Hollywood is failing Jewish-Americans despite a history together - opinion
| Published date | 16 March 2024 |
| Author | ANDREA SAMUELS |
| Publication title | Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel) |
They also drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as well as antisemitism researcher Prof. Pamela Nadell, who told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), "I was very disturbed to see him speaking, to millions of people, a lot of antisemitic tropes."
These tropes, which have plagued show business for over a century, stemmed from the fact that nearly every major movie studio was founded in the early 1900s by a group of first-generation secular Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe: Carl Laemmle (Universal), Adolph Zukor (Paramount), William Fox (Fox), Louis B. Mayer (MGM), and Benjamin Warner (Warner).
With antisemitic barriers preventing Jewish immigrants at the time from joining many of the more well-established industries, Hollywood, with its lack of guardrails, was one of the few from which Jews weren't excluded. As such, the film industry seemed the obvious choice for these creative Jewish businessmen.
In addition to the movies, the garment, and publishing industries also attracted Jews, Nadell said, "because there were so many other sectors of the economy where they were barred from."
Historian Neal Gabler expanded on this in his book An Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood. "There were no social barriers in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of [the 20th] century," he writes, whereas "impediments [were] imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out."
HOWEVER, EVEN though the face of Hollywood has changed greatly since then, with most of the studios being swallowed up by huge corporations, the dangerous antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories surrounding Jews and their role in the industry persist.
"Jews remain active in Hollywood in a variety of roles, but it would be impossible to say that they run Hollywood, that they own Hollywood," Nadell said. "Whenever the Jews enter into any kind of position where they might have influence over people who are not Jewish, then all of a sudden it's seen as some kind of conspiracy," she explained.
While success in Hollywood was there for the taking, it came at a heavy price for Jews who, in order to get on, had to effectively extinguish their Jewishness. While many changed their names, sickeningly, some...
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