Our February salute to great Hollywood screenwriters includes Ben Hecht, whose Scarface (1932) was among some 70 films for which this prolific screenwriter, director, producer, playwright and novelist received credit; and Anita Loos, the biographer/novelist/playwright/screenwriter whose way with comic dialogue enhanced countless movies including her adaptation of The Women (1939) from the stage hit by Clare Boothe (Luce). Outstanding among great writing teams was the husband-and-wife pair Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, who created several scintillating screenplays for director George Cukor including Pat and Mike (1952), starring the KaninsÕ close friends Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. Many writers who started as novelists and then became screenwriters include Patricia Highsmith, author of the source novel for Alfred HitchcockÕs riveting thriller Strangers on a Train (1951) and co-writer of the film adaptation with famed detective novelist Raymond Chandler. Distinguished novelist William Faulkner, in turn, co-wrote the screen adaptation of ChandlerÕs novel The Big Sleep (1946), starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Playwrights as screenwriters, a logical progression, include Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman, who collaborated to striking effect on the screen version of LehmanÕs play Sweet Smell of Success (1957). Among HollywoodÕs most gifted writer/directors is Billy Wilder, whose delightful romantic comedies include Love in the Afternoon (1957), co-written with I.A.L. Diamond from a novel by Claude Anet. Among blacklisted writers who managed to emerge from the shadow of the House Un-American Activities Committee of the 1950s include Dalton Trumbo, who wrote the screen version of Exodus (1960), the Leon Uris novel. Classic film writers still working include Frederic Raphael, an Oscar winner for his screenplay for Darling (1960) and a collaborator with the late Stanley Kubrick on the recent Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Among Laurel Award winners honored by the Writers Guild of America is writer-director Woody Allen, whose Interiors (1978) shows the influence of Allen idol Ingmar Bergman. By Roger Fristoe