23. (Part 1)
JEWISH
INFLUENCE IN THE MASS
MEDIA
"There is a new age of commercialism
in American media, with
its concentration of power and its widening breech
between the
public interest and the
interests of the very
few. In the coming
century, the questions
about the integrity of
America's information
and media ownership are
likely to be as fundamental
to society as
the purity of the water
we drink or the air we
breathe."
-- Thomas Maier, p.
13
"So here I am again in purse and
wallet country ... briefcases,
hold-alls, canvas football-bags
-- the swag that's forever
associated in my mind
with being Jewish. Cheap
and ugly objects,
made for others' tastes,
never one's own; Jews
always
second-guessing the gentiles,
making little Hollywoods,
little
Broadways, returning gentile
ideas to the gentiles,
giving a Jew's
idea of what is gentile
back to gentiles, wherever
they go ... If
that is a Jewish tune
to which the Lauren Bacall
and Faye
Dunaway look-alikes are
dancing in Beverly Hills,
then I wish
someone other than Jews
had written it."
-- Howard Jacobson,
Jewish author, 1995, p.
26, 208
"I wonder if any of our immigrant
grandparents could have
imagined that on the eve
of the 21st century, Jews
would
comprise 11 percent of the
United States Senate, dominate
the
entertainment industry as
never before, while at the
same time
boasting the most popular
professional wrestler as
well as the
most notorious spy in the
country?"
-- Jonathan Tobin, Jewish author, 1-4-99, p. 5
"Non-Jewish participants [in a
Los Angeles-area survey
sponsored by the Zionist women's organization
Hadassah],
most of whom did
not grow up with Jews or
know them personally,
had vivid resentments toward Jews
for their economic success,
seeing them as 'insular,' superior and
rich. They repeated the
canards that Jews own the media,
run the studios, own the
Wilshire/Fairfax district.
Jews were praised for their work ethic
and strong family solidarity, but were regarded
with suspicion,
as being important behind-the-scenes players,
lawyers who took advantage
of their clients and media manipulators
who slanted
the press in the O. J. Simpson case."
-- Marlene Adler Marks,
New Jersey Jewish News, 4-23-98, p.
5]
"It
just seems the whole world
is Jewish ... The Jewish
Connection
can be found in so many
people, places ...
and even animals."
-- M. H. Goldberg, Jewish author, 1976,
p. 105]
"Given
their skills and experiences,
Jews today have excellent
employment opportunities
... Jews are represented
among those men most active
in promoting reform in top-level
positions in banking, government,
and the media."
-- Michael Paul Sacks,
1998, p. 265, Jewish author
commenting about Jews in
Russia
"The main complaint heard [in Israel]
is that for some reason
Jews are
the imaginative leaders
in this field [movies] almost
everywhere
except Israel, and guess
why. The real 'why,' the
truly stinging
insinuation, is that in
Israel there are too many
Jews
who have to
deal with each other."
--
Jay Gonen, Israeli
author, 1975, p. 274
"Only the blind cannot see that
whoever controls the cultural
apparatus ... also controls
the destiny of the United
States and
everything in it."
-- Harold Cruse, Black intellectual, The
Crisis of
the Negro Intellectual, (in Kostelanetz, p. 107)
"Two-thirds of Americans,"
notes Bill McKibben, "tell
researchers they get 'most
of their information' about
the world from television
... [Most] American homes
have TVs ... on an average
of seven hours a day ... As
many as 12 percent of adults
(that is, one in eight) feel
they are physically addicted
to the set, watching an average
fifty-six hours a week." [MCKIBBEN,
p. 18] "Twenty years ago," noted Neil Postman
in 1985, "the question, Does
television shape culture or
merely reflect it? held considerable
interest for many scholars
and social critics. The question
has largely disappeared as
television has gradually become our culture." [POWERS/ROTHMAN/ROTHMAN,
p. 41]
"Most Americans are
basically," noted Jewish author
Herbert Schiller in 1973,
"though
unconsciously, trapped in
what amounts to a no-choice
informational
bind. Variety of opinions
on foreign and domestic
news
or, for that matter, local
community business, hardly
exists
in
the media. This results essentially
from the inherent identity
of
interests,
material and ideological,
of property-holders (in this
case
the
private owners of the communications
media), and from the
monopolistic
character of the communications
industry in general."
