Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History up to World War II (review)

Despite its title's protestations, Carr's book is not a cultural history of the complex and multifaceted topic of Hollywood and antisemitism. Instead, the book limits its focus to antisemitic responses to the Jewish presence in the film industry and particularly to the Jewish Hollywood moguls, which Carr argues can be used to trace American anti-Jewish attitudes from the 1880s to World War II. The strength of Carr's presentation is his comprehensive documentation of what I would call "antisemitica" relating to Jewish Hollywood, including newspapers, magazines, ephemeral materials, memoirs, novels, posters, plays, and congressional reports. The book, however, suffers from Carr's dense and inaccessible writing. The more significant problem is his rigid adherence to a theoretical framework—of his own design—that is at once obtuse and too narrow, disallowing a more satisfying and historically rich context for the materials he presents. Stymieing this important topic is Carr's definition of what he identifies as "the Hollywood Question." The term, he argues, "asks whether Jews, given their quasi-racialized difference, should participate in the regular affairs of mediated life" (9).

Readers will benefit from Carr's extensive research into and documentation of early-twentieth-century antisemitica, his extensive footnotes (they number 803!), and ample bibliography. Carr makes available illuminating anti-Jewish writings by Joseph Breen, Henry Ford, and Gerald P. Nye, among others. The book also includes a wealth of rare antisemitic cartoons, illustrations, and drawings, such as the following 1930s Los Angeles leaflet (112).

BUY Gentile. EMPLOY Gentile. VOTE Gentile.
Christian Vigilantes Arise!

Boycott the Movies!
HOLLYWOOD is the Sodom and Gomorrah
where
INTERNATIONAL JEWRY
controls
VICE—DOPE—GAMBLING
Where
YOUNG GENTILE GIRLS ARE RAPED
by
JEWISH PRODUCERS, DIRECTORS,
CASTING DIRECTORS WHO GO UNPUNISHED
THE JEWISH HOLLYWOOD ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE CONTROLS
COMMUNISM
IN THE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY
STARS, WRITERS AND ARTISTS ARE COMPELLED TO
PAY FOR COMMUNISTIC ACTIVITIES

Carr only briefly describes how the industry portrayed the Hollywood movie producers on screen. In one example, the image of the Jewish movie producer in Tall Tales (1932), Carr's reading differs greatly from both Patricia Erens (The Jew in American Cinema, 1984) and Lester Friedman (Hollywood's Image of the Jew, 1982), who found the character to be less negative and more sympathetic. In fact, Carr devotes little time to discussion of the images of Jews on screen, an analytical omission that weakens his overall argument. He ignores the strong, ethnic Jewish images presented on the silver screen in the 1920s, the period when Jewish studio magnates exercised firm control over the means of production. Humoresque (1920), Hungry Hearts (1922), His People (1925), Surrender (1927), The Younger Generation (1929), and The Symphony of Six Million (1932): all include rich and variegated Jewish characters. Carr discusses The Jazz Singer (1927), but only in light of the antisemitic responses it engendered. There is no discussion of the film's phenomenal box office success, the explicitness of its Jewishness, the uncompromising ethnic image of Joseph Rosenblatt, or the cantorial scenes set in the synagogue.

Nor does Carr acknowledge the deliberateness of the Jewish producers in excising patently offensive Jewish characters and antisemitic materials from their studio films. Negative images of Jews—like the greedy, unethical, hooked-nose Jew out to swindle the American public in Cohen's Fire Sale, produced by Thomas Edison's Biograph Company in 1907—do make appearances in movies of this early period, but not in films shepherded by the Jewish studio heads. While a few ethnic vaudeville characterizations appear in some early films and 1920s comedies, the moguls carefully guarded silver-screen images of Jews.

While the bulk of the book does not treat the representations of Jews on screen, Carr does discuss the filmic image of the Jew in his last chapter. Carr offers a brief analysis of the oft-discussed issue of the...