VITAL SIGNSrnThe Merchants ofrnDeath of SunsetrnBoulevardrnby Bill KauffmanrnWho Owned Hollywood?rnPlaywright Robert Sherwood, the sixfoot-rnse’en weather vane of mideenturvrnhberahsm, once eomplained,rn”The trouble with me is that I start offrnwith a big message and end with nothingrnbut good entertainment.” That’srnno trouble at all, as writer-director PrestonrnSturges insisted in his wonderfulrnfilm Sullivan’s Travels (1941), but thenrnSherwood was unduly modest. On backrnlots and in ginny writers’ conferences,rnhe and others in Hollywood’s prewarrn”creative community”—I use the Entertainmentrn’Tonight locution—connivedrnto turn the parochial mind-your-ownbusinessrncitizens of fly-over land intornbattle-primed belligerents. Our shellshockedrnnation has never recovered.rnAdolf Hitler said of Sergei Eisenstein’srnBattleship Potemkin, “This is arnfilm which could turn anyone into a Bolshevik.”rnBeginning in 1939, the spectaclernof our stateside Eisensteins, man’rnof them foreign-bred, urging Americanrnnatives to sacrifice their sons for WinstonrnChurchill provoked a brief, sad, andrnfutile protest by the pugnaciousrnguardians of the Old Republic.rnUnder the influence of Europeanbornrnmoguls, immigrant directors, andrnBritish actors, “movies have ceased tornbe instruments of entertainment,”rncharged North Dakota Senator GeraldrnP. Nye. “They have become the mostrngigantic engines of propaganda in existencernto rouse the war fever in Americarnand plunge this Nation to her destruction.”rnNye, an agrarian populist and legendaryrnscourge of the masters of war,rnwas his chamber’s champion muckrakcr.rnBetween 1934 and 1936 he led a Senaterninvestigation exposing the “merchantsrnof death”: those “great American andrnEuropean bankers and the powerful internationalrnmunitions makers” who hadrnsuckcred us into the First Wodd War,rnor so Nye believed. He dedicated thernrest of his career to preventing a replav.rnAlas for poor Nye, I lollywood had retaliatoryrnpowers beyond J.P. Morgan andrnCompany’s wildest dreams.rnNye made his case in an August 1,rn1941, nationwide radio address. “Beforernwe plow a million boys under therndust and mud of Africa, Indo China,rnFrance, arid far away Russia,” the senatorrndeclared, wc ought to examine whyrn”movie companies have been operatingrnas war propaganda machines aliriost as ifrnthev were being directed from a singlerncentral bureau.” Nye named severalrnfilms—among them That HamiltonrnWoman, Man Hunt, and Sergeant York—rnthat “whip up the warrior spirit in youngrnmen, glorify militarism,” and altogetherrnignore Sam Goldwn’s sly dictum, “Ifrnyou have a message, send it WesternrnUnion.”rnNye’s target was clear. He was anrnAnglophobe, like so many Middle Americanrnpopulists, and he had no desire tornsacrifice Dakota farmboys in order tornpull the British Empire’s chestnuts outrnof the fire. (In 1933 the North DakotarnSenate had voted to secede from thernUnion, in part to extricate the state fromrnthe tentacular grip of the Wall Street-rnBritish octopus.) “Go to Hollywood,”rnNye urged his auditors in radio land.rn”The place swarms with refugees. It alsornswarms with British actors.” Thisrncharming Anglophobia, though jarringrnto modern ears, acted as a brake on thernWise Men. It has, regrettably, gone thernway of anti-Masonry and the freerncoinage of silver. When we hear maledictionsrnagainst Hollywood today wcrnsniff for anti-Semitism; Nye, unfortunately,rnplayed down to our expectationsrnby stating; “There are eight major filmrncompanies. The men who dominaternpolicy in these companies—own or directrnthem—arc well known to you.” Hernthen rattled them off; Louis B. Mayer,rnHarry and Jack Cohn, Adolph Zukor,rnJoseph Schenck, Arthur Loew, SamrnGoldwyn . . . you get the picture. Exoticrnnames, none too American-sounding.rnMost were Jewish.rnThe reaction was fierce and immediate.rn”This was deliberately cooked uprnfor the double purpose of terrorizing thernJews on one hand to keep them fromrnactive participation in the anti-isolationistrnfight and on the other to arousernpublic prejudice against the interventionistrncause on the Jew Angle,” fumedrnthe prolix hawk Robert S. Allen.rnBraving a hailstorm of vilification,rnNye and his senatorial confrere BurtonrnK, Wheeler arranged subcommitteernhearings to investigate the propagandarnactivities of the motion picture and radiornindustries. Nye, a scrapper, kickedrnthings off by asserting that the film industryrnwas run by men “born abroadrnand animated by the persecutions andrnhatreds of the Old World.” Many directorsrn”come from Russia, Hungary,rnGermany, and the Balkan countries.”rn(This was true, by the way, if veracityrnmatters.) Applying to anti-Semitism hisrnmost stinging epithet—”un-American”rn—Nye insisted that “those primarilyrnresponsible for the propaganda picturesrnare born abroad. They came to ourrnland and took citizenship here entertainingrnviolent animosities toward certainrncauses abroad. . . . If they lose sightrnof what some Americans might call thernfirst interests of America in times likernthese, I can excuse them. But their prejudicesrnby no means necessitate our closingrnour eyes to these mtcrests and refrainingrnfrom undertaking to correctrntheir error.”rnNye’s economic determinism led himrnto look at the export market for films.rn”If Britain loses, seven of the eight leadingrncompanies will be wiped out.” Thernquestion, then, was this; “Are you readyrnMAY 1993/45rnrnrn