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9 1 A MOVIE PROBLEM As soon as the Jews gained control of the “movies,” we had a movie problem. —Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent, 1921 The idea that Hollywood could be subversive is as old as the industry itself. The culture wars at the turn of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of mass amusements as a challenge to a Victorian America grounded in distinct class and gender divisions, especially in the realm of entertainment. This Protestant culture faced the challenge of new immigrants, many of them Catholics and Jews from southern and eastern Europe. As the forces of urbanization and industrialization transformed the nation, a mass society emerged and, along with it, a mass culture. Starting with nickelodeons in ethnic communities and spreading to movie houses across the nation, cinema quickly became the leading form of mass culture.1 As middle-class defenders of the Victorian way struggled to maintain social control,they turned their attention to the screen.To their dismay,they found that control of the film industry rested in the hands of the very groups they sought to maintain in a position of subordination. As one historian notes, the movie moguls—predominantly eastern European Jews—were seen by the public as“part splendid emperors, part barbarian invaders.”2 The Hollywood Jews soon became the target of vicious anti-Semitic diatribes. For instance, in 1921 Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent branded Hollywood as Jew-controlled, not in spots only, not 50 per cent merely, but entirely; with the natural consequence that now the world is in arms against the trivializing and demoralizing influences of that form of entertainment as presently managed....As soon as the Jews gained 10 J. EDGAR HOOVER GOES TO THE MOVIES control of the “movies,” we had a movie problem, the consequences of which are not yet visible. It is the genius of that race to create problems of a moral character in whatever business they achieve a majority.3 The image of a Jewish-controlled medium, therefore, was deeply intertwined with the image of a morally subversive Hollywood.4 For some, film became synonymous with licentiousness. The theaters themselves were seen as dens of iniquity,where illicit activities could take place beneath the cover of darkness. In an era marked by steep concern over urban vice and “white slavery,” moral guardians believed that the exhibition of movies threatened a sexual revolution.What appeared on the screen did little to set their minds at ease. Genteel-minded critics fretted over the vulgar antics of Charlie Chaplin , whose penchant for bawdy humor enthralled many. Film critic James Agee recalled his mother’s objections to the comedian:“That horrid little man!...He’s so nasty!...So vulgar! With his nasty little cane; hooking up skirts and things, and that nasty little walk!” Others were outraged by Cecil B. DeMille’s Male and Female (1919), which tantalized audiences with a brief glimpse of Gloria Swanson’s bare breasts. Fearing the effect on society and especially on children, middle-class reformers, Catholic leaders, and activists in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union pushed for control of the screen. Censorship boards sprang up at local and state levels, leading finally to the industry’s adoption of a code for self-regulation in the early 1930s. The motion picture industry, as historian Francis Couvares notes, took shape not only as a result of economic imperatives, but cultural ones as well.5 Hollywood, therefore, served as a leading locale for early twentieth-century culture wars, a moral and ethnic challenge to the established order. Often seen as subversive in this broader sense, the motion picture also acquired a reputation for political subversion as well. Political struggles over film content focused largely on class issues until the late 1930s, when fighting fascism consumed much of Hollywood’s political focus. During this earlier period, filmmakers on the left sought to use film to promote the betterment of the working classes, their messages ranging from calls for sympathy to demands for revolution. Their enemies on the right detected a grave danger in all of this, fearing a Communist propaganda conspiracy that could induce the masses to overturn the social order in the name of Bolshevism. In this cultural struggle lay the roots, though not yet the beginning, of Hollywood’s cold war. This chapter traces the “movie problem” during the 1920s and 1930s, when political battles for control of the screen focused first on issues of labor and class, and then, as...

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