Has Hollywood Fallen Out of Love With Israel?
A recent book examines the origins and end of an affair between the film industry and the Jewish state.
In 1947, a full-page advertisement ran in the U.S. film industry’s trade publication
Variety
, saluting then-U.S. President Harry Truman’s efforts to encourage the British government to accept increased Jewish immigration to Palestine.
The signatories included many of the luminaries of Hollywood
actor Edward G. Robinson to director William Wyler, whose film about returning veterans
The Best Years of Our Lives
, had won the Oscar for Best Picture the previous year.
This was a collective cause du jour—whither the European Jewish refugees?
Director George Stevens (
Swing Time
) had spent the war years as the head of a U.S. Army Signal Corps documentary
The next year, when Israel became a state, Robinson—the Jewish star of 1930s gangster pictures like
Little Caesar