Hollywood and Jewish émigré actors’

1933 - Point of No Return

Since 1933, when Hitler came to power and the National Socialists became the ruling party in Germany, hundreds of first-class European actors made their way to the streets of Los Angeles and Hollywood studios. Some went straight to Hollywood from Germany; others first fled to Austria, France or even the USSR. Those were people dissenting from the regime, those seeking shelter from the war, but first and foremost, naturally, the Jews - more than five thousand arrived in Los Angeles between 1933 and 1945. One would think there would be plenty of room for everyone in America's  melting pot The melting pot is a model of ethnic dynamics and a metaphor for a heterogeneous society becoming homogenised through assimilation. Such a society was expected to emerge too in the States, a fusion of the many immigrants of diverse ethnicities and locals.  , but this was not the case. While language and accent were of secondary importance to the camerapersons, filmmakers, or screenwriters, they were vital for the actors. The new Hollywood policies seem to have further complicated the situation. Throughout the 1930s, the major studios strived to produce onscreen characters as neutral as possible, devoid of national peculiarities in speech and appearance. This particularly affected Jews. Jewish characters vanished from the screen, and Jewish last names disappeared from the credits.

This shift occurred for several reasons. First, the sound enters the film, and along with it comes the requirement of standard American accent (yet the sound era in Hollywood started with a Jewish boy: Jakie Rabinowitz, in The Jazz Singer). Then,  the Hays code The American Motion Picture Association Code, or Hayes Code, is a Hollywood code of ethics for film production. It was introduced in 1930 by the Motion Picture Association, or Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and came into full effect in 1934. Although The Code was never an official standard, it was only abolished in 1967.  centred on Catholic family and morality came into full force from 1934 onwards. The aforementioned "melting pot" concept also plays its part, as the screen characters trying so hard to blend into the mainstream of American society lose all ethnic identity. Foreign politics were also involved: the studios were determined to remain neutral. Since Germany was a significant market, films were also made to suit the tastes of local audiences (i.e. the local government). When two hundred and fifty Jewish actors arrived in Hollywood with their vast theatrical experience and strong German accents, very few roles could be offered to them, for they were all too different. Except maybe the characters who were different as well.

 Peter Lorre - Lang's child-killer maniac

Peter Lorre certainly is one of the most famous immigrants of the 1930s and 1940s. A native of Ružomberok (today's Slovakia), he arrived in the US with substantial professional experience. He became a household name in 1931 after playing the role of a child killer in Fritz Lang's M. But even back then, at the time of filming, Lorre had the time to try himself in Jacob  Moreno's Jacob Moreno considers theatrical improvisation and engaging the audience in the action as a group psychotherapy session. Improvisation and play are a kind of extension of psychoanalysis, where the "patient" ceases to play a passive role and, at the same time, gains the opportunity to unleash their creative potential.   psycho-theatre. That was his escape from his studies in banking. He had also worked with Bertolt Brecht. (Both Brecht and Lang also immigrated to the USA, Moreno moved there as early as the late 1920s). So by the time director Josef von Sternberg called Lorre for the lead role in Crime and Punishment in 1935, the actor had already developed his own recognisable style of acting.

The chubby face, the enormous eyes, either mournful or insane, the soft, quiet voice - none of these betrays the brutality of which Lorre's characters are usually capable. The effect of the hypnosis, under which the character appears to be subjected to, nearly always plays a decisive role in the plot. Nearly always, he is led, helpless, and ill. It is precisely with this bunch of characteristics that Lorre lands first the role of Raskolnikov (later, the film will be described as a vulgar adaptation of Dostoevsky′s novel, in which Lorre is perhaps the only reminder of the original work), and then a dozen other films. He played mad professors, murderers, and petty crooks and always retained this otherness, this eccentricity in his characters. Despite becoming the lead actor, Lorre was far from being the only eccentric Jew on the screen.

Eccentrics in supporting roles

Lorre's popularity derives from the fact that he had started his Hollywood career with leading roles, but this was something of an exception. It was much more common for Jewish actors to play strong supporting roles. Luckily many used to play such roles before emigration. Yet at German and Austrian studios, unlike in the US, most actors had theatre training - actors would come from the companies of Max Reinhardt, Brecht, Tairov or even Terevsat (Theater of Revolutionary Satire). These differences in professional backgrounds meant that their acting was also different. Theatre actors would always introduce an element of eccentricity into their character: they would not just put on an exaggerated moustache or a voice but would alter their manner of acting altogether. Sometimes it was the clumsiness of movements, whereas at other times, conversely, a melodic, smooth manner of speech and movement. Thus, many unhinged eccentrics made their way into Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s.

 These were not just waiters, accountants and comedians. If Jews could not play Jews, they had to play persons of all ethnicities. Vladimir Sokoloff beat all records in this. Originally from Moscow, he first played at the Khudozhestvenny Theatre, then at the Chamber Theatre with Tairov, and finally with Reinhardt. At the invitation of the latter, Sokoloff stayed in Germany. In 1932 he moved to France, and from there, in 1937 - to the United States. In Hollywood, Sokoloff played about a dozen different ethnicities in dozens of films: in West of Shanghai, he played General Chow Fu-Shan. In an adaptation of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, he played a Spaniard, Anselmo. In Emile Zola he played Paul Cézanne. And, of course, he also played a plethora of Russian characters - ranging from the smuggler Dimitri in Alaska to Kalinin in Moscow.

More than just a Russian - a Communist

In 1939 and 1940, two films of very similar subject matter were released, making possible another comic persona that seemed to be tailor-made for Jewish émigré actors. Not merely a Russian - a communist. First came Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka. The story is about three Soviet envoys dispatched to Paris to sell off valuables looted during the revolution. The three cannot resist the temptations of the bourgeois lifestyle, so Nina, a Party official, is sent to their rescue. The sparkling Felix Bressart, a Jew from Eydtkuhnen (now Chernyshevskoye), played one of the envoys. He is joined in the trio by Sig Ruman, a long-time German émigré, and Alexander Granach, a more recent Jewish emigrant, referred to a little later.

 The other film was “Comrade X”. This time, an American reporter, McKinley (Clark Gable), travels to the Soviet Union to write a series of scathing articles under a pen name “Comrade X”. He is quickly exposed by his manservant Vanya ( also played by Bressart). However, Vanya has a condition: he will not expose McKinley, only if he takes his daughter Theodore across the border to the States. After the US entered the war in 1941, becoming an ally of the USSR, Hollywood stalls the release (and re-releases) of anti-Soviet films, but the cinematic image lingers. Besides Bressart, “Comrade X” also features Sokoloff and Mikhail Rasumny (from Odessa). Like Sokoloff, Rasumny made it to Berlin right after the 1927 tour of the Khudozhestvenny. He had considerable experience not only as an actor but also as a theatre manager: in 1919, in Vitebsk, he founded the Terevsat (with Marc Chagall as the set designer), and in 1933, when he left Germany and moved to Paris, he founded the Jewish Theatre-Revue. And then, in 1938, in New York - the Jewish Drama Studio. In Hollywood, he would play anything: restaurant managers, mechanics, and ordinary Russians, and in For Whom the Bell Tolls, he played the  , Raphael. The role of Theodora in  “Comrade X” was played by Hedy Lamarr, who, like Lorre, was fortunate enough to become a full-fledged star in emigration.

The one and only Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr, or Eva Maria Kiesler at the time, began her career in her native Vienna, where her parents had met: Emil Kiesler, originally from Lviv, and her mother, Gertrud, from Budapest. Hedy Kiesler calls on Reinhardt, meets him and even plays with Lorre (in 1931 The Trunks of Mr O.F. by Alexis Granowsky). In 1937, she secretly ran away from her husband Fritz Mandl with a handful of jewellery in her hands and a firm determination to sign a contract with MGM. The problem was that Kiesler had an accent and had previously played inappropriate roles. In 1933, she played in Gustav Machatý's Ecstasy, where not only did she appear naked in one scene, but she also acted out an on-screen orgasm (the first ever in film history). Under the strict Hays Code, which governed the entire Hollywood production, this was utterly unacceptable. And yet Kiesler had a powerful bargaining chip: she was a beauty. To Mayer, one of MGM's executives, that was good enough, so he came up with a screen name for her - Hedy Lamarr - and signed her up.

The film that started Lamarr's Hollywood career is very telling: it is the 1938 “Algiers” by John Cromwell, a French “Pépé le Moko” remake. This is a story about Casbah, a city neighbourhood that lures one into its web like a trap and never lets one go. The protagonist, Pepe, meets a mysterious woman (Lamarre) who stirs up memories of his beloved and unattainable Paris and makes him decide to leave Casbah. It ends tragically, with the foreign woman emerging as Fate's embodiment. Similar roles had also been reserved in Hollywood for earlier European immigrant divas - Garbo and Dietrich. They were to look foreign, enigmatic and fatal. However, Lamarr was too obviously beautiful, which stood in the way of mystery. Therefore, she wasn't entirely enshrined in this particular persona. Down the road, she had roles much like those of her other colleagues - a Viennese refugee ( “Come Live with Me” by Clarence Brown, 1941), a Chinese-French beauty ( “Lady of the Tropics”, Jack Conway, 1939), daughter of Hungarian artists (“Dishonored Lady”, Robert Stevenson, 1947), or the role of a Soviet streetcar conductor, as in “Comrade X”.

Confessions of a Nazi Spy 

After Kristallnacht in 1938 and the following engagement of the US in the war in December 1941, several anti-Nazi and propaganda films were made (about 180 films between 1939 and 1946). With each new film, the German authorities banned further distribution of films by one company or another and closed down its local studio subsidiaries. Paramount was the last to withdraw from Germany in October 1940. Ironically, Hollywood urgently needed an immense number of actors with German accents who could play members of the SS, the Gestapo, soldiers, the Führer and his entourage. Finally, over 65% of the emigré actors found employment in film productions. Obviously, that included Jewish actors as well. 

The first in the line was “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”, released in May 1939. And Warner Bros., who produced the film, were the first to close down their German branch immediately after the November  pogrom An organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. . Francis Lederer played the lead spy in the film, he was born in Prague, where he attended the Academy of Dramatic Arts, and after World War I, he performed in German theatres, including that of Reinhardt. Lederer decided to stay in the States once he arrived there in 1933 on tour: it was no longer safe to return to Germany. His partner in the film, Lionel Royce, is another German spy but in a supporting role. 

Royce was born in the Galician town of Dolyna (now Ivano-Frankivsk province, Ukraine), enlisted as a volunteer in WWI, promoted to lieutenant, and worked as an actor after the war in Vienna and Berlin. He first fled to Austria and from there to the USA in 1937.

Martin Kosleck (real name Nicolaie Yoshkin) played Goebbels in this film. Kosleck was born in Barkotzen (present-day Poland) in Pomerania into a Russian-German Jewish family. Trained by Reinhardt, he came to the US as early as 1932, but things didn't work for him in Hollywood. Kosleck returned to New York, where he went on acting before he was called by Anatole Litvak, the film's director, to play in “Confessions of a Nazi Spy”. Litvak himself had a similar trajectory: born in Kyiv to a family of Lithuanian Jews, he moved from the USSR to Germany, from there to France in 1933 and finally to the USA in 1937.

Jewish actor - top screen-nazi: Alexander Granach

Actors accepted their parts without any fuss - it was the job. They would only refuse parts in films if they thought they were too small for their status or if they feared being recognised in Germany or Austria, where they still had relatives - this was also a frequent reason for actors to have their names changed in film credits. Alexander Granakh ( a native of the village Werbowitz in the present-day Ivano-Frankivsk province of Ukraine) also played Nazis on more than one occasion. He had an acting background of his own: like Lorre, Granach had previously appeared in very expressive roles, not just the typical, but instead, he played in a unique individual manner. 

In the 1920s, he famously played Knock, Nosferatu's manservant, in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror”, and Judas Iscariot in Robert Wiene's “I.N.R.I”. Granach decided to flee Germany for the USSR, but things didn't work out too well; he barely escaped prosecution on espionage charges (it was a miracle that a letter from Feuchtwanger was found among Granach's possessions during a house search). From the USSR, he went to Zurich, where he appeared in a couple of productions, and then he set off for the States.

He then played communists in Lubitsch's films and had a supporting role of a Pole in “So Ends Our Night”, a 1941 adaptation of Remarque's “Love thy Neighbour”. When anti-Nazi films took off, he switched to playing Gestapo types - in Robert Stevenson's “Joan of Paris” and Fritz Lang's “Hangmen Also Die!” (based on a screenplay by Brecht). Like Royce, Granach joined the army as a volunteer during WWI, was taken prisoner and escaped. There Goes a Mensch," which chronicles his extraordinary journey through small towns and major capitals, emphasising his zest for life. The book culminates in 1936 with his portrayal of Shylock, a role he had always aspired to play and eventually did at the Kyiv State Jewish Theatre. Sadly, another war loomed on the horizon.