[SCHILLER,
H., p. 19]
The ABC, CBS, and NBC television and radio networks were
all controlled and developed
to power by Jews: David Sarnoff at NBC, William Paley at CBS, and Leonard Goldenson at ABC. As late as 1985, "Leonard Goldenson,
ABC's
founder, was still very much
in charge, and his network
... was still the Number One
in America." [WILLIAMS, p
5]
Paley, the second
mogul, achieved control of
CBS
in 1928 and headed it
for nearly the next sixty
years. Early investors in
the company included other
Jews of Paley's original Philadelphia
home, including Ike Levy and
Jerome Louchheim. One of Paley's
biographers noted that he
"had an insatiable appetite
for power [SMITH, S., p. 15]
... CBS shaped and reflected American society
to a greater degree than its
rivals ... The flickering
images on CBS represented the soul and sensibility
of Bill Paley." [SMITH, S.,
p. 16]
"Officially, [Sarnoff,
the third mogul] did not head
RCA until thirteen years after its
founding," notes Carl Drehr,
"actually, as commercial manager,
for all practical purposes
he ran it almost from the
beginning." [DREHR, C. p.
52]
By 1936 David Sarnoff
was both president of RCA
(later CEO) and chairman of
the board of NBC
(he founded NBC
in 1926 as a radio company).
[GOLDBERG, M. H., 1976, p.
162] His son Robert became
the CEO of NBC in 1955. In 1956, says a biographer,
Sarnoff "brought the issue
of nepotism [about the appointment
of his son to head NBC]
in the open." "When a man
stands in the way of his son's
progress," Sarnoff told an
NBC staff convention, "he is not thinking
of his son, he is thinking
of himself." [LYONS, p. 312-313]
"David Sarnoff," notes Edwin
Emery, "retired in 1970 to
the honorary chairmanship
of the Radio
Corporation of America,
which he had built. RCA
was a two-billion dollar business
and the largest communication
organization in the world.
His son Robert became both
President and Board Chairman
of RCA and father and son sat on the NBC board [a subsidiary of RCA]." [EMERY, p. 606]
"Both
Paley and Sarnoff," notes
Chaim Bermant, "have shown
a consistent interest in Jewish
affairs. The latter was for
many years on the board of
the Jewish Theological Seminary
in New York, and both he and
Paley have been generous supporters
of the Weizmann Institute
of Science [in Israel]." [BERMANT,
C., 1977, p. 105]
(The
pattern of television ownership
in England has been the same.
As Bermant observes: "In Britain,
until 1955, radio and television
were a state monopoly ...
In 1955, however, commercial
television was launched and
in time comprised three networks
and several smaller regional
companies. The networks, Associated-Rediffusion,
Associated Television
and Granada were headed
by Emil Littler, Lew Grade,
and Sidney Bernstein respectively,
all of whom had spent a lifetime
in show-business ... and all
three were Jewish.") [BERMANT,
C., 1977, p. 105]
Despite corporate
buyouts and the labyrinthian
nature of business takeovers,
restructuring, et al, Jewish
management and control over
the decades has remained dominant;
in 1993, for instance, the
Chief Executive Officers for
the three major American television
networks and the four largest
film studios were all Jews.
[MACDONALD, p. 129]
(In 1998, in a survey,
the Anti-Defamation League
solicited opinion about the
fact that "the presidents
of the three national television
networks, ABC, CBS, and NBC,
are Jewish." [ADL, NOV 1998]
In the film world, noted J.
J. Goldberg in 1996, "virtually
all the senior executives
at the major studios are Jews."
[GOLDBERG, JJ, p. 288]
While Jews make
up merely 2.5% of the American
population, in a 1990 issue
of Premiere magazine,
the first thirteen individuals
identified "as the most powerful
people in Hollywood," were
Jewish. [WHITFIELD, p. 83] In the same year, as noted by American
Film magazine, the chairmen
of eight of the top ten movie
and television companies were
Jewish. [STAUTH, p. 44] In an October 1994 issue of Vanity
Fair, ten of eighteen
deemed important faces in
the changing world of "media
megacorporations" were Jews.
[HALBERSTAM, p. 12]
In 1999, the Los
Angeles Jewish Times ran
an article entitled "Yes,
Virginia, Jews Do Control
the Media."
