Liberties and constraints: émigré producers in Hollywood Motion Pictures from the 1930s to the early 1950s

Abstract

This essay focuses on four Jewish émigré film producers who were among the more than eight hundred film professionals from Germany and Central Europe who fled from Hitler to Hollywood from the 1930s to the early 1950s and found employment in the American film industry: Joe Pasternak (1901–1991), Eric Pommer (1889–1966), Sam Spiegel (1901–1985), and Seymour Nebenzal (1899–1961). The essay discusses the impact of their encounter with Hollywood in light of their career successes and failures, their engagement with American culture and society, their European background, and their Jewish identity. Particular attention is given to the concept of the creative producer, which formed the core of their self-understanding as well as to the public image the émigré producers created of themselves or that was disseminated by the media, and the role their German or Central European background, their Jewish roots, and their loyalty to America played in it.