Why wasn't more anti-Semitism directed toward Hollywood in the bad old days?

Cafe Society
1

Probably like most Americans (I would like to think), I grew up in a household that wasn’t anti-Semitic. We had some Jewish friends, but my parents never talked about Jewish people as being this or that (or people of any race, for that matter).

I never knew that a lot of the directors, producers, stars, etc., of Hollywood were Jewish. This was also never mentioned by the media, either. I don’t think I even knew until my 20s that the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers were Jewish.

Actually, it wasn’t until fairly recent years that I ever encountered any anti-Semitic commentary about Hollywood. There was Mel Gibson’s meltdown, then later Gary Oldman sort of defended him in that Playboy interview and said some stupid stuff himself.

So I guess my question is, with all the racial prejudice and anti-Semitism (a la Henry Ford) that America has had to offer over the years, why wasn’t more directed at Hollywood, especially back in the “bad old days” when people could be quite open about their prejudices?

Hollywood seems to be an example of the American melting pot working, at least with respect to Gentiles and Jews. Both could be successful, both could play any type of role, and romance between them on the screen happened all the time. If anything, religion simply wasn’t talked about.

I will confess ignorance about the whys and wherefores on this, but I’ll offer up some theories that Dopers can discuss:

  1. Anti-Semitism wasn’t allowed in American media (despite Henry Ford and his newspaper), at least not very much, so anything directed at Hollywood took place outside the major media.

  2. Anti-Semitism wasn’t directed much toward Hollywood because Americans were happy with the product coming out of Tinsel Town.

  3. Anti-Semitism was directed toward Hollywood in the major media, but I missed it since I grew up in the 70s, and it was gone by then.

Thanks for your thoughts!

2

I don’t have a cite, but my understanding is that the terms “Jewish” and “Communist” were used kind of interchangeably in the 40s and 50s, and the McCarthy hearings were fueled as much by antisemitism as anything else. There have always been code words for Jews by antisemites who didn’t want to appear to be such (like “I guess some people are too well-connected to have to serve in the military!”).

If the “bad old days” you refer to were earlier, I don’t know. There was less public scorn of blatant antisemites before the Holocaust than after.

3

This. Also, there was a huge number of entertainers who got to Hollywood by way of vaudeville, which had a lot of Jewish entertainers. If you wanted to see movies, or stand-up comedy, or song & dance routines, you kept your antisemitism to yourself.

4

There wasn’t the entertainment media back then that we are used to now. People mostly didn’t care who made their movies (other than actors of course; I’m talking behind the scenes people) and didn’t know who they were unless they worked in the industry. As far as why the system was Jewish-friendly in the first place, it was because Jewish people founded most of the studios.

5

I don’t know about American attitudes towards Hollywood specifically, but for a long time despite popular admiration many respectable people viewed the popular entertainment industry as inherently at least somewhat dodgy (and there are still traces of those attitudes to be found.) Did people even expect any “better” from what were basically glorified carnies?

6

I think one issue is that American anti-semitism was a more upper-class issue, and much more Atlantic coast than Pacific. There was no reason to think about Jews at all in large swaths of the country, and some sects were distinctly pro-Hebrew. Not that it didn’t occur, but Jewish Americans were probably more likely to be seen as just the oddball neighbors in big chunks of the nation. Much American AS was about limiting Jewish competition for the most prestgious schools and jobs. But, Hollywood was almost literally a new invention, and a rather tacky one, so that wouldn’t really apply.

7

Yes, there was an enormous amount of anti-Semitism directed toward Hollywood. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing that it’s been so totally forgotten.

Entertainers and the whole popular entertainment industry was low-class work in every sense. High audience art - opera and classical music and some theater - was permissible; every other aspect of it was directed at the masses. This made for openings for ambitious ethnics. The Lower East Side in NYC, the Jewish ghetto, produced a superstar per block for decades, but Irish, Italians, and Blacks were also disproportionately represented. Actors were considered to be crooks and prostitutes, and of course often were out of necessity.

Movies started with machines set up in existing stores and slowly grow to take over whole buildings. They were run by hustlers and failed entertainers finding a niche in industries respectable people wouldn’t touch, who quickly learned they could make more money by producing their own product. Illegally. The Edison Trust controlled movie making. The producers moved out to California where the local authorities wanted their business and weren’t hand-in-glove with the majors as in NY and NJ.

So the business, mainly run by Jewish entrepreneurs, was highly suspect from the very beginning. It was thought of basically as “just the sort of thing those Jews would do.” To fight that, the studio heads deracialized their product and their actors. Actors changed their ethnic names to the blandest Anglo-Saxon. Movie scripts scrubbed out all references to Judiasm. Americanism became the goal, especially after immigration was halted in 1924 and America became whiter and more middle class. And that was before Joseph Breen started enforcing the Hays Code in 1934.

Yes, there were a few exceptions, mainly for things so popular that they could pass. Latin lovers and vamps were acceptably exotic. The Jazz Singer was such a huge hit that everybody loved it - though Al Jolson never had a follow-up movie career.

The moguls - by the 30s consolidation had reduced the number of major studios to about six - kept the lowest possible profile to the ends of their reigns in the early 50s. They did business with Nazi Germany to the last moment; it was a big market. They scrubbed pictures of any references that the Germans might dislike. Only a very few ever got by. Breen was effectively an arm of the Catholic Church hierarchy, so priests got glorified and other religions were downplayed. Right wing media, also heavily isolationist, vilified the Hollywood union movement for being Communist and Socialist, which were understood as code words for Jewish even though that was also said directly. They kept up a constant barrage on the evils of Hollywood values in language otherwise identical to today’s right-wing hatred of Hollywood.

