Hollywood and Anti-Semitism
A Cultural History up to World War II

Examines the role of American Jews in the entertainment industry.

Steven Alan Carr (Author)

9780521798549, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 April 2001

360 pages, 25 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'… Carr's book offers an important and erudite study of anti-semitism and its continuing role in the history of the Hollywood industry.' Michael Hammond, Journal of Jewish Studies

This book examines the role of American Jews in the entertainment industry, from the turn of the century to the outbreak of World War II. Eastern European Jewish immigrants are often credited with building a film industry during the first decade of the twentieth century that they dominated by the 1920s. In this study, Steven Carr reconceptualizes Jewish involvement in Hollywood by examining prevalent attitudes towards Jews among American audiences. Analogous to the Jewish Question of the nineteenth century, which was concerned with the full participation of Jews within public life, the Hollywood Question of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s addressed the Jewish population within mass media. This study reveals the powerful set of assumptions concerning ethnicity and media influence as related to the role of the Jew in the motion picture industry.

Introduction: what is the Hollywood question?
Part I. The Hollywood Question and American Anti-Semitism, 1880–1929: 1. Anti-Semitism and the American Jewish question
2. Religion, race and morality in the Hollywood question
Part II. The Hollywood Question for a New America, 1929–1941: 3. A New Deal for the Hollywood question
4. The Hollywood question in popular culture
5. The politics of the Hollywood question
6. Answering the Hollywood question
Part III. The Hollywood Question, 1941 and Beyond: 7. Popular culture answers the Hollywood question
8. The Hollywood question in crisis, 1941
9. The new Hollywood question.

Subject Areas: Jewish studies [JFSR1], Films, cinema [APF]