Hollywood Heavy and Light: Jewish Images and Favorite Fluff

HollywoodHeavyandLight: JewishImages and Favorite Fluff RudyBehlmer. America's Favorite Movies: Behind the Scenes. New York: Frederick UngarPublishing Co., 1982.342 pp. LesterD. Friedman. Honvvvood's Image oftheleiv. New York: Frederick Ungar Pubhshing Co., 1982.400 pp. Gm:rEvans America's largest propaganda machine isthe movie industry. For almost eight decades, control of that important cultural reflector has rested in the hands of so-called movie moguls, most of whom have been Jews. Their alleged power to persuade, direct and reflect public opinion has long attracted those who think about and analyze contemporary America. Lester D. Friedman has undertaken a decade by decade survey of Hollywood movies to examine how they have dealt with perceptions of the Jew. The result, Hol(vivood's Image of the Jew, is thoughtful, evocative and most readable. Early Jewish movie tycoons, according to Friedman, had a difficult time portraying the Jew. These figures, themselves trying to break out of the Jew's historically alienated position, moved outwardly toward assimilation into the American melting pot. They shunned the old world and its ways while associating themselves with American youth, vitality and success. Naturally, this colored the manner in which they portrayed their ethnic brothers. Eager to reflect the distance between themselves and the newer immigrants, they produced silent films through the 1920swhich portrayed the Jew as a comic character coping with an alien (and anti-Semitic) world. These Hollywood films contained a naive, optimistic vision of an America which was better than anywhere else. Beneath the surface a powerful assimilationist ethos was always at work. Hollywood's Jewish moguls were not anxious to make endearing a stereotype they had escaped themselves. By mocking that stereotype they confirmed their homogenization as Americans. Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 15,Number 4, Winter 1984,481-486 482 Gary Evans Friedman emphasizes that, because of financial and artistic limitations, these filmsvery rarely confronted social issues in a serious or straightforward manner. His comments on the Jew's use of black face makeup (venerable George Bums began his career in blackface) are especially revealing about the immigrant experience. If blackface was the mask through which Jews could speak of their own woe using the voice of another, it was also one group's desperate need to assert its own superiority by mimicking another. While silent films of the 1920sattempted to make Americans less nervous about Jewsand Jews more conscious of themselves as Americans, in the 1930s Jews nearly vanished from the screen or Jewish characters tended to conceal their identities. Refusal to confront anti-Semitism or even the core of Nazi hatred was, according to Friedman, the result of Hollywood's not wishing to jeopardize vast foreign markets or to provoke isolationist America. (Producer Walter Wanger called off an anti-Nazi film project because he feared he would never get another bank loan). Even in the classic Confessions of a Nazi Spy, the Jewswere never mentioned by name and the film had no Jewish characters. But Friedman's assertion that Hollywood's Jews wanted to protect foreign markets distribution may explain the issue only partially. Between the two world wars, xenophobia was a rampant force in American life. By depicting many nationless, raceless and religionless characters, Hollywo(•d's Jews could avoid drawing attention to their own "otherness." They were 10t interested in becoming scapegoats. One mogul's begrudging admission m a query about his Jewishness was "that too." Respectability meant few or no public religious ties. Whether the tycoons were privately more sensiti\i::to their ethnic identities is never mentioned by Friedman. Nor does he examine the Jews' history of keeping a low profile when the dominant society was going through a socio-economic and/or political crisis. As their own severest censors, Hollywood's film kings kept the Jew from the screen in the 1930sand in the early 1940swere nervous about "message" films which might draw scrutiny from either interventionists or isolationists. Films did little to alert America to the nature of the Fascist menace; furthermore , once war came to America, Hollywood feared that making a connection between American Jews and those suffering in Europe would lead critics to conclude that Jews were fighting for personal, not...