So, why is a Hollywood film that was labeled as virulently anti-Semitic in a recent book being showcased in a monthlong series called “The Jewish Experience on Film’’?
“I sort of made a decision that I would never bad-mouth anyone in my field,’’ says Eric Goldman, the Jewish film expert who will co-host the series, which begins Tuesday on Turner Classic Movies, with Robert Osborne. “Not even an ambitious young academic who is trying to make a name for himself with outrageous charges.’’
This was Goldman’s diplomatic way of referring to Ben Urwand, the Harvard University fellow whose controversial book “The Collaboration’’ asserts that in the years before World War II, Hollywood studio chiefs routinely followed suggestions from German officials so their films would continue to be shown in that country.
At Goldman’s suggestion, TCM will show for the first time (at 8 p.m. EST on Sept. 23) 1934’s “The House of Rothschild” — a biography of the Jewish founder of the famous banking house that Urwand claims is so full of offensive stereotypes that it was excerpted in a Nazi propaganda film.
“That’s totally wrong,’’ says Goldman, who teaches at Yeshiva University and founded a company that distributes Jewish films. “If anything, the film is so pro-Semitic that my extensive research found some in the Jewish groups didn’t want it made because they were afraid it might trigger anti-Semitism in America.’’
Despite these concerns, the film was made at the insistence of Twentieth Century Fox studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck — the most powerful gentile in an industry then dominated by Jewish moguls like the Warner brothers.
“Zanuck said this film was too important for America,’’ says Goldman. “He knew the whole Jewish issue, and he worked with these guys when he was at Warners. Zanuck was always deeply concerned about any kind of prejudice, which he also dealt with in another of our movies, ‘Gentleman’s Agreement.’ ’’
In that Best Picture Oscar winner from 1947, also showing on Sept. 23, Gregory Peck plays a gentile magazine writer who pretends to be Jewish to research an exposé of anti-Semitism in America. The same theme plays out in another rarely seen film making its TCM premiere that same night — “Focus’’ (2001), based on a story by Arthur Miller about a gentile (William H. Macy) mistaken for a Jew when he dons a pair of glasses.
The 22-film series kicks off with two versions of “The Jazz Singer’’ — the groundbreaking part-talkie from 1927, with Jewish superstar Al Jolson, and the 1953 remake starring the Catholic Lebanese entertainer Danny Thomas as a singer who defies his cantor dad to pursue a show business career.
Also making their TCM premieres as part of “The Jewish Experience on Film’’ are “Sword in the Desert’’ (1949), with Jeff Chandler (born Ira Grossel) as a freighter captain smuggling Jewish refugees into pre-Palestine Israel (“You’ll sit there at the end with your mouth open’’), and the Israeli musical “Sallah’’ (1964), “which is actually in Hebrew, stars Topol [the lead in the later film version of ‘Fiddler on the Roof’] and is a lot of fun.’’