What Our Immigration Did for Hollywood, and Vice Versa

Abstract

Compared with what was to come later, the first immigration wave from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary to Hollywood looks like a mere trickle. It was important enough though, to be mentioned and analyzed in all the history books of the American film. In the days of the silent movies, there was one way for film people to go to Hollywood via a home-made success. To quote one classic example: when VarietW scored a solid hit not only in Europe but before American audiences as well, the whole team of its makers, including the producer (Erich Pommer), the director (A.E. Dupont) and the featured actors (Emil Jannings, Lia de Putti, etc.) all of a sudden found themselves with fat contracts in the capital of moviedom. Of the directors thus rocketed over the ocean, Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Curtiz, (Kertesz) and William Dieterle have been advancing steadily since and are more than ever on top today. F. W. Murnau died in an auto accident; A.E. Dupont has become a successful agent; Ludwig Berger, Lothar Mendes, Alexander Korda, Pommer and Berthold Viertel returned to Europe. Whereas Berger stayed there, Korda (dividing his time between London and Hollywood) and Pommer are back on their producing jobs here as is Mendes on the megaphone; Viertel has taken to writing wonderful poetry and lately retired to New York. All of the actors, however, who had come to Hollywood in those bygone days, were forced by the talkies to return to their homelands. Only Pola Negri and the late Conrad