Newspaper Article

Hollywood and Hitler: did the studio bosses bow to wishes of the Nazis?: Harvard historian claims filmmakers agreed to cuts and that some movies were dropped

Helmore, Edward

2013

Overview

[Ben Urwand]'s interpretation of the relationship is disputed by other scholars of the period. He claims that Hollywood studio chiefs, many of them recent eastern European Jewish refugees, enthusiastically worked with Hitler's censors to alter films or even cancel productions entirely in order to protect access to the German film market. \"In the 1930s the Hollywood studios not only collaborated by not making films that attacked the Nazis, they also did not defend the Jews or touch on Germany's persecution of the Jews,\" Urwand said. About his research, Urwand said: \"I wouldn't want what I write to be generalisable about Jews, but specific Jews in the movie business made decisions to work with Nazi leaders.\" Urwand has uncovered evidence that as late as January 1938 the German office of 20th-Century Fox was requesting Hitler's views about American movies. The letter was signed \"Heil Hitler\". By 1932, Urwand writes, Nazi-inspired regulations allowed for film studios to have their permits revoked if films considered damaging to German prestige were shown not only in Germany but anywhere in the world. Hollywood, he claims, enthusiastically acquiesced to Hitler's demands to shape the content of movies to meet Nazi propaganda goals. \"The excuse of ignorance can be ruled out,\" he writes. \"Hollywood executives knew exactly what was going on in Germany, not only because it had been forced to fire its own Jewish salesmen but because the persecution of the Jews was well known at the time.\"

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited
• Subject: Urwand, Ben