Speaker 1: M Hey everybody, I'm Robert Evans, and this is once
Speaker 1: again Behind the Bastards, the show where we tell you
Speaker 1: everything you don't know about the very worst people in
Speaker 1: all of history. Now, this is a show where I
Speaker 1: read a story about someone or someone's terrible from from
Speaker 1: history to a guest who is coming in cold. And
Speaker 1: my guest today is the inimitable Daniel van Kirk. Hello, Daniel.
Speaker 1: You are a comedian. You are a writer, host of
Speaker 1: Dumb People, Town, Hindsight, pen Pals, three great podcasts than you,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna guess you can throw a pretty good
Speaker 1: punch because you look kind of yoked. I just think
Speaker 1: the listeners should know that. Thanks. It's all I'm going
Speaker 1: for is yoked. I am working towards that being my
Speaker 1: only introduction. Alright, this next guy is Yokes. Please welcome
Speaker 1: to the Yokes as Hell. Just saw him on the
Speaker 1: street and brought him into the podcast. I am going
Speaker 1: to fight that rule that you can't do stand up
Speaker 1: in a tank time that a rule. Can't think about it?
Speaker 1: Would you listen to anybody talk to you on a
Speaker 1: microphone in the tank top. I was Daniel O'Brien's subordinate
Speaker 1: for years and he wears a tank top of the time,
Speaker 1: so maybe he's broken used to it. Yeah. Um, all right,
Speaker 1: So today we are talking about Hollywood and the Nazis,
Speaker 1: I mean, and how the two helped one another. You know,
Speaker 1: you say that US guests come into this cold and
Speaker 1: I am ready for that. That's beautiful. Well, what do
Speaker 1: you think when you think of like how Hollywood reacted
Speaker 1: to the Nazis, what do you think of? Well, one,
Speaker 1: I think there's that documentary on Netflix about a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of directors get sent to like make propaganda films.
Speaker 1: I mean they made propaganda for the US against the Nazis. Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Are we saying the idea of people who
Speaker 1: are we pro within the Hollywood elite. It's a little
Speaker 1: more complicated than that. When we think about Hollywood the Nazis,
Speaker 1: we think about what you're talking about, those like why
Speaker 1: we fight documentaries and like bugs Bunny beating up Hitler
Speaker 1: and and all that stuff that all came after the
Speaker 1: war had started. When we talk about the period from
Speaker 1: when the Nazis took power to the beginning of World
Speaker 1: War two and what Hollywood, it is a very different
Speaker 1: tale and a less positive one towards Hollywood. So that's
Speaker 1: what we're gonna talk about. All right, Well, I'm going
Speaker 1: to start us off with some background on the motion
Speaker 1: picture industry because I think it's going to be useful
Speaker 1: to sort of set the tone that this story comes
Speaker 1: in on. The first good movie going experience probably happened
Speaker 1: on December in Paris. This is when Tin Lumiser Brothers
Speaker 1: films were screened, and it was sort of the first
Speaker 1: time where projection technology was advanced enough that, like it
Speaker 1: was a good picture, you'd actually want to go and
Speaker 1: see this rather than looking at like a grainy like
Speaker 1: you know, it wouldn't be clear what was really happening.
Speaker 1: So that was the first like good movie going experience.
Speaker 1: The first permanent movie theater, the Nickelodeon, was opened in
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh in nineteen o five. The first full length movie
Speaker 1: came out a year later. It was an Australian film
Speaker 1: about the outlaw Ned Kelly. But of course Americans quickly
Speaker 1: grew to dominate the industry, which you may have caught, yeah,
Speaker 1: that it started in Pittsburgh. Yeah, the first movie theater.
Speaker 1: I would never have guessed that right either. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: Pittsburgh Okay, yeah, all right, I guess that in a
Speaker 1: Permanti Brothers sandwich your historic. I don't know what that
Speaker 1: means because I've never been to Pittsburgh either, but I
Speaker 1: see it on all those food jounls. It's like the
Speaker 1: sandwich where they put everything on the sandwich, like fries
Speaker 1: and cole slaw. It's Permanti Brothers supposed to be amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: our three Pittsburgh listeners are over the moon right now.
Speaker 1: We're here for you. We're here for you, guys. Today
Speaker 1: is for you Pittsburgh. Obviously, one American was more dominant
Speaker 1: than others in the early film industry. Thomas Alba Edison
Speaker 1: now William Dixon, a Scottish inventor, actually created the kinetoscope,
Speaker 1: which is one of the very first movie cameras, but
Speaker 1: he worked for Thomas Edison, and so in eighteen ninety
Speaker 1: two Edison got the patent for like the first functional
Speaker 1: movie camera that you could really sell as a commercial device.
Speaker 1: This made him even wealthier, although who's are already pretty
Speaker 1: rich at the time. Dixon, because he didn't get rich
Speaker 1: off of inventing the movie camera, went on to become
Speaker 1: one of the first video pornographers and all of history
Speaker 1: and to make kids fortune. Yeah, he's that's the prequel
Speaker 1: to the Deuce. Yes, yes, yes. Edison meanwhile just kept
Speaker 1: buying patents related to the motion picture industry and suing
Speaker 1: anyone he caught infringing upon them. Uh. In nineteen o eight,
Speaker 1: he was a leading mind behind the creation of the
Speaker 1: Motion Picture Patents Company, which was a trust that basically
Speaker 1: bonded everyone who owned a film patent together in one
Speaker 1: organization so they could control which films could be made
Speaker 1: and basically monopolized the art form of filming. Things Like
Speaker 1: anytime there's a new industry, especially in the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and then the early nineteen yards, it was like three
Speaker 1: or four people being like, well, let's just on all
Speaker 1: of it. Let's just down all of it and stop
Speaker 1: it from ever changing, because that was Edison's idea. He
Speaker 1: figured movies would always be like five or ten minutes
Speaker 1: shorts that people watched a brunch of in a row,
Speaker 1: and he was like, well, let's just be the only
Speaker 1: ones who get to do that. Right, it went, and
Speaker 1: actually that's what's happening today in the car industry. Over
Speaker 1: the past like twenty to thirty years and even up
Speaker 1: till today. With what Tesla is trying to fight is like,
Speaker 1: you guys bought all of this electric technology back in
Speaker 1: the eighties so that you never had to release it
Speaker 1: because you controlled it all. So it was basically illegal
Speaker 1: starting in nineteen o eight to make a film that
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison didn't personally approve of. Uh, And he was
Speaker 1: from the beginning very concerned with the moral character of films. Quote,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, nothing is of greater importance to the
Speaker 1: success of the motion picture interests than films of good
Speaker 1: moral tone. No thank you, which is always the best part.
Speaker 1: Somebody's like by my moral tones, Like, no, I understand
Speaker 1: what you're saying, But do you also understanding yourself defining that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you everyone judges their own morals. Yeah, everybody has
Speaker 1: a moral tone. You're just saying yours is right. And
Speaker 1: in Edison's case, I think that meant he didn't want
Speaker 1: films to show immigrants, so well, I guess that's his
Speaker 1: moral tone. One of the things happening during this period
Speaker 1: was what's known today as the Americanized the immigrant movement,
Speaker 1: which was a reaction to the fact that immigration into
Speaker 1: the United States had switched from being mostly people from
Speaker 1: the British Isles, Germany and Northwest Europe, to people from
Speaker 1: scary places like Russia, the Balkans and most horrifying of all, Italy.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, which we all know what happens when too
Speaker 1: many Italians get into a country. Good stuff, great espresso,
Speaker 1: terrible pizza. I think people like just don't think enough
Speaker 1: about the time in our country where you know the
Speaker 1: difference between racism and prejudice, right, prejudices. I judge you
Speaker 1: based off what I know about you, and racism tends
Speaker 1: to be at judge you based off how you look. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so prejudice like was equal to like racism, but you
Speaker 1: had to identify like are you Irish? Are you Italian?
Speaker 1: And then once find out, then we prejudicize. Is that
Speaker 1: a way we prejudicize you. But there was this time
Speaker 1: where it was like it wasn't based off color of skin.
Speaker 1: It was like this thing like, well you're from there,
Speaker 1: No thanks. They would say it was based off color
Speaker 1: of skin because a lot of people in nineteen o
Speaker 1: eight would have looked in an Italian, a lot of
Speaker 1: like American white people would have looked in an Italian
Speaker 1: and said, well that's not a white man. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Irish were the last of the white people to
Speaker 1: become officially white essentially, but it was a process of
Speaker 1: being accepted as white for all of what we now
Speaker 1: just say, like, oh, everybody in fucking Europe is white
Speaker 1: as well, that's Europe. But that was not the case
Speaker 1: from the beginning, and this is the period where it's starting. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know much about Edison in specific, but I
Speaker 1: know this was a big factor in the movie industry
Speaker 1: because the Americanized the Immigrant movement campaigned for the regulation
Speaker 1: of the film industry. They were the first people to
Speaker 1: want to censor films, and so Edison was very much
Speaker 1: sort of reacting to that. The Americanized the Immigrants movement
Speaker 1: was unsuccessful in actually creating laws to govern films, but
Speaker 1: their arguments clearly had an impact on people like Edison.
Speaker 1: A war started to brew in the nascent motion picture industry,
Speaker 1: and on one side were people like Edison. And uh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a quote from a Moving
Speaker 1: Picture World, which is like one of the first industry
Speaker 1: trade magazines. A critic wrote it in nineteen ten, and
Speaker 1: he gave a horrified description of a movie theater um
Speaker 1: and This is from the textbook Taking Fame to Market.
Speaker 1: So this will give you an idea of kind of
Speaker 1: what some people in the film industry, sort of on
Speaker 1: Edison side of things, were horrified of when they looked
Speaker 1: into a movie theater. The audience also stood for one
Speaker 1: or two high class films without any fuss, although we
Speaker 1: are sure they didn't understand what they were looking at
Speaker 1: any more than they would a Chinese opera. I would
Speaker 1: have been more comfortable on board a cattle train than
Speaker 1: where I sat. There were five hundred smells combined in
Speaker 1: one One young lady fainted and had to be carried
Speaker 1: out of the theater. I can forgive that all right,
Speaker 1: as people with sensitive noses should not go slumming. But
Speaker 1: what is hardest to swallow is that the taste of
Speaker 1: the seething mass of human cattle are the tastes that
Speaker 1: have dominated, or at least set the standards of American
Speaker 1: moving pictures. This is like a film critic in nineteen
Speaker 1: ten and he's commenting on the type of people in
Speaker 1: the movie theater that you're going to the movie you're slumming, Yes,
Speaker 1: but not based on people who are seeing movies, or
Speaker 1: but based on based on both the people who are
Speaker 1: seeing movies are a lot of them are immigrants and
Speaker 1: horror people because it's a very affordable way to spend
Speaker 1: your time, but also the people making movies and running
Speaker 1: movie theaters were mainly lower class entrepreneurs who had come
Speaker 1: to the country from Europe and were either Jewish or
Speaker 1: Catholic immigrants, which at this point, if you're not a
Speaker 1: white Anglo Saxon Protestant, you're below what they would declare
Speaker 1: white people on the totem pole. So that's a big
Speaker 1: factor in this is that these people who are Jewish
Speaker 1: immigrants from Eastern Europe and Catholic immigrants from Eastern Europe
Speaker 1: are moving into the United States and starting movie theaters
Speaker 1: and other people like them are going to see these shows,
Speaker 1: and the movies that are being made are being made
Speaker 1: to play to this audience, and that is scary to
Speaker 1: the whitest people who have ever lived. What are they watching?
