Jack Warner, Louis B Mayer<\/p>\n
(Jewish Telegraphic Agency<\/a><\/em>) Jews are circling the wagons after black comedian David Chappelle delivered an opening monologue on Saturday Night Live in which he dared notice the dominating Jewish presence in Hollywoo<\/a>d after working there for the last 30 years:<\/p>\n \u2026The Anti-Defamation League was quick to denounce Chappelle\u2019s act, calling it antisemitic<\/strong>. Other prominent Jews have followed suit.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very disturbed to see him speaking, to millions of people, a lot of antisemitic tropes<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d Pamela Nadell, a professor at American University who researches antisemitism<\/strong>, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\n But Chappelle, who was himself riffing on recent antisemitism controversies involving Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, wasn\u2019t exactly breaking new ground by insinuating that Jews run Hollywood.<\/strong> The trope has been a part of show business since its earliest days \u2014 when, in a literal sense, Jews did run Hollywood<\/strong>. Or the studios, anyway.<\/p>\n Nearly every major movie studio was founded in the early 20th century by a group of first-generation secular Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe<\/strong>. Carl Laemmle (Universal), Adolph Zukor (Paramount), William Fox (Fox), Louis B. Mayer (MGM), and Benjamin Warner (Warner) were all Jewish silver-screen pioneers, laying the groundwork for the size and scale of the industry to follow.<\/p>\n But the industry has diversified greatly in the century since, with studios largely swallowed up by corporate behemoths<\/strong>. And while individual Jews may be overrepresented in an industry that has long welcomed and rewarded them, the rhetorical danger<\/strong>, Nadell said, comes in conflating a large Jewish presence in an industry with ownership and control of that industry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cJews remain active in Hollywood in a variety of roles, but it would be impossible to say that they run Hollywood, that they own Hollywood<\/strong>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhenever the Jews enter into any kind of position where they might have influence over people who are not Jewish, then all of a sudden it\u2019s seen as some kind of conspiracy<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Conspiracy theories dogged Jews in Hollywood from the industry\u2019s beginning. Because so many Jews were in control in Hollywood in its early years<\/strong>, Joseph Breen, who for decades ran the industry\u2019s Production Code office<\/strong> and tried to make movies palatable to Catholic morality groups, blamed \u201cthe Jews<\/a>\u201d for sneaking sex, violence and moral depravity into the movies<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n But their rise to the top of the still-young motion picture industry <\/strong>wasn\u2019t because they were a part of some secretive cabal; it\u2019s because, historians say, Hollywood provided a low barrier to entry for enterprising businessmen, and was lacking the antisemitic guardrails of more established industries<\/strong>.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were no social barriers<\/strong> in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of [the 20th] century,\u201d historian Neal Gabler writes in his landmark 1988 book \u201cAn Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n In the book, Gabler notes that the movie business, which evolved out of other professions like vaudeville and the garment industry where Jews had already found a toehold<\/strong>, lacked \u201cthe impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out.\u201d<\/p>\n As such, Jews (particularly recent immigrants) were able to thrive in show business in a way they couldn\u2019t in most other industries. Once they were in, family ties or the general phenomenon of affinity groups often led to them elevating other Jews in the industry<\/strong>: For example, prolific Jewish producer David O. Selznick, whose credits include \u201cGone With The Wind,\u201d \u201cRebecca\u201d and a huge string of other hits in the 1930s and \u201940s, spent many years at MGM, run by his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer.<\/p>\n Areas like the film, garment and publishing industries were attractive to Jews, Nadell said, \u201cbecause there were so many other sectors of the economy where they were barred from<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n But in exchange, Hollywood\u2019s prominent Jews had to effectively extinguish their Jewishness.