"[There is a] new age of commercialism in American media, with

In 1985 Laurence Tisch, Chairman of the Board of New York University, former President of the Greater New York United Jewish Appeal, an active supporter of Israel, and a man of many other roles, started buying stock in the CBS television network through his company, the Loews Corporation. The Tisch family, worth an estimated 4 billion dollars, has major interests in hotels, an insurance company, Bulova, movie theatres, and Loliards, the nation's fourth largest tobacco company (Kent, Newport, True cigarettes). Brother Andrew Tisch has served as a Vice-President for the UJA-Federation, and as a member of the United Jewish Appeal national youth leadership cabinet, the American Jewish Committee, and the American Israel Political Action Committee, among other Jewish organizations. By September of 1986 Tisch's company owned 25% of the stock of CBS and he became the company's president. And Tisch -- now the most powerful man at CBS -- had strong feelings about television, Jews, and Israel. The CBS news department began to live in fear of being compromised by their boss -- overtly, or, more likely, by intimidation towards self-censorship -- concerning these issues. "There have been rumors in New York for years," says J. J. Goldberg, "that Tisch took over CBS in 1986 at least partly out of a desire to do something about media bias against Israel." [GOLDBERG, p. 297]

The powerful President of a major American television network dare not publicize his own active bias in favor of another country, of course. That would look bad, going against the grain of the democratic traditions, free speech, and a presumed "fair" mass media. And if it ever became clear that the CBS news department was in danger of turning into an ad agency for Israel, the resulting controversy would probably defeat Tisch's purpose in helping them. But word leaked out, that CBS news under Laurence Tisch lived in fear of being ethically compromised.

During the Palestinian Intifada (the stone-throwing revolt by Palestinian Arabs against Israeli military rule), a birthday party was held by Jewish TV personality Barbara Walters and her husband Merv Adelson for Jewish Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. Other invited Jewish guests included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and U.S. News and World Report publisher, Mortimer Zuckerman.

According to Roone Arledge, the President of ABC News, who was also a guest at the party, a long and heated debate arose about television's depiction of the Israeli military's attempts to crush Arab rioting. CBS President Tisch argued that TV should effectively censor reports on what was happening, that "television ought to be banned in the occupied territories "because it portrayed Israeli soldiers in a bad light. Kissinger had argued the same a few weeks earlier, publicly concerned that "TV cameras incited riots and tarnished Israel's reputation." Arledge vehemently argued that the media's ethical stand should be to be present and report whatever was happening, when and wherever possible.

Barbara Walters and Mortimer Zuckerman covered for Tisch and they all denied that he took such an irresponsibly biased, and disturbing, position. According to (Jewish) reporter Ken Auletta, however, eight other people at the party testified -- five to him personally -- that Tisch did. Jewish guests at the party, led by Tisch, also attacked Arledge's ABC anchorman (who was not present) Peter Jennings, for being -- as they saw it -- too "anti-Israel. "Several guests," writes Auletta, "came away deeply distressed by Tisch's behavior. What disturbed them was that the President of CBS seemed to say that the perceived interests of Israel took precedence over the interests of CBS News. Tisch's reflex, they felt, was to defend Israel, not his network; he was blaming Jennings and the press for reporting Israel's excesses, not Israel committing them. " [AULETTA p. 488-490]

Tisch's strong emotions about Israel were exhibited in other ways. After CBS's popular news program, 60 Minutes, did a story about the Jewish lobbying group AIPAC (the American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Tisch was furious with his employees because the program made Jews, to his eyes, look too powerful. (Curiously, long-time CBS reporter, David Schoenburn, notes that both 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt, and 60 Minutes reporter, Mike Wallace (both Jewish), "were personal friends of Larry Tisch." [SCHOENBURN, p. 6]) Tisch reportedly even called the reporter of the AIPAC story, Wallace, a self-hating Jew. Tom Wyman, the non-Jewish CEO of CBS, joined in the fray, at another party. He was reported by Newsweek to have complained "that Tisch's enthusiasm for 'pro-Israel' causes and charities might compromise the independent reporting of CBS news." [AULETTA, p. 164]

This attitude by powerful Jewish media figures reflects a certain tradition, and recalls the case in the late 1940s of Adolph Schwimmer who "became the Jewish state's prime [arms] smuggler in America." Among his close contacts was Herman "Hank" Greenspun, the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Greenspun once noted that he was a Zionist "before I could even identify a picture of George Washington." [RAVIV, p. 40] During Israel's "War of Independence" in 1948, Greenspun traveled to "Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Panama, where he organized false documents, bank guarantees, and arms shipments to Israel." [RAVIV, p. 41] "Hank Greenspun," notes Alex Pelle,

"embarked on an incredible odyssey, plundering a naval depot in

Hawaii, seizing a private yacht at gunpoint near Wilmington, California,

and posing in Mexico as a confidential agent of Generalissimo Chiang

Kai-shek's government. A single driving purpose generated over the

span of seven months all those seemingly unrelated events: to fill the

holds of a ship ... with six thousand tons of contraband rifles, machine

guns, howitzers, cannons, and ammunition, destined for the port of

Haifa and Israel's beleaguered Jews. In so doing, Hank Greenspun

had violated the United States' Neutrality Act, the Export Control

Law, and Presidential Proclamation 2776." Thanks to Jewish lobbying

pressure, Greenspun was pardoned by President John F. Kennedy

in 1961. [GREENSPUN, H., 1966, p. ix]

*********************************************

In 1989 the Time Inc. corporate media giant merged with Warner Communications to become Time-Warner Communications, the largest media organization at the time in the world. (Sigmund Warburg, an internationally renowned Jewish banker who represented the London Daily Mirror Group, then the largest newspaper company on earth, had years earlier tried to buy Time, Inc., to no avail). [CLURMAN, p. 31] When the dust had settled this time, Steve Ross, a Jewish entrepreneur who started out working for a funeral home, sat astride the monstrous merger, the highest paid corporate executive in America. His $39.1 million in 1990 as co-CEO, sole chairman and chief decision-maker, was 1,363 per cent above the corporate average. [CLURMAN p. 304] The merger, notes Richard Clurman, "was the creation of the biggest media empire, the corporate interfaith marriage of the sixty-seven-year-old Time Inc., a WASPy blue-chip American institution, for years the largest combined magazine and book publisher on earth, to Steven J. Ross's poker-chip Warner Communications, Inc., the pop entertainment conglomerate whose movies and sounds of music ricochet around the world." The Time Inc. stable included such venerable publishing mainstays as Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, People, Money, Time-Life Books, the Little-Brown publishing house, HBO (long time chief: Michael Fuchs), the Book of the Month Club, and television stations. It even held a 20.5% share in the ownership of Turner Broadcasting (of CNN fame) and 10.5% voting power in it. Warner contributed the likes of Lorimar Television, Atco-East/West Records, Atlantic Recording, Quincy Jones Entertainment, Elektra Communications, DC Comics, as well as the Batman movie, Rod Stewart, Madonna, Bugs Bunny, and the rest of its vast movie-music empire. (By 1997 Time-Warner even owned the rights to the photographs, other images, and words of Martin Luther King, Jr.) In his earlier years, Ross had revitalized Warner-Seven Arts by buying cable-TV monopolies, as well as major interests in the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, Ralph Lauren perfume and cosmetics, and other investments. A month after the Time-Warner merger, federal bank regulators instituted new restrictions to hinder such "highly leveraged transactions." [CLURMAN, p. 33]

