American Jews: The true Hollywood story
Marlon Brando once said on a talk show, “Hollywood is run by Jews,” and Charles Lindbergh once declared, “Their [Jews’] greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures ... ”
With the 86th Academy Awards coming up on March 2, it’s as good a time as any to reflect on America’s “Jew view” and acknowledge those in Hollywood who cautiously — and later brazenly — embraced their Jewishness on screen. We may be well past the days when Betty Joan Perske became Lauren Bacall or Tony Curtis distanced himself from Bernard Schwartz, but the Jewish experience in America, as told by Hollywood films, is still a gripping one.
In its early decades, American cinema mostly hid American Jewry, with studio moguls, most of whom were Jewish, shying away from on-screen representations. Aside from Silent Era “ghetto films,” such as “Humoresque” (1920) and “The Cohens and the Kellys” (1926), which depicted Jewish families dealing with American assimilation, Hollywood avoided clearly identifiable Jewish characters, themes and issues.
http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/.premium-1.576635