Speaker 1: I mean, they're probably not watching that much in the
Speaker 1: way of movies. I'm guessing nothing good because we don't
Speaker 1: really get it was low round entertainment. It was very
Speaker 1: low rent entertainment, very short, cheap kind of like it
Speaker 1: wasn't the opera or the orchestra, and you're not in
Speaker 1: this period seeing complicated movies with a three act structure
Speaker 1: that are very long, and that doesn't come until a
Speaker 1: little bit later in nineteen o nine. Because of this
Speaker 1: trust Edison puts together, independent film basically becomes illegal. The
Speaker 1: now outlaw filmmakers call themselves Independence. They keep right on
Speaker 1: making movies, using illegal equipment and buying foreign film stock.
Speaker 1: To get around the trust. Edison forms a subsidiary, the
Speaker 1: General Film Company, to confiscate illegal equipment and basically bust
Speaker 1: into movie theaters and shut down on his because he
Speaker 1: owns the patents. You can't make a movie unters for film. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and at this point the film industry is all in
Speaker 1: basically New York, the East Coast. But it's like the
Speaker 1: cops showed up and there was a fight between his
Speaker 1: people and the Independence. They would just say, well, we're
Speaker 1: recovering what we own exactly, and they've got the law
Speaker 1: on their side. These people are breaking the law by
Speaker 1: filming movies illegally, you know, because they don't have the
Speaker 1: right to use a movie camera to make a movie
Speaker 1: if Edison doesn't approve of it. Yeah, Now the good
Speaker 1: news is Edison's plan backfired. The General Film Company's iron
Speaker 1: fist just pushed independence to get into manufacturing film them selves.
Speaker 1: So Edison's not I'm not going to sell you film,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sell you cameras. So these people
Speaker 1: who are making independent films and running small movie theaters
Speaker 1: start getting their own cameras from outside of the US
Speaker 1: because there's other people making movie cameras kind of on
Speaker 1: the edge, like they're definitely breaking the law a bunch,
Speaker 1: but you know, it's it's also nineteen o eight, nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine, so the law doesn't mean quite what it
Speaker 1: does today, which is why Edison's hiring goons to enforce it.
Speaker 1: You know, so many of these independent early motion picture
Speaker 1: moguls were people like Carl Lamel. They were immigrants themselves,
Speaker 1: and Carl Lamel was born in southern Germany. He moved
Speaker 1: to the United States as a young man and worked
Speaker 1: a series of odd jobs until, in his recollection quote,
Speaker 1: one rainy night, I dropped into one of those hole
Speaker 1: in the wall five cent motion picture theaters. The pictures
Speaker 1: made me laugh. Although they were very short in the
Speaker 1: projection jumpie. I liked them, and so did everybody. Else.
Speaker 1: I knew right away that I wanted to get into
Speaker 1: the motion picture business. So Lamel got into the business
Speaker 1: of running theaters. But then he became a distributor himself
Speaker 1: because he basically it was too much of a hassle
Speaker 1: to rely on the distributor to send him films, and
Speaker 1: that also meant he was dependent on Edison Um. So
Speaker 1: he eventually starts his own production outfit, the Independent Motion
Speaker 1: Picture Company, in order to make films on his own terms,
Speaker 1: because he's just there's so much demand and Edison and
Speaker 1: his guys, the people who have actual approval, aren't making
Speaker 1: enough movies and they're sort of throttling the supply to people.
Speaker 1: So a guy like Lambol's like, well, funk it. I'll
Speaker 1: just make my own movies and I'll rent them out
Speaker 1: the other theaters in addition to the theaters that I owned.
Speaker 1: In nineteen twelve, Carl Limley renamed his company, which had
Speaker 1: been the Independent Motion Picture Company Universal, where we get
Speaker 1: Universal Studios. During the meeting where this was announced, he explained, quote,
Speaker 1: that's what we're supplying, Universal Entertainment for the Universe Ours
Speaker 1: Technica does note that he later admitted he'd gotten the
Speaker 1: name from a Universal pipe fitting struck he'd seen out
Speaker 1: the window during this meeting. So I think Carl was
Speaker 1: just kind of literally the thing where somebody's like, what's
Speaker 1: your name and you're like, uh, pencil fold it from
Speaker 1: what was from That also proves like, don't put too
Speaker 1: much thought into it just didn't work, because it clearly
Speaker 1: it's worked. Everybody knows what Universal Pictures is, right. Uh So, Universal,
Speaker 1: Paramount and Warner Brothers all started as essentially illegal film companies.
Speaker 1: They fled from the East Coast to California, both because
Speaker 1: the fantastic sunlight made it easier to shoot on sort
Speaker 1: of the low tech ship that they were using in
Speaker 1: those days, but also because the distance helped protect them
Speaker 1: from Thomas Edison's wrath because you know, back then travel
Speaker 1: Act you were saying, is not what the law is now,
Speaker 1: because it's just like in the still running around to
Speaker 1: where you just hire your own cops. That's part of it.
Speaker 1: There's also US marshals and stuff, but they've got to
Speaker 1: travel all the way across the country, and right, it
Speaker 1: just means everything takes longer. And these guys are basically
Speaker 1: playing a waiting game because they know that the trust
Speaker 1: are starting to be busted during this period of time, right,
Speaker 1: like Teddy Roosevelt. That's anything he was doing. So they're
Speaker 1: thinking is if we get out to California, we can
Speaker 1: make a shipload of money. We're off the radar. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when we do have to pay fines, will make enough
Speaker 1: money to make it worthwhile. And the lengthening of sort
Speaker 1: of the time that everything will take eventually will win that.
Speaker 1: I was wondering when we started, how did we end
Speaker 1: up in California Fromburg? That's how we got it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the guy who wound up slaying the beast of
Speaker 1: the Motion Picture Patent Company was a dude named William Fox.
Speaker 1: He started out running a film rental company. Soon he
Speaker 1: started making movies to just like Lambley uh, and the
Speaker 1: Fox Film Corporation became the foremost anti Edison studio. Fox
Speaker 1: sued the mp PC and one, finally ending the patent
Speaker 1: wars in nineteen fifteen. By that point, Hollywood had already
Speaker 1: become the center of American and global film production. Now
Speaker 1: all this is important to establish his background because Hollywood
Speaker 1: was built by immigrants who had fought bigotry upon arriving
Speaker 1: in America and had often fled persecution in their home countries.
Speaker 1: Jewish people were overwhelmingly well represented within the industry. Here's
Speaker 1: a quote from Ben Irwan's The Collaboration quote. The men
Speaker 1: who created the studio system in Los Angeles where Jewish
Speaker 1: immigrants of Eastern European descent. These men included William Fox
Speaker 1: who founded Fox, It was b Mayor who ran MGM,
Speaker 1: Adolf Zucker who ran Paramount, Harry Cone who ran Columbia Pictures,
Speaker 1: Carl Lamley who ran Universal Pictures, and Jack and Harry
Speaker 1: Warner who ran Warner Brothers. Of eighty five names engaged
Speaker 1: in production, one study noted in the nineteen thirties, fifty
Speaker 1: three are Jews. So this is a very Jewish dominated business.
Speaker 1: These are people who had to fight in order to
Speaker 1: be able to do their business against discrimination and stuff.
Speaker 1: So these are You would think that when Adolf Hitler
Speaker 1: rose to power in the early nineteen thirties, these diverse
Speaker 1: and used to fighting bigots movie moguls would have stood
Speaker 1: up to try and halt the spread of fascism. You
Speaker 1: think that was their bread and butter, But you would
Speaker 1: be wrong. Throughout the first seven years the Nazis were
Speaker 1: in power, past the outbreak of World War two, zero
Speaker 1: major motion pictures were made that addressed the Hitler or
Speaker 1: the Nazis in a in a hugely negative LFE. There
Speaker 1: was one movie that kind of sort of did up
Speaker 1: until the outbreak of the war, but it came out
Speaker 1: in like nineteen Well, that's what I was gonna ask you.
Speaker 1: So when they got here, when did they switch from
Speaker 1: making these nickel like quick short movies and start making
Speaker 1: longer ones. That really starts to happen around nineteen Like
Speaker 1: I said, I think it was nineteen o six was
Speaker 1: the first close to full length movie, was like an
Speaker 1: hour or something long. Nineteen ten was the birth of
Speaker 1: the star system. That's when these people, so number one
Speaker 1: these are, I think, is when they start doing talkies.
Speaker 1: So in the silent movies, it becomes very useful to
Speaker 1: have someone the audience is familiar with who, They understand
Speaker 1: this person's gestures, their facial expressions and what because it's
Speaker 1: important for the medium. So nineteen ten is when movie
Speaker 1: stars start to become a thing. Which again nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: is when the patent wars in. So by nineteen fifteen
Speaker 1: we have the beginnings of Hollywood as we know it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I you know, from that episode that you did,
Speaker 1: people should check out if they haven't already about Behind
Speaker 1: the Bastards for Hitler, Like there, it was obvious what
Speaker 1: his agenda was. It's so interesting to me that there's
Speaker 1: this disconnect of this industry that has literally drived out
Speaker 1: of the idea of like showing viewpoints or opinions are
Speaker 1: telling stories. That there's a disconnect of the people who
Speaker 1: have started this here in California that are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not even yeah addressing it. Yeah, and we what
Speaker 1: what's undeniable? So this is a controversial thing that we're
Speaker 1: going to get into today. What's undeniable is that during
Speaker 1: the pre World War two years, but post the Nazis
Speaker 1: coming to power, Hollywood made almost no films whatsoever that
Speaker 1: even talked about the Nazis. The number of films that
Speaker 1: mentioned Jewish people dropped by like sixty or seventy percent. Um.
Speaker 1: They became very very careful about not offending the Germans.
Speaker 1: Um the debate is over. You know. Harvard scholar been Urwand,
Speaker 1: who wrote the collaboration, essentially argues that the studios worked
Speaker 1: with the Nazis, and he presents compelling evidence to that point. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a it's a good book studios run
Speaker 1: by predominantly Jewish, Yes, yes, and we'll we'll get into
Speaker 1: how this all started. I do want to announce upfront
Speaker 1: that Urwand has some detractors, um, people who don't think
Speaker 1: collaboration is a fair term. And so I'll be getting
Speaker 1: in when where there are areas of controversy, I'll be
Speaker 1: getting into it a little bit because this is very
Speaker 1: far from settled history. But I think Irwan's arguments are
Speaker 1: more convincing than the other one. So that is kind
Speaker 1: of largely the tact we're going to be taken here. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: Irwan traces the start of the collaboration to the film
Speaker 1: All Quiet on the Western Front, which came out in
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty, almost three years before Hitler was in charge,
Speaker 1: but during the period where Nazis had attained a lot
Speaker 1: of power in both the Reichstag and on the streets. Now.
Speaker 1: All Quiet on the Western Front was based off of
Speaker 1: a classic book about German soldiers in World War One,
Speaker 1: It's It's Wonderful. Um. It was not an anti German film,
Speaker 1: but it was anti war and very critical of the
Speaker 1: pro war sentiment in the country that had driven Germany
Speaker 1: to ruin in World War One. It gives you a
Speaker 1: sympathetic oh yeah, like take on the German soldier. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's a devastating emotionally um. But the Nazis
Speaker 1: hated it because again, like you remember that scene where
Speaker 1: like the boys are in class and their teachers making
Speaker 1: going to war seem like this like wonderful, awesome adventure,
Speaker 1: and they're all, yeah, horribly, Um, the Nazis did not
Speaker 1: want them, and yeah, yeah, the Nazis hated that because
Speaker 1: their Nazis they were trying to get we want we
Speaker 1: want to get kids excited about dying for the fatherland again.
