America on Film. Sean Griffin
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the classical Hollywood era were Jewish: Carl Laemmle (Universal), Adolph Zukor (Paramount), Louis B. Mayer (MGM), Harry Cohn (Columbia), and the Warner Brothers. With Jewish men as the leaders of the film industry, many other people of Jewish heritage went into the business as directors, writers, actors, and technicians. Consequently, American Jews have had a greater say in how their images were being fashioned in American cinema than any other racial or ethnic minority.
This is not to say that mainstream Hollywood movies became non‐stop celebrations of Jewish culture. On the contrary, Jewish filmmakers had to negotiate their images (both as industry leaders and in film texts) within a larger white society. Classical Hollywood films therefore emphasized a vision of America as largely white and Christian, in order to appeal to white mainstream audiences and avoid the wrath of potential anti‐Semites. For example, there are numerous fondly remembered classical Hollywood Christmas films (A Christmas Carol [1938], It’s A Wonderful Life [1946], and Miracle On 34th Street [1947]) but, until 8 Crazy Nights (2002), there were no comparable Hollywood Hanukkah films. In fact, overtly Jewish characters rarely appeared in 1930s Hollywood films, and Jewish executives often went out of their way to efface their (and their employees’) Jewish heritage. Jewish actors were encouraged to change their names to “whiter‐sounding” ones: Emanuel Goldenberg, Julius Garfinkle, Betty Perske, Danielovitch Demsky, David Kaminsky, and Bernard Schwartz became, respectively, Edward G. Robinson, John Garfield, Lauren Bacall, Kirk Douglas, Danny Kaye, and Tony Curtis. These efforts were a conscious strategy to deal with recurrent worries about anti‐Semitism. Repeatedly, Christian protest and reform groups asserted that Jews in Hollywood were destroying the moral fiber of the country. Jews in Hollywood were constantly on the defensive, ready for the shadow of prejudice to emerge and attempt to destroy their industry. It is no wonder that producer David O. Selznick (most famous for producing Gone With the Wind [1939]) told an interviewer at one point, “I’m American and not a Jew.”
Possibly the one studio to show some commitment to upholding its Jewish heritage was Warner Brothers. Consistently hiring more Jewish actors than did other studios, Warner Brothers also made films about Jewish characters on a somewhat regular basis. The studio won a Best Picture Oscar for The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a film that focused on the notorious “Dreyfus affair,” a major French military trial that pivoted on anti‐Semitism. Warner Brothers was also the first studio to repudiate Nazi Germany in its films, several years before the United States entered World War II, most memorably in Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). Executives at the other studios refrained from making films critical of Nazi Germany so that they could maintain their European film distribution deals. While these decisions were thus partly fueled by capitalist desires, Jewish industry heads were also worried that taking a forthright stand against Hitler could reawaken anti‐Semitic sentiment against Hollywood. In fact, that is exactly what happened in the wake of films like Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Special US Senate committee hearings were held, accusing Hollywood of trying to push the United States into World War II. The transcripts of these hearings are filled with ugly anti‐Semitic rhetoric, a good example of how pervasive (and acceptable) such feelings were during this era.
After the war, as American citizens learned the extent of the Holocaust, re‐evaluations of American anti‐Semitism began to occur. Yet many Jewish Hollywood moguls feared tackling the subject. It took the one non‐Jewish studio head (Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century‐Fox) to make the first social problem film about American anti‐Semitism. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) starred Gregory Peck as a gentile reporter going undercover as a Jew in order to expose prejudice. The film was a critical and commercial success, and won a Best Picture Oscar. That same year, a film about an anti‐Semitic murder, Crossfire (1947), was released. Sadly, many of the people involved in making it were soon targets of suspicion and hatred themselves. Director Edward Dmytryk and actor Sam Levene (along with many other Jewish people in the film industry) were accused of being communist agents by HUAC, the House Un‐American Activities Committee. The ensuing Red Scare threw studio executives into a panic. These allegations of communist influence in Hollywood were again tinged with (and, some have argued, fueled by) the anti‐Semitism of prominent politicians and social commentators. The results of this postwar paranoia did put a disproportionate number of Jews in Hollywood out of work. Fear of being considered un‐American also curtailed the production of social problem films. Images of Jews in Hollywood films did not disappear in the wake of the Red Scare, but they were now rarely shown as part of present‐day America. Rather, Hollywood films of the 1950s tended to represent Jews as oppressed minorities in Biblical epics such as The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben‐Hur (1959). These films addressed social prejudice, but from a safe historical distance and within the framework of mainstream Christianity.
Contemporary Jewish American characters returned to American films during the 1960s. Just as the countercultural critique of whiteness resulted in a new generation of Italian American film actors, so too did a number of Jewish American performers become stars at this time: Barbra Streisand, Elliot Gould, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen. However, unlike their counterparts of earlier generations, these actors did not have to efface their Jewish identity by changing their names, revamping their looks, or playing only Christian characters. Many of these stars have gone on to Oscar‐winning performances and careers that have lasted for decades. One of America’s most prolific filmmakers (as a writer‐director and sometime star), Woody Allen has written and directed over fifty films since the late sixties. His multiple Oscar‐winning film Annie Hall (1977) announced his arrival as a major American filmmaker, and not just a Jewish comedian skewering Hollywood science fiction films (Sleeper [1973]) or Russian novels (Love and Death [1975]). Over the course of five decades, Allen has directed art‐house pastiches (Star Dust Memories [1980], Shadows and Fog [1991]), searing domestic melodramas (Interiors [1978], Another Woman [1988], Blue Jasmine [2013]), and charming nostalgia pieces (Radio Days [1987), Midnight in Paris [2011]). His existential bent is on full display in films like Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Irrational Man (2015), both of which tackle the moral conundrums of crime and what it means to be human. Despite personal issues which have tarnished his career in many peoples’ eyes (an affair with and later marriage to his then‐girlfriend Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Sun Yi Previn), Allen has continued to make diverse kinds of films that nonetheless show the stamp of his unique auteur sensibility.
Egyptian‐born Omar Sharif, seen here as Jewish entrepreneur Nicky Arnstein opposite Barbra Streisand as Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Who is white and who is not?
Funny Girl, copyright © 1968, Columbia.
Jewish American writers, directors, actors, producers, and comedians continue to thrive in the American film industry. Writer‐director‐actor‐producer Mel Brooks began his long career as writer for the seminal TV comedy Your Show of Shows (1950–54), and later created the spy spoof Get Smart (1965–70). His cinematic comedies The Producers (1967), Young Frankenstein (1974), Blazing Saddles (1974), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) have made generations of movie fans laugh out loud. Jewish American entertainers continue to thrive on television as well, especially in sitcoms. Back in the earliest days of TV history, The Goldbergs (1949–57) was a popular sitcom focusing on the titular Jewish family. Adapted from a successful radio show by its creator and star, Gertrude Berg, The Goldbergs had to recast a central character when actor Philip Loeb was accused of being a communist. Although Berg fought to keep Loeb on the show, he allegedly accepted a settlement and withdrew from the show; he died in 1955, another casualty of the anti‐communist (and anti‐Semitic) Red Scare. More recent decades have given us enormously popular TV sitcoms like Seinfeld (1989–98) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–), both of which draw humor from the foibles and neuroses of their urban Jewish characters. The recent Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–)