filled with ugly anti‐Semitic rhetoric, a good example of how pervasive (and acceptable) such feelings were during this era.
After the war, as American citizens learned the extent of the Holocaust, re‐evaluations of American anti‐Semitism began to occur. Yet many Jewish Hollywood moguls feared tackling the subject. It took the one non‐Jewish studio head (Darryl F. Zanuck at 20th Century‐Fox) to make the first social problem film about American anti‐Semitism. Gentleman’s Agreement (1947) starred Gregory Peck as a gentile reporter going undercover as a Jew in order to expose prejudice. The film was a critical and commercial success, and won a Best Picture Oscar. That same year, a film about an anti‐Semitic murder, Crossfire (1947), was released. Sadly, many of the people involved in making it were soon targets of suspicion and hatred themselves. Director Edward Dmytryk and actor Sam Levene (along with many other Jewish people in the film industry) were accused of being communist agents by HUAC, the House Un‐American Activities Committee. The ensuing Red Scare threw studio executives into a panic. These allegations of communist influence in Hollywood were again tinged with (and, some have argued, fueled by) the anti‐Semitism of prominent politicians and social commentators. The results of this postwar paranoia did put a disproportionate number of Jews in Hollywood out of work. Fear of being considered un‐American also curtailed the production of social problem films. Images of Jews in Hollywood films did not disappear in the wake of the Red Scare, but they were now rarely shown as part of present‐day America. Rather, Hollywood films of the 1950s tended to represent Jews as oppressed minorities in Biblical epics such as The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben‐Hur (1959). These films addressed social prejudice, but from a safe historical distance and within the framework of mainstream Christianity.
Contemporary Jewish American characters returned to American films during the 1960s. Just as the countercultural critique of whiteness resulted in a new generation of Italian American film actors, so too did a number of Jewish American performers become stars at this time: Barbra Streisand, Elliot Gould, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen. However, unlike their counterparts of earlier generations, these actors did not have to efface their Jewish identity by changing their names, revamping their looks, or playing only Christian characters. Many of these stars have gone on to Oscar‐winning performances and careers that have lasted for decades. One of America’s most prolific filmmakers (as a writer‐director and sometime star), Woody Allen has written and directed over fifty films since the late sixties. His multiple Oscar‐winning film Annie Hall (1977) announced his arrival as a major American filmmaker, and not just a Jewish comedian skewering Hollywood science fiction films (Sleeper [1973]) or Russian novels (Love and Death [1975]). Over the course of five decades, Allen has directed art‐house pastiches (Star Dust Memories [1980], Shadows and Fog [1991]), searing domestic melodramas (Interiors [1978], Another Woman [1988], Blue Jasmine [2013]), and charming nostalgia pieces (Radio Days [1987), Midnight in Paris [2011]). His existential bent is on full display in films like Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Irrational Man (2015), both of which tackle the moral conundrums of crime and what it means to be human. Despite personal issues which have tarnished his career in many peoples’ eyes (an affair with and later marriage to his then‐girlfriend Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Sun Yi Previn), Allen has continued to make diverse kinds of films that nonetheless show the stamp of his unique auteur sensibility.
Egyptian‐born Omar Sharif, seen here as Jewish entrepreneur Nicky Arnstein opposite Barbra Streisand as Jewish comedienne Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. Who is white and who is not?
Funny Girl, copyright © 1968, Columbia.
Jewish American writers, directors, actors, producers, and comedians continue to thrive in the American film industry. Writer‐director‐actor‐producer Mel Brooks began his long career as writer for the seminal TV comedy Your Show of Shows (1950–54), and later created the spy spoof Get Smart (1965–70). His cinematic comedies The Producers (1967), Young Frankenstein (1974), Blazing Saddles (1974), and Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993) have made generations of movie fans laugh out loud. Jewish American entertainers continue to thrive on television as well, especially in sitcoms. Back in the earliest days of TV history, The Goldbergs (1949–57) was a popular sitcom focusing on the titular Jewish family. Adapted from a successful radio show by its creator and star, Gertrude Berg, The Goldbergs had to recast a central character when actor Philip Loeb was accused of being a communist. Although Berg fought to keep Loeb on the show, he allegedly accepted a settlement and withdrew from the show; he died in 1955, another casualty of the anti‐communist (and anti‐Semitic) Red Scare. More recent decades have given us enormously popular TV sitcoms like Seinfeld (1989–98) and Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–), both of which draw humor from the foibles and neuroses of their urban Jewish characters. The recent Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017–) examines life for a young Jewish woman in the late 1950s as she attempts to break into the male‐dominated world of stand‐up comedy.
Today, Jewish Americans remain a strong presence in the media industries, and most of them no longer fear the possibility of anti‐Semitic backlashes. While many Jewish filmmakers still focus on stories and issues central to white Christian America, there is ever‐greater room for films about the Jewish American experience or films that center on issues of historical importance, such as Avalon (1990), Schindler’s List (1993), Focus (2001), The Pianist (2002), Munich (2005), and A Serious Man (2009). A small number of independent films exploring Orthodox Jewish culture also exists: these films include the documentary Trembling Before G‐d (2001), as well as Fading Gigolo (2013), Menashe (2017), and Disobedience (2017). Still other films, like Keeping Up With the Steins (2006), use gentle humor to celebrate the peccadilloes of Jewish American culture and/or American ethnicities in general.
While such developments seem to indicate that Jewish Americans have largely been accepted as white, anti‐Semitism continues to be kept alive within various white supremacist groups and fundamentalist Christian communities. In the late 2010s, attacks on synagogues increased in the US and across the globe. The survival of demonic Jewish stereotypes in the twenty‐first century was made vividly clear with the release (and enormous box office success) of The Passion of the Christ (2004). This harrowing retelling of Jesus Christ’s torture and crucifixion, directed by Mel Gibson, acknowledges that both Romans and Jews were involved in his death, yet presents his Jewish persecutors as the more twisted and grotesque figures. Jewish communities were aghast and protested the film across the country. And although Gibson denied any anti‐Semitic intentions in his film, he was caught making anti‐Semitic comments during an arrest for drunk driving in 2006. (He later issued a public apology.) Such films and incidents highlight the fact that assimilation into whiteness is a process that is always ongoing, as well as that fear and/or hatred of the Other remains a powerful force in many Americans’ lives.
Case Study: The Jazz Singer (1927)
The Jazz Singer stands as one of the most important movies in American film history because it is considered to be the first Hollywood studio motion picture feature with synchronized sound. Produced by Warner Brothers in 1927, this silent film with sound sequences revolutionized the industry; it also deals with issues of race and ethnicity in very interesting ways. The story of The Jazz Singer focuses on the problems faced by Jewish immigrants in the first few decades of the twentieth century, and dramatizes the process of ethnic assimilation into whiteness. The film also points out historical connections between Jewish immigrants and African Americans (primarily via the blackface tradition), and even obliquely comments on the connections between Jews and Irish Americans.
As