Speaker 1: So on the day the film was released in Germany,
Speaker 1: the Nazis in Berlin, organized by Joseph Gebel's, bought three
Speaker 1: D tickets to the seven pm showing. Nazis inside the
Speaker 1: theater who did and yelled at the movie and at
Speaker 1: one predetermined point started throwing stink bombs into the crowd
Speaker 1: and releasing mice. So like that was sort of there,
Speaker 1: before they're in power, how they would try to shut
Speaker 1: down a movie they didn't really, Yeah, like junior high
Speaker 1: kids like junior high kids. Yeah, I mean probably a
Speaker 1: lot of them were teenagers. Yeah, yeah, Now, the Nazis
Speaker 1: protested for six days until the film was completely removed
Speaker 1: from German screens. Karl Lambley, founder of Universal, ordered a
Speaker 1: bunch of scenes cut from the film in order to
Speaker 1: please the German foreign Office, including that scenes with the teacher.
Speaker 1: He was the first big studio head to cave in
Speaker 1: to Nazi demands. Now he died in nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: and to be totally fair, he helps smuggle like three
Speaker 1: Jewish people out of Germany during the Hitler years that
Speaker 1: he was alive. Yeah, I mean we could say that
Speaker 1: once he realized whole ship, yeah not good. But on
Speaker 1: what when beforehand, when it was just about money, he
Speaker 1: started the precedent of working with the Nazis in order
Speaker 1: to continue to sell films to Germany. He was the
Speaker 1: first of the studio heads that was like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is worth. This is the thing man, Like, even right
Speaker 1: now in our country where it's like you've really got
Speaker 1: to ask yourself, what side of history do you want
Speaker 1: to fall in on this? Even if it doesn't affect
Speaker 1: you now, yeah, like where do you want to fall
Speaker 1: on this ship? I mean, but the hard part is
Speaker 1: you gotta look at history from the perspective of people
Speaker 1: who don't know what's coming next. I know. But Leery, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you're because the Nazis are still saying all
Speaker 1: this ship. Yeah, they still have all these attitudes, but
Speaker 1: you're like, well, they're kind of self contained and they're
Speaker 1: there and they're not really doing anything bad yet. So
Speaker 1: maybe I can moderate a whole group of people and
Speaker 1: makes you know, sell my whatever your product is, then
Speaker 1: I'll do it. But then ask like, well, what if
Speaker 1: it what if they start doing what they're talking about?
Speaker 1: And I think that I don't want to like judge
Speaker 1: Lambley too harshly because clearly he was a what what
Speaker 1: uh Limley? Well, yeah, I don't want to judge Limley
Speaker 1: too harshly because clearly he was a good person who
Speaker 1: like just fucked up. I agree with we know, we
Speaker 1: know we have the precedent now that we should be
Speaker 1: looking at with hindset, but I just be careful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very And this is again one of the things that
Speaker 1: the people who don't like Rwan criticize him over is
Speaker 1: essentially thinking too much from the perspective of people living
Speaker 1: in the present day who know what the Nazis did
Speaker 1: And that's a fair patamt. Both things be true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: can't you be like even couldn't it possible for him
Speaker 1: to be like, Yeah, I funked up on that early stuff. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: once I saw the legitimacy of the horrors of what
Speaker 1: they were doing, Uh, asked me how hard I worked
Speaker 1: to try and save people? Like, yeah, both of those
Speaker 1: things can be true. And it's also true that while
Speaker 1: he worked hard to save people, he didn't work hard
Speaker 1: to make anti Nazi movies. So right, we're going to
Speaker 1: get into the rest of this collaboration and sort of
Speaker 1: the history of Hollywood in the Nazis. But first it
Speaker 1: is time for some ads for products. I understand you're
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Speaker 1: Do you do you also love doritos? Daniel Van enjoy
Speaker 1: a Derrito? Well that's fantastic. Why don't you and I
Speaker 1: go have a quick derrito break and then we'll we'll
Speaker 1: we'll let these ads roll for everybody else and we're back.
Speaker 1: We just had a delicious fistful of of derrito's. Are
Speaker 1: you on a little half and half? Oh yeah? And
Speaker 1: cool Ranch that's a that's we call that the Nacho ranch,
Speaker 1: dangerous place for a horse. That's not a complete joke anyway,
Speaker 1: Let's move on now that we're fortified. So in April
Speaker 1: of ninety three, around a month after Hitler became Chancellor
Speaker 1: of Germany, the movie King Kong debuted around the world.
Speaker 1: Uh It ran in Germany for quite a while and
Speaker 1: was very successful until a professor with the German Health
Speaker 1: Office called it quote nothing less than an attack on
Speaker 1: the nerves of the German people. He said, it quote
Speaker 1: provokes our racial instincts to show a blond woman of
Speaker 1: the Germanic type in the hand of an ape. It
Speaker 1: harms the healthy racial feelings of the German people. The
Speaker 1: torture to which this woman has exposed her mortal fear,
Speaker 1: and the other horrible things that one would only imagine
Speaker 1: in a drunken frenzy are harmful to German health. In
Speaker 1: a drunken frenzy, yeah, you're the one on the things
Speaker 1: you would imagine happening to her while you're drunk. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's normal to imagine a woman getting molested by an
Speaker 1: ape when you're drunk. As a doctor in Germany, I
Speaker 1: can say this. You know, if he was a Nazi,
Speaker 1: I mean, he probably right, It's I don't know this
Speaker 1: specific guy. He was certainly okay enough to maintain his
Speaker 1: job when the Nazis took over, which meant he was
Speaker 1: willing to He was vetted on some level. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was vetted on some level. My judgment has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the technical achievements of the film, which I recognize,
Speaker 1: nor do I care what other countries think is good
Speaker 1: for their people. For the German people, this is unbearable
Speaker 1: even that tone, Isn't that even in itself part of
Speaker 1: the whole how we got to World War Two in
Speaker 1: the Nazi Party for the German people, like it's a
Speaker 1: pride yeah, because of how much pride was lost in
Speaker 1: this world War is wondrous war. Yes, that now, that's
Speaker 1: part of the whole thing. Like other people can do
Speaker 1: what they want, Germans and we need to hold ourselves
Speaker 1: to a higher esteem. We are a proud people and
Speaker 1: once we route out this evil within our country, we
Speaker 1: will be the best country in the world and eventually
Speaker 1: take it all over. And it's this like in America,
Speaker 1: we've always sort of had this like attitude that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we can be free and easy because we just like
Speaker 1: landed on the continent with all of the resources. You know,
Speaker 1: everybody happened to die that was here before us, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: and in Germany they're like everybody around us wants to
Speaker 1: kill us, and we have to be the hardest sons
Speaker 1: of bitches in order to like, Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: is a big fact. And they weren't. Russia was Russia
Speaker 1: was the Russia was the hardest sons of bitches will
Speaker 1: tell you that. Yeah, yeah. Uh So. The professor went
Speaker 1: on to warn that quote psychopaths or women would in
Speaker 1: particular be vulnerable to being thrown into a panic by
Speaker 1: the film Psychopaths or Women, either one either because you're
Speaker 1: either gonna go do that to a woman or you're
Speaker 1: gonna you're gonna feel like that's gonna happen. Do you.
Speaker 1: Oh see, you actually found a more like a friendlier
Speaker 1: interpretation of that. I thought he was just saying psychopaths
Speaker 1: and women are the same thing. Oh, but no, I
Speaker 1: think you are probably right. Is that he's like, well,
Speaker 1: either men who want to molest women will see this
Speaker 1: as a call to do it, or women will be
Speaker 1: scared by I think you're probably right, um, credit to
Speaker 1: the Nazi not me. No no, no, no no, I'm
Speaker 1: not calling you a Natz. I almost never call our
Speaker 1: guest Nazis. Thank you, thank you. I'd like to keep
Speaker 1: that straight going. Yeah. Uh so the movie was not banned,
Speaker 1: but its title was changed. Yes, it was changed from
Speaker 1: King Kong to quote the Fable of King Kong, an
Speaker 1: American tricken sensation film. So it's like rolls off the tongue,
Speaker 1: doesn't that of course? Yeah, that should have been the title. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's puter Jackson, that's you miss you fool. It's a
Speaker 1: tricken sensation film. What does that mean? A Trickensen? The
Speaker 1: Americans have worked up this skookie little idea, I think it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was meant to make it seem less serious, to
Speaker 1: make it. Yeah, it's a fable like German people are
Speaker 1: used to scary fable. So if we present this as
Speaker 1: a fable rather than you know, this as a joke, Yeah,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. They were trying to get the commentary bingo. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh. Now.
Speaker 1: Dr Ernst Seeger, who will be hearing about a bit
Speaker 1: in this podcast, was Germany's chief censor, and he had
Speaker 1: other issues with the film. He was sorry, opened right,
Speaker 1: it had already been it's already been out, it's already
Speaker 1: been a huge hit. It's been out in Germany for months,
Speaker 1: I think, I think months. Yeah. So he was fine
Speaker 1: with the idea of what he called an uran utan.
Speaker 1: And I just want you to look at the spelling
Speaker 1: of randutan. Is it similar to orangutang? It is, that's
Speaker 1: what they used to call them. What the idea of
Speaker 1: a ran newtan ran neutan. It's almost written phonetically, Yeah
Speaker 1: it is, yeah, which I suspect ran new ran Neutan randuitan.
Speaker 1: So he was fine with the idea of an Irandutan
Speaker 1: falling in love with a quote blonde woman of the
Speaker 1: Germanic type, because that was in line with popular racist
Speaker 1: wisdom of the time, which was that people who aren't
Speaker 1: white lust over white women. So he was actually okay
Speaker 1: with that women. He was like, yeah, this show is
Speaker 1: a real thing in nature that we have to be
Speaker 1: guarded about. Yeah, yeah, he's I mean, he's a jackass.
Speaker 1: Sure we'll be hearing a lot of old timey racism
Speaker 1: from this particular Nazi. Uh So Dr Seeger didn't object
Speaker 1: to that to the film because of the monkey molesting
Speaker 1: the woman thing. He objected to the film because it
Speaker 1: showed a commuter train being derailed, and he was afraid
Speaker 1: that that would make people less trusting for public transportation.
