Exiles in Hollywood

FAIN: GN-50594-05

Film Odyssey, Inc. (Washington, DC 20009-5074)
Karen Thomas (Project Director: November 2004 to February 2012)

Production of a two-hour documentary film about the contributions to American cinema of exiles from Nazi Germany.

When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, one of his earliest actions was to ban Jews from working in that country’s storied film industry. The men and women who had created German cinema’s “Golden Age” with films like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and "The Blue Angel" were forced to flee. They took their considerable skills to Hollywood, where they made monumental contributions to American cinema in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. These exiles, who include Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Billy Wilder, Franz Waxman, and Fred Zinnemann, made pictures that are among the best of the American canon: "Bride of Frankenstein," "Casablanca," "Double Indemnity," "Sunset Boulevard," "High Noon," "The Big Heat," "Some Like It Hot," to name a few.