Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream

The history of the influence of Eastern European Jewish Emigre culture has had on Hollywood and the films created in its golden age. Tagline: They fled a nightmare to build a dream.

The film portrays Louis B. Mayer (MGM) as an Eastern European Jew who fled to Hollywood to escape persecution. This is totally false. Mayer was born in Russia in 1884 but his family moved to the US when he was 3 years old. When he was 8 years old, the family moved to Canada. Mayer grew up in Canada. In 1904, when he was 20 years old, he moved back to the US. The movie business was an economic opportunity for him. It had nothing to do with him being Jewish or being persecuted.

Jack Warner (Warner Bros.) was also born in Canada. Adolph Zukor (Paramount) was born in Hungary and emigrated to the US in 1891 when he was about 18 years old.

According to this documentary, every "underdog" theme portrayed in a Hollywood film is a Jewish theme. One given example is "Independence Day" - where a white middle-class president articulates the Jewish experience. The Jewish persecution theme running throughout this documentary is overblown and overemphasized, distorting the facts.

This documentary goes by two names--"Hollywoodism: Jews, Movies and the American Dream" as well as "Hollywood: An Empire of Their Own". The Netflix title is the latter one--and was billed as a documentary about the Jewish moguls responsible for creating the Hollywood film industry. The former title, however, has MUCH more to do with the film, as it's less a history and more a thesis about the loss of Jewishness of these moguls and the substitution of a Judeo-Christian form of Americanism into the American consciousness. So, instead of a documentary about film history, it's more a discussion of this lack of Jewishness among these men...and it's much, much more intellectual and far less entertaining. Often, I felt like the film was talking above the viewer and also, at times, used the selective use of the facts--ignoring those that did not support their ideas and touting those that did. A few examples:

Talking as if these Jewish men had positive feelings towards Black Americans. While they cited a few examples of positive roles in films, they ignored horrible examples of racism like the popularity of Steppin Fetchit and Willie Best's films.

Saying that the monster films of the 30s and 40s were metaphors for the Jewish experience. Huh?! While some COULD possibly interpret them that way, I am pretty sure that was not the films' intention.

Discussing how these moguls were pretty quiet about the Holocaust (which is true) but ignoring that these same moguls chose to break US laws about neutrality when they portrayed the Nazi regime as evil in films made just before the US entered WWII (yes, in a big departure from free speech, there really was such a law).

Blaming the moguls' performance at the House Committee on Unamerican Activities was why these men soon lost control of the studios. Many lost control because they died...not because of the HUAC and some others lingered (such as Jack Warner) for decades after these hearings.

All in all, I felt I was less seeing a film about Hollywood and more watching a film that was meant to prove some vague concept...a very vague one. Overall, a disappointment.

This is a vivid portrayal of Hollywood's Jewish history, emphasising the importance of Jewish pioneers in the development of film, but possibly trying too hard to connect the early film-scripts to the East European shtetls (racial enclaves) from which most of them had emigrated.

So, for example, the Westerns, with so many native Americans being hunted down by the cavalry, are supposed to reflect the Cossacks terrorising Jewish villages. Yet not every Jewish producer was particularly fixated on the politics of old Russia. Most of them were just wanting to make a buck, and recognised that Western dramas were close to the heart of the cinemagoing public.

It is true that these pioneers were mightily glad to escape the big cities whose clubs and hotels were officially closed to them, the City Fathers of New York especially loathing the film industry for its brash arrogance. And Hollywood gives us quite a panorama of Jewish themes, from Al Jolson and Warner Brothers leading the Talkie revolution to America's reluctance to upset their German market in the 30's, to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) quizzing many of the original pioneers, trying to suggest a possible link between Jewishness and Communism.

Altogether, I think the film is right to question the over-used term 'Golden Age of Hollywood' to denote the ascendancy of the studios. It just meant pre-TV.

This film is a must-see for anyone who's interested in film history, Hollywood, and the men who created it.