Speaker 1: God for us, funny, that is a very German thing, though,
Speaker 1: to watch this movie and be like, what if it
Speaker 1: makes people scared of the train, Like he has an
Speaker 1: issue with mechanical malfunctions, like they you've got to show
Speaker 1: that we can build stuff better than Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 1: The German people think that we endorsed that something would
Speaker 1: be built. Not well, I I German engineering would never
Speaker 1: have a train derailment. For what it's worth, Hitler loved
Speaker 1: King Kong. Yeah, Hitler had no problem. He was. He
Speaker 1: was way into the movie. He loved it. The collaboration
Speaker 1: quotes a German foreign press chief who said, quote, one
Speaker 1: of Hitler's favorite films was King Kong, the well known
Speaker 1: story of a gigantic ape who falls in love with
Speaker 1: a woman no bigger than his hand. Hitler was captivated
Speaker 1: by this atrocious story. He spoke of it often and
Speaker 1: had its screens several times. Really, I can't hear that
Speaker 1: and not think. Do you remember when them that Fire
Speaker 1: and Fury book came out and somebody posted a fake
Speaker 1: excerpt from it where they were talking about Trump having
Speaker 1: the monkey channel made for him. It reminds me of that, Like,
Speaker 1: like Hitler just staring at this ape on the screen,
Speaker 1: just spell bound, do you get just really liked the
Speaker 1: idea of like a creature that like could not be contained,
Speaker 1: had like he because how he saw himself, It's like,
Speaker 1: I'm bigger and they can bust free. I can like
Speaker 1: there had to be some sort of grandiose delusion that
Speaker 1: he had in that. I think I and I'm on
Speaker 1: I'm on the record here. I think Hitler was just
Speaker 1: a nerd. I think before that was a commentary. I
Speaker 1: think if Hitler had just a monster and he thought
Speaker 1: it was cool, the the special effects were groundbreaking at
Speaker 1: the time. So I think that's why he loved it
Speaker 1: for the same reason people love Jurassic Park in Ninetich
Speaker 1: just probably And I think that's the kind of guy
Speaker 1: Hitler was, because he was he was very obsessed with
Speaker 1: fantasy sort of fiction, you know, as a young man.
Speaker 1: So I suspect that was the thing. Now. Germany in
Speaker 1: the thirties was an important market for Hollywood prior to
Speaker 1: World War One. It had been like the second largest
Speaker 1: foreign market for Hollywood films. And then you know, after
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty, when Hollywood was allowed back in the country,
Speaker 1: accepted between like twenty and sixty movies every year that
Speaker 1: the Nazis were in power. There there were rules in
Speaker 1: Germany stating that like they were supposed to be no
Speaker 1: more than one Hollywood movie for every German movie made,
Speaker 1: but they relaxed those because the German film industry had
Speaker 1: trouble and because the people like Hitler, yeah yeah, Germans
Speaker 1: loved American movies, um, and we're it was a major
Speaker 1: market for Hollywood. There was a lot of money in
Speaker 1: being able to sell films to the Germans. Um. Most
Speaker 1: of the major studios set up German branches during the
Speaker 1: Weimar years. Executives from MGM, Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox
Speaker 1: all kept up a brisk correspondence with Hitler's adjutants during
Speaker 1: the period of time the Nazis were in charge. Some
Speaker 1: of them even signed letters Heil Hitler, no ship. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they all that's some wrong side of history right there.
Speaker 1: Should I write Should I write Aisle Hitler on it?
Speaker 1: I could just like sincerely regards, like dude, what's the harm.
Speaker 1: You know he's gonna like it. You know he's gonna
Speaker 1: like it. We're all the way over here in America.
Speaker 1: Do you want to keep selling movies? Yeah? Right, trust me,
Speaker 1: it's never going to come back at somebody in auction
Speaker 1: in sixty years, in the dismay of your future family
Speaker 1: is going to be selling a letter where you wrote, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and what's in two years? He'll be out of power.
Speaker 1: He's so crazy? How could this keep going on? Do
Speaker 1: you imagine the feeling of like ninety three and you
Speaker 1: fucking wrote Hitler? Oh yeah, you'd be like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I hope that gets burnt in with the books. He's
Speaker 1: throwing my letter in with the boy. I hope the
Speaker 1: Germans are bad at keeping records. It's actually the thing
Speaker 1: their best at. Oh ship Yeah. So, like every dictator
Speaker 1: I've ever read about, Adolf Hitler was a huge movie buff.
Speaker 1: He watched uh at least one Hollywood film every single night,
Speaker 1: pretty much that he was in power in his own
Speaker 1: private movie theater. Usually the only time Hitler stopped talking,
Speaker 1: as a general rule, is when he was watching a movie. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: Tarantino knew this ship man with glorious pastards, get him
Speaker 1: to a movie, Get him to a movie. He loved movies,
Speaker 1: and he tended to either really like films or hate them.
Speaker 1: When Irwan was searching the collaboration, he went into the
Speaker 1: Buns Archive, which is like a big German government archive,
Speaker 1: and he found Hitler's thoughts on dozens and dozens and
Speaker 1: dozens of movies. Yeah. Yeah, And he would usually write
Speaker 1: like I liked it, or it was it was good,
Speaker 1: or it was great, or you know, I switched it
Speaker 1: off for whatever reason. Um. He would say that if
Speaker 1: he didn't like a movie, he would say it was bad,
Speaker 1: very bad, particularly bad. No, no, no, I know, I'm
Speaker 1: just being trump. Well, he would say bad movies were
Speaker 1: repulsive or the most potent crap, which is potent crap.
Speaker 1: Potent crap, Yeah, potent crap. That's that's got to be abandoned, Berlin,
Speaker 1: potent potent crap. Can you guess what Hitler's favorite Hollywood
Speaker 1: movie was? M Let's see you didn't see anything after? Rightly? Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a shame. I really think he would have
Speaker 1: liked white Christmas. Oh, he would have loved white Christmas.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of like racist stuff in that TONSU dude,
Speaker 1: I don't know tell Mickey Mouse really Yeah, yeah, he
Speaker 1: ordered multiple Mickey Mouse cartoons In nineteen thirty seven. Joseph
Speaker 1: Gebbels was trying to get him a Christmas gift and
Speaker 1: wound up settling upon a shipload. Disney come up in
Speaker 1: any of this stuff in Hollywood, but they actually got
Speaker 1: out of the country pretty early because they were kind
Speaker 1: of a small studio at this point, and so like
Speaker 1: dealing with we'll get into that a little bit, like
Speaker 1: they weren't a huge factor in here. But he loved
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse. Yeah, that's you don't want to be on
Speaker 1: that end of the room, yeah, Hitler. Joseph Gebel's One
Speaker 1: Christmas gave him a bunch of Mickey Mouse films, And
Speaker 1: this is what Gebels wrote in his diary. I presented
Speaker 1: the Few. I present the Fear with thirty two of
Speaker 1: the best films from the last four years and twelve
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse films, including a wonderful art album for Christmas.
Speaker 1: He's very pleased and extremely happy for this treasure that
Speaker 1: will hopefully bring him much joy and relaxation. Hitler loved
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse, which and salam Bin Laden left, Tom and
Speaker 1: Jerry what. Yeah, the CIA is archive because the CIA
Speaker 1: posted up all the stuff we didn't episode on this,
Speaker 1: but all the stuff that was on a Sama's hard drives.
Speaker 1: Dozens of episodes of Tom and Jerry really, yeah, tons
Speaker 1: of them. That sad. There's nothing to do with this information.
Speaker 1: That's the sad ascending to any cartoon. What Tom and
Speaker 1: Jerry isn't the final episode they kill each other, they
Speaker 1: kill him? I think so. Yeah, I had no idea
Speaker 1: where there is an episode where they killed themselves and
Speaker 1: then the ghosts and they float away. It's like dark, dude,
Speaker 1: that's extremely dark. Yeah, that's that actually sounds more fitting
Speaker 1: of Hitler. The Germans are into dark myths for kids.
Speaker 1: And you know what, then, I hope he saw that
Speaker 1: whole Like remember Disney made that propaganda film about the kids. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope he saw and he was so pissed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope he just hate He was so mad he
Speaker 1: felt betrayed by Disney. It's frustrating because we don't know
Speaker 1: much about what he thought about the anti We know
Speaker 1: he saw some of the anti Hitler films. He watched
Speaker 1: The Great Dictator twice. Really, we don't know what he
Speaker 1: thought about it. That's not recorded, but we know we
Speaker 1: watched it twice. Wow. Yeah. And we'll talk more about
Speaker 1: The Great Dictator at the end. But that's always one
Speaker 1: of the big mysteries to me is like, what did
Speaker 1: he like it? Like, was Hitler watching The Great Dictates flattered? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's I mean, it's one of the great movies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they made one of bottom they made one about him.
Speaker 1: They made many, but like, yeah, but they made one
Speaker 1: about him that like was a groundbreaking film. Yeah, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure he probably he may he may have. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Hitler was chiller. The point of this is that Hitler
Speaker 1: was actually a lot chiller about movies than most of
Speaker 1: his sensors. Um there were numerous cases of films that
Speaker 1: had difficulty getting through Nazis sensors that were nonetheless loved
Speaker 1: by Hitler. Uh. He seemed to be particularly vulnerable to
Speaker 1: being influenced by films. He actually had a film called
Speaker 1: tip Off Girls turned off midway through during a scene,
Speaker 1: like there was a scene in the movie where these
Speaker 1: people are robbing trucks by having women light down in
Speaker 1: the street and then the truck stops in front of
Speaker 1: the woman, and then like gangsters will rob the trucks.
Speaker 1: Hitler had the movie stopped right after this scene so
Speaker 1: he could go write a law, a one sentence law
Speaker 1: that was immediately put into German like legal codes. Quote,
Speaker 1: whoever sets up a roadblock with an hint to commit
Speaker 1: a crime will be punished by death. So Hitler watches
Speaker 1: this movie about people hijacking trucks like this and like
Speaker 1: runs out of the theater to go and make a
Speaker 1: new law. Influenced pretty wild, right, Yeah, it's just like
Speaker 1: a kid. He is like a kid. I mean, I
Speaker 1: mean a horrible fucking monster kid. I'm not minimalizing, but
Speaker 1: like on this level and this energy of his life,
Speaker 1: he's like, oh no, oh my god, we have to
Speaker 1: change the law. Yeah. So Hitler was clearly aware of
Speaker 1: the impact movies had on him and on everybody else. Um.
Speaker 1: He believed the spoken word was the only way to
Speaker 1: push large scale societal change, and he noted that just
Speaker 1: as people were more convinced by his speeches when they
Speaker 1: happened after dark, movie screened at night were more convincing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: still true, Hitler. You know, comedy same way. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: doing stand up comedy and daylight is not There's something
Speaker 1: about the night for us as human beings that we
Speaker 1: allow more in fluence or just sway into our minds.
Speaker 1: It's where we allow ourselves to go places mentally through
Speaker 1: like a spoken person, whether that's a speech or stand up,
Speaker 1: Like how many I don't know, you just think about
Speaker 1: so many big things has happened at night? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think, like if I think personally in my own self,
Speaker 1: like why I'm more influence able at night, It's because
Speaker 1: when I wake up in the morning, I usually get
Speaker 1: a bunch of ship to do, and so like I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking about life. I'm thinking about the stuff that
Speaker 1: I need to do in my life. And then you
Speaker 1: get around tonighttime and you're probably done with most of that.
Speaker 1: I don't maybe that's a factor, just that like when
Speaker 1: you're going out to a movie at night or to
Speaker 1: see a comedy show you finished, you're more willing to
Speaker 1: think about stuff because you don't have anything pressing other
Speaker 1: than this thing, you know what. I don't know. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's probably even more true for like Friday night
Speaker 1: and Saturday night comedy shows and movies, because you're you're
Speaker 1: the rest of your world is turned off for a
Speaker 1: few couple of days hopefully. Yeah, that makes sense, And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things like, you know, Hitler is Hitler,
Speaker 1: but when he says something about how people react to
Speaker 1: being propagandized, too, are trying to like convinced when he
Speaker 1: talks about how speeches impact people should probably listened to
Speaker 1: him on that stuff. The guy knew what he was
Speaker 1: talking about when it comes to that. So pre Hitler,
Speaker 1: Germany and many other countries had limited how many films
Speaker 1: Hollywood could export. Uh. In ninth January ninety two, a
Speaker 1: non Nazi German Dr. Martin Freudenthal, had traveled to Hollywood
Speaker 1: to study the studio system. This was not uncommon. Canada, Chile, China,
Speaker 1: and other countries at all sent representatives to Hollywood in
Speaker 1: the early thirties to make sure that their people were
Speaker 1: portrayed accurately and inoffensively in films. Right, So the Germans
Speaker 1: aren't the only people who are concerned about their representation
Speaker 1: in movies. Obviously, the French were particularly emphatic about this.
Speaker 1: One Frenchman Baron Valentine Mandelstam had convinced Yeah, really great,
Speaker 1: sounds like a German name. Actually, um actually convinced his
Speaker 1: government to ban all Warner Brothers films in France until
Speaker 1: Warner Brothers paid him for the advice that he was
Speaker 1: giving them. So like, the Germans are not the only
Speaker 1: people trying to influence Hollywood. They're not the only people
Speaker 1: going in there with kind of like strong arm tactics.
Speaker 1: When the criticisms have been Irwan's book, the collaboration is
Speaker 1: that he doesn't go into all of this quite enough.
Speaker 1: It is important to note that the US also had
Speaker 1: a serious censorship bonner at this time. This had started
Speaker 1: in the nineteen twenties. Like I said that the idea
Speaker 1: of movie stars who really drove films had come about
Speaker 1: after nineteen ten um, and so during the twenties you
Speaker 1: had both an economic boom obviously it's the Roaring twenties,
Speaker 1: but also the first generation ever of rich, famous Hollywood actors.
Speaker 1: Several of these people died of drug overdoses and were
Speaker 1: revealed of having, you know, being homosexual or bisexual, like
Speaker 1: that was a very common thing. There were murders. The
Speaker 1: stuff that happened has always been a factor in Hollywood
Speaker 1: was new at this point and it was shocking to people.
Speaker 1: And this all came to a head in the summer
Speaker 1: of nineteen one when Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle was the biggest
Speaker 1: name in comedy. Uh, he was you could call him
Speaker 1: the twenties equivalent of a guy like Chris Farley almost
Speaker 1: um Paramount interesting because Chris Father was supposed to play
Speaker 1: Fatty Arbuckle Uh in a biographical film. I did not
Speaker 1: know that and before he could do it. Well, that's
Speaker 1: we'll get into what what that is because we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk more about Fatty Arbuckle and sort of the first
Speaker 1: moral scare in Hollywood that led to the birth of
Speaker 1: the American censorship apparatus. That is important for us to
Speaker 1: understand the context of all this. But first it's time
Speaker 1: for products. Yeah you didn't see it, but he pumped
Speaker 1: his arms. Yeah all right, Well listen to this the
Speaker 1: ads and with your ears and we're back. Uh, we're back,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about Fatty Arbuckle and the birth of
Speaker 1: censorship in Hollywood. So you said he's like the biggest community,
Speaker 1: He's he's the biggest star in the world. Right in
Speaker 1: n Paramount Pictures had just given him a three million
Speaker 1: dollar eighteen film contract, which was the biggest contract in
Speaker 1: history at the time. So he's a uh, this is
Speaker 1: still part of the system. Yeah, he's not doing any
Speaker 1: other movies for any other one else but Paramount because
Speaker 1: of this contract. But he's he's fucking loaded because three
Speaker 1: million dollars in nineteen one is like all of the
Speaker 1: money today. Um. So, to celebrate his success, one of
Speaker 1: Fatty Article's friends through a three day Labor Day bacchan
Speaker 1: all party in San Francisco, which is, of course one
Speaker 1: of the great drinking towns in history. Now this is
Speaker 1: during prohibition, but these guys are movies star so they
Speaker 1: just they're able to find liquor anyway. It's like finding
Speaker 1: drugs now. Uh. Now, Fatty did not enter the party
Speaker 1: in good spirits. He visited a mechanic slightly before the
Speaker 1: trip and accidentally sat on an acid soaked rag, so
Speaker 1: his ass was covered in second degree burn. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. When did you start all that? He said
Speaker 1: he did not have a good trip. He did not
Speaker 1: have a good time before the trip. Okay, so before
Speaker 1: he leaves for his back and all San Francisco vender
Speaker 1: and Labor Day party, which I still that sounds like
Speaker 1: a great labored It does sound like a great labor
Speaker 1: So he where's the app He's in a mechanics getting
Speaker 1: his car worked on, and there's an acid soaked rag,
Speaker 1: and that someone that burns his ass for batteries the
Speaker 1: same where are you getting acid? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: assume acid was all over the place. And that's why
Speaker 1: you never sit down and be like cool if I
Speaker 1: sit here you asked that question. No, that's the acid,
Speaker 1: jass on, That's where we keep the acid. Right if
Speaker 1: I am a mechanic, right, and you know how when
Speaker 1: you go to a mechanic and they're like, don't enter
Speaker 1: the garage area, or like owner only enter the garage
Speaker 1: are with one of our employees. I would also post
Speaker 1: underneath that sign here's why and have the story of
Speaker 1: Fatty Arbuckle city his ass on an acid soaked rag.
Speaker 1: It is the if this was a movie starring Fatty Arbuckle,
Speaker 1: this is exactly what would have happened. Are fat funny
Speaker 1: protagonist burns and then he's got to sit on a
Speaker 1: donut the whole movie and it's it's funny. What do
Speaker 1: you mean, Fatty? What do you mean you're not you
Speaker 1: don't know if you're coming to the party. All right, Look,
Speaker 1: I'm at the mechanic. Sure, as one does. Sat down right,
Speaker 1: don't you get set of standard around? Of course I do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't you wish sometimes we still had those horse and boggies.
Speaker 1: Don't get me started. Why what happened? I have acid as,
Speaker 1: I have acid ass. So Fatty Arbuckle shows up to
Speaker 1: this party with his ascid ass and he goes to sleep,
Speaker 1: wakes up in the morning and there's a shipload of
Speaker 1: people in the rooms that they've rented. There's a big party. Um,
Speaker 1: so he gets drunk. He starts to have a good time,
Speaker 1: and he meets a year old actress and fashion model
Speaker 1: named Virginia rap Are Buckle and rap. One version of
Speaker 1: the story is that our Buckle and rap go back
Speaker 1: into a room and have sex and somehow her bladder
Speaker 1: winds up punctured. Um. The myth is that he crushed
Speaker 1: her to death. To death. Yeah, that's that's one of
Speaker 1: the myths, that Fatty Arbuckle crushed a woman to death.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence of that. Did she die? She she
Speaker 1: totally died. Okay, hold on, so everybody goes into separate rooms. No,
Speaker 1: there's two different versions of the story. Sorry. One woman
Speaker 1: who's possibly a con woman had a history of being
Speaker 1: a con woman before this. Claimed to be a friend
Speaker 1: of Rap, but there's no evidence of that. There's no
Speaker 1: evidence they'd ever known each other. She just might have
Speaker 1: tried to jump onto this exactly. It's tragedy train. And
Speaker 1: in court she basically claimed that he sexually assaulted Rap
Speaker 1: and her bladder wound up punctured and that's why she died.
Speaker 1: But was she found dead the next morning? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: She lingered for several days. They first rented a hotel
Speaker 1: room for her because she was sick, and then after
Speaker 1: a day or two, they took her to a hospital
Speaker 1: because they're like, oh, this isn't getting better, and this
Speaker 1: is like nineteen ladder tend to get pop from a punch. Well, sorry,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm jumping out that I don't really know.
Speaker 1: Don't we know is that in the autopsy there's no
Speaker 1: signs of violence on the body. Um and that Arbuckle
Speaker 1: and multiple other guests claimed that they never had sex
Speaker 1: and we're never alone together. They claimed that she had
Speaker 1: been drinking and started complaining that she couldn't breathe and
Speaker 1: like complaining of abdominal pain, and then they got her
Speaker 1: a hotel room to try to like chill her out
Speaker 1: and whatnot. And you know, she died several days later.
Speaker 1: We don't know what happened. So one theory is they
Speaker 1: had sex, maybe concerns real or non consensual, but either way,
Speaker 1: in the course of that his either weight or aggression
Speaker 1: or just yeah, harmed her in a way that eventually
Speaker 1: killed her. Yes. And the other theory is she just
Speaker 1: drank a lot, somehow rumptured her own bladder, she had
Speaker 1: some sex with anybody. There's no signs of any sort
Speaker 1: of abuse or sex, and there's no signs of violence
Speaker 1: violence exactly, and they put her in a hotel to
Speaker 1: be like, yeah, go sleep off the thing that's killing you,
Speaker 1: and then sure enough she slept it off forever. Well,
Speaker 1: they took her to a hospital, but then she died
Speaker 1: in the hospital. Yeah, it doesn't really like it seems
Speaker 1: like Arbuckle was probably innocent with what we know today
Speaker 1: because this case has been relitigated for decades um. But
Speaker 1: at the time there was a huge court case about it,
Speaker 1: and it exposed the wild lifestyles, illegal drinking, in general
Speaker 1: debauchery of Hollywood A listers. So this led the Motion
Speaker 1: picture Studios to get scared because they were scared that
Speaker 1: the government was going to come in and regulate the
Speaker 1: whole industry because this really yeah, this was this was
Speaker 1: like shocking to people at the time. Yeah, because you
Speaker 1: don't have what we have today everybody. This is death's murders, suicides,
Speaker 1: and drug scandal like are the only times the general
Speaker 1: American public is hearing about what the hell these celebrities
Speaker 1: are doing. Yeah, used to be you can literally just
Speaker 1: you just do whatever you wanted. A lot of times
Speaker 1: you had enough money to make people not say anything
Speaker 1: about it. And this is also a time where like
Speaker 1: people are shocked at the idea of a woman having
Speaker 1: sex with someone who wasn't husbands like, so this is
Speaker 1: this is shocking two people at the time. They get
Speaker 1: really angry, and there's a fear that the government's going
Speaker 1: to come in and regulate the film industry. So in
Speaker 1: order to avoid that, the big studios try to get
Speaker 1: ahead of this by creating the Motion Picture Production Code.
Speaker 1: In N two, this becomes this. Basically, they create the
Speaker 1: m p a A because this is where the m
Speaker 1: p A comes from, and the head of the m
Speaker 1: p a A at first is a guy named William Hayes,
Speaker 1: who was a former Postmaster General. UM. One of Hayes's
Speaker 1: first acts was to ban Fatty Arbuckle from ever appearing
Speaker 1: in another movie. Yeah. Now that band was reversed eight later,
Speaker 1: but it was too This is the end of Fatty's
Speaker 1: career is like a big star, um and this is
Speaker 1: the end of him being a part of this podcast
Speaker 1: because he was not a Nazi. Uh So, I just
Speaker 1: this sets up where Hollywood is at the time, because again,
Speaker 1: one of the criticisms of Rwan's book is that he
Speaker 1: talks about how all these Hollywood studios collaborated with the Nazis,
Speaker 1: but he doesn't focus enough on how everybody was censoring
Speaker 1: movies back then. So I want to make sure we're
Speaker 1: giving that sort of background. Um. Now. In nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: the m p A adopted the Production Code, which is
Speaker 1: more commonly known as the Hayes Code, and the Haze
Speaker 1: Code basically laid out all the things you couldn't do
Speaker 1: in movies. So when the code was announced, Hayes said
Speaker 1: this quote. The code sets up high standards of performance
Speaker 1: from motion picture producers. It states the considerations which good
Speaker 1: taste and community value make necessary in this universal form
Speaker 1: of entertainment. The code decreed that no picture quote laurel
Speaker 1: lower the moral standards of those who see it. Now,
Speaker 1: this is also like, this is in response to the
Speaker 1: public outcry of the scandal of like what's happening in Hollywood. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of different scanals, so our buffets that
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, in this in their personal life, they're
Speaker 1: acting like this, yeah, but as far as what they
Speaker 1: put on film, will make sure that that makes you
Speaker 1: feel good about your quote moral code. Yeah, because this
Speaker 1: is like that's the basic idea is that Hollywood gets
Speaker 1: criticized for being too too lascivious two out there, and
Speaker 1: some of the movies were a little bit more before
Speaker 1: the production code. You know, you could get away with
Speaker 1: more nothing that we would consider shocking today, but for
Speaker 1: the time it was so this was essentially the industry
Speaker 1: being like, well, all right, we've got to stay within
Speaker 1: the lions anywise, we're gonna get shut down by the government.
Speaker 1: We're gonna pun intended project a good image, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and so and part another factor in this is that
Speaker 1: like in I think it is the they start making
Speaker 1: talkies and so that there are more concerns then, because
Speaker 1: film is growing from a novelty to a serious fact
Speaker 1: at the center of like American culture, big industry exactly.
Speaker 1: So that's why in nineteen thirty they clamped down even
Speaker 1: further and make this production coke. Um. So again, no
Speaker 1: picture is allowed to lower the moral standards of those
Speaker 1: who see it. Uh. It states that the sympathy of
Speaker 1: the audience shall never be thrown to the side of crime, wrongdoing,
Speaker 1: sin or evil. Um. So, like eight percent of the
Speaker 1: movies that have come out this year are already banned.
Speaker 1: You can't even have a Sopranos. Yeah, no, of course,
Speaker 1: not Jesus Christ, let alone breaking bad. Um. Suggestive dancing
Speaker 1: was banned, as was kissing with too much lust. It
Speaker 1: was forbidden to insult religion or show the use of
Speaker 1: illegal drugs. Also forbidden was interracial romance, the concept of
Speaker 1: revenge and depicting a crime in any way that might
Speaker 1: give people an idea of how to actually commit that crime.
Speaker 1: The concept of revenge and what was the lass? Uh,
Speaker 1: you can't show someone committing a crime in a way
Speaker 1: that actually would inform people how to do that, which
Speaker 1: is still something like you can't and we lost that
Speaker 1: boat in nineteen in the eighties when mcgeivers showed everybody
Speaker 1: how to make a pipe point on TV and then
Speaker 1: a kid went out and did it. Well, I feel
Speaker 1: like that's a public service. The only thing that's Daniel,
Speaker 1: the only thing that's going to stop a bad guy
Speaker 1: with a pipe bomb is a good guy with a kid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a good kid year old with a pipe bomb. Boy,
Speaker 1: we don't talk about pipe bombs enough anymore. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: all the guns, one thing at a time. Brother, all right,
Speaker 1: So um. In the Collaboration, ben Erland argues that studios
Speaker 1: work directly with the Nazi government in a way that
Speaker 1: was unique and novel. Um, who did this? This is
Speaker 1: the guy who wrote this book. Operation. Again, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to give both sides of this. So you gotta set
Speaker 1: up that censorship is everywhere and other countries are also
Speaker 1: agitating to have films censored because they're offended at one.
Speaker 1: But Erland argues that the way the studios worked with
Speaker 1: the Nazi government was unique and novel, even given all
Speaker 1: of this context, and I do think his argument has
Speaker 1: a lot of water. The main argument is there or
Speaker 1: not it was a collaboration where the studios were actually
Speaker 1: working with the Nazis, or if it was just normal censorship.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna let you make your own mind up
Speaker 1: on that. I'm gonna let you the listener, make your
Speaker 1: mind upon that. I'm gonna try to sort of present
Speaker 1: both sides of this. Um. What no one doubts is
Speaker 1: that during the time the Nazis were in power, up
Speaker 1: until World War Two started UH, references to Nazis and
Speaker 1: references to Jewish people were severely curtailed in movies and
Speaker 1: in fact often cut out entirely. UM. Now, one thing
Speaker 1: everyone seems to agree on is that greed was a
Speaker 1: major factor behind this, because in nineteen thirty two, the
Speaker 1: Germans introduced Article fifteen into their legal code, which stated
Speaker 1: that quote the allocation of permits may be refused for
Speaker 1: films the producers of which, in spite of warnings issued
Speaker 1: by the competent German authorities, continue to distribute on the
Speaker 1: world market films the tendency or effective which is detrimental
Speaker 1: to German prestige. So the Germans now say that we
Speaker 1: can stop. So they have to hand out permits in
Speaker 1: order for like a studio to sell them a movie,
Speaker 1: and they're doing like six to a year or something
Speaker 1: like that. Generally, most studios they're going to need about
Speaker 1: ten to a dozen movies accepted to make a profit
Speaker 1: in Germany. So what what Article fifteen said is that
Speaker 1: all permits to a film producer can be stopped if
Speaker 1: they distribute anywhere in the world a movie that is
Speaker 1: detrimental to German prestige. Yeah, so this is opposed to
Speaker 1: like France who was like, we're not putting your movies
Speaker 1: out until you take advice on how we want to
Speaker 1: be seen Germany saying we're gonna stop you if you
Speaker 1: do a movie anywhere in the world that we don't
Speaker 1: we don't like exactly. So that starts to be how
Speaker 1: the Germans approach things. It's like, we will cut Hollywood
Speaker 1: off from Germany if you make movies anywhere that we
Speaker 1: don't like. So yeah, this is now, this is ninety two,
Speaker 1: So this is when the Nazis have a lot of
Speaker 1: power in Germany, but they're not in control yet. So
Speaker 1: it's important to note that this is a lot of
Speaker 1: Germans are sore about Hollywood because during World War One,
Speaker 1: Hollywood had made a lot of anti German pictures, right,
Speaker 1: So like this is not just a Nazi thing, but
Speaker 1: the Nazi he's really amp it up to the nth level.
Speaker 1: So that that German guy who came to Hollywood Dr
Speaker 1: Freuden Tall to sort of like talk to them about
Speaker 1: how they represented Germans. Um he was. He had been
Speaker 1: able to get the Hayes office to cancel a paramount
Speaker 1: movie about the sinking of the Lusitania, and he'd also
Speaker 1: been able to secure edits to a movie set inside
Speaker 1: of German pow camp. So he he went over there
Speaker 1: and he was able to actually get Hollywood to change
Speaker 1: some movies to make them more friendly to Germans. And
Speaker 1: when he returned to Germany eight when he returned to
Speaker 1: Germany from his time in l A, he wound up
Speaker 1: landing there eight days after the Enabling Act, which is
Speaker 1: what made Hitler a dictator. So eight days after Hitler
Speaker 1: takes power for real, Dr Freuden Tall meets with several
Speaker 1: German officials, including Joseph Gebel's I'm going to quote from
Speaker 1: the collaboration here. Everyone listened to Freud and Tall outlined
Speaker 1: a brand new plan to combat the hate film problem
Speaker 1: in the United States. He began by pointing out that
Speaker 1: the most successful moments of his trip had been his
Speaker 1: interactions with the heads of Hollywood studios. He had received
Speaker 1: permission from the Hayes office to meet directly with Carl
Speaker 1: Lamley of Universal Pictures, and as a result of their meeting,
Speaker 1: Limley had agreed to postpone the sequel to All Quiet
Speaker 1: on the Western Front entitled The Road Back. Throughout the
Speaker 1: rest of the year, freuden Tall had met with Lambley's son,
Speaker 1: Karl Lambley Jr. And many more pictures were changed in
Speaker 1: Germany's favor. Naturally, freuden Tall said Universal's interest in collaboration
Speaker 1: is not platonic, but is motivated by the company's concern
Speaker 1: for the well being of its Berlin branch and for
Speaker 1: the German market. Other studio heads were just as obliging.
Speaker 1: An executive at r KO promised that whenever he made
Speaker 1: a film involving Germany, he would work quote in close
Speaker 1: collaboration with the local consul general. An executive Fox said
Speaker 1: that he would consult a German representative in all future
Speaker 1: cases as well. Even United artists offered quote the closest collaboration.
Speaker 1: So you can see why Erland picked the title the
Speaker 1: Collaboration for his book. Yeah, it does seem like there
Speaker 1: was an active working relationship with these studios and them
Speaker 1: saying we know, look, we get what you guys are
Speaker 1: doing over there. Yeah, we want to work with you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't ban our films. Let's work together so we can
Speaker 1: make sure we can sell our films and Germany will
Speaker 1: get enough movies and we don't offend you guys. And
Speaker 1: is it too far of a reach to say that
Speaker 1: if you make a movie the Nazis, like all the
Speaker 1: Nazis are gonna go see it, Like if it's endorsed
Speaker 1: by the government, not see it. They would all go
Speaker 1: see it, right, I mean not all of their they're
Speaker 1: very it's very popular. And well, actually we're going to
Speaker 1: get into that in a little bit. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that's interesting here is the Nazis have sort
Speaker 1: of come down to us from history is like masters
Speaker 1: of propaganda. They did not consider themselves masters of propaganda.
Speaker 1: The Nazis considered Hollywood to be by far the best
Speaker 1: at propaganda, and so we will be we will be
Speaker 1: discussing that quite a bit later on um so Freud
Speaker 1: and Tall suggested that someone should permanently have the job
Speaker 1: of being the German liaison to Hollywood. This person's job
Speaker 1: would be to educate and train film industry personnel so
Speaker 1: that anti German movies were never made in the first place.
Speaker 1: I think fred Fred Tall probably wanted that job for himself,
Speaker 1: but he didn't wind up getting it. Diplomat named George
Speaker 1: Gisling actually got the job, and jis Ling's first big
Speaker 1: task was a movie called Captured, which featured scenes of
Speaker 1: German soldiers beating up captured British soldiers and denying them water.
Speaker 1: Justisling demanded that this all be cut, and when it wasn't,
Speaker 1: he flipped his ship. Captured was declared by the Nazis
Speaker 1: to be the worst hate film since World War One.
Speaker 1: Jis Ling activated Article fifteen and stopped Warner Brothers from
Speaker 1: receiving permits from any more films. Ever, in nineteen thirty four,
Speaker 1: the company closed its Berlin office. A scholar named Doherty,
Speaker 1: who also has written about this period of time, calls
Speaker 1: them quote the first of the majors to withdraw on
Speaker 1: principle rather than work with the Nazis. So Warner Brothers
Speaker 1: are of the studios, kind of the heroes at this point,
Speaker 1: because they they made their movie. They made their movie,
Speaker 1: they refused they did change it. Somewhat because he had
Speaker 1: some Justling had some points that they're like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that is unfair, but they still made a movie
Speaker 1: that the Nazis didn't like, and the Nazis completely cut
Speaker 1: them out of German so they said, fine, let's closer office.
Speaker 1: We're not going to keep fine with you. Well, they
Speaker 1: closed their office. I mean, they lost a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but yeah, they closed their office and they left her
Speaker 1: I mean they were forced to leave Germany. So on
Speaker 1: March nineteen thirty three, UFA, the major German film company
Speaker 1: at the time, They're big studio that was actually making
Speaker 1: movies in Germany, fired most of its best writers, directors,
Speaker 1: crew members, and talent. I'm gonna give you one guess
Speaker 1: as to why they fired all these people at once. Yep.
Speaker 1: And it turns out that most of their film industry
Speaker 1: people in Germany were Jewish too. Um. The Salesman's Syndicate,
Speaker 1: a Nazi organization, sent letters to American film studios with
Speaker 1: offices in Germany and ordered them to fire all of
Speaker 1: their Jewish employees as well. The Salesman's Syndicate, which is
Speaker 1: a was a Nazi organization like a Nazi almost like
Speaker 1: a labor union for a Nazi salesman sent letters to
Speaker 1: American film studios with offices in Germany and ordered them
Speaker 1: to fire all of their Jewish employees. So the Nazis fired.
Speaker 1: The Nazis ordered their big film company to fire all
Speaker 1: of its Jewish employees. And then they go to the
Speaker 1: American studios working in Germany and they said the Lemley
Speaker 1: and all these other people, like, hey, every you can't
Speaker 1: have any Jewish people employed in Germany. You know, they're
Speaker 1: not saying you have to fire you Jewish people, and
Speaker 1: we'll get to that later. We'll get to that later.
Speaker 1: But they start by saying, you can't employ Jewish people
Speaker 1: within Germany now, and fairness of the companies, none of
Speaker 1: the studios obliged instantly. First they sent all of their
Speaker 1: Jewish workers home instantly on mental preservation leave. So they
Speaker 1: put these guys out on paid leave, and eventually Hollywood
Speaker 1: reached an accord with the Nazis. They put up lists
Speaker 1: each studio of their best Jewish employees in Germany, and
Speaker 1: the German government would grant those employees exemptions and actually
Speaker 1: granted them protection to like state protection to the Jewish
Speaker 1: employees of these these movie studios, but most of the
Speaker 1: Jewish employees of all these studios were fired, so they
Speaker 1: did come to an arrangement. The Nazis aren't getting their
Speaker 1: whole way yet, but also the studios fire and most
Speaker 1: of their Jewish employees in Germany. Um so, uh, these
Speaker 1: people were able to stay at their jobs until January I,
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six, when the Nazis categorically banned Jewish people
Speaker 1: from working in the film industry. The collaboration basically credits
Speaker 1: the delay to the fact that because the Germans had
Speaker 1: fired all of the Jewish people from their own film
Speaker 1: production company, they weren't able to make enough movies, and
Speaker 1: so they couldn't. They didn't want to push Hollywood that
Speaker 1: much because they they understood movies were valuable for people's morale,
Speaker 1: and so they were like, well, okay, we can't make
Speaker 1: many movies right now because we just fired everyone who
Speaker 1: knows how to make movies, So we won't push the
Speaker 1: studios quite yet because we need a couple of years
Speaker 1: before we do to rebuild our own domestic film industry.
Speaker 1: Um so, actually, for a while, this goes great for
Speaker 1: the Hollywood studios, and in fact, in nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: they sell sixty five pictures because they're the only people
Speaker 1: making movies that Germany German citizens can get. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the Germany can't really make movies for yeah. So in
Speaker 1: you know, in the boom Yeah, and it's a boom
Speaker 1: in In In nineteen thirty two, before Hitler was in power,
Speaker 1: they'd sold fifty four films to Germany and nineen thirty
Speaker 1: three they sell sixty five. So this is seeven great
Speaker 1: for the studios. You know, you gotta deal, you gotta
Speaker 1: work with the Nazis a little bit, but by god,
Speaker 1: the money comes in. It's like a curse. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a good it's a solid amount of money. And these guys,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's an expensive industry. So midway through
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty three, a screenwriter named Herman manka witza Witz yeah,
Speaker 1: who wrote he was the guy who wrote Citizen Kane.
Speaker 1: Later um so he decided to write a movie that
Speaker 1: explicitly attacked the Nazis and brought up the attacks Jewish
Speaker 1: people had to endure under Nazi rule. He wrote a
Speaker 1: screenplay titled The Mad Dog of You. This is the
Speaker 1: same year, so he's early on this, He's very early
Speaker 1: on this. This is when the studios He's already being
Speaker 1: like ships going down. This is fucked up, right, The
Speaker 1: Nazis are a problem. Somebody should make a movie in
Speaker 1: the paper and go after exactly. So he writes a
Speaker 1: script uh and a producer, Sam Jeff, buys the idea
Speaker 1: and leaps into trying to film it. Jeff was so
Speaker 1: shocked that there were no other anti Nazi movies in
Speaker 1: production in Hollywood that he got terrified someone was about
Speaker 1: to beat him to the punch. So he takes out
Speaker 1: a full page ad in the Hollywood Reporter that says this,
Speaker 1: which try to imagine anyone doing this today. Because I
Speaker 1: sincerely believe that in the mad Dog of Europe, I
Speaker 1: have the most valuable motion picture property I have ever possessed,
Speaker 1: and because I wish to take sufficient time to prepare
Speaker 1: and film it with the infinite care that it's subject merits,
Speaker 1: I hereby ask the motion picture industry to kindly respect
Speaker 1: my priority rights. So he puts out an ad being like,
Speaker 1: no one else make an anti Nazi movie right now,
Speaker 1: I'm making a great anti Nazi. This is what Dante's
Speaker 1: Peak should have done with Volcano. Oh yes, or the
Speaker 1: prestige this is important other magician movie that came out
Speaker 1: or what's the other one? Deep impact and Arma should
Speaker 1: have asked for priority. Yeah, and I'm making the definitive
Speaker 1: f Hitler movie nobody else, everybody. I don't know what
Speaker 1: you guys are doing or if I get to be first,
Speaker 1: but hold off if you're hold off, because this is
Speaker 1: gonna be the funk Hitler movie to funk all fun
Speaker 1: Hitler movies. Um Now, I've never read the screenway screenplay.
Speaker 1: Irwan who wrote the collaboration, did, and he he doesn't
Speaker 1: think it was very good, but who knows. I have
Speaker 1: no way to judge this. But it did contain frank
Speaker 1: depictions of Nazi violence against Jewish and would have been
Speaker 1: groundbreaking because that did not happen before nineteen forty period,
Speaker 1: and no movie was there a depiction of Nazi violence
Speaker 1: against Jewish people before nineteen So the movie would have
Speaker 1: been groundbreaking if it had ever been made. See, Jeff
Speaker 1: was not trying to release the movie in Germany, so
Speaker 1: j Lyn couldn't bring Article fifteen against him since his
Speaker 1: company he wasn't working with one of the big studios.
Speaker 1: He started his own independent production company. Um so there
Speaker 1: wasn't anything that Jisling could do to them, because like, what,
Speaker 1: we're not in Germany, what are you gonna do? Well,
Speaker 1: Jisling went to the Hayes office, or at least Irlan
Speaker 1: suspects that Jisling went to the Hayes office. We don't
Speaker 1: exactly know what happened. Urwan suspects that Jisling went to
Speaker 1: the Hayes office and threatened to ban all American movies
Speaker 1: from Germany if the studios didn't make sure that this
Speaker 1: movie didn't get made. There is no hard evidence of
Speaker 1: this act. What we know is that Will Hayes, America's
Speaker 1: chief censor, had a meeting with Sam jeff and Herman Mankowitz,
Speaker 1: very shortly after that, and Hayes allegedly told them quote
Speaker 1: because of the large number of Jews active in the
Speaker 1: motion picture industry in this country, the charge is certain
Speaker 1: to be made that the Jews as a class are
Speaker 1: behind an anti Hitler picture and using the entertainment screen
Speaker 1: for their own personal propaganda purposes. The entire industry because
Speaker 1: of this is likely to be indicted for the action
Speaker 1: of a mere handful. So I think it's probable that
Speaker 1: Jissling did go to Hayese and be like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ban America from Germany, American movies from Germany if you
Speaker 1: don't stop this ship. Because he's certainly bore. Hay was
Speaker 1: just unprovoked looking out for the interest of the industry
Speaker 1: so that they could keep making money in Germany. Also possible.
Speaker 1: I mean either way, yeah, either way, either way, it's
Speaker 1: it's gutless. Yeah. Um. So Jeaff wound up selling the
Speaker 1: script to a guy named Rosen because he couldn't He
Speaker 1: couldn't raise the money himself. Al Rosen was an early
Speaker 1: film industry agent. He got as far as buying film
Speaker 1: style and casting who would have been the very first
Speaker 1: hitler ever in motion picture history other than the actual hits,
Speaker 1: but the project died on the vine. He also couldn't
Speaker 1: find additional financial backing to make the movie. Lewis Meyer
Speaker 1: of MGM told him, quote, because we have interest in Germany.
Speaker 1: I represent the filming picture industry here in Hollywood, we
Speaker 1: have exchanges there, we have terrific income from in Germany,
Speaker 1: and as far as I am concerned, this picture will
Speaker 1: never be made. See all that, Like Magawitz or Jeffy
Speaker 1: or Jeff could have had to say it was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but they're doing fucked up ship and it seems seems
Speaker 1: full full disclosure. From my opinion, it seems as though
Speaker 1: their attitude is, yeah, we know they are. We're also
Speaker 1: making more money there than we've ever made. Yeah, so exactly, Yeah,
Speaker 1: as you would hear it. Yea. But someone's gotta fucking
Speaker 1: pay the rent, buddy, dude. Ye Now. I think we've
Speaker 1: clearly seen some evidence of what would could be fairly
Speaker 1: called collaborations so far. But they is another wrinkle in
Speaker 1: this and another dynamic present in Hollywood at the time
Speaker 1: that is important. Fear See. Hitler's rise to the chancellorship
Speaker 1: had correlated with a massive surge and anti Semitism and
Speaker 1: an anti Semitic violence in the United States. Twenty thousand
Speaker 1: Nazis marched in Madison Square Garden in the thirties, like
Speaker 1: there were camps all around the United States for American
Speaker 1: You do not hear about that. There were fascist rallies
Speaker 1: all over the United States. In the Pacific Palisades, the
Speaker 1: Nazis bought a chunk of land to make a retreat
Speaker 1: in the early thirty What is it now, It's a
Speaker 1: graffiti sanctuary essentially, really yeah. Yeah, some of the old
Speaker 1: buildings are still there and it just gets tagged a bunch.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful hike. Look up Hitler's house and it
Speaker 1: wasn't actually Hitler's house. It was supposed to be like
Speaker 1: a spa basically. But if you look up Hitler's house
Speaker 1: Pacific Palisades, you'll find out how to hike up there.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful hike. Really, yeah, yeah, there is. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of fascist sympathy and what is that about?
Speaker 1: Point would just anti semitism in America. Anti Semitism was everywhere.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean here though, there were just so
Speaker 1: many people that like, yeah, we we think the Jews
Speaker 1: are the problem too. Yeah, and it was less I
Speaker 1: think people here were less hateful about us and they
Speaker 1: were in Europe, but it was very common. It was
Speaker 1: very common to view like the idea that Jewish people
Speaker 1: controlled I mean, they did control the film industry. At
Speaker 1: this point, the idea, like to go back to your
Speaker 1: other episode about behind the Bachards of Hitler, the escapegoat
Speaker 1: became that the Jews were undermining the government's ability to
Speaker 1: come back to power, right, That's how it like initially started.
Speaker 1: So what was the feeling here that they just were
Speaker 1: bad people. Know. It's the same idea that has persisted
Speaker 1: for a while that um so, you know, Jewish families
Speaker 1: are overrepresented in the finance industry and banking and have
Speaker 1: been for quite some time. And the reason for this
Speaker 1: is that for a very long time, both Muslims and
Speaker 1: Christians were prohibited, based on their religions, from running banks,
Speaker 1: from charge interest that was a religious like like it
Speaker 1: was forbid. It's still forbidden for Muslims. I think for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, Catholics and Protestants have gotten over that ship
Speaker 1: in recent years. And for a long time pretty much
Speaker 1: the only people who could run a bank were Jewish people,
Speaker 1: and so they got a toe hold in that industry
Speaker 1: and that that has been a major factor, uh in
Speaker 1: the rise of anti Semitism. It's it's not talked about
Speaker 1: a lot now like we tend to think of the
Speaker 1: Nazis is really stirring up anti I mean they did,
Speaker 1: but there was a lot of at present in Europe
Speaker 1: in the United States. There are still churches all throughout
Speaker 1: Europe that have stained glass reliefs of which called a
Speaker 1: judent sow, which is a pig that's supposed to represent
Speaker 1: a Jewish woman nursing Jewish babies, like there's still representations
Speaker 1: of the Blood Passover, which is like this idea that
Speaker 1: Jewish rabbis kill Christian kids to make their Passover bread.
Speaker 1: Like those things are in You can go find churches
Speaker 1: today in Europe that still have stained glass reliefs of
Speaker 1: that stuff. If you look at it, like, anti Semitism
Speaker 1: did not start with the Nazis. It was everywhere prior
Speaker 1: to World War Two. And so the studio heads in
Speaker 1: Hollywood were terrified of this, and we're very aware of it.
Speaker 1: And we're seeing fascist sympathy surging in the United States
Speaker 1: prior to World War two, and we're seeing anti Semitism
Speaker 1: surge in the United States prior to World War Two.
Speaker 1: So they were scared and they wanted Hollywood not to
Speaker 1: stir things up and make it worse. That was a
Speaker 1: legitimate fear that if we make movies about Jewish people
Speaker 1: in any way, if we address the Nazi issue in
Speaker 1: any way, if we're seen as trying to change American
Speaker 1: opinion towards the Nazis, that will encourage more violence against
Speaker 1: Jewish people. So that is another factor here that is
Speaker 1: something all of these Jewish studio heads and production people
Speaker 1: are very concerned about. Jewish people were very divided about
Speaker 1: what to do because there were a lot of Jewish
Speaker 1: speakers at this time who thought that Hollywood need to
Speaker 1: address like the issues that the Nazis raised. Rabbi Stephen
Speaker 1: Wise of the American Jewish Congress said this in ninety three,
Speaker 1: the time for caution and prudence's past. What is happening
Speaker 1: in Germany today may happen to morrow in any other
Speaker 1: land on Earth unless it is challenged and rebuked. It
Speaker 1: is not the German Jews who are being attacked. It
Speaker 1: is the Jews. We must speak out. If that is unavailing,
Speaker 1: at least we shall have spoken. So this is not
Speaker 1: like none of these are uniform groups. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of Jewish people saying fucking Hollywood ought to do something,
Speaker 1: But there's also a lot of very scared people in
Speaker 1: Hollywood being like, maybe it's bad to do anything. Um.
Speaker 1: So that speaker just quoted with from the American Jewish
Speaker 1: Congress um who called for a total boycott on German
Speaker 1: products in nineteen thirty. Now, the American Jewish Committee and
Speaker 1: the Benigh Breath protested this. They were more on the
Speaker 1: don't rock the boat side of things, and those Jewish
Speaker 1: advocacy groups were closer head closer ties to the film industry,
Speaker 1: so their feelings wound up having a larger impact on
Speaker 1: the policy of the major studios at the time. UM.
Speaker 1: From nineteen hundred to nineteen twenty nine, some two d
Speaker 1: and thirty movies had been made about Jewish people. There
Speaker 1: would be significantly fewer released during the Nazi era. I
Speaker 1: think one of the things that's worth noting is that
Speaker 1: from ninety four or sixty three Hollywood movies had featured
Speaker 1: Jewish characters. Right in the next six years, from nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty four to nineteen forty, only twenty four films featured
Speaker 1: Jewish actors. So yeah, about two thirds is what this
Speaker 1: This drops by um, and we're going to get into
Speaker 1: why right now. UM. See, in nineteen thirty four, a
Speaker 1: former Warner Brothers employee named Darryl z and Nuck got
Speaker 1: his hands on the script for a movie called The
Speaker 1: House of Rothschild. Since he wasn't Jewish himself and was
Speaker 1: the co founder of his own studio, Twentieth Century Pictures,
Speaker 1: he felt free to produce whatever the hell he wanted.
Speaker 1: He saw this movie as a critique of anti Semitism
Speaker 1: and a carefully availed attack on Hitler, because it would
Speaker 1: be talking about how Jewish people have been persecuted a
Speaker 1: century or so ago in Europe, but it would clearly
Speaker 1: be he thought people, would you know, Yeah right? Um?
Speaker 1: So Yeah, though it was set in the fat past,
Speaker 1: the film addressed the present at one point. His main
Speaker 1: character even said quote, go into the Jewish quarter of
Speaker 1: any town in Prussia today and you'll see men lying dead,
Speaker 1: but for one crime that they were Jews. So this
Speaker 1: is like a pretty direct attempt to address it. But
Speaker 1: there's a double irony in this movie. The first irony
Speaker 1: is that only a non Jew at this point in
Speaker 1: Hollywood could have gotten away with making a film that
Speaker 1: directly addressed anti Semitic violence. The second irony is that
Speaker 1: the fact that Zanuck was not Jewish meant that he
Speaker 1: didn't notice that his film attacking anti Semitism wound up
Speaker 1: being anti Semitic as fuck. Real. Yeah, it was not
Speaker 1: intentionally so, um, But one of its central scenes involved
Speaker 1: a Jewish banker, the patriarch of the Rothschild family, bribing
Speaker 1: a tax collector and cheating the government out of his money.
Speaker 1: During a rant about the unfairness of anti Semitism. This
Speaker 1: banker shouted, quote, work and strive for money. Money is power.
Speaker 1: Money is the only weapon that the Jew has to
Speaker 1: defend himself with. So Zanuk's heart is in the right place. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's not seeing it clearly. Yeah. The inciting incident of
Speaker 1: the movie is when the patriarch of the Rothschild family,
Speaker 1: on his deathbed, urges his five sons to create at
Speaker 1: five bank branches in different cities across Europe. He says, quote,
Speaker 1: your banking houses may cover Europe, but you will be
Speaker 1: one firm, one family, the Rothchilds, who always work together.
Speaker 1: That will be your power. And remember this before all,
Speaker 1: neither business, nor power, nor all the golden Europe will
Speaker 1: bring you happiness. Till we are people have equality, respect, dignity,
Speaker 1: to trade with dignity, to live with dignity, to walk
Speaker 1: the world with dignity. So he's trying there's a good
Speaker 1: message in here. There's a good message in here, but
Speaker 1: it's couched in like a story about bankers who like
Speaker 1: a big part of the movie trying to comment and
Speaker 1: exactly and it focuses a lot on Nathan Roth's child
Speaker 1: wheeling and dealing with different European leaders in order to
Speaker 1: fund the defeat of Napoleon. So some of this plot
Speaker 1: could very easily be anti Jewish propaganda, and many American
Speaker 1: Jews were horrified by the movie. Um, it also had
Speaker 1: a lot of people who loved it, and a lot
Speaker 1: of Jewish people in America thought it was a heroic movie,
Speaker 1: and it still has a reputation as like, whatever you
Speaker 1: will say about its las, at least he tried, right, like,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't condemn it, when when other people
Speaker 1: seemed to be deliberately not trying. Yeah, but this did
Speaker 1: scare a lot of Jewish people, particularly a lot of
Speaker 1: Jewish people in the film industry, and so as a result,
Speaker 1: throughout the nineteen thirties, Jewish actors started getting less and
Speaker 1: less work. It's debatable as to how much of that
Speaker 1: was out of a desire to please the Nazis and
Speaker 1: how much of it was due to the fears of
Speaker 1: Jewish political leaders. Whichever cause was more to blame, the
Speaker 1: result is in dispute. Jewish people started disappearing from the
Speaker 1: silver screen long before the Germans disappeared them on Moss
Speaker 1: from Europe. We do know at least that the Nazis
Speaker 1: were fans of the House of Rothschild. In nineteen forty
Speaker 1: they were released The Eternal Jew, which is one of
Speaker 1: the violence propaganda films and all of history. That film
Speaker 1: included that scene from Zenox movie where the elder Rothschild
Speaker 1: cheats the tax assessor. Like that whole scene was included
Speaker 1: in this Nazi propaganda film, but a German voiceover played
Speaker 1: during the scene, saying, here we show a scene from
Speaker 1: a film about the Rothschild family. It was made by
Speaker 1: American Jews, obviously, is a tribute to one of the
Speaker 1: greatest names in Jewish history. They honor their hero in
Speaker 1: a typically Jewish manner, delighting in the way old Meyer
Speaker 1: Mshell Rothschild cheats his host state by feigning poverty in
Speaker 1: order to avoid paying taxes. So, yeah, it's tough. The
Speaker 1: guy tries to do the right thing and he accidentally
Speaker 1: makes Nazi propaganda like, so you gotta do a spin it, man.
Speaker 1: It's a mess, yeah right, yeah, yeah, are you are?
Speaker 1: No one's trying, and the person who's trying is making
Speaker 1: some mistakes and then also fueling the fire of the
Speaker 1: people he's against. Which yeah, sucks. And not only are
Speaker 1: the people not trying, there seems to be some evidence,
Speaker 1: whether directed from the Nazi government or just to make
Speaker 1: their own money, that they're like, oh, yeah, we don't
Speaker 1: even want you make in movies that could infringe on
Speaker 1: Hollywood's profitability in Germany don't rock the boat or Nazi
Speaker 1: Germany to be more specific. So we're going to get
Speaker 1: into the rest of this possible collaboration, uh, and we're
Speaker 1: also going to talk about the pro fascist movies that
Speaker 1: Americans made completely by accidents in this period of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a wacky story, Daniel. But this is where part
Speaker 1: one's gonna end, So the listeners gonna have to catch
Speaker 1: the rest of this on Thursday. Daniel. At the end
Speaker 1: of this episode, do you have any plug doubles to plug? Yes.
Speaker 1: I would like to let people know I'm starting Daniel
Speaker 1: van Kirk The Together tour that will start on the
Speaker 1: eighteenth of September, and I'm going to be hitting up
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of cities. The first leg of it
Speaker 1: is Houston, Austin, Dallas, Lafia, and Baton Rouge. If you
Speaker 1: go to Daniel van Kirk dot com or my Twitter
Speaker 1: handle at Daniel van Kirk. You can find all that
Speaker 1: information there and I will also be doing a live
Speaker 1: Dumb People Town October twenty as part of the All
Speaker 1: Things Comedy Festival in Phoenix. Well that's just grand. I'm
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. You can find me on Twitter at I
Speaker 1: right okay. You can find this podcast on the internet
Speaker 1: at behind the Bastards dot com, which is where all
Speaker 1: of the sources for today's podcast pea this. You can
Speaker 1: also find us on Twitter and Instagram at at Bastard's pod.
Speaker 1: So check us out and I will see you all
Speaker 1: in like two days to talk more about Nazis in Hollywood.
Speaker 1: H