"Four of the largest
five entertainment giants,"
it announced, "are now run
or owned by Jews. Murdoch's
News
Corp (at number four) is the only gentile
holdout -- however Rupert
is as pro-Israel as any Jew,
probably more so." [LOS ANGELES
JEWISH TIMES, p. 14] (And who is the Executive Vice President at
the News Corporation?
Gary Ginsberg.) [WEINTRAUB,
B., 3-4-01] "Time-Warner,
Disney,
Viacom-CBS, News Corporation and Universal rule the entertainment world
in a way that the old Hollywood
studio chiefs only dreamed
of," noted the Jewish Week
in 1999, "And, after all the
deals and buyouts, four of
the five are run by Jews.
We're back to where we started,
bigger than ever." [GOLDBERG,
J.J., 9-17-99, 12]
Since
Australian-born Rupert Murdoch
is the lone non-Jew in the
aforementioned pantheon of
elite media moguls, it is
appropriate to examine his
relationship to the Jewish
community. As one of his biographers,
Thomas Kiernan, notes:
"The
most important impact of 1962
on Murdoch, though, was his
trip to the
United
States to buy television programs
... The chief executive who
impressed
Murdoch
more than any was New York's
Leonard Goldenson, the head
of the
American
Broadcasting Company ...
At the time, Goldenson was
turning the
small,
feisty ABC television
network into a legitimate
rival of the twin Goliaths,
CBS
and NBC. His method
was to pursue 'down-market'
programming, a
combination
of entertainment and news
shows designed to appeal to
the coarser
tastes
of the American public. ABC
became known as the 'schlock
network
during
the 1950s ... Goldenson's
approach to television in
America was similar
to
Murdoch's newspapers in Australia
[p. 75-76] ... [Murdoch] and
Goldenson
became
fast friends ... In time,
Goldenson became Murdoch's
newest mentor ...
Goldenson's
Jewishness also had a significant
impact on Murdoch ... As for
the
stereotype of Jews being financially
aggressive, brash, devious,
cutthroat,
pushy,
and concerned only with making
money -- well, he certainly
possessed
many
of those traits too ...[p.
76-77] ... Goldenson, like
many of his
ambitious
New York counterparts, made
no effort to disguise his
Jewishness.
If
anything, they wore it on
their sleeves, mostly out
of their pride in Israel.
In
a place like New York, it
was almost fashionable to
be a Jew in the 1950s,
especially
if one's ambitions were focused
on achieving a niche in the
city's
establishment
... [p. 77] It was easy for
him to identify with these
New York
Jewish
counterparts. When the time
came for him to make his permanent
move
into the United States fifteen
years later, it was to them
that he would
turn
largely for support. And they
would respond eagerly, but
not just because
Murdoch
represented a source of busness.
They felt they could 'trust'
him
on
Israel. Leonard Goldenson
had not let a meeting with
Murdoch go by
during
his trips to New York without
giving him a dissertation
about Israel
and
its imporance in the global
scheme of things." [KIERNAN,
T., 1986, p. 78]
"What binds [the Hollywood
elite] is a sense of interlocking
ventures and relationships,"
said a Jewish observer, William
Isaacson, Time Inc.'s
media editor, in 1994, "The
old establishment was a club.
The New Establishment is a
network." [CASH, p. 15] In
a 1980s study, 59% of the
directors, writers, and producers
of the fifty most economically
successful movies produced
between 1965 and 1982 were
also found to be Jewish. [LIPSET,
p. 4]
(See Martin Greenberg's
The Jewish Lists for
a sampling of such people).