<\/p>\n Yearning to assimilate into American society, the Jews who ran these studios were beset on all sides by antisemitic invective \u2014 first from Christian groups like the Legion of Decency<\/strong>, then by anti-Communist groups, both of whom accused Hollywood\u2019s Jews of conspiring to undermine American society with their loose morals<\/strong>.<\/p>\n As such, the Jewish studio heads largely refrained from making any movies about Jewish themes, or snuffing out antisemitic content even within their own films, or otherwise exerting their influence in any obviously Jewish way<\/strong>, even as many of the Golden Era of Hollywood\u2019s most acclaimed writers and directors (Herman Mankiewicz, Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, Billy Wilder) were also Jewish. \u201cGentleman\u2019s Agreement,\u201d the landmark 1947 film about antisemitism, didn\u2019t have any Jewish producers, directors or major stars (though some of its credited writers were Jewish).<\/p>\n Famously, Hollywood\u2019s Jews also went out of their way to avoid offending Hitler during the Nazi era, continuing to do business with Germany and largely avoiding featuring Nazis as villains in the prewar years<\/strong>.<\/p>\n With the demise of the studio system in the 1960s, Jewish creatives ranging from Mel Brooks to Steven Spielberg to Natalie Portman no longer had to hide their identity from audiences<\/strong>, but instead made it an essential part of their public personas. Earlier this week, in a New York Times interview, Spielberg acknowledged that Hollywood was a welcoming place for Jews<\/strong> when he arrived as a young filmmaker.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing Jewish in America is not the same as being Jewish in Hollywood,\u201d he said while promoting \u201cThe Fabelmans,\u201d a loose retelling of his own Jewish upbringing. \u201cBeing Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle and immediately being accepted as I have been in that circle, by a lot of diversity but also by a lot of people who in fact are Jewish<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, such ethnic affinity has often been deemed conspiratorial<\/strong>. \u201cHollywood is run by Jews\u201d and \u201cowned by Jews,\u201d Marlon Brando<\/strong> declared in a 1996 interview with Larry King, further claiming that Jewish studio executives prevented antisemitic stereotypes from being depicted on screen while allowing stereotypes of every other minority group<\/strong> \u201cbecause that\u2019s where you circle the wagons around.\u201d<\/p>\n (Despite this outburst, which prompted intense backlash from Jewish groups, Brando was known for having close relationships with Jews<\/strong> and demonstrating a strong understanding of Jewish theology and culture throughout his life, and apparently spoke Yiddish quite well.)<\/p>\n This general air of suspicion around Jews in show business has continued into the modern day, as evidenced by Chappelle and West\u2019s comments. In the tweets that precipitated the collapse of his businesses, West singled out Jewish producers and managers in the entertainment industry he had affiliations with, echoing how believers in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control tend to fixate on Jews in leadership positions outside of the public eye<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Ignoring the many industry leaders who are not Jewish, such conspiracy theorists tend to focus on the successful managers and lawyers in Hollywood who are<\/strong>, including Jeremy Zimmer, Ari Emanuel, Allen Grubman \u2014 and Harvey Weinstein, whose decades of sexual abuse, scorched-earth targeting of his accusers and eventual downfall are the subject of the new movie \u201cShe Said.\u201d<\/p>\n And in a similar fashion to Brando, Chappelle suggested that there is a double standard in talking about ethnic groups<\/strong>, with jokes about Jews being seen as taboo in a way that jokes about Black people and other groups are not: \u201cIf they\u2019re Black, then it\u2019s a gang. If they\u2019re Italian, it\u2019s a mob. If they\u2019re Jewish, it\u2019s a coincidence and you should never speak about it<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n At the same time as Jews in and out of the industry are fighting such perceptions, they are also pushing for greater visibility. The unveiling of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles last year almost entirely omitted Jews from Hollywood\u2019s founding narrative<\/a><\/strong>, leading to backlash from Jews in the industry and, ultimately, the guarantee of a new permanent exhibition space focusing on Jews<\/strong>.<\/p>\n And there was one other way in which the Chappelle episode hearkened back to the age-old dynamics of the relationship between Jews and Hollywood: \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d executive producer Lorne Michaels, who presumably allowed the monologue on the air, is Jewish<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Yes, Lorne Michaels is Jewish, but the writer here fails to mention that prior to the airing of SNL, during rehearsals David Chappelle practiced a different monologue<\/a> because he knew the real one wouldn\u2019t get past the Jewish censors.<\/p>\n And Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL is being his typical disingenuous self calling Chappelle\u2019s comments antisemitic \u2014 ignoring the fact that Abe Foxman, the former head of the ADL, all but admitted that Jews do control Hollywood \u2014 and a number of other professions.<\/p>\n In fact, Joel Stein \u2014 a writer for the Los Angeles Times<\/em> \u2014 got so tired of hearing his fellow Jews deny they controlled Hollywood that we wrote his 2008 landmark article, \u201cWho Runs Hollywood? C\u2019mon<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u201d \u2014 in which Stein prodded even Abe Foxman<\/strong> to admit,<\/p>\n \u201cI think Jews are disproportionately represented in the creative industry. They\u2019re disproportionate as lawyers and probably medicine here as well<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n Yes, the old Jewish Hollywood studio system has been replaced by mega-corporations \u2014 but those mega-corporations are all headed by Jews \u2014 like Disney with Susan Arnold, Bob Iger, and Michael Eisner \u2014 something that the writer here conveniently fails to point out.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t take our word for it \u2014 the hugely successful Jewish filmmakers \u2014 the Coen Brothers<\/a> \u2014 admitted in an interview, \u201cHollywood has always been largely Jewish<\/em>\u2026\u201d \u2014 but when Jews say this, no one bats an eye because they are proud of that control and success \u2014 but they don\u2019t want anyone to see the downside of that control.<\/p>\n And, of course, they use the age-old canard that Jews dominated Hollywood because they couldn\u2019t work in other professions that were \u201cclosed\u201d to them \u2014 apparently like banking, law, academia, and medicine.<\/p>\n Farming<\/a>, clearly, was never an option for Jews.<\/p>\n Hollywood was welcoming to young ambitious Jews because it was already<\/em> Jewish \u2014 and favored hiring their co-ethnics, which this article all but admits.<\/p>\n Yes, Hollywood is now \u2014 and has been from its beginnings \u2014 controlled by Jews \u2014 and Jews need to stop trying to gaslight us<\/a> \u2014 and themselves<\/em> \u2014 that they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
![a lot of antisemitic tropes<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d Pamela Nadell, a professor at American University who researches antisemitism<\/strong>, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\nBut Chappelle, who was himself riffing on recent antisemitism controversies involving Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, wasn\u2019t exactly breaking new ground by insinuating that Jews run Hollywood.<\/strong> The trope has been a part of show business since its earliest days \u2014 when, in a literal sense, Jews did run Hollywood<\/strong>. Or the studios, anyway.<\/p>\nNearly every major movie studio was founded in the early 20th century by a group of first-generation secular Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe<\/strong>. Carl Laemmle (Universal), Adolph Zukor (Paramount), William Fox (Fox), Louis B. Mayer (MGM), and Benjamin Warner (Warner) were all Jewish silver-screen pioneers, laying the groundwork for the size and scale of the industry to follow.<\/p>\nBut the industry has diversified greatly in the century since, with studios largely swallowed up by corporate behemoths<\/strong>. And while individual Jews may be overrepresented in an industry that has long welcomed and rewarded them, the rhetorical danger<\/strong>, Nadell said, comes in conflating a large Jewish presence in an industry with ownership and control of that industry<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\u201cJews remain active in Hollywood in a variety of roles, but it would be impossible to say that they run Hollywood, that they own Hollywood<\/strong>,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\u201cWhenever the Jews enter into any kind of position where they might have influence over people who are not Jewish, then all of a sudden it\u2019s seen as some kind of conspiracy<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nConspiracy theories dogged Jews in Hollywood from the industry\u2019s beginning. Because so many Jews were in control in Hollywood in its early years<\/strong>, Joseph Breen, who for decades ran the industry\u2019s Production Code office<\/strong> and tried to make movies palatable to Catholic morality groups, blamed \u201cthe Jews<\/a>\u201d for sneaking sex, violence and