The Good, the Bad, and the Fatal

The Good, Bad, and Fatal: Ben Urwand on Hollywood Moguls and Hitler Ben Urwand, The Collaboration: Hollywood's Pact with Hitler. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2013. 327 pp., ISBN 978-0-674-72474-7 (hc). US $26.95.ABSTRACTThis review-essay examines Ben Urwand's study of film censorship and crediting policies applied by heads of Hollywood film studios, as well as by Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) and its subsidiary office, Production Code Administration (PCA), during period immediately preceding Hitler's accession to power in 1933 until shortly after outbreak of World War II in 1939. Urwand's book is examined alongside Thomas Doherty's similar study, Hollywood and Hitler: 1933-1939, and in light of Doherty's strong objections to Urwand's concept of collaboration. Both books portray key decisions leading to almost complete omission of Jews as film characters throughout 1930s.Ben Urwand's book opens with as good a portrait of totalitarian idiocy as one find:Eleven men were sitting in a screening room in Berlin [in 1933]. Only a few of them were Nazis. At front of room was Dr. Ernst Seeger, chief censor from long before Hitler came to power. Next to Seeger were his assistants: a conductor, a philosopher, an architect, and a pastor. . . . The [American] movie they were about to watch . . . was called King Kong. . . .They watched an enormous gorilla fall in love with a beautiful woman and then fall off Empire State Building. One of characters muttered something about beauty and beast. . . .Dr. Seeger looked over at first expert witness, Professor Zeiss from German Health Office. In your expert opinion, Seeger asked, could this picture be expected to damage health of normal spectators? . . .Zeiss erupted. am astounded . . . that a German company would dare to seek permission for a film that can only be damaging to its viewers. It is not merely incomprehensible but indeed an impertinence to show such a film, for this film is nothing less than an attack on nerves of german people! (1-2; emphasis in original)Enervation, it should be noted, was a powerful phenomenon in that era, when many-on both sides of Great War (World War I)-who had returned from service in battlefield found themselves unable to describe what they had been through. Their experience remained mired in conflict's front-line trenches, along with multitude of stray bullets, scattered shrapnel, and bodies of comrades. Walter Benjamin, one of great thinkers of era, in his 1933 essay Experience and Poverty, found in their silence, their paralysis of tongue, an apt metaphor for destruction of experience more generally which modern era had brought about.1 But Professor Zeiss's reference to the nerves of German people is wielded clumsily and ideologically. The deliberations continued. According to Professor Zeiss: My judgment has nothing to do with technical achievements of film, which I recognize. Nor do I care what other countries think is good for their people. For German people, this film is unbearable (2; emphasis in original).Professor Zeiss was challenged by Dr. Schulte, assistant practitioner at a mental hospital in Berlin: In every instance where film seems dangerous . . . it is in fact merely ridiculous. We must not forget that we are dealing with an American film produced for American spectators, and that German public is considerably more critical. Even if it is admitted that kidnapping of blonde woman by a legendary beast is a delicate matter, it still does not go beyond borders of permissible. Psychopaths or women, . . . who be thrown into a panic by film, must not provide criteria for this (ibid.; emphasis in original).With committee members at an impasse, they postponed their decision on whether film King Kong, epic of a giant ape's infatuation with a blonde American woman, was suitable entertainment for German public

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