Afraid of losing new business opportunities, the bosses of the studios began to accede to the requests of the German Government, it is explained in the synopsis of the book The Collaboration available on the Internet. And when Hitler - who could recognize how few politicians of his time the impact the film might have on public opinion - came to power, the bosses of the film industry began to deal directly with their representatives. The dialogue - often held in meetings among studio executives and the German consul in Hollywood, Georg Gyssling - could happen at the highest level, having being involve Goebbels and Louis B. Mayer, the legendary producer who is credited with creating the star system in golden age of MGM.
"I did not mean what I wrote about the Jews would be widespread, but there are some Jews in the movie business who decided to work with Nazi leaders," continues the academic, noting that three of the biggest studios - MGM, Paramount and 20th-Century Fox - only left Germany in the mid-1940s.
Urwand discovered a letter dated January 1938, and signed "Heil Hitler," in which the German delegation at 20th Century-Fox manifests interested in the opinions of the Führer on American films. The investigator also tells that Hitler liked to productions that spun around strong leaders such as Indian Lancers or Mutiny on the Bounty, and hated Chaplin's The Great Dictator, as expected.
Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust historian at Emory University, is eager to read the book from the young Urwand and says he may have at hand a true blockbuster. Speaking to the New York Times the academic praised "audacity of history" that has to count.
Ben Urwand, born in Australia, with Jewish ancestors (his maternal grandparents fled from Hungary and spent the war years hiding), began the project that will now give a book in 2004, when he gave an interview in which the writer Budd Schulberg vaguely referred to meetings between the producer Louis B. Mayer and the German consul in Los Angeles to discuss cuts in movies.
