Europeans in Hollywood

Don Whittemore and Philip Alan Cecchettini. Passport to Hollywood. New York: McGraw Hill, 1976, 558 pp. John Baxter. The Hollywood Exiles. London: Macdonald and Jane's, 1976. 242 pp. Almost from its beginnings, American cinema has been able to lure some of the finest foreign talent—writers, directors, actors and cameramen—to work for it, sometimes (most notably with actors and cameramen) putting their abilities to good use, and just as frequently (especially where writers and directors are concerned) wasting, distorting, frustrating or neglecting the very qualities that brought these figures to the forefront in the first place. For every Lubitsch, Curtiz, Wilder or Hitchcock who adapted quickly to the demands of Hollywood and, in many cases, went on to produce work of high quality, there are two or three Sjostroms, Christensens, Eisensteins or Renoirs who were rarely allowed to work on films that suited their particular creative abilities and who often ended by retiring from Hollywood, baffled, angry and frustrated—in some cases to direct few films, or even none at all, for the remainder of their careers

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Hollywood · Media studies · Movie theater · Sociology · Cinema and Media Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society