Steve Ross (whose father changed his surname from Rechnitz, and whose former stepfather, William Paley, for decades controlled CBS) was widely known as a man of dubious ethics and caused consternation among many journalists at Time that such a man was about to take them all over. He has been an "unindicted co-conspirator" in a 1979 United States Justice Department case investing underworld money laundering operation in suburban New York City. His "top lieutenant" at Warners took the fall and admitted guilt; likewise, Warners' assistant treasurer (who handled Ross's personal accounts) was also convicted of fraud and perjury. [CLURMAN, p. 29] In earlier years Ross had merged his funeral home operation with a parking lot company, Kinney National Service, which had its own "unsavory reputation." "There were rumors that Kinney was mobbed up [i.e., tainted by organized crime]," notes Fred Goodman, "Caesar Kinney, Kinney's executive vice president and original owner of Kinney's parking lot business, was the son of Emmanuel Kinney, a well-known New Jersey gambler." [GOODMAN, p. 137-138] (In 1969 Ross and the Kinney company bought Warner-Seven Arts from Elliott Hyman for $400 million. [Sam Kinney had been head of production; Benny Kalmensan was the number two man.] For his part, Hyman's earlier company was Associated Artists Productions, which had purchased the entire pre-1948 Warners film library in 1956. Associated Artists' chairman was Louis Chesler, who, notes Andrew Yule, was a man "with established ties to Mafia boss Meyer Lansky. Nor was this AA's only shady connection. Its vice-president, Morris 'Mac' Schwebel, would later be convicted of criminal activity." [YULE, p. 176])

The 1989 merger of the two super companies, Time and Warner, also raised issues of conflict of interest. How could Time, Fortune, and other magazines now be expected to give honest reviews and evaluations of Warners movies, records, and other enterprises? Richard Clurman notes the fact, for instance, that an August 1991 Fortune article called "The Deal Decade: Verdict of the 80s" ... "sharply criticized leveraged excesses deal by deal, with the names and numbers of the dealmakers but it skipped one of the highest profiles of them all, the Time-Warners merger." [CLURMAN, p. 305]

Among the central negotiators in the mega-merger was the Jewish Vice-President of Time, Inc., Jerry Levin, "chief tactician for Time's merger with Warner," and Ed Aboodi, an Israeli-born "financial consultant" for Warners. Aboodi's reputation, says Clurman is that of a "shadowy mystery man ... [He] was an invisible mystery man to the world outside Warners until the Time-Warner deal." Investigative reporter Richard Clurman found no listing in any telephone directory for his Alpine Capital Company, which is housed in the Time-Warner building. "Aboodi says he has no telephone listing for Alpine because 'people know me and they know how to find me. I've never thought about it." [CLURMAN, p. 165] "Levin and Aboodi," says Clurman, "a Delphic-like oracle and a Talmudic-like exegetist, [are] quite a combination for an intricate modern business deal. Levin even spoke of the 'thaumaturgic (i.e., mystical) significance' of some of their meetings." [CLURMAN, p. 166] "While his peers have been unabashedly striving to scale the corporate ladder to attain the personal perquisite of power and wealth," notes Connie Bruck, "Levin has long maintained that he has been compelled by something far less mundane, almost mystical: a sense of obligation to bring to fruition the 'manifest destiny' of Time, Inc. and, now, Time Warner." [BRUCK, p. 55] Ultimately, the Chief Financial Officer, the General Counsel, and Secretary of the Board for the new company were all to come from Warners. [CLURMAN, p. 197-198] The new company committed up to $150 million to a fund managed by Aboodi's Alpine Capital company, as well as providing him his $8 million advisory fee.

By 1991 Time-Warner announced a deal with the largest of Japanese venture capital trading firms, C. Itoh, and Toshiba; this translated into a Japanese investment of another billion dollars. The massive mega-company then hired former Federal Communications Commission chairman Dennis R. Patrick and "two corporate 'image makers' who had worked at the White House" to help maneuver governmental regulatory policies. Time-Warner "also had on retainer an elegant pack of the most connected Washington lobbyists." [CLURMAN, p. 338] The new Time-Warner soon also acquired Sunset magazine, Lane Publishing, and 50% interest in Six Flags Amusement Parks.

"Time-Warner," wrote Richard Clurman in his book about the subject in 1992, "is a combination whose creations (magazines, books, movies, music, cable TV, and programming) are now exposed to the minds and emotions of more people than those of any other commercial enterprise on earth ... [CLURMAN, p. 33] [Time-Warner executives] frequently predicted that one day '5 or 6 media companies would dominate the world.'" [CLURMAN, p. 338]

After the big merger, ruefully notes Clurman, for twenty years a journalist and executive at Time, Inc., "in a bicoastal, cross-cultural anointing, Time's house organ [had a column on new executive titles] under the heading 'Honorable Menschen" [a Yiddish pun]. Within the same two weeks, Nick Nicholas [the co-chairman of Time-Warner, eventually dumped from that position], was given a American-Jewish Committee Human Relations Award in Los Angeles and Steve Ross was named Man of the Year by the Entertainment Division of the UJA [United Jewish Appeal] in New York." [CLURMAN, p. 314] (Steve Ross was "one of the role models" for Oskar Schindler in Stephen Spielberg's film Schindler's List. "To prepare [actor Liam Neeson] for the part, the director reportedly showed pictures of Ross ... a wheeler-dealer of legendary proficiency." [KELLMAN, p. 10] Schindler was also likened to another Jewish media mogul, Michael Ovitz, "on top of the mountain pulling strings in every fiefdom down below." [KELLMAN, p. 10]

When Steve Ross subsequently died of cancer, Gerald Levin replaced him as head of Time-Warner after a struggle for power, successfully firing presumed heir, Nick Nicholas. (Levin's son, Lee, is studying to be a rabbi at the Jewish Theological Seminary. [BOXER, T., 5-26-01] Soon Norman Pearlstine, formerly the head of the Wall Street Journal and Jewish, was installed as editor of Time magazine.

More recently, in 1995, Disney's Jewish chairman Michael Eisner announced the $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities-ABC to create an even larger corporate media monolith, relegating massive Time-Warner to second size. Disney-ABC controls, aside from the obvious, everything from the Anaheim Angels baseball team and the Mighty Ducks hockey team to Miramax Films (co-chaired by the Jewish Weinstein brothers, Harvey and Bob) and the ESPN sports network (Jewish president and CEO, Steven Bornstein). Disney also owned Fairchild Publications which included fashion magazine Jane, W, Supermarket News, Women's Wear Daily, Chilton Books, Los Angeles Magazine, and numerous newspapers and TV stations. Not to be out-fattened, Gerald Levin at the heal of Time-Warner soon absorbed Ted Turner's media empire, Turner Broadcasting, including CNN. [BRUCK, p. 58] Turner was relegated to second in command at Time-Warner. Head of the Turner Broadcasting System division in 1999? Brad Siegel. The new chief of CNN in 2001? Also Jewish: Walter Isaacson, formerly Time Inc.'s editorial director.

