Thomas Doherty is a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. His previous books include Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934, Cold War, Cool Medium: Television, McCarthyism, and American Culture, and Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration. He lives with his wife Sandra in Salem, Massachusetts.

Klappentext

Recapturing what ordinary Americans saw on the screen during the emerging Nazi threat, Thomas Doherty reclaims forgotten films. He also recounts how the disproportionately Jewish backgrounds of the executives of the studios and the workers on the payroll shaded reactions to what was never simply a business decision. His history features a cast of charismatic personalities: Carl Laemmle, the German Jewish founder of Universal Pictures; Georg Gyssling, the Nazi counsel in Los Angeles; Vittorio Mussolini, son of the fascist dictator and aspiring motion picture impresario; Leni Riefenstahl, the Valkyrie goddess of the Third Reich; screenwriters Donald Ogden Stewart and Dorothy Parker, founders of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League; and Harry and Jack Warner of Warner Bros., who yoked anti-Nazism to patriotic Americanism and finally broke the embargo against anti-Nazi cinema with Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). As Europe hurtled toward war, a proxy battle was waged in Hollywood over how to conduct business with the Nazis; over whether to address or ignore Nazism in Hollywood feature films; and over how to cover Hitler and his victims in the newsreels. Should Hollywood lie low, or stand tall and sound the alarm?

Zusammenfassung
The behind-the-scenes story of Hollywoodâ™s struggle with Nazism before the outbreak of war.

Inhalt

Prologue: Judenfilm! 1. Hollywood--Berlin--Hollywood "The Hitler Anti-Jew Thing"The Aryanization of American ImportsThe Aryanization of Hollywood's Payroll2. HitlerThe Disappearance of Jews qua JewsThe Unmaking of The Mad Dog of Europe"What about the JewsThe Story of a Hollywood Girl in Naziland: I Was a Captive of Nazi Germany (1936)3. The Nazis in the Newsreels"The Swastika Man"Naziganda"4. The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League"Unheil Hitler!"The Politics of Celebrity5. Mussolini Jr. Goes Hollywood6. The Spanish Civil War in Hollywood"Censored Pap!" Walter Wanger's Blockade (1938)Loyalist Red Screen Propaganda7. Foreign Imports"German Tongue Talkers" Anti-Nazism in the Arty Theaters"Nazi Scrammers"8. "The Blight of Radical Propaganda"Trouble from Rome Over Idiot's Delight (1939)Trouble from Berlin Over The Road Back (1937)Trouble from Washington with the Dies Committee9. Inside Nazi Germany with the March of Time 10. "Grim Reaper Material"History Unreels"The Present Persecutions in Germany"11. There Is No Room for Leni Riefenstahl in Hollywood12. "The Only Studio with Any Guts"The Warner Bros. Patriotic ShortsThe Activist Moguls"The Picture That Calls a Swastika a Swastika!": Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)13. Hollywood Goes to WarEpilogue: The Motion Picture Memory of NazismThanks and AcknowledgmentsNotesIndex