The Jewish founders of Hollywood — and make no mistake, the heads of major studios were overwhelmingly Jewish — had a few things in common: ambition, creative vision and killer business instincts.
But more than anything else, the people who were the driving force behind Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Universal, Columbia and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer shared a common sense of being Jewish in 20th-century America. They were assimilationists who saw themselves as Americans above all and who molded Hollywood to reflect and shape their American ideals.
“Above all, they wanted to be seen as Americans, not Jews,” Neal Gabler wrote in his definitive 1988 history, “An Empire of Their Own: How Jews Invented Hollywood any”. Louis B. Mayer, co-founder of MGM, went so far as to claim that his birth certificate was lost during the immigration process and declared his date of birth from then on to be the Fourth of July.
The worrying thing is when Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opening in 2021, it neglected to integrate the Jews in depicting the early days and later successes of Hollywood despite explicit attention to other ethnic and racial groups. Aside from a few brief mentions, these include Billy Wilder fleeing the Nazis, a photo of MGM mogul and academy founder Louis B. Mayer looming over Judy Garland, and a few scoundrels in the fray. exhibition on #MeToo, Jews are absent. Jewish studio heads, business leaders, and actors were almost completely shut out, an oversight that led to many objections.
“It’s like building a museum dedicated to Renaissance painting and ignoring the Italians,” says Hollywood historian and Brandeis University professor Thomas Doherty. told Rolling Stone magazine at that time.
When I asked the museum’s former director and president, Bill Kramer, now the museum’s CEO. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said he did not admit errors but said museum officials took the criticism seriously. “Clearly this is what a number of stakeholders are expecting,” he said. “In the minds of some tourists, this is a shortcoming that needs to be corrected.” Does he think those criticisms are well-founded? “That’s how everyone feels. And those feelings are real and those feelings are valid.”
The museum made up for its neglect by creating what it called its first permanent exhibition, “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Cinema Capital,” opening opening on Sunday.
The exhibition has three components. The first part provides a panoramic view of how the city of Los Angeles evolved to accommodate the influx of immigrants, including Jews, the growth of the film industry, and the needs of its diverse population. , from the Oglala Lakota to Chinese immigrants, are reflected in the archive. footage and interactive whiteboard map. The second part traces the history of the city’s studios, and the third part presents an original documentary, “From Shtetl to Studio: Hollywood’s Jewish Story.” The space is intimate but has open views and is well done.
So how did the Jews get abandoned in the first place? Some sources told Rolling Stone magazine After its opening, those who might have exerted more pressure before chose to stay hidden from the museum’s development. Some of these reservations certainly arise from current trends, focusing on racial representation and what Kramer calls “pro-social” causes — gay rights, women’s equality , the labor movement – which the museum details in a dedicated section and weaves its way throughout.
It may also be due to the uneasy tension among Jews around their places in America – the desire to assimilate, assimilate and succeed, while at the same time wary of the possibility of exclusion or displacement, too many announcements, inciting a backlash and stirring up underlying anti-Semitism. The recent outbreak of anti-Semitism we have witnessed on college campuses and in protests against Israel It’s been long stewing in the academy And luxurious cultural Institutions.
Throughout The Academy Museum’s development, largely coming in the wake of campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite, officials have made clear it will emphasize diversity and inclusion. The museum highlights non-white and other marginalized contributors to the industry to help redress the industry’s long record of exclusion.
“I don’t think you open a cultural institution at this historic moment and not reflect diversity of history and perspective,” Jacqueline Stewart, the museum’s current director and president, told me. when I asked about the museum’s focus on representation. She pushed back against criticism. “There used to mentioning Jewish filmmakers from the beginning,” she said, referring to a clip of Steven Spielberg’s Oscar acceptance speech. “It looks like it got lost.”
But in bending over backwards to highlight different identity groups at every point, the museum unintentionally misses part of what makes films a fundamentally unifying and universal medium: their ability to transcend those differences. In a pluralistic, immigrant nation, Hollywood helped create a uniquely American culture that could reach a wide audience. That’s part of what we call the magic of movies.
If nothing else, Hollywood is constantly evolving, perhaps more than ever under the threat of AI, increased economic pressure, and consolidation. The Academy Museum also continues to change. Much of what I saw in the museum — a marvel, it must be said, and a must-see for any film lover — has been transformed into new material since my first visit in June 2022. Elements in the core exhibition are in constant rotation, partly due to the fragility of its artifacts, such as costumes; partly to reflect the richness of its collection; and in other cases, in an overt attempt to hit all bases between competing interests.
If this current represents the Academy Museum’s stated purpose of representing the changing priorities of American audiences, it also has the potential to extend beyond the present moment, with its deliberate divisiveness intentional and unintentional.