     And this is how a Jewish ethnic online magazine described Brad Turrell, number 12 in its 2001 "Fifty Most Influential Jews in America":

     "While Turrell was the head of communications for the WB television network, he
     began a religious odyssey that transformed he and his family into observant
     Jews. Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways. In April, he was promoted
     to the top communication slot for all of Turner Broadcasting which includes TNT,
     TBS Superstation, the WB Network, Cartoon Network, Turner Classic Movies,
     Turner South and Boomerang, the CNN News Group Networks, which includes
     CNN/U.S., CNN Headline News, CNNfn, Accent Health, CNN Airport Network,
     College Television Network (CTN), CNN Radio Network, CNN.com, CNNfn.com,
     CNNfyi.com and MyCNN.com and Nascar.com. With all the recent claims [by
     Jewish lobbying organizations] of CNN's alleged media bias against Israel, it will
      be interesting to see how Turrell handles the position." [JEWSWEEK, 2001]

     The aforementioned Weinstein brothers "run a company [Miramax] that released more movies than any other in the U.S. in the year 2000 and had the eighth-largest box-office receipts." "After Disney paid $60 million for Miramax in 1993," notes New York Magazine, "[Harvey] Weinstein spent his time buying his way to the Oscar platform and getting in touch with his inner thug by screwing over far more delicate artistic sorts ... But all the legendary bad behavior [by him] cannot obscure an objective fact: Harvey Weinstein is a cultural good. Pulp Fiction, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, and Shakespeare in Love have all become a part of the national narrative, framing the way people dance, talk, and fight ... [Weinstein] is a pushcart peddler who is more than happy to put his thumb on the scale when the old woman is buying meat,' says [fellow Jewish] producer Saul Zaentz. 'He has not qualms about it ... 'People say, 'Are you tough?' I say: 'Facing [Jewish Hollywood moguls] Barry Diller, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen, you know, Stephen Spielberg ... Why the hell would you have to be tough in this industry to survive? Those guys are just a walk in the park?'" [CARR, D., 12-03-01]

     (Among Weinstein's most recent projects -- like so many Jewish moguls -- is one with a Holocaust theme (this one based on a piece of fiction by Jewish novelist Leon Uris, Mita 18.) "'I'm preparing to direct a movie about the Warsaw Ghetto. About Jews kiling fucking Germans in great numbers,' he says with enthusiasm.") [CARR, D., 12-03-01]

"It makes no sense at all to try to deny the reality of Jewish power and prominence in popular culture," wrote Jewish author, film critic, and talk show host Michael Medved in 1996,

"Any list of the most influential production executives at each of

the major movie studios will produce a heavy majority of recognizable

Jewish names." [MEDVED, p. 1] ... Consider the well-publicized

reshuffling that recently rocked the Walt Disney Company, involving

some of the mightiest and most highly paid media moguls. In this game

of corporate musical chairs, Disney C.E.O. and Chairman of the Board,

Michael Eisner lost the services of his movie production chief, Jeffrey

Katzenberg, who became part of the much-heralded new "dream team"

(formally incorporated as DreamWorks SKG) with Steven Spielberg

and David Geffen. {[In 1990 Forbes magazine called Geffen -- a former

agent and record producer -- the richest man in Hollywood." [KOTKIN,

p. 62] The first project out of DreamWorks was also by a Jewish

producer, Gary Goldberg, whose earlier "gentle, semi-autobiographical

look at a middle-class Jewish family" lasted 35 episodes in 1991-92 on

CBS [CEROWE, p. F1]] Meanwhile, Eisner created a new position at

Disney for his omnipotent super agent Michael Ovitz and gave broader

responsibilities to his fair-haired boy, Joe Roth, former head of 20th

Century Fox ... These headlines underscored the ironic fact that the

famous Disney organization, founded by a gentile Midwestern who

allegedly harbored anti-Semitic attitudes now features Jewish personnel

in nearly all its most powerful positions." [MEDVED, p. 37]

     Among these personnel is also Michael Lynton, appointed to be the head of Disney's movie division in 1994. At the very start of Eisner's tenure at Disney, Katzenberg headed the Disney studios, fellow Jew Richard Frank headed television, and David Hoberman was the chief at the film division. [SCHWEIZER/SCHWEIZER, p. 5] Joseph Shapiro became a Disney Senior Vice President in the 1990s. Steven Bornstein is (2001) chairman of Walt Disney Internet Group, heading Disney's commercial explorations of the world wide web. Even the president of the Disney-founded California Institute of the Arts is Jewish, Steven Lavine. In earlier years, during Saul Steinberg's attempt to lead a hostile takeover of the famous WASP firm, some observers were concerned that the "take over battle might be regarded as an attempt by Jews to topple one of the temples of Protestant America." [TAYLOR, J., p. ix] At that time, when Walt Disney's nephew, Roy E. Disney, held the largest individual stake in the company, his lawyer was also Jewish: Stanley Gold. [TAYLOR, J., p. 3] Gold eventually became "a financial power through Roy Disney's Shamrock Holdings and one of the largest foreign investors in Israel." [TUGEND 10-22-99])

      As Carl Hiaasen wrote, in his 1998 volume Team Rodent -- How Disney Devours the World:

     "In December 1997 Disney chairman Michael D. Eisner exercised company
      stock options that brought him $565 million in a single swoop. The notion of
      attaching such a sum to one man's job is both obscene and hilarious on its face,
      yet it's pointless to debate whether or not Eisner deserves it. He got the dough.
      It happened in the same month that Business Week chose Disney's board of
      directors as the worst in America. The reason: Many seemed to have been
      handpicked not so much for their business expertise as for their loyalty to the
      autocratic Eisner. Among the company's directors are his personal architect, his
      personal attorney, the principal of his children's elementary school, and seven
      current and former Disney executives 'Fantastic' is how Eisner has described his
      choices for the board. But critics say it's a meek and malleable group. That's
      precisely what was needed to sit still for the ludicrous $75 million platinum parachute
      given to Michael Ovitz [also Jewish] as compensation for fourteen whole months as      president of the Walt Disney Company." [Hiaasen, C., 1998, p. 38-39]

In 1997, when Lilian Disney (Walt's widow) donated $50 million towards building a Los Angeles cultural center called Disney Hall (named in honor of her husband), Variety noted lingering (Jewish) animosity towards him:

"So far [her donation is] the only notable sign of financial support from

the film industry or its players for the new concert hall in downtown Los

Angeles ... The fact that the hall bears the name of Disney [is] possibly a

turnoff to other studios." [JOHNSON, p. 11]

"Not everyone was happy with the 'inevitable' changes [resulting from the arrival of Eisner and his new management at Disney in the 1980s]," notes Joe Flower, "Letters to the Los Angeles Times, homeland newspaper to the company and the entertainment industry, ran heavily negative, complaining of the compromise in quality in Disney's Saturday morning cartoons, the 'commercialism' of the new management's projects and the dilution of the Disney name." [FLOWER, p. 192] In 1985 Disney announced that pop star Madonna would star in one of its films (she eventually didn't) and affiliates of the great bastion of "family entertainment" began to produce R-rated films. The movie Pulp Fiction (produced by a Disney affiliate, Miramax) was decried by some for its graphic and celebratory violence. By 1987, when Disney had a quarterly profit increase of 159%, Chairman Eisner got a $2.6 million year-end bonus while rank-and-file Disney employees found their health insurance deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses doubled. [FLOWER, p. 257]

