.

To refine our original question: Was Ben Hecht's Some Like It Hot inspired by Virgil Whyt'e All-Girl Band? The inspiration was likely to have worked in the opposite direction (Alice Whyte taking inspiration from drummer Gene Krupa)) since the band wasn't organized until three years after that movie. The 1939 movie Some Like It Hot, often confused with the one 20 years later, was not about an all-girl band. That was the 1959 version in which Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon infiltrate an all girl band, a Billy Wilder film not associated with Ben Hecht. But Hecht came to know about America's Musical Sweethearts World War II band from a variety of sources. As comic relief, he incuded references to it in his otherwise heavy-handed 1946 ballet drama Spectre of the Rose. A thorough and passionate review of Hecht's Spectre of the Rose by Donald Phelps appears in SENSES OF CINEMA, Issue 19 (March-April 2002)www.sensesofcinema.com

Ben Hecht, New York screenwriter and Hollywood screenwriter was in his youth a screenwriter in Chicago in the mid 1910s. 

See more about his early career and his Chicago Daily News stories about the early film industry, in print at the Snickersnee Press.