All of Golden Age Hollywood was about living a lie for the public. Jews played down their Jewishness. Gays hid in fake marriages. Women were homebodies who made delicious meals for their husbands even in mansions with 20 cooks. Blacks played docile clownish caricatures. People who got out of line had their careers destroyed. “Please don’t hit me” was the name of the game on every level. That’s one reason why Golden Age films are so revered by many. Every one of their prejudices were removed from view, with nothing but the idealized notion of melting-pot American values left on screen. This went across the board, especially in the Mid-West and South, the places with the lowest Jewish percentages.

That’s also the reason the 60s were so hated by the same people. “Fuck that noise” was the new game. They’ve never been forgiven.

8

The Singing Fool (one of the biggest hits up to that time), Say It with Songs, Wonder Bar, Go Into Your Dance and others don’t count as a follow-up movie career?

One of the strongest anti-Semitic attacks on Hollywood was published in Henry Ford’s Dearborn Independent between October and December 1921. The articles were published soon after the Roscoe Arbuckle scandal broke and not long before the William Desmond Taylor murder, both of which provided a huge opportunity for anti-Hollywood vituperation in general. The articles can be read at
http://web.archive.org/web/20040404014401/http://www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/
(scroll down to the October 1998 section)

The anti-Semitism found in the Ford articles dovetails with many post-war anxieties that a certain generation of Americans had over changes in morality – the popularity and influence of the movies, the rise of jazz music, the importation of foreign films (which the American Legion protested, at least in the case of German films, as noted in the 12-3-1921 piece), and so on. The objects of worry change from era to era (not many people now are worried about the morally corrupting effects of jazz music), but it seems that the structure of worry really doesn’t.

9

Fascinating! Thank you, I am being educated.

10

Missed edit window–it’s the NOVEMBER 1998 section in the above link.

11

I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of Americans had no idea there were any Jews in Hollywood.

12

The idea that Jews run Hollywood to brainwash white people is such a common conspiracy theory (along with their control over Wall Street) that I’d be surprised if someone reached adulthood without being exposed to it. I suppose it’s possible nowadays where everyone creates their own media bubble, but you’d have to miss out on a lot of old movies and books that discuss that trope. Or never be exposed to white nationalist/KKK rhetoric, or read anything about racial separatism, and so on. I’d figure eventually young people on the internet would hear enough about how terrible Stormfront or /pol/ are to visit out of sheer curiosity.

13

I meant back in the day - today, of course, it’s common knowledge. But in the 1930’s, unless you recognized “Goldwyn” as a Jewish name (and how many people in Topeka would make that connection?), how would you know there were any Jews involved in the movie industry?

14

I’d heard some conspiracy theories in the context of Nazi propaganda and explaining what anti-Semitism is in general, but I had not heard anyone seriously (directly or through the media) say, “The Jews run Hollywood, etc.” until I heard the Mel Gibson meltdown or commentary on that.

I think it’s clear the Internet makes all kinds of conspiracy theories and whatnot spread much faster. I had never heard of Holocaust denial until 2000 or 2001, at which point I spent some time on the Internet reading about the issue (needless to say, the deniers are despicable idiots).

15

BTW, I’m looking at some Mel Gibson clips on YouTube, and the effin’ Nazis making anti-Semitic comments (to the point where they are drowning out any actual discussion) is sickening.

16

No, they really don’t. Jolson was a gigantic star on Broadway; he was called The World’s Greatest Entertainer, for Pete’s sake. His career in Hollywood was essentially over by 1930, about the time that talkies became dominant. His big problem was that he couldn’t play anybody but Al Jolson and when he made a couple more pictures that were the same he typecast himself more. I’d say his failure in Hollywood is revealed by how bitter he became about that failure.

I certainly agree with this, though.

People find out these things by being told these things. They don’t need to figure it out by themselves. Huge media figures from Henry Ford to Father Coughlin to the Klan - much huger in the 1920s than after the Civil War - to dozens of other haters were happy to blame all the ills of the world on the Jews. That the Jews ran Hollywood would have been well-known everywhere. A 2008 poll showed that 22% of Americans still believed it.

17

The Turner Diaries is from 1978. I can’t remember if they called out Hollywood specifically, but it definitely portrayed the Jews as running Western media to brainwash white people into accepting minorities and interbreeding. That’s an extreme example of the idea. It’s usually more of a just so racial trope, like Jews running delicatessens or Asians running nail salons.

If the Jews run the media it’s not a surprise there’s not much anti-semitism in the media. Huehuehue. I can’t recall off hand, but I’m pretty sure there’s older comedy standup that requires knowledge of that trope. I tried to do a search but I get more recent stuff.

18

This was my point too. There was no “behind the scenes” media then. Other than who was the star, nobody cared about how movie was made. Heck, even in my lifetime a lot of this info was for “film buffs” and not simple to find.

19

But isn’t it true? (That Jewish people run Hollywood thing, not that it is used to spread lies.)

20

The difference between;
Jewish people run Hollywood
and
Jews run Hollywood
is both subtle and profound.

CMC fnord!