As Disney profits soared and its "family values" reputation corroded, in 1997 the Southern Christian Baptist Convention initiated a boycott of all Disney products, in part because of Disney-ABC's homosexual sit-com, "Ellen." In 1997 too the Catholic League for Religion and Civil Rights, already protesting a Disney-sponsored feature film called "Priest,” successfully lobbied at least seven corporations to pull their ads from a new Disney-ABC series called "Nothing Sacred," which featured, as some expressed it, "an inner city priest's struggles with his religious beliefs." The offended Catholic organization decried the TV program for containing "slanderous assaults" against the Church. (Similarly, in 1992, a few Catholic newspapers refused to accept advertising for a novel by Jewish author Erich Segal, Acts of Faith, the story of a love affair between a Catholic seminarian and an Orthodox Jewish woman.) The conservative Focus on the Family organization also instituted its own boycott against any product with a Disney label. In 1995 the well known Disney "family entertainment" company was scandalized when it was revealed that the director, Victor Salvo, of a new Disney movie called "Powder," was a convicted child molester. In 1999 Disney invited controversy with its film about the life of New York mass murderer David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam." Even the killer himself was outraged by the movie. "Let me tell you something," said Berkowitz from prison, "Walt Disney must be turning over in his grave." [HARDEN, p. 22]

As Rabbi Daniel Lapin notes about the aforementioned Disney movie Priest,

"When it came to Priest, there were few courageous Jewish leaders

out there who stepped to the defense of Catholics ... It was

appropriate for Jews to join in the denunciation of Priest. After all,

the head of Disney as well as the heads of its distribution subsidiary,

Miramax, are Jewish. We may feel that making such an observation

is in bad taste. If non-Jews make the same observation we no doubt

will immediately recognize them as anti-Semites. However, this kind

of intimidation will not stop many Americans from making that

observation. Neither will it stop them from seeing as insulting that

the companies just happened to choose Good Friday as the date

for this film's national release." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 311]

In 1994 Disney faced claims that its Lion King character was pilfered from a 40-year old Japanese story by Tezauka Osamu. In 1990 advocates for the homeless managed to get Disney to stop selling a tramp toy. In 1996 the World Development Movement protested Disney's exploitation of toy-makers in Third World countries. In 1997 nearly forty organizations joined the National Hispanic Media Coalition protests against Disney and its ABC network for alleged discrimination in hiring. In 1997, after media embarrassment, Disneyland reinstated a discount program for the disabled it had tried to quietly rescind. In 1997, too, Disney CEO Michael Eisner (already since 1984 the highest paid executive in the United States at $660 million over 11 years), succeeded in getting a ten-year future "compensation package" for himself that could be worth close to $800 million, a sum attacked at a Disney shareholders meeting by about twenty investor organizations, including the California Public Employees Retirement System. After a failed 14-month hiring of Eisner's (Jewish) friend Michael Ovitz to be groomed as the next Disney heir to power, Ovitz was awarded a controversial $128 million severance package. [GRELLEY, Persp, p. B9; FISHER, M, BAPTISTS, p. A1; MATZER, p. D8; HORN, p. 3; BURRESS, p. A1; CHICTRIB, 12-20-90, p1, 8; GUARDIAN, 12-4-96, 1, 19; BURRESS, p. E1; BRAXTON, p. F2; MILLER, p. A1; LIEBERMAN, D, USA, p. B3; FARHI, p. D1, SLATER p. 298, 327; SEGAL, N, p. 5]

(In the 1990s the Disney-ABC conglomerate began buying up and gentrifying Manhattan's Times Square area. All the low-life adult bookstores and other such merchants were shifted, en masse, to another area. And who was positioned to sell the real estate in the newly designated porno site? "Just about the whole neighborhood," noted London's Daily Telegraph, "it turned out, was owned by half-a-dozen old Jewish families.") [LAURENCE, C., 10-30-95, p. 17]

In 1992, the Disney film "Aladdin" came under attack from outraged Arab and Muslim groups. Condemnation starts with its opening song: "Oh, I come from a land / a far away place / where the caravan camels roam. / Where they cut off your ear if they don't like your face / it's barbaric, but, hey, it's home." [SHAHEEN, J. 12-21-92, p. F3] Professor Jack Shaheen complained again about Disney four years later:

"Nearly one year after Disney bashed Arabs in 'Aladdin,' ...

[its] studio executives promised they would in the future consult

with Arab Americans so as not to repeat the mistakes. Soon after,

in 'The Return of Jafar' (1996), they displayed gobs of hook-nosed

Arabs referred to in the film as 'desert skunks.' That same year, Disney

continued trouncing Arabs in ... 'In the Army Now' ... In 1995,

Disney's Christmas feel-good family film 'Father of the Bride, Part

II, writers inserted a foul, rich, Arab-American couple, the Habibs...

Collectively, Disney's relentlessly ruthless images advance suspicion

and hatred. Although other studios perpetuate injurious clichés ... only

Disney violates Americans of Middle East heritage." SHAHEEN, J.,

This anti-Arab, anti-Islam tenor, of course, is a recurring theme from Hollywood. In 1998, for instance, a non-Disney film, The Siege, by director Edward Zwick, came under especially heated attack by Arabs and Muslims. From the apologetic side, "Zwick and [Siege producer Lynda] Obst, both Jewish, have said that they intended the 20th Century Fox film to combat racism." [PFEFFERMAN, N., 9-4-98] The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee strongly felt it did something else, calling it "insidious, incendiary, and dangerous" for Arabs and Muslims. "There is no doubt," agreed Montreal Gazette reviewer Bill Brownstein, "... that The Siege does incite racial hatred toward Arabs ... The image that will linger long after the lights come back on is that of U.S. soldiers herding up every Arab in New York and shunting them off to mini-concentration camps." [BROWNSTEIN, B., p. A3]

     In 2000, London's daily newspaper The Independent noted the new movie Rules of Engagement, directed by William Friedkin and produced by Paramount, whose head of the film division is Sherry Lansing. Friedkin and Lansing are husband and wife -- and they are both Jewish:

     "The Arab nations -- and the Islamic world in general -- have become the new
     stock enemy, a powerful and unreasoning force in True Lies (1994), Executive
     Decision (1995), GI Jane (1997) and The Siege (1998) -- in which Bruce Willis
     rounded up Arab Americans in an attempt to stop a Hezbollah-type terrorist
     group blowing up New York. Even The Insider (1999) -- a film about corruption
     in the tobacco industry, for heaven's sake -- tacked on a Syrian prologue in which Al
     Pacino took on a pack of mad-ish mullahs. And Rules of Engagement? This film is      absolutely off the scale,' says Hussein Ibish, communications director of the
     American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Commitee, a Washington-based pressure
     group. 'I've never seen anything quite so vile. I felt like I was being physically
     beaten, which is a reaction I've never had encountering a work of art. It was
     mind-bogglingly vicious. I'm amazed that a major American entertainment company
     would actually release such a thing." [SWEET, M., 7-30-00]

In 1999, the Disney company found itself embroiled in yet another controversy, this one political. It had allowed the state of Israel to have an exhibit -- the largest -- "on display at the new Millennium Village at [Disney World] Complex's Epcot Center in Florida." [LOS ANGELES JEWISH TIMES, Aug 27-Sept 2, 99] Muslim and Arab organizations were concerned that Israel would portray Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state, an assertion at odds with the Muslim and Arab view.