As early as 1936, one
study found that "of 85 names
engaged in [movie] production,
53 are Jews. And the Jewish
advantage holds in prestige
as well as numbers." [GABLER,
p. 2]
In 1980, film
scholar Patricia Erens noted
that "the list [of Jewish
screenwriters in Hollywood]
is long. A recent survey indicated
that seventy to eighty per
cent of the Screen Writers
Guild was composed of Jews,
a trend dating back to the
1930s." [ERENS, P., 1980,
p. 116] (Prominent among them
were Julius and Phil Epstein,
Carl Foreman, William Goldman,
Ben Hecht, Garson Kanin, Howard
Koch, Abraham Polansky, Herman
Mankiewicz, Morris Riskin
and Budd Schulberg). "Composing
[music for movies]," adds
Erens, "has been another area
of high concentration for
Jewish artists." In this genre,
Erens notes Burt Bacharach,
Irving Berlin, Elmer Bernstein,
Bernard Herrman, Marvin Hamlisch,
Jerome Kern, Alfred Newman,
Andre Previn, Miklos Rozsa,
and Max Steiner. [ERENS, P.,
1980, p. 116]
(Great Britain? "Writing
a musical is the most intimate
thing you can do without taking
your clothes off," noted England's
Jewish Chronicle in
2002, "So says Britain's most
prolific [and Jewish] lyricist,
Don Black. He should know.
Currently the favored lyric
partner of Andrew Lloyd Webber,
Black, who grew up in Hackney
and whose uncle was a rabbi,
has worked with some of the
greatest names in popular
music -- people like Elmer
Bernstein, Quincy Jones, John
Barry, Jule Styne, Maurice
Jarre. The list is almost
endless, and this week sees
Black's 18th musical, 'Romeo
and Juliet,' open in London's
West End.") [JEWISH CHRONICLE,
11-1-02, p. 44]
"Hollywood," notes
film critic Lester Friedman,
"was a town dominated by Jews
from its earliest days down
to the present time." [FRIEDMAN,
L., 1982, p. vii] As early
as 1925, Samuel "Roxy" Rothafel
"was the leading movie theatre
impresario in America." [GABLER,
N., 1988, p. PHOTO SECTION
CAPTION] He was also known for his movie theatre
"palaces." Grauman's Chinese
Theatre, the iconic site where
Hollywood stars dipped their
hands and feet into fresh
cement, was owned by Sid Grauman,
also Jewish.
Early Jewish film directors are many,
including Billy Wilder, Eric
Von Stroheim, Josef Von Sternberg,
Ernst Lubitsch, William Wyler,
Hal Wallis, William Wanger,
Robert Wise, Rouben Mamoulian,
Robert Rossen, George Cukor,
Sidney Lumet, and Cecil B.
DeMille (who had a Jewish
mother). In later years came
Peter Bogdanovich (half-Jewish),
William Friedkin, Stanley
Kubrick, Arthur Penn, and
many others. More recent Jewish
academy
award-winning directors
include Sydney Pollack, Stephen
Spielberg and Barry Levinson.
Jewish influence in movie-making
also has a strong international
complexion: Polish-born Roman
Polanski (Chinatown;
and Czech-born Milos Forman
(Amadeus) are among
the many prominent movie directors
who are also Jewish. Jews
were also prominent, even
dominant, in the pre-World
War II years in the German
film world (from which many
Jewish filmmakers -- the likes
of Fritz Lang and Otto Preminger -- moved to America). In Russia, "Mikhail Romm," notes Jewish
scholar Barnet Litvinoff,
"[was] considered the greatest
Soviet filmmaker since his
fellow-Jew, [Sergei] Eisenstein."
[LITVINOFF, B., p. 86]
As Louis Rapoport
notes:
"[Joseph Stalin] was
not pleased by the fact that
there was a highly
disproportionate number
of Jews in the Soviet film
industry, as in
the other arts: for
example, directors Sergei
Eisenstein, Mikhail Romm,
Mark Donsky, Leonid
Lukov, and Yuli Reissman;
actors and actresses
Faina Raneskaya, Mark
Berness, Daniel Segal, Solomon
Mikhoels, and
Benjamin Zuskin; scriptwriters
Vasily Grossman (the novelist-journalist)
and Yevgency Gabrilovich;
and cinematographer Boris
Volchok."
[RAPOPORT, L., 1990,
p. 82]
"The motion picture
industry," notes Charles Silberman,
"was largely a Jewish invention."
[SILBERMAN, p. 147]
"All the large Hollywood
companies, with the exception
of United Artists (a distribution company
established by Hollywood actors
who feared the big producers
would restrict their artistic
freedom) were founded and
controlled by Jews," notes
the Encyclopedia Judaica,
[United
Artists, however, was
controlled by Jews later]
... An even more important
influence in the film industry
... were the independent producers,
among whom Jews were in the
majority." [ENCY JUD, p. 445,
449]
In the earliest years
of the movie and entertainment
industry, Jewish filmmakers
often popularized negative
images of the Jewish community.
