boutons_deux
06-26-2013, 10:13 AM
The list of institutions and industries that have been accused of whitewashing their links to the Third Reich is long, including variousgovernments, (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/arts/an-italian-saint-in-the-making-or-a-collaborator-with-nazis.html?pagewanted=all) the Vatican, Swiss banks and American corporations like I.B.M., (http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/03/18/reviews/010318.18schoent.html) General Motors and DuPont.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/06/26/arts/26COLLABORATIONjp/26COLLABORATIONjp-articleInline.jpg
“All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930), a film that led to Nazi riots and demands for editing.
Now a young historian wants to add a more glamorous name to that roll call: Hollywood.
Hollywood studios, in an effort to protect the German market for their movies, not only acquiesced to Nazi censorship but also actively and enthusiastically cooperated with that regime’s global propaganda effort.
In the 1930s “Hollywood is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany,” Mr. Urwand said by telephone from Cambridge, Mass., where he is currently at Harvard’s prestigious Society of Fellows. “It’s also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being.”
That the German government meddled in the film industry during Hollywood’s so-called golden age has long been known to film historians, and such activity was chronicled in the American press at the time. (“Long Arm of Hitler Extends to Hollywood Studio,” read a 1937 headline in Newsweek.)
But Mr. Urwand, 35, offers the most stinging take by far, drawing on material from German and American archives to argue that the relationship between Hollywood and the Third Reich ran much deeper — and went on much longer — than any scholar has so far suggested.
It was Warner who personally ordered that the word “Jew” be removed from all dialogue in the 1937 film “The Life of Emile Zola,” Mr. Urwand writes, and his studio was the first to invite Nazi officials to its Los Angeles headquarters to screen films and suggest cuts.
“There’s a whole myth that Warner Brothers were crusaders against fascism,” Mr. Urwand said. “But they were the first to try to appease the Nazis in 1933.”
Sometimes entire films were quashed. Previous historians have written about the battle over “The Mad Dog of Europe,” (http://www.jta.org/1933/10/23/archive/charges-nazis-here-using-threats-to-halt-production-of-mad-dog-of-europe) an anti-Nazi film planned in 1933 that some Jewish groups opposed on the grounds that it would stoke anti-Semitism. But Mr. Urwand, who uncovered the only known script, argues that the studios were concerned only with protecting their business with Germany.
“We have terrific income in Germany and, as far as I am concerned,” Louis B. Mayer was quoted in a legal case as saying, “this picture will never be made.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/books/scholar-asserts-that-hollywood-avidly-aided-nazis.html?hp&_r=0
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/06/26/arts/26COLLABORATIONjp/26COLLABORATIONjp-articleInline.jpg
“All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930), a film that led to Nazi riots and demands for editing.
Now a young historian wants to add a more glamorous name to that roll call: Hollywood.
Hollywood studios, in an effort to protect the German market for their movies, not only acquiesced to Nazi censorship but also actively and enthusiastically cooperated with that regime’s global propaganda effort.
In the 1930s “Hollywood is not just collaborating with Nazi Germany,” Mr. Urwand said by telephone from Cambridge, Mass., where he is currently at Harvard’s prestigious Society of Fellows. “It’s also collaborating with Adolf Hitler, the person and human being.”
That the German government meddled in the film industry during Hollywood’s so-called golden age has long been known to film historians, and such activity was chronicled in the American press at the time. (“Long Arm of Hitler Extends to Hollywood Studio,” read a 1937 headline in Newsweek.)
But Mr. Urwand, 35, offers the most stinging take by far, drawing on material from German and American archives to argue that the relationship between Hollywood and the Third Reich ran much deeper — and went on much longer — than any scholar has so far suggested.
It was Warner who personally ordered that the word “Jew” be removed from all dialogue in the 1937 film “The Life of Emile Zola,” Mr. Urwand writes, and his studio was the first to invite Nazi officials to its Los Angeles headquarters to screen films and suggest cuts.
“There’s a whole myth that Warner Brothers were crusaders against fascism,” Mr. Urwand said. “But they were the first to try to appease the Nazis in 1933.”
Sometimes entire films were quashed. Previous historians have written about the battle over “The Mad Dog of Europe,” (http://www.jta.org/1933/10/23/archive/charges-nazis-here-using-threats-to-halt-production-of-mad-dog-of-europe) an anti-Nazi film planned in 1933 that some Jewish groups opposed on the grounds that it would stoke anti-Semitism. But Mr. Urwand, who uncovered the only known script, argues that the studios were concerned only with protecting their business with Germany.
“We have terrific income in Germany and, as far as I am concerned,” Louis B. Mayer was quoted in a legal case as saying, “this picture will never be made.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/26/books/scholar-asserts-that-hollywood-avidly-aided-nazis.html?hp&_r=0