Jews and Christians: Partners in early Hollywood

When, in 1920s Hollywood, as author and historian Neal Gabler has observed, Jews created “an empire of their own,” was there peace in filmland between Jews and Christians?

Within the Hollywood film colony of that period, which was populated with stars like Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, “Everyone shared,” said Marc Wanamaker, a film history consultant and historian of the Hollywood Heritage Museum, in a recent interview.

As the Jews who ran the film industry interacted with the Christians who made up the majority employed by it, this spirit of helping one another manifested in surprising ways. Perhaps most unexpected is the story of how Jewish studio chiefs helped build a Hollywood church.

Neal Dodd, known as “the padre of Hollywood,” appeared in many films as a minister or priest, including 1934’s “It Happened One Night” with Claudette Colbert and Clark Gable; he was, in fact, an ordained minister. He arrived in Los Angeles around 1917, and soon after set out to establish a ministry for those who worked in Hollywood. After opening St. Mary of the Angels Anglican Church in temporary quarters at 1724 N. Vermont Ave. in 1918, he moved to a new building at 1743 N. New Hampshire Ave. the same year. But with friends and supporters like Pickford and Fairbanks — whose wedding he presided over in 1920 — the Rev. Dodd had ambitions to build something bigger, “like a Hollywood cathedral,” Wannamaker said. Lacking large donations, and finding competition from the city’s established churches, he had to scale back his early ambitions, but by 1930 he had finally raised enough money to build a small neighborhood church at 4510 Finley Ave. in Los Feliz.

“Jewish and Christian donors gave money for a new church,” Wanamaker wrote in an email.

“In the 1920s, most of the studios were Jewish-run,” Wanamaker said, referring to the Hollywood powerhouses of the time, including Universal Studios, run by Carl Laemmle; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), run by Marcus Loew, Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B. Mayer; Adolph Zukor at Paramount; Harry Cohn at Columbia; and the Warner brothers — Albert, Sam, Harry and Jack.

Although they occasionally made films with Jewish references, Wanamaker said, “as filmmakers, they did not want to identify with being Jews. Their goal was to make films for the American public, so [that] Americans [of] all races, ethnicities, religions would go see their pictures,” said Wanamaker, who is the nephew of actor Sam Wanamaker.

Which is why, he said, “When Dodd showed up to build, they wanted to bring in Judeo-Christian values.”

The Mediterranean Revival church, which was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural landmark in 1974, is located near the corner of Hillhurst and Finley avenues. Inside, there once hung a donor plaque with the names of Irving Thalberg, Louie B. Mayer and Jesse Lasky, according to Wanamaker, but it has apparently been removed.

Jewish-run studio support was sought from the beginning of the project, according to a news story in the Feb. 3, 1920, edition of the Evening Herald newspaper. The article says that the Rev. Dodd, while making the rounds at the studios to talk up his new church, was “cordially received at [Jesse] Lasky’s [studio], Universal City [Carl Laemmle] and several other studios.”

“Jews and Christian worked together. They respected each other’s religion. They respected each other’s values. That’s why they put money into this church,” Wanamaker said.

An example of how the sharing went both ways can be seen in the story of “American’s sweetheart,” Mary Pickford, a Christian Scientist, who donated both funds and the use of her celebrity to aid the Jewish Home for the Aged (which later became the Los Angeles Jewish Home). Pickford was a silent movie star and one of the founders of United Artists, