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Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 Thomas Doherty Columbia University Press; 448 pp; $35 ISBN9780231163927
Thomas Doherty's meticulously researched study examines the encounter of the American film industry and moviegoers with Hitler and Nazism during the seven-year period between Hitler's rise to power and the outbreak of war in Europe. Predominantly employing primary sources, Doherty traces the narratives of key individuals, institutions, and organizations that figured in shaping what, if anything, of Nazism appeared on American screens.
Doherty's carefully crafted thirteen chapters focus on what influenced the way Nazism came to be represented in motion pictures, documentaries and newsreels from 1933 onwards. On July 1, 1933, four months after Hitler was appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany, "a new law regulating the production and importation of motion pictures in Germany codified the anti-Semitic actions that had already been initiated by roving gangs of brownshirts" (22). The policy of Aryanization that eliminated Jews from the German film industry was "sudden, ruthless, and comprehensive" (21). Doherty's first chapter addresses how the Aryanization policy decimated Weimar's revered film industry, demanding as well that American studios with a presence in Germany remove their Jewish workers. "Studios had two options - obey or pull up stakes." Some studios such as Paramount, Fox, and MGM, acquiesced; other studios eventually pulled out but "maintained back-channel communications and intermediaries in the country" (38). Warner Brothers departed "by the end of 1933," becoming the first studio to "withdraw on principle" and refuse to have any dealings with Nazis (38). In his chapter on Warner Brothers Doherty, in accord with Michael Birdwell's study Celluloid Soldiers (1999), highlights how its fierce anti-Nazi stance made it...