This program took place on February 12th, 2025 at 6:30pm Eastern at the Center for Jewish History. Program partners include NYU’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism.
Michael Berkowitz, author of Hollywood’s Unofficial Film Corps: American Jewish Moviemakers and the War Effort and moderator Avinoam Patt joined us for a discussion around the often uncredited influence of Jewish moviemakers during World War II. Initially perusing a project on Jewish photographers in the United States Signal Corps, while working in the archives Berkowitz began to notice photographers repeated references to work in motion picture film. Upon further investigation, no credited materials could be immediately located. What followed was a historian’s hunt at multiple archives and museums to track down the mysterious missing footage. Ultimately Berkowitz uncovered a story deserving of its own book.
As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sought to use the power of Hollywood to galvanize Americans around the war effort, he enlisted the support of expert filmmakers to blur the lines between entertainment “studio” films and “government” or propaganda films. FDR’s opponents felt he was too “cozy with Jews” and too “cozy with Hollywood” and the concern was that a pronounced Jewish involvement in the government films would create the perception that the war was being fought for Jewish interests. As such, many of the Jewish photographers and filmmakers involved in the projects purposefully went uncredited, the unity of the American public was thought to be of primary importance.
Berkowitz and Patt’s compelling conversation looks at key players of this unofficial film corps and the lasting, though anonymous, impact they have had on American cinema history.
Topics covered in this program: World War II, FDR, Harpo Marx, Leo Rosten, “Why We Fight” series, Film Division of the Office of Facts and Figures, Louis Brownlow, uniformed film workers, Budd Schulberg, footage of Nazi atrocities and the Holocaust, propaganda supporting the allyship of the United States with the Soviet Union, Red Scare, All in the Family, Leni Riefenstahl.
