`Good, -there's a place here for Jews,
Irish, blacks.'"
Their focus was on themselves, says
Gabler, and what they saw was that
"this was a place to be an American."
The producers' personal plot lines
ran along the assimilation angle. "The
great irony that animates the whole
history of Holly wood," says Gabler,
"is that this group of Jewish immi-
grants defined the idealized vision of
America, which defines America
itself."
They created trailers for what life
would be for others. "The whole gist
of this is that life is a movie," says
Gabler, "a film that never ends."
How could such a thing happen,
Gabler
muses, that a group of largely
•
uneducated refugees could find refuge
in film? "Part of it is that they used
the industry to aggrandize them-
selves," says Gabler.
"One of the worst canards about
Hollywood is that it's all about money
— that in itself has an anti-Semitic
subtext." The truth was that filmmak-
ers made films "that entertained them-
selves."
Originally, says Gabler, gentiles
looked at the fledgling movie world as
one not worth unearthing. "The gen-
tiles believed that the business, all this
stuff, was a novelty, that it appealed to
a lower-class audience and ultimately
it wouldn't endure."
Pass the popcorn — profits soon
became titanic. "The filmmakers pro-
vided something that the public want-
ed. The Jews who succeeded had that
movies that celebrated the working
class while extolling middle class val.-
ues, emphasizing family and the aspi-
rations of youth. It is instructive to
watch the film clips from famous
movies with an eye toward their Jew-
ish roots.
Gabler convinces us that Mr
Smith Goes to Washington and The
Grapes ofWrath are really movies that
extol Jewish values and themes.
He goes so far as to say that the
black Hollywood musicals of the
period — Cabin in the Sky, Showboat
-- were filled with the Jewish themes
of redemption and belonging, and
that their Jewish composers (... wrote
music in black face."
Meanwhile, the theme of personal
life for these driven professionals was
one of assimilation and public rejec-
tion of their Judaism. Most divorced
their Jewish wives and married
younger gentile women. They exem-
•
Hollywood's founders included, clockwise
from top left, Adolph Zukor of Para-
mount, William Fox of 20th Century
Fox, Jack Warner of Warner Bros. and
Harry Cohn of Columbia.
instinct. They were men who under-
stood public taste."
They also had an eye for talent.
Yet, what would have happened had
Jews, denied access to other indus-
tries, been able to set their sights on
something else? What
would have happened had they
missed Hollywood and Vine and
landed elsewhere?
The industry "would have been
completely different without Jews,"
says the author. "Movies would, of
course, be entertain-
Plified the It
man, the outsider, w
made it to the top
wants all the accoUttern
of the landed gentry; or, as
one person quipped, "They
went from Poland to polo
in one generation.
Zukor's son admits that
e war, H011ys voo
he didn't even k.now he was
created ardently
Jewish until his mother
patriotic films, and
accidentally mentioned it
even a number of
when he was 7 years old. It
pro-Soviet movies
is instructive that the only
to appease Presi-
films made about anti-
Harry Co hn, the head of
dent Roosevelt.
Pictures,
circa
Semitism during this period Columbia
After
the war, these
1940.
Gentlernan's
— Crossfire and
came back to haunt
Agreement — were both
the moguls as ammunition at the
made by non-Jews.
hearings. It was a time when the pub-
Yet, this ardent desire to be like
lic thought "Jewish,' "communist
everyone else, to shed the mark of
and "intellectual" were virtually syn-
being an outsider, served to undo the
moguls after World War II during the onymous, and it was the saddest day
in Hollywood's history.
infamous House Un-American Activ
ment, but films would have been very
different.
"Look at other countries — English
cinema, the German, the French —
where Jews are involved" but don't run
the industry. "In those countries, they
developed film as a middle-class rather
than lower-class form. That difference
changes everything.
"Movies, at some level, still have
that same attraction as they did in the
beginning in this country" says
Gabler. "Going to the movies — corn-
pared to opera, ballet — was an anti-
cultural act.
"The idea of movies has always
been as a democratic medium," says
Gabler. In fact, those who think of
movies as only art brush aside the
medium's intent. "That kind of think-
ing denatures the value of movie-
going," he says.
"There are those who think, with
its depiction of self-absorbed Jewish
moguls, that `Hollywoodism' could
serve as fodder for anti-Semitism. And
these are Jews who are saying maybe it
shouldn't be shown."
Which just shows one thing, says
Gabler: As long as Jews still question the
way others see them, then the American
dream first conjured up by the produc-
ers "has not been fulfilled." ❑
e story 8
I. Louis
ow his
is own studio
ears of his life
th e grounds
t the end, consicl-
o Catholicism.
's wife had him placed
i s with a cross and a
ewes
fitti g, , then that the last
It is
frame of this savvy documentary is a
shot of the quintessential American
actor, John - Wayne, looking at the
camera and saying, "IChaimt." ❑
n
"Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and
American Dream" airs 9 p.m. Sun-
day, March 22, on the A&E net-
work. For an insider's look at life
in Hollywood, see this week's "On
The Bookshelf."
1998
87