Why the Academy Museum’s Antisemitism Criticism Is Overblown

I recently went to see “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” the long overdue exhibition on the Jewish founders of Hollywood that opened in May at the Academy Museum, and came away impressed.  

But after reading the recent criticisms, I came away perplexed.  

With depictions of the moguls in the installation criticized as antisemitic, the museum bowed to the pressure and has since announced its intent to revise the exhibition and address some of the language that was deemed objectionable.  

In a limited space on the third floor of the distinctive Miracle Mile facility, the interesting exhibition — the museum’s first permanent mounting — traces Jews’ role in the emergence of the studios, their success in putting Los Angeles on the map and how that established Hollywood as the movie capital of the world.  

It features a map marking the “Jewish” institutions founded by those at the studios, including Temple Israel of Hollywood and Wilshire Boulevard Temple. Hillcrest Country Club is depicted because Jews at the time would not be accepted into the WASP country clubs, so they built their own to socialize freely in comfortable, even luxurious, surroundings.  

As Groucho Marx famously quipped about Jewish assimilation and social antisemitism, “I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member.”  

The length of the exhibition’s rear wall is devoted to the history of each studio and the moguls who founded them. Not all of the stories are flattering, but this history is complex.  

In a description of fewer than 100 words, Harry Cohn is described as a “tyrant and predator,” with an office modeled on “Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, built to intimidate anyone who entered.” Cohn’s admiration of Mussolini preceded the Italian leader’s alliance with Hitler, though the casual audience may not know that.  

Warner Bros. founder Jack Warner is described as “brash and irreverent” and a “womanizer” who was “frugal” in shaping the studio’s culture. The description is quite accurate, and I suspect most people will not associate frugality with antisemitism if they even bother to read the caption.  

In the panel devoted to Universal Studios, Carl Laemmle is noted as rising from errand boy to running the studio, “where his kindness and nepotism earned him the moniker Uncle CarI.” 

It is later made clear that Laemmle put many of the Jews he brought to the U.S. from his hometown in Germany on the Universal payroll, which saved their lives and for which they were most grateful. Would that other moguls in other industries had done half as much. 

Some of what we learn is highly complimentary: Laemmle saved the Jews of his hometown; and Harry and Jack Warner were early anti-Nazis, more political than their non-political competitors.

Other inclusions are not so complimentary, even including some of the founders’ personal details: While Cohn was a family man, Warner was a man-about-town — someone who might have been canceled in today’s environment.  

The moguls of old Hollywood were mostly from Eastern Europe, where they had tasted the bitterness of antisemitism. They came to the United States for freedom and opportunity, facing a world in which antisemitism was less lethal but still venal, not to mention blatant, in a culture where violent racism and deep anti-immigrant sentiments were all too prevalent. 

Names were changed. Samuel Goldwyn was so identified with his company he made it his last name. And these executives’ attitude toward their own Jewishness was ambivalent. Like many immigrants of their generation, they wanted to assimilate, to become fully American, and their films reflected those values.  

Notable in the exhibition is that, with rare exceptions, the word “Jew” was seldom heard onscreen. Acts with overly Jewish names were encouraged to Americanize them. And so these men — I am being gender specific — created an imaginary America with white picket fences and liberty and freedom for all. Imaginary? Think of Irving Berlin, a Russian Jew, who wrote “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas/ Just like the one I used to know.”  

The Christmas of his early youth in Russia was a time when Jews had to hide, fearing the animus of their neighbors. Easter was only worse, as the Jewish people were accused of deicide. 

The exhibition concludes with a film that clearly reflects the meticulous scholarship of Neal Gabler, a fierce critic of the initial omission of the founders’ story and author of “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood.” The movie is historically accurate, therefore some of what we see does offend some contemporary viewers.  

For the U.S. of the 1920s-40s had much to offend. The film is informative and powerful, making clear to the visitor just what the exhibition was about. Above all, it is gripping. When my wife and I attended, the standing-room-only crowd stayed for the film’s entirety, leaving only when it came to a part they had already seen.  

Upon completing the exhibition, my wife, who was a severe and unrelenting critic of the omission of the founders’ stories at the opening of the museum back in September 2021, exclaimed, “It was well worth waiting for.” And I share her assessment. Well done, indeed!  

Michael Berenbaum is a Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at American Jewish University. He has created historical museums on four continents, foremost among them the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and was president and CEO of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.