Rarely publicly expressed, there may be an angry undercurrent in popular perception about the reshaping of Disney's public image: a perceived negative Jewish influence in the mass media's shaping of modern American values, a theme which is not new. "During Hollywood's pre-second World War Golden Age," notes J. J. Goldberg," it was commonly argued that Jews were insensitive and hostile to Christian values and were shaping an American culture that offended the American Christian majority." [GOLDBERG, p. 284] In later years even Jewish authors could be found who complained about a noticeable shift in media-defined American values. "A distinct majority of [producers and writers in Hollywood] are Jewish," wrote Jewish critic Ben Stein, "They do not hold criminals responsible for crime but rather place the blame on society." [PRAGER, p. 63]

"There may be something more serious behind these boycotts [against Disney], Lehrer [an Anti-Defamation League official] and others suspect," says Joel Kotkin, "a revival of the traditional concerns among various groups about 'Jewish control' of the means of mass communications. Disney ['s] ... leadership comprises some of the most visible and powerful Jewish figures in the industry." [KOTKIN, DISNEY, p. 12]

In protesting the Disney-ABC TV series "Nothing Sacred' (which has extremely low ratings, yet was renewed for a second season anyway), the president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, William Donohue, noted in 1997 that

"Perhaps the most aggravating aspect of 'Nothing Sacred' is the

audacity of executive producers David Manson and Richard Kramer,

to admit that their purpose is to create 'dialogue among Catholics' about

the teachings of the Church. Who ever asked -- or appointed -- these

two men, both of whom are Jewish, and both who believe in nothing,

to foment dialogue in my Church? .... 'Nothing Sacred' is political

propaganda against the Magisterium being waged by producers who

are outsiders." [DONOHUE]

In 1999, a Disney affiliate, Miramax Films, produced yet another Catholic-bashing movie, Dogma, "Kevin Smith's controversial satire of Roman Catholicism." [GEIER, T., 11-13-99] The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights claimed to have garnered 300,000 signatures in protest of the film. The Miramax Jewish co-chairmen, Bob and Harvey Weinstein, eventually "personally bought back" the movie from its parent company and forwarded distribution rights to another firm, Lion's Gate (co-presidents also Jewish: Mark Urman and Tom Ortenberg).

In 1992 the Jewish film critic and talk show host, Michael Medved, was taken aside by an unnamed” best-selling author" and "popular television commentator" at a "media accountability" conference for a heart to heart talk. "What I don't get," the unnamed Gentile said, "when I look at Hollywood, is why is it that so many of the people who are responsible for the worst garbage turn out to be Jews? It's sort of become an obvious question, but nobody likes to talk about it, because nobody wants to sound like a bigot ... How come they're so set on trashing everything that the rest of us care about? I'm afraid we've got more and more people out there who are wondering about the same thing." [MEDVED, p. 315]

"To hear this sophisticated and dynamic public figure draw a connection between Jewish involvement in Hollywood and the current degradation in Hollywood," says Medved, "hit me with the force of a blow to the chest. No one could ever accuse him of anti-Semitism; for many years he had compiled an admirable record of service to Jewish causes and he'd made several trips to Israel." [MEDVED, p. 315, p. 70] (Jewish assault on non-Jewish and Christian values is an old theme. In 1927, Bishop Joseph Schrembs of Cleveland, remarking on the pornography, prostitution, and general mass media trades, noted the "large and influential group of Jews who are attempting to break down Christian morality. Let us go to the decent Jews -- and thanks be to God there are decent Jews and lots of them -- and ask them to join hands with us to solve the common problem of commercialized vice." [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000, p. 142]

Hollywood movies and television at-large have been increasingly attacked in recent years for propagating a range of decadent values. 82% of Americans polled in a 1989 Associated Press/Media General survey felt that today's movies had too much violence, 80% felt there was too much profanity, and 72% too much nudity. 72% of a Parents magazine survey supported prohibition "against making fun of religion" in the mass media. A 1991 Gallup poll showed that 58% of Americans were "offended frequently or occasionally" by prime-time programming. A 1989 Time/CNN survey documented that 67% of the American public believes the violence in movies was "mainly to blame" for rising teenage violence; 70% supported "greater restraints on the showing of sex and violence" in the movies. [MEDVED, Hollywood, p. 4] In the 1992 Presidential election both Bill Clinton and Robert Dole criticized Hollywood for glorifying drugs. In 1999 the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Office of National Drug Control Policy released the results of a joint report that studied the content of the top movie rentals and 1,000 most popular songs of 1996-99. 98% of the films and 27% of the songs "contained reference to either alcohol or drugs, 26% of movies portrayed illicit drug use in a humorous context." [OLDENBERG, p. 8B] And in a 2000 report, the Federal Trade Commission "accused the entire [entertainment industry] of aggressively selling violent and sexually explicit films, video games and music to kids." [MSNBC, 4-24-01]

"That this [film and TV] industry," says Michael Medved, "more firmly associated with Jews than any other business in the world, is almost universally viewed as a destructive force in our society should be viewed with concern." [MEDVED, p. 42] Not even focusing on the Hollywood world, in 1999, Rabbi Daniel Lapin wrote an extraordinarily unusual, and stunning, appraisal of the collective negative effects of the modern Jewish community upon the values of America:

"My firm conviction is that we must engage in an honest exploration of

the problems and shortcomings of the Jewish community and Jewish

communal leadership. Instead of focusing on imagined enemies, we

should ask whether dogmatic commitment to a secular-liberal vision is

encouraging dislike for the Jewish community. Without such honest

self-appraisal, Jews will become more and more disliked -- not by

crazed individuals but by decent Americans distressed over their

rapidly deteriorating culture and the role of Jews in that agenda. It

cannot escape the notice of ordinary Americans coping with the

challenge of raising responsible children in a hostile world that many

Jewish names and groups lead the fight for policies these Americans

see as causing the country's decline." [LAPIN, D., 1999, p. 42]

Jewish-dominated Hollywood and its movie and music world has always been a hotbed for all sorts of vices, including drugs. All sorts of people partake in these realms, and there can be created long lists of Tinseltown drug addicts and dealers, of course, but Jews are to be found -- as in so many fields -- profoundly disproportionate in them (Jewish mobster Arnold Rothstein, in the early 20th century, is even credited by some with beginning the syndicated drug trade in America). As early as the 1930s, actress Lana Turner notes her surprise at the drug interest of her Jewish husband, famous band leader Artie Shaw:

"When I came back Artie and Phil [Silvers, a well-known Jewish

comedian] were smoking what they called 'reefers.' I'd heard of

marijuana, of course, but I'd never seen it before. It was associated

mainly with jazz musicians. Artie and Phil offered me some, and I

said no." [TURNER, L., 1982, p. 58]

In more recent years cocaine has become an especially popular Hollywood drug. In 1974 Paramount Pictures' head of production Robert Evans was replaced, largely because of his continuous problem with cocaine. In 1980 he was convicted for cocaine possession. [MCDOUGAL, p. 393, WICK, S., 87] In 1982 Jewish actor Richard Dreyfus "was arrested and charged with possession of cocaine and 31 tablets of Percodan." [WOODWARD, 1984, p. 418] Likewise, in the 1990s actor Robert Downey, Jr. spent a year in prison for drug abuse. In an extreme case, in 1983 Hollywood agent Roy Radin, also Jewish, was found murdered, a result of his involvement in a drug ring. [WICK, p. 144] Radin, " a six-foot, three-inch, 300-pound cocaine addict ... made a fortune producing traveling vaudeville shows for Police Benevolent Associations across the country. 'The Roy Radin Review,' as it was called, headlined the likes of Georgie Jessel and Tiny Tim ... [Radin] sometimes took 75 percent of the proceeds." [GAINES, S., 1998, p. 246] Radin, notes singer Eddie Fisher, "was the sleaziest person I"d ever known. He was guzzling cocaine." [FISHER, E., 1999, p. 312] Bert Schneider's and Bob Rafelson's film BBS company "ethic was the raucous parties, with bags of dope and bowls of coke openly displayed on coffee tables." [MCGILLIGAN, 1994, p. 202]

Rachel Abramowitz notes the post-1960s elite that has come to rule Hollywood:

"[Executives Paula] Weinstein and [Mark] Rosenberg and their radical

friends typified the leftists with the cause manqué who poured into

Hollywood from the [political] battlefields of Columbia and Stanford,

ready to take on life on the studio expense account. Unlike their

forebears, they weren't self-made scrappers but tended to be well-tended

progeny of the upper-middle class with down-home hippie roles ... They

drank Perrier, did coke and grass [cocaine and marijuana] ... Paula

Weinstein was one of the new breed of Hollywood executives ... [Their]

intoxicants were cocaine and work." [ABRAMOWITZ, R., 2000, p.

In 1991, Jewish academy award-winning film producer Julia Phillips (among her products: The Sting, Taxi Driver, Close Encounters of the Third Kind) wrote an autobiographical book about her life in the upper echelons of Hollywood movie making. Here are some snippets from her expose about her experiences in the behind-the-scenes real-life world of Tinseltown that makes America's movies and molds popular culture, helping towards an answer, perhaps, to the question 'Where does Hollywood's on-screen interest in drugs come from?’:

* "[Backstage at a Rolling Stones concert at Madison Square Garden]

there is a smelly Israeli named Freddie who seems to be very important

to everybody. He carries two medium sized bottles filled with rock

cocaine. He offers some to Goldie [Hawn] and some to me. Fuck

you, Mr. Under-Assistant West Coast Promo Man. We turn him down;

I've got my own." [PHILLIPS, p. 197]

* "Our little baby [is] asleep innocently in another room while we, two

smart New York Jews, are imbibing in [heavy drugs]." [PHILLIPS,

* "Jack Spratlin is a middle-echelon Hollywood drug dealer ... [He] is

an acid casualty. He was meant to be one thing -- an upwardly mobile

street Jew from New York who came to Hollywood to be an agent

and a luminary -- but he became another because of drugs." [PHILLIPS,

* "I let Spratlin fuck me from behind in the closet in front of the mirror

just before I leave for the morning." [PHILLIPS, p. 327]

* "The seductive thing about freebase, for me anyway, is that at first I

have the illusion that I am doing substantially less cocaine than if I

toot it ... I learn a rough [drug] recipe from a nice Jewish dealer in

the Valley." [PHILLIPS, p. 358]

* "One morning Rottweiler wakes up in bed in a bad mood. We've run

out of blow the night before and he's down downed himself out with

Quaaludes. Like all male junkies, he uses dope as a reason not to

bathe. Like all Jewish girls, there is nothing in the world to keep

me from a daily shower and shampoo. Not even freebase." [PHILLIPS,

* "I actually smoke freebase in the hospital, right up to the abortion."

* "I sleep with Michael Brandon, but I do a taste of this and that as

sexual aids. Basically, I mix Quaaludes and Atvion and pot ... Upon

awakening the next morning, I look at him and he is cute, but I

surprise both of us by bursting into terrible heaving sob/tears. Being

Jewish and funny, Michael defends himself with some pretty good

jokes." [PHILLIPS, p. 453]

Ned Wynn (of partial Jewish heritage: actor, screenwriter, and son of comedian Keenan Wynn), recalls his first encounter with cocaine in the Hollywood world, thanks to singer Cass Elliot (born Ellen Naomi Cohen):

"I had been introduced to cocaine by Cass Elliot, the lead female

singer with the Mamas and the Papas. An enormous woman of

appetites yet unfathomed, Cass had literally chased me around

at a party John had taken me to one night. She had cornered me

and actually spooned coke into my nose. Caught like a rabbit in

the glare of Cass's eyeballs, I wrinkled and twitched and snorted

and lit up like a little light bulb. Cass, you dog. I was in." [WYNN,

In 1995, Marvin Shick wrote an article in the Jewish Week, saying that:

"Much has been made of the abundance of high-profile Jews in the

lower-depths of the entertainment industry. While it won't do to simply

say it ain't so, for it is, ... I do not feel especially guilty because of the

wrongful behavior of certain Jews, whether they are secular sleaze

merchants or chasidim ... But I am embarrassed, even hurt, when

wrongdoers are honored, which happens too often in our fervid world

of organizations and fund raising. It is my understanding that in

Hollywood 'humanitarian' awards are handed out promiscuously,

with Jewish organizations well in the lead ... It's ... a mistake for

our community to have so little to say about the cultural depravity all

around us ... It is insufficient for us to act like a community of amateur

constitutional lawyers whenever someone shouts 'First Amendment' to

protect the cesspool of moral corruption." [SCHICK, p. 5]

Jewish film critic Steve Walz noted with concern the rise of violently and morally reckless "teenager films" in the late 1990s. "The most controversial teen flick [Cruel Intentions]," he observes, has "several Jewish and half-Jewish stars, writers, producers, etc. involved in this flick, which basically depicts wicked teenagers trying to bed each other based on vicious dares ... Teenage crime figures are on the rise and anyone who tells you that there ISN'T a direct correlation between what teens see on the big screen or small screen and their anti-social relations is a flat out liar." [WALZ, 3-1-98] The plot of Cruel Intentions, noted the Los Angeles Times, "revolves around a rich New York City high school girl who snorts cocaine from her crucifix and bets her stepbrother he can't deflower a certain virgin. She offers him sexual relations with her as the prize, if he wins." [JENSEN, E., p. F1]

Jews in fact have a long history of testing the limits of popular morality and exploring sexuality's potential for profitability. They dominated the early 1900s vaudeville scene and were prominent in the development of the striptease as entertainment, as part as the package known as burlesque ("the most sexualy suggestive and sexually explicit of all of New York's popular media"). [FREIDMAN, A., 2000, p. 62] After all, as an earlier chapter evidences, and as Yale professor Donald Davis phrases it, "the Jewish pimps and vice lords ... dominated the white slave trade traffic and its 'sex industry' in the early twentieth century." [DAVIS, D., p. 29] "Jewish male comics," also notes Andrea Most, "regularly appeared in drag on the Broadway and vaudeville stage." [MOST, A., 1999, p. 322]

      In the early to mid-20th century, a number of anti-vice organizations sought to curtail some trends in the New York entertainment industry, which was largely Jewish. (Sometimes underscoring ethnic/religious undercurrents, these included expressly Catholic organizations like the Legion of Decency and the National Organization for Decent Literature). "New York's position as the nation's cultural mecca," notes Andrea Friedman, "and the important role played by entertainment industries in the city's economy, made the conflicts over obscenity that occured there unique in their importance to municipal life ... The substantial role played by Jews in New York's entertainment industries made debates about obscenity especially important to many Jewish leaders." [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000, p. 10] In 1942, New York City refused to renew city burlesque theatre licenses, shutting them all down. [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000, p. 62] "Jews," notes Jewish scholar Friedman,

      "were also well represented among New York's theatrical producers, and burlesque
      in particular was notable for the presence of Jews among producers, managers, and
      entertainers ... The visibility of Jews in these industries nourished Christian
     fears that commercial culture in the metropolis would become even more
     corrupt and corrupting than it already was. Their association with an entertainment
     world built around the commodification of sexuality seeemed to sustain a
     preexisting paradigm of antisemitism that fused prejudices regarding
     Jewish greed and sexual immorality in the conviction, as historian Edward
     Bristow had phrased it, that Jews 'organized widespread conspiracies to
     corrupt and pollute the Christian world.' In the United States, as in Europe,
     many Christians subscribed to the view that Jews were so avaricious
     that they would permit neither legalities nor morals to stand in their way
     of their accumulation of wealth." [FRIEDMAN, A., 2000 , p. 141]

     Friedman also notes the main reason for eventual Jewish religious activism in some anti-obscenity groups -- fears of anti-Semitism:

     "Some of New York's Jewish religious leaders also became more vocal in debates |
     about obscenity during the 1920s and 1930s. To a greater degree than Protestants and      Catholics, however, their participation came in response as much
     to the existence of anti-obscenity campaigns as to the existence of obscenity. Rabbis
     entered into anti-obscenity activism in the attempt to counter Christians'
     perceptions of Jews as a different, alien, and more primitive people, by
     demonstrating that they shared the 'Christian' morals of their Protestant
     and Catholic brethren and by trying to control the behavior of other Jews.
     Prompted by the concern that Christian condemnations of obscenity
     might fuel antisemitism (and vice versa), they sometimes joined in such
     condemnations in self-defense. For Jews, anti-obscenity activism became a
     strategy for protecting the Jewish community by policing it." [FRIEDMAN, A.,
     2000, p. 140-141]

The most famous stripper of all time, Gypsy Rose Lee (real name: Rose Louise Hovick) was Jewish, as was her early forum -- Minsky's Theatre (of "The Night They Raided Minsky's" fame). The theatre founders were Abe and Billy Minsky, grandsons of the chief rabbi of the Russian city of Minsk. Another Minsky, Herbert, was the "maestro of burlesque." [COOPER, p. 42] (The Minsky's New Gotham Burlesque House was raided on April 8, 1937, and its Jewish manager, Sam Kraus, jailed. Other Minsky venues included the Republic and Oriental Burlesque sites. As Jay Maeder observes, "New Gotham operator Abe Minsky was one of numerous Minsky brothers who had largely cornered the stripper business in New York." Jewish "civil rights" lawyer Morris Ernst declared that the raid was a "step in the direction of fascism.") [MAEDER, J., 6-26-2000] Elsewhere in New York City, among many other Jewish madams, was "Polly Adler, the Polish-born madam of New York's most famous bordello of the 1920s and 1930s." [MCDOUGAL, p. 92] A little earlier, "the most famous madam in turn-of-the century New York was Rosie Hertz. Saving enough from her own prostitution, she and her husband, Jacob, opened several brothels on the Lower East Side during the 1880s ... The epitome of the 'white slaver,' Hertz was called by one judge the 'godmother for prostitutes.' Another critic considered her 'as much a public feature of the lower East Side ... as the Brooklyn Bridge." [GILFOYLE, T., 1992, p. 295]

      Dallas, Texas? When Jack Ruby (Rubenstein) murdered Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963, he owned the Carousel, a local strip tease joint. As Gerald Posner notes, "Ruby's main competition was from the Theatre and Colony Clubs, owned by two brothers, Abe and Barney Weinstein. In 1961, they had introduced amateur strip-tease dancing." [POSNER, p. 362] Atlanta, Georgia? By 1999, owner Steve Kaplan's Gold Club "nude dancing" business had been "indicted on federal racketeering charges that included prostitution, credit card fraud, money laundering, police corruption and ties to the Gambino organized crime family." His lawyer, Alan Begner, was also Jewish. "Since 1982," noted the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, "Begner has carved a lucrative niche as a lawyer of adult entertainment establishments," representing about half of the 45 in metropolitan Atlanta. "I knock out laws," he explained to the newspaper. Begner's interest in strip joints began when another Jewish owner (Emmanual Isaacs of the "She Club") asked him to represent him. [RANKIN, B., 12-5-99, p. 2D]

      The Associated Press further noted in 2001 that Gold Club owner Steven Kaplan (club manager: Norbert Calder) was

     "accused of building a $50 million fortune in part by providing prostitutes
     for celebrities. Atlanta's Gold Club is one of the most profitable nude clubs
     in the country, popular among convention-goers and visiting celebrities.
     Federal investigators say it is also a high-priced brothel that pumps cash into
     the Gambino crime family ... [The Federal indictment against Kaplan] says
     Kaplan ordered more than 20 beatings of people who did not repay loans
     at high rates of interest." [COURT TV, 4-2001]

     The most famous "sex club" in history (prospering in the 1970s and 1980s before the AIDS epidemic) is probably Plato's Retreat, based in New York City. Its owner was also Jewish: Larry Levenson. As Jewish scholar David Allyn describes it:

     "First of all, you have to picture the Ansonia Hotel, which is a late 19th century
     wedding-cake of a building in the heart of the upper west side in New York. In
     the basement of the Ansonia was Plato's Retreat, then the world's most famous
     sex club. Men and women would stroll about the Ansonia lobby in nothing but
     towels. In the club, they would have sex with possibly a dozen or so people
     in a single night. Plato's Retreat represented the commercial version of what was
     happening in people's apartments and living rooms across the country."
     [BOOKMARK, 2000]

In the early movie world, seminal Jewish "vamp" film actress Theda Bara "scandalized the mores of the middle-classes ... Local boards issued edicts condemning her films." [HYMAN, p. 118-119] "The first sex symbol [Bara] in movie history," says M. H. Goldberg, "was Jewish. (It is interesting to note that two other sex symbols in movie history -- Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor -- converted to Judaism.)" [GOLDBERG, H. M., 1976, p. 166] A little earlier, Anna Held, of Polish Jewish descent, celebrated a "naughty French persona" in the Ziegfield Follies and "was an early icon" of "America's burgeoning cult of celebrity at the turn of the century." [LAVITT, P., 2000, p. 263, 268] Vienna-born Jewish actress Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Kiesler) pushed mores in the movie world with the European film Ecstasy (1933), featuring partial nudity and daringly new degrees of eroticism. The film was banned in the U.S. till 1940.

In the early years of the 20th century, Sholom Asch's play "God of Vengeance" was performed in New York in Yiddish and then in English off-Broadway without incident. "Asch's tale centers on Yankel, a Jew who runs a shady downstairs brothel with his ex-whore wife, yet is obsessed with protecting the chastity and piety of his young daughter." When the play was finally performed to a broader public on Broadway, it was "shut down by New York police, a landmark censorship case ... The actors, producer, and owner of the Apollo Theatre" were all arrested and their court trial became "the first jury conviction of American entertainers charged with presenting 'immoral' fare." Variety magazine called the play "the most disgusting play every presented on Broadway." [BERSON, M., 4-2-2000]

Cartoon character Betty Boop? The Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave, notes Amelia Holberg,

"created and controlled one of the great 30s sex symbols, animated

Betty Boop. Betty's cartoons, remembered vividly for their overt

sexuality and often grotesque imagery, are even more provocative

when viewed in relation to the lives of her working-class Eastern

European immigrant, Jewish creators ... Betty's initial disappearance

can be traced to the Hays Production Code Office, which determined

Betty Boop to be too racy for general audiences in 1934." [HOLBERG,

      A., 1999, p. 290-291]

      [Chaim Bermant notes a little more about Will Hays and the tearing down of popular mores: "The Jewish dominance of Hollywood did not, of course, pass without comment. By the end of World War I it became clear that the cinema was becoming, if it had not already become, the supreme influence in the cultural life of America, affecting its tastes, its habits, its outlook. There was a growing clamour -- to quote the words of one influential pressure group -- 'to rescue the motion pictures from the hands of the Devil and five hundred un-Christian Jews.' To defend themslves against such criticism, Mayer, Laemmle, Goldwyn and the other un-Christian Jews grouped themselves into the Motion Pictures Prodducers and Distributors of America Inc., and invited Will H. Hayes to preside over them. In doing so they were not merely attempting to buy-off criticism, they were buying respectability."] [BERMANT, C., 1977, p. 102]

      The Fleischer brothers also created Popeye, and many other characters in the 1930s. In fact, "Jews represent 80 percent of the pioneers and leaders of the comic book industry." [GOLDBERG, M. H., 1979, p. 118] In the molding of popular American culture, Mad magazine (publisher: William Gaines. Editors Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman. All Jewish. Kurtzman formerly worked for the communist paper the Daily Worker.) [HEILBRUNN J., 6-01] Mad's "most popular artists" were also Jewish: Mort Drucker and Al Jaffee. [GOODWIN, G., 2001, p. 159] Mad magazine was influential in creating a new kind of adolescent. "Americans of Jewish background," note Stanley Rothman and S. Robert Lichter,

     "developed a direct and important influence on adolescents and even pre-
     adolescents in othe ways. Starting in the 1950s, Mad Magazine developed
     wide popularity among this group, and, as Marie Winn had pointed out,
     it played a significant role in 'the move toward free expression among
     children; its relentless exposure of parental dishonesty caused shock
     waves and reaction among its young readers.' From the beginning
     Mad's editors have been Jewish and, as they themselves would agree,
     hostile to the American civic myth." [ROTHMAN/LICHTER, 1982,
     p. 108]

      Joe Shuster and Jerome Siegel created Superman. Bob Kane created Batman; Stan Lee created Spiderman and The Hulk. Jewish all. [ETKES/STADTMAUER, 1995, p. 128] Stan "the Man" Lee "revived Marvel Comics. He invented the superhero as anti-hero ... A 1965 college poll conducted by Esquire ... revealed that student radicals ranked Spider-Man and the Hilk alongside the likes of Bob Dylan [also Jewish] and Che Guevara as their favorite revolutionary icons ... The outsider hero had arrived as the most celebrated figure in youth culture, and Marvel had him." [HEILBRUNN, J., 6-01] Head of DC comics (Superman, et al)? Also Jewish: Jenette Kahn (1998).

     The Jewish Forward noted the Jewish dimension to the comics world and the blockbuster movie Spiderman in 2002:

      "Sure, Spiderman's great. He's a nebbish who happens to have super-human
      powers. He's got radioactive blood, he detects trouble with his Spider sense,
      he catches thieves just like flies, all while smashing box-office records by taking
      in $114 million his first weekend as a movie star. According to Dan Raviv,
      however, the real heroes of Marvel Comics are the two Israeli men at the
      company's helm, Isaac (Ike) Perlmutter and Avi Arad. In this real-life drama,
      they're the two little guys who wrestled Marvel away from sparring billionaires,       transforming a bankrupt company into a highly profitable one. Exactly how
      two underdogs beat seasoned tycoons at their own game is the kind of fairy
      tale that movies are made of, and it makes for interesting reading in Raviv's
      latest book, 'Comic Wars: How Two Tycoons Battled Over the Marvel
      Comics Empire and Both Lost' (Broadway Books). The good guys are the
      immigrant owners of a small toy company — albeit one with exclusive rights
      to license Marvel toys. And the bad guys are two titans of finance: Ronald
      Perelman, the Revlon chief and takeover artist who ran Marvel into bankruptcy,
      and corporate predator Carl Icahn [both Perelman and Icahn are also Jewish]
      — a model for Michael Douglas's character in 'Wall Street' — who attempted
      a hostile takeover. In the end the Israelis, predicting the Marvel superheroes'
      ability to jump from comic book pages to the silver screen, unexpectedly seized       control of the company ... The story of Marvel is a Jewish one indeed. Founded
      in 1939 by Martin Goodman, Marvel was a part of the so-called "golden age"
      of comics, when hordes of young Jewish writers and artists, most of them
      struggling immigrants' sons, created armies of imaginary superheroes like
      Superman and Captain America, whose mission was to wage war against Nazis
      and their ilk. At Marvel in particular, the key players throughout the decades,
      including Jacob Kurtzberg and Stanley Lieber — better known as Jack Kirby
      and Stan Lee, the creators of the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man in the early 1960s
      — have been almost exclusively Jewish." [KEYS, L., 5-10-2002]

      Cartoonists Jules Feiffer, Al Capp (the author of L'il Abner; Capp's original name was Alfred Gerald Caplin), Herblock (Herb Bloch), Ralph Bakshi, Rube Goldberg, illustrator Maurice Sendak, Shel Silverstein, Nicole Hollander, and many others are also Jewish. Isador (Fritz)Freleng was the "creator of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Pie, Speedy Gonzalez, and the Pink Panther." [ETKES/STADTMAUER, 1995, p. 128] "To my mind," says Stan Sulkes, echoing legend about Jewish history, "no one is more Jewish than Bugs Bunny. Or more resourceful. Surrounded by enemies, he survived by his wits, thwarting all the Elmer Fudds of this world unwilling to let him live in peace. Happily, I'm not alone in that view. Another transplanted New Yorker recognizes Bugs' ethnicity too. 'It was no accident,' observes David Gilner, director of Libraries for Hebrew Uni