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German exiles in Hollywood
Several English language books have discussed the influence of German-speaking emigres on Hollywood in the 1 930s and 1940s. Yet, with few exceptions, AngloAmerican literature has tended to ignore the specific characteristics of what has elsewhere been termed a German exile cinema l preferring to present a hagiography of such well-known directors as Fritz Lang, Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger and Ernst Lubitsch, usually mixed in with other foreign nationals like Alfred Hitchcock and Victor Seastrom.2 If German exiles are mentioned at all, for example Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, then it is only to decry their mistreatment at the hands of the crass Hollywood establishment? At the same time, vague suggestions have been made concerning the influence of German emigres on such genres as the horror film and film noir. In point of fact, a systematic study of the influence of German emigres on any American film genre has yet to be published in English.4
The emigration to Hollywood of Germanspeaking filmmakers after 1933 is a specific historical phenomenon. Almost all of these emigres came to the United States in the years between 1933 and 1941, not because they necessarily wanted to, but because their lives depended on it. Over 1500 German or German-speaking Central European directors, writers, producers, actors, technicians and other white-collar workers who had worked in the film industries of Berlin, Munich, Vienna and Budapest were blacklisted by the National Socialists for no other reason than they were Jewish. Forced to become refugees without a visible means of support, they worked where they could in Europe, and eventually found their way to Hollywood. As middle-class Jews, they sought to assimilate as quickly as possible, without a thought of returning to their former homeland - unlike political refugees who seek to overthrow the governments that forced them into exile and return to their homelands. Once in America, they quickly learned a new language and sought to 'become Americans'. Rather than call attention to their special status, they emphasised their Americaness: Billy Wilder and Fritz Lang, for example, both consistently maintained in public interviews that they never spoke another word of German after coming to these shores, while they in fact continued to speak German at home for decades with...