Storyboarding the American Dream: Jews and the History of Hollywood

With guest speaker: Andrew Douglas, Ph.D.

Learn how the Jewish identity of the industry’s prominent moguls was a key ingredient in the way in which Hollywood formed, developed, and flourished in the first half of the 20th century. It is no coincidence that it was a small group of Eastern European immigrants (with names like Zukor and Mayer) and first-generation Americans (with names like Warner and Cohn) who took the movies from being dismissed as a fad and a petty amusement to being hailed as a major art form and a mighty industry.

Andrew J. Douglas, Ph.D., is the deputy director at Bryn Mawr Film Institute (BMFI), a non-profit film center outside Philadelphia. Previously, he was BMFI’s founding director of education, having joined the organization in July 2005, four months after its opening. The programs he started continue to educate roughly 5000 students of all ages about film each year. Dr. Douglas has given talks at Yale University and Johns Hopkins University and has written for Film International and the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, among other publications. He has been used as an excuse for his grandmother to meet Robert Redford and was dressed down by Harrison Ford, whom Dr. Douglas still thinks is America’s greatest living leading man.

The event is co sponsored by Federation, WCA and MCA