moral depravity into the movies<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\nBut their rise to the top of the still-young motion picture industry <\/strong>wasn\u2019t because they were a part of some secretive cabal; it\u2019s because, historians say, Hollywood provided a low barrier to entry for enterprising businessmen, and was lacking the antisemitic guardrails of more established industries<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\u201cThere were no social barriers<\/strong> in a business as new and faintly disreputable as the movies were in the early years of [the 20th] century,\u201d historian Neal Gabler writes in his landmark 1988 book \u201cAn Empire Of Their Own: How The Jews Invented Hollywood<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nIn the book, Gabler notes that the movie business, which evolved out of other professions like vaudeville and the garment industry where Jews had already found a toehold<\/strong>, lacked \u201cthe impediments imposed by loftier professions and more firmly entrenched businesses to keep Jews and other undesirables out.\u201d<\/p>\nAs such, Jews (particularly recent immigrants) were able to thrive in show business in a way they couldn\u2019t in most other industries. Once they were in, family ties or the general phenomenon of affinity groups often led to them elevating other Jews in the industry<\/strong>: For example, prolific Jewish producer David O. Selznick, whose credits include \u201cGone With The Wind,\u201d \u201cRebecca\u201d and a huge string of other hits in the 1930s and \u201940s, spent many years at MGM, run by his father-in-law, Louis B. Mayer.<\/p>\nAreas like the film, garment and publishing industries were attractive to Jews, Nadell said, \u201cbecause there were so many other sectors of the economy where they were barred from<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nBut in exchange, Hollywood\u2019s prominent Jews had to effectively extinguish their Jewishness.<\/p>\nYearning to assimilate into American society, the Jews who ran these studios were beset on all sides by antisemitic invective \u2014 first from Christian groups like the Legion of Decency<\/strong>, then by anti-Communist groups, both of whom accused Hollywood\u2019s Jews of conspiring to undermine American society with their loose morals<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAs such, the Jewish studio heads largely refrained from making any movies about Jewish themes, or snuffing out antisemitic content even within their own films, or otherwise exerting their influence in any obviously Jewish way<\/strong>, even as many of the Golden Era of Hollywood\u2019s most acclaimed writers and directors (Herman Mankiewicz, Ernst Lubitsch, George Cukor, Billy Wilder) were also Jewish. \u201cGentleman\u2019s Agreement,\u201d the landmark 1947 film about antisemitism, didn\u2019t have any Jewish producers, directors or major stars (though some of its credited writers were Jewish).<\/p>\nFamously, Hollywood\u2019s Jews also went out of their way to avoid offending Hitler during the Nazi era, continuing to do business with Germany and largely avoiding featuring Nazis as villains in the prewar years<\/strong>.<\/p>\nWith the demise of the studio system in the 1960s, Jewish creatives ranging from Mel Brooks to Steven Spielberg to Natalie Portman no longer had to hide their identity from audiences<\/strong>, but instead made it an essential part of their public personas. Earlier this week, in a New York Times interview, Spielberg acknowledged that Hollywood was a welcoming place for Jews<\/strong> when he arrived as a young filmmaker.<\/p>\n\u201cBeing Jewish in America is not the same as being Jewish in Hollywood,\u201d he said while promoting \u201cThe Fabelmans,\u201d a loose retelling of his own Jewish upbringing. \u201cBeing Jewish in Hollywood is like wanting to be in the popular circle and immediately being accepted as I have been in that circle, by a lot of diversity but also by a lot of people who in fact are Jewish<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nStill, such ethnic affinity has often been deemed conspiratorial<\/strong>. \u201cHollywood is run by Jews\u201d and \u201cowned by Jews,\u201d Marlon Brando<\/strong> declared in a 1996 interview with Larry King, further claiming that Jewish studio executives prevented antisemitic stereotypes from being depicted on screen while allowing stereotypes of every other minority group<\/strong> \u201cbecause that\u2019s where you circle the wagons around.\u201d<\/p>\n(Despite this outburst, which prompted intense backlash from Jewish groups, Brando was known for having close relationships with Jews<\/strong> and demonstrating a strong understanding of Jewish theology and culture throughout his life, and apparently spoke Yiddish quite well.)