"Some of the worst offenders,"
says Nathan Belth, "were themselves
Jews." [BELTH, p. 46] The
"so-called 'Jew movies' were
produced at the rate of one
every two week." [BELTH, p.
50] These centered on highly
unflattering Jewish characters
-- smugglers, robbers, lustful
"Yiddish sports," and miserly
swindlers. In 1916, the Anti-Defamation
League convinced Carl Laemmle
(the Jewish head of Universal film studios) to avoid making
any movie that "held Jews
up to ridicule or contempt
... By 1920 the policy enunciated
by Laemmle became the general
practice among movie makers."
[BELTH, p. 50] (Even
Jewish comedian Jack Benny's
"tightwad" persona was a "Jewish
character.") [FAINBOLD, N., 6-5-98]
"Despite
the powerful Jewish role in
[early] motion pictures,"
says Milton Plesur,
"that
industry also had its anti-Semitic
features. Whenever a producer
wished to
depict
a betrayer of public trust,
a hard-boiled, usurious money
lender, a
crooked
gambler, a grafter, a depraved
firebug, a white slaver, or
other
villains
of one kind or another, the
charcter was often represented
as a Jew ...
When
one of the many theatres owned
by Jews boycotted a movie
with the
usual
stereotypes, Rebecca's
Wedding Day (Chicago,
1916), Hollywood
got
the message and agreed to
cease producing anti-Semitic
films."
[PLESUR,
M., 1982, p. 34]
Jews have long been
active in establishing themselves
and networking throughout
the American theatrical and
entertainment worlds.
"The Broadway musical,"
says Charles Silberman, "generally
considered the most characteristically
American theatrical form,
has been largely an American-Jewish
creation ... Composers and
lyricists who have given the
Broadway musical its distinctive
shape have almost all been
Jews -- people such as Jerome
Kern, Oscar Hammerstein, Ira
Gershwin, Richard Rogers and
Lorenz Hart, Rogers and Hammerstein,
and more recently Frederick
Loewe, Marvin Hamlisch, and
Stephen Sondheim. [SILBERMAN,
p. 147] The team of Alan Jay
Lerner and Fritz Loewe produced
Brigadoon, My Fair
Lady, Camelot,
Paint Your Wagon, Gigi,
and other major musical plays.
"The wellspring of the American
musical," says Gene Lees,
"is to be found in the opera-bouffee
of Jacques Offenbach, a German
Jew by birth though he lived
and worked in Paris and his
shows were in French." [LEES,
G., 1990, p. 12] "With the
exception of Cole Porter,"
notes the London Guardian,
"almost every writer of musicals
in the pre-rock [music] era
was Jewish, even if their
names sometimes suggested
otherwise." [ARNOT, C., 10-4-2000,
p. 6]
"At the turn
of the century," Jewish performers
Lewis Fields and Joe Weber
"were the most beloved and
ambitious of comedy teams."
[FIELDS/FIELDS, p. xiii] Vaudeville
star Sophie Tucker "raised
several million dollars for
Jewish causes." [ANTLER, J.,
199,7, p. 140(d)] Unknown
to most Americans, an estimated
80% of America's professional
comedians in recent history
were/are Jewish, [PLESUR,
M., 1982, p. 170; SLAVIN,
p. 18] from Milton Berle (Berlinger),
Jack Benny (Benjamin Kubelsky),
Woody Allen (Alan Konigsberg),
Eddie Cantor (Isidore Iskowitz),
Fanny Brice (Fania Borach),
Pee Wee Herman (Paul Rubenfeld),
Soupy Sales (Milton Hines),
Joey Bishop (Joseph Abraham
Gottleib), Buddy Hackett (Leonard
Hacker), Alan King (Irwin
Kniberg), Gene Wilder (Eugene
Silverstein), Gilda Radner,
Don Rickles, Joan Rivers (Molinsky),
Jerry Lewis (Joseph Levitch),
Mel Brooks, Pinky Lee, Billy
Crystal, Totie Fields, Red
Buttons (Aaron Chwatt), Allen
Sherman, Henny Youngman, Shecky
Green, Zero Mostel, David
Steinberg, Shelly Berman,
Jack Carter, Mort Sahl, Myron
Cohen, and Rodney Dangerfield
(Jack Cohen) to the Marx Brothers
and Three Stooges (Moe and
Curly Howard/Hurwitz, and
Larry Fineman). "Nearly all
the American comedians and
comediennes whose names have
lingered," says Chaim Bermant,
"from Fanny Brice to the Marx
Brothers, and from Jack Benny
to Lenny Bruce, have been
Jews. If Hollywood was a Jewish
industry, no part of it was
so exclusively Jewish as laughter."
[BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 101]
One
of the best known comedy clubs
in metropolitan Los Angeles
is "Budd Friedman's Improvisation
in Hollywood." [KRASSNER,
P., 1993, p. 286]
Even
in Australia, there was the
Jewish comic Harry Van Der
Sluice (1892-1954): "Using
the stage name Roy Rene, he
became Australia's most celebrated
comedian, portraying the character
known as 'Mo.' With his 'Jewish'
nose, humour, gesture and
stage make-up -- a black ...
beard and moustache -- Roy
Rene resembled the personification
of an anti-semitic caricaturist's
dream." [RUBINSTEIN, H., 1988,
p. 185]
"When
I started doing stand-up comedy
in New York in 1978," says
Mark Schiff,
"we created our own little
shtetl. All I saw every
night, either walking the
streets
or in a comedy club, was mostly
other Jewish comedians. About
80 percent
of the comics I worked with
were Jewish. I personally
knew a therapist that
was treating 10 different
Jewish comics at the same
time." [SCHIFF, M.,
11-16-01]
Lenny (Leonard Schneider)
Bruce's humor, says Barry
Rubin, portrays "almost everyone
[as] really Jewish, meaning
different, oppressed, alienated.
Gentiles were hypocrites,
secret anti-Semites." [RUBIN,
p. 110]
John Stewart (Leibowitz)
"is Generation X's Mort Sahl
and Lenny Bruce -- a comedian
who unapologetically filters
his political satire through
a Jewish sensibility ... he
sometimes refers to Christians
as 'you people' ..." [FORWARD,
1-5-01]
Comedian Jackie Mason is even
an ordained rabbi. He was
an early supporter of political
racist Meir Kahane. "Democratic
principles shouldn't apply
to Israel like they do to
America," he told a Jewish
journalist. [FRIEDMAN, R.,
1990, p. 222] Early in her media career,
talk-show host Sally Jessy
Raphael interviewed Mason
on a live radio broadcast:
"I was just
beginning to feel that the
interview was going pretty
well
when all of
a sudden he reached under
my sweater, unhooked my
bra, and cupped
my breasts in his hands. I
was repelled. I was shocked.
I was scared.
I was dumbfounded. But there
was absolutely nothing I
could do about
it but try to get the interview
over as fast as I could. I
was on live
radio, after all." [RAPHAEL,
S., 1990, p. 21]
George Burns
recalls the political activism
of fellow Jewish comedians
Georgie Jessel, Eddie Cantor
and Jack Benny:
"George
had just come back after raising
something like $25,000,000
in bonds for the new
nation of Israel. 'That's
a lot of money, Georgie,'
I said, 'How'd you
raise so much?
'It
wasn't that difficult, Natty,"
he explained, "I just left
no Cohen
unturned ... [BURNS,
G., 1989, p. 178] One night,
I remember, [Jack
Benny] had dinner
at Cantor's house and Eddie
started telling him about
Israeli Bonds. Jack
made out a check right there
for $25,000." [BURNS,
G., 1989, p. 203]
During the 1950s
and 1960s, notes Irv Saposnik,
"Sid Caesar,
Alan King, Morey Amsterdam,
Jack Carter, Buddy
Hackett,
Sam Levenson, Jackie Mason,
Jan Murray, and Joey Bishop
(among
others) became household fixtures.
Suddenly, Jewish
comedians
were everywhere: Milton Berle
on the Texaco Star
Theatre,
Eddie Cantor on the Colgate
Comedy Hour, Sid Caesar
and company
on Your Show of Shows,
and a whole comic avalanche
on the
Ed Sullivan Show ...
Psychoanalysis and stand-up
comedy
offer
a distinct way of looking
at the world. Both present
the abnormal
