On “The Collaboration” by Ben Urwand *****

I preface Urwand's book by saying that there are some things I dislike about being human—and most especially being an adult. One of those things is ethical dilemmas, or more precisely the dilemma of choosing whether to follow one's own ethical standards or to follow the money or the boss. One might idealistically say that one should always follow one's ethical standards, but what if what one does for a living often brings you into conflict with those ethics, or brings to sets of ethical beliefs into conflict. It's easy to say one would never work at making missiles, but what of making guns, which have practical uses as well as illicit ones? This type of conundrum comes up often in artistic fields. You work as a producer of a music album, and you might disagree with the contents of a particular song. Do you allow the artist to have his or her say? Do you refuse and thus force the artist to compromise or possibly lose out on the artist's work completely? As an artist, do you cut the illicit song to sell the album or do you give up on the contract and the possible career to stay true to your art?

In the case of 1930s American movie studios, the CEOs chose wholly to remain wedded to the dollar and to making films, compromised films, rather than risk losing a chunk of their audience and the accompanying profit margin. And for that, Urwand provides a very damning portrait, a portrait that seems to show what is wrong with corporate America in general, that in the case of caring about people versus caring about money, the latter always wins. (But of course the issue isn't always as easy as that. Had studios condemned the actions of a particular nation, they'd have lost not only money and access to markets--those working for them would have lost jobs. At what point do you stop collaborating and start attacking? Where exactly is that border? Sometimes, it's hard to say.)

The issue at the heart of Urwand's book, the “collaboration” that takes place, is between Hollywood and Nazi Germany. “Collaboration,” may be something of a strong word. Hollywood didn't set out to make movies for the Nazis. However, it did compromise with the films it did make to appease Germany. At first, Urwand's case seems a bit weak. Even today, films are edited for particular foreign audiences. But as he pushes his case and moves us forward in history, the choices the heads of the studios make seem more and more dubious.

In the lead-up to World War II, Germany passed a law that studios that made movies that were anti-German could not only see those films banned but all their films. Germany would also squeeze others to avoid distributing the movie (and as it took territory would extend bans to the new lands). This resulted in Hollywood studios not only censoring scenes from movies but eventually abandoning some projects wholesale.

Most disturbing is the way that Jews were essentially written out of Hollywood films, even though the majority of the executives were Jewish. Nazis didn't want and wouldn't allow positive portrayals of Jews on screen; eventually, the Nazis didn't even want Jews working on movies that were to be released in Germany. So for a decade (and longer than that), the Jew disappeared from cinema.

Urwand spends time talking about which films were popular with the Nazis, which weren't, and which were not made because of them. Interesting passages discuss films that particular people took up trying to get made that never came into production because not only did the studios refuse to make them, but people in the industry refused to finance them or be involved with them. Even some Jewish organizations stepped in to keep such films from being made, so afraid were they that portraits of Jews might alienate others and contribute to anti-semitism.

A really interesting passage comes at the end, and it is this perhaps wherein Urwand's point seems the most damaging. After World War II and the defeat of the Germans, major studio executives took a tour of Germany. Their desire was that Germany no longer be allowed to make its own movies (they even urged Congress to ban film stock in Germany)--there were propaganda excuses for this, but essentially the real reason seems to have boiled down to having a captive audience to sell American movies to. Millions of Jews died in the war, and little was ever done for them by the industry; the only concern, it seems, was making money.