Book Reviewed: An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood by Neal Gabler

Jews invented the American dream The Jewish domination of gentiles in the early years of Hollywood is due to the diligent and business savviness of Jewish immigrants. The opportunities were open to everyone, but they used their skills wisely. This is an illustration of making the American dream come true. They began with small businesses, nickelodeons or film distribution and gradually moved into production. They built the studio system that defined Hollywood for decades, creating stars, genres, and the modern movie business model. Most Hollywood’s early movie studios were established between 1910 and 1930. The key figures were Adolph Zukor, founded Paramount Pictures; Carl Laemmle, founded Universal Pictures; William Fox, founded Fox Film Corporation (which later became 20th Century Fox); Louis B. Mayer, co-founded Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM Studios); Samuel Goldwyn, co-founded Goldwyn Pictures, which later merged into MGM; Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack Warner, founded Warner Bros; and Harry Cohn, co-founded Columbia Pictures. They turned a new technology (motion pictures) into a mass entertainment industry; created the glamorous Hollywood image that spread American culture worldwide; and established Los Angeles as the film capital due to its good weather and distance from Edison’s patent enforcement teams on the East Coast. Once F. Scott Fitzgerald whined that Hollywood is "a Jewish holiday, and a gentile’s tragedy." He was wrong! The real tragedy was the challenges Jews faced. Their dominance became a target for vicious anti-Semites-from fire-and-brimstone evangelicals who demanded the movies' liberation from "the hands of the devil." For once the luck was on Jewish side, there were none of the impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out. Financial barriers were lower too. In fact, one could open a theater for less than four hundred dollars. Additionally, if new immigrant Jews were proscribed from entering the real corridors of gentility and status in America, the movies offered an ingenious option. The rich and pretentious Jews in Hollywood were perhaps the greatest misfortune that ever fell on the Jewish immigrants. Because they became the fountain of anti-Semitism. A Jew bee Americanized only in direct proportion to his becoming de-Judaized. Yearning to become an American required him to renounce everything Jewish about him. That made his whole religion conform to an elite Protestantism. Rabbi Inoye, who conducted Sabbath services for the elites at Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles lamented that immigrant Jews assimilated into American protestant culture without guilt, but for people who had been shaped out of fear and atonement, it was precisely what the Hollywood Jews were required of their God. The book discusses how petty Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures was. He jettisoned Judaism as he jettisoned anything he found disadvantageous. He never went to a synagogue. It was a kind of defiance for him. He exhibited active contempt toward it as if it were something repellent. The history of the movies made by each studio in the early years is quite interesting. Frank Capra, one of the greatest directors of Hollywood had an uneasy working relationship with Columbia pictures. I strongly recommend this book to readers interested in the history of Hollywood and Jewish American history.