<\/p>\nThis general air of suspicion around Jews in show business has continued into the modern day, as evidenced by Chappelle and West\u2019s comments. In the tweets that precipitated the collapse of his businesses, West singled out Jewish producers and managers in the entertainment industry he had affiliations with, echoing how believers in antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control tend to fixate on Jews in leadership positions outside of the public eye<\/strong>.<\/p>\nIgnoring the many industry leaders who are not Jewish, such conspiracy theorists tend to focus on the successful managers and lawyers in Hollywood who are<\/strong>, including Jeremy Zimmer, Ari Emanuel, Allen Grubman \u2014 and Harvey Weinstein, whose decades of sexual abuse, scorched-earth targeting of his accusers and eventual downfall are the subject of the new movie \u201cShe Said.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd in a similar fashion to Brando, Chappelle suggested that there is a double standard in talking about ethnic groups<\/strong>, with jokes about Jews being seen as taboo in a way that jokes about Black people and other groups are not: \u201cIf they\u2019re Black, then it\u2019s a gang. If they\u2019re Italian, it\u2019s a mob. If they\u2019re Jewish, it\u2019s a coincidence and you should never speak about it<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\nAt the same time as Jews in and out of the industry are fighting such perceptions, they are also pushing for greater visibility. The unveiling of the new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles last year almost entirely omitted Jews from Hollywood\u2019s founding narrative<\/a><\/strong>, leading to backlash from Jews in the industry and, ultimately, the guarantee of a new permanent exhibition space focusing on Jews<\/strong>.<\/p>\nAnd there was one other way in which the Chappelle episode hearkened back to the age-old dynamics of the relationship between Jews and Hollywood: \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d executive producer Lorne Michaels, who presumably allowed the monologue on the air, is Jewish<\/strong>.<\/p>\nYes, Lorne Michaels is Jewish, but the writer here fails to mention that prior to the airing of SNL, during rehearsals David Chappelle practiced a different monologue<\/a> because he knew the real one wouldn\u2019t get past the Jewish censors.<\/p>\nAnd Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL is being his typical disingenuous self calling Chappelle\u2019s comments antisemitic \u2014 ignoring the fact that Abe Foxman, the former head of the ADL, all but admitted that Jews do control Hollywood \u2014 and a number of other professions.<\/p>\nIn fact, Joel Stein \u2014 a writer for the Los Angeles Times<\/em> \u2014 got so tired of hearing his fellow Jews deny they controlled Hollywood that we wrote his 2008 landmark article, \u201cWho Runs Hollywood? C\u2019mon<\/em><\/strong><\/a>\u201d \u2014 in which Stein prodded even Abe Foxman<\/strong> to admit,<\/p>\n\u201cI think Jews are disproportionately represented in the creative industry. They\u2019re disproportionate as lawyers and probably medicine here as well<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\nYes, the old Jewish Hollywood studio system has been replaced by mega-corporations \u2014 but those mega-corporations are all headed by Jews \u2014 like Disney with Susan Arnold, Bob Iger, and Michael Eisner \u2014 something that the writer here conveniently fails to point out.<\/p>\nDon\u2019t take our word for it \u2014 the hugely successful Jewish filmmakers \u2014 the Coen Brothers<\/a> \u2014 admitted in an interview, \u201cHollywood has always been largely Jewish<\/em>\u2026\u201d \u2014 but when Jews say this, no one bats an eye because they are proud of that control and success \u2014 but they don\u2019t want anyone to see the downside of that control.<\/p>\nAnd, of course, they use the age-old canard that Jews dominated Hollywood because they couldn\u2019t work in other professions that were \u201cclosed\u201d to them \u2014 apparently like banking, law, academia, and medicine.<\/p>\nFarming<\/a>, clearly, was never an option for Jews.<\/p>\nHollywood was welcoming to young ambitious Jews because it was already<\/em> Jewish \u2014 and favored hiring their co-ethnics, which this article all but admits.<\/p>\nYes, Hollywood is now \u2014 and has been from its beginnings \u2014 controlled by Jews \u2014 and Jews need to stop trying to gaslight us<\/a> \u2014 and themselves<\/em> \u2014 that they don\u2019t.<\/p>\nJews think they are so much smarter than \u201cgentiles\u201d<\/a> \u2014 we\u2019re just dumb \u201cgoyim\u201d to many of them \u2014 but we\u2019re not that<\/em> dumb\u2026<\/p>\n](\"https:\/\/christiansfortruth.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/drevilcanard-1.jpg\"){kind=link}