Uninspired, Joyless Jewish Exhibit
Lawrence Bender, prominent producer, has condemned the exhibition as “uninspired”, “joyless” and full of bias for its derogatory language about the industry’s leading legends.
He said: “You think ‘Oh, we’re back in the shtetl, we’re back in the ghetto,’” speaking after seeing the Hollywoodland show at the museum owned by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Ampas), the organizsation behind the annual Oscars.
Harry Cohn, the co-founder of Columbia Pictures, is accused in information placards of being a “tyrant and predator” who modelled his office after Mussolini’s, “built to intimidate anyone who entered”.
Harry Warner: Frugal and Womanizer
Harry Warner of the Warner Brothers is described as “frugal” and “womanizer”, while Carl Laemmle, the president of Universal, is called out for nepotism.
Double Standard
The criticism was echoed by Patrick Moss, the television writer, who said: “The exhibit is a lazy and insidious condemnation of Hollywood’s founders,” writing in an outraged letter to Ampas: “The focus is not on the founders’ achievements, but on their sins.”
He also said the exhibition was “complicit in the hatred of American Jews, by using anti-Semitic tropes and dog-whistles”.
Ironically, the display had been intended to correct the impression that the immigrant founders of the film industry had been completely written out of the story when the Academy Museum opened in 2021.
It prompted the chief executive of America’s anti-defamation league to ask “Where are the Jews?” when he visited, while John Goldwyn, the producer whose grandfather Sam founded MGM, called the omission of the founders’ contribution “an egregious oversight”, adding, “If you’re going to have a museum…that celebrates arguably the most significant art form of the 20th century, how is it possible not to acknowledge the Jewish men who started it all?”
In response, the Academy Museum promised that Hollywoodland, which opened in May, would comprehensively tell the story of several seminal studio heads in the first permanent exhibition in the museum.
Jacqueline Stewart, who just lost her job as museum director, and Dara Jaffe, its curator, have borne the brunt of the criticism for the exhibit.
They claimed that the show would get prominent space in the popular area where visitors had previously paid to be filmed picking up their own Oscars Awards in a simulated ceremony.
Small, Dark Place
But its location has been condemned as small, dark and unimpressive, “up on the third floor where nobody is going to see it.”
AMPAS has acknowledged receiving letters of criticism and promised to “move quickly and thoughtfully” in addressing concerns.
