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  • 2017-10-01 (xsd:date)
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  • Did the Hollywood Reporter Criticize Actors Who Opposed Nazi Germany in 1937? (en)
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  • In the midst of a September 2017 debate over whether the propriety of NFL players' engaging in protests during the playing of the U.S. national anthem, a book excerpt was circulated online that brought to light the movie industry's attempt to downplay criticism against Nazi Germany in the 1930s: The excerpt featured a quote attributed to Frank Pope, who was then the managing editor of the entertainment industry trade publication The Hollywood Reporter (THR), from a column he wrote in 1937 chiding film stars for speaking out on political issues: Both the quote and the excerpt were taken from a real book, Thomas Patrick Doherty's Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939, published in 2013. Doherty and THR both sent us pictures of Pope's column as it was originally printed on the front page of the Reporter on on 16 October 1937: Doherty, a professor of American Studies at Brandeis University, told us that Pope's viewpoint represented the mainstream opinion of Hollywood distributors and film moguls at the time, as the movie industry was leery of portraying Nazis in a negative light to avoid alienating what was then the second-largest film market in the world. However, Doherty said, opposition to the Nazis from within the film industry led to the formation of what was called the popular front, a loose alliance of actors and screenwriters who engaged in off-screen activism. The increased political activity among this group led to the formation of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936: Doherty also noted that any type of activism in the film industry was really new for the time and carried a particular political risk for studios because of the restrictions set forth by what was popularly known as the Hays Code: The high court extended those rights to the motion picture industry in its unanimous decision in Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, which stated: Doherty added that the Reporter was also a different kind of publication at the time Pope's column was published: Even though studios can not overtly dissuade actors from taking political stances, he said, discussions of the potential impact on them for doing so continue: On 9 August 2013, THR published a lengthy excerpt from another book, The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler, chronicling not only the film industry's hands-off policy toward Nazis, but a Senate probe into allegations that Hollywood had reversed course after World War II had begun and promoted anti-Nazi themes in order to draw the U.S. into the conflict: (en)
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