Half a Hero Half a Hero Half a Hero is a 1953 American comedy film starring Red Skelton and Jean Hagen. Directed by Don Weis, the film was written by Max Shulman and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Freelance writer Ben Dobson (Skelton) lands his first full-time writing job at a national magazine, tasked with rewriting other authors' work. His wife Martha (Hagen) uses this as the perfect time to start their family, and four years later pressures Ben into moving from New York City to the suburbs, where he's swiftly living beyond his means. His boss then wants him to write a story on
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing In a "New York Times" review, Joshua Cohen described the book as being "in all respects, a heresy — which is to say, Lord above, it’s a future classic." Reviewing the novel for "The Guardian", Anne Enright wrote that it "is hard to read for the best reasons: everything about it is intense and difficult and hard-won." The novel won several awards including the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the Goldsmiths Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. The Guardian Book Club featured the novel in 2016, and