Shocking New Exhibition Reveals Hidden Jewish History in Hollywood – Academy Museum Responds to Criticism!

Names like Schmuel Gelbfisz, Lazar Meir, and the Wonsal siblings might not ring a bell when it comes to Hollywood’s history. However, if you hear Samuel Goldwyn, Louis B. Mayer, and the Warner brothers, it’s a different story.

These titans of Hollywood’s golden age decided to change their original Jewish names to something more pleasing to the American ear in the early 1900s, hoping it would advance their careers. While their studios have had significant success, producing some of the finest films in history, their birth names remain largely unknown.

The Academy Museum is determined to rectify this.

The museum is launching a new exhibit called “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital” which will open to the public on Sunday. The exhibition seeks to shed light on the stories of Jewish moviemakers and studio founders who turned Los Angeles into the global entertainment hub. This will be the museum’s first permanent exhibit.

“The goal is to give people a deeper insight into how the city and the movie industry are intertwined, and to help them understand why this is specifically a story of Jewish immigrants,” said Dara Jaffe, an associate curator at the Academy Museum, who spearheaded the project.

The exhibit offers an immersive journey through the development of major Hollywood studios and the golden age of cinema in the early 20th century, as seen through the lens of Jewish immigrants who played a crucial role in establishing the industry.

The Academy Museum, which opened in 2021, had been criticized for barely acknowledging or highlighting the mostly Jewish filmmakers who shaped the industry. The exhibitions of the museum were primarily focused on celebrating the work of groups that were often marginalized in Hollywood, and did not feature the Eastern European Jewish immigrants and their first-generation American Jewish children who laid Hollywood’s foundations.

Jaffe acknowledged that the museum always had plans to include the stories of Jewish founders in their exhibitions, and understands the criticism about their absence during the museum’s opening. She welcomed suggestions and feedback while creating the exhibit to ensure it accurately reflects history and resonates with both the filmmaking and Jewish communities.

“Portraying this aspect of history is fundamental to our identity as a film museum in Los Angeles,” Jaffe said. “We want every visitor to understand the story of Hollywood’s founding and the role of Jewish studio heads.”

With the exhibit opening during Jewish American Heritage Month amidst a spike in antisemitism, Jaffe hopes visitors will leave with a deeper understanding of the relationship between Jewish people and the film industry. She also wants to emphasize that this history should not be used as an excuse to fuel further antisemitism.

Neal Gabler, author and film critic, who penned “An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood” in 1988, acted as an advisor for the exhibit. In his book, Gabler noted that Jews often encountered obstacles in other industries and saw the entertainment industry as a chance to create their own enterprise.

Gabler wrote that Jews designed “their idealized America on the screen”, defining American values by their work. The exhibit showcases this aspect in two of its three distinct parts, highlighting the Jewish founders and their studios, including Universal, Fox (later 20th Century-Fox), Paramount, United Artists, and Warner Bros., and how they shaped the concept of the American Dream.

The “Studio Origins” section has multimedia displays detailing the stories of each of the major studios and their respective founders. It also delves into how the studio system functioned from the late 1920s to late ’40s, when the eight major studios dominated production and often signed long-term contracts with actors and filmmakers.

A short documentary, named “From the Shtetl to the Studio: The Jewish Story of Hollywood,” highlights the founders’ immigration stories and the challenges they faced while building Hollywood. The documentary, narrated by Ben Mankiewicz, host of Turner Classic Movies and the grandson of “Citizen Kane” co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz, features archival images and video clips.

The exhibit also includes an animated tabletop and projections that demonstrate how Los Angeles grew alongside the burgeoning film industry. Jaffe emphasized the need to organically balance the stories of the founders and the city in the exhibit.

“Hollywood is both a physical location and a concept. There’s the geographical city of Los Angeles and Hollywood as a mythical symbol,” said Jaffe. “Filmmaking in Los Angeles existed before the Jewish founders established the studio system, but it was their creation that truly transformed Los Angeles into the Hollywood we know today.”