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An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood Neal Gabler
Doubleday. 503pp. 0-385-26557-3
The major Hollywood movie studios were founded by Jews. This much is known. Gabler treats us to a beautiful history of Hollywood - and of the Jews who created it. With a level of social analysis that is just right, and a level of detail that can be a bit too much, Gabler tells how a bunch of outsiders, tied together more by a common family background in which the failure of the father was significant than by anything else, traveled west and made a fortune. Along the way, Gabler tells us, their relationships to America and to Judaism were all different but all illuminating.

Carl Laemmle with Universal Pictures, Adolph Zukor with Paramount Pictures, William Fox with the eponymous Fox Film Corporation, Louis Mayer with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Harry and Jack Warner with Warner Brothers, and Harry Cohn with Columbus did as much as any men to build the modern Hollywood film industry. Chapter by chapter Gabler builds a picture of each man, how they did things and what their studio was like. This book is fascinating for anybody interested in the history of cinema, as it is for those with an interest in the impact of Jews on the world. Jews really did play a huge part in the making of so many of cinema's classics - and Gabler does much to recount every little anecdote and story. Some will no doubt find this boring, others will be drawn in to the tales, and the intrigue.

More than being a history of Hollywood however, this book is also a history of the Jewish lives of the studio bosses, and of the way in which their Jewishness and desire to be more American than the President affected both them and Hollywood. To different degrees the bosses dropped their Judaism, or allowed it to be more compatible with their vision of Americanism. They founded a country club when they were barred from others, and many adopted Christian practices. They had a show biz rabbi and sent their children to the best schools. Assimilation was more of a priority than Jewish life - most of the studio bosses really wanted their children to be a real part of American high society. That this obsession with assimilation influenced not only the kind of films made in Hollywood, but also in the last analysis created the myth of the American Dream, is perhaps the most intriguing and absorbing part of An Empire of Their Own.

Gabler argues that the Jewish studio bosses were keen to see films that stressed a message of social inclusion, and of the 'other' being capable of change, worthy of good treatment. What the studio bosses were really concerned with, was their own social standing - they made films they thought would help them achieve their strongest wish - to be accepted. The ideology that permeated these films then was about how anybody could succeed, should be allowed to, and should be accepted as an American. The American Dream - created by Jews.

Gabler succeeds in conveying the tragic side of the bosses' lives too. Self-confidence was never natural, and a fear of being criticised for having too much power or influence prevented Hollywood from being more active in working to combat the Nazis or bring America into the Second World War. The bosses were weak again when confronted by McCarthyism. Gabler portrays the bosses as near-broken by these experiences, although he does it in the under-stated and factually-laden way that characterises An Empire of Their Own.

A television programme has been made of An Empire of Their Own, and in many ways is more worthwhile - writing about film is necessarily limited by a lack of film to illustrate the point. What the TV programme misses though is the time to create an incredibly rich tapestry of the lives of the studio bosses.

An Empire of Their Own is a fascinating book. Well argued and written by an obvious expert, it is well worth getting hold of.

It's a good book....wish King Harvey would read it and take a few cues from it. I miss the old bosses and their sensibilities.

What I'm noticing more from La La Land today is the plethora of stories told from an obvious homosexual perspective rather than from a Jewish/Humanist/Relativist/Liberal/Red Diaper Baby perspective.

American Beauty (barf) is a great example of that and the "play make believe" for a living crowd fawned all over it.

I don't think laying Jesus's crucifying at the hands of the Pharisees is anti-semitic. From what we can gather, they felt he was a threat to their power. It's simple history from what I've gleaned.

Does Gabler mention how many of the Jews in the movie industry were collaborating with the Communists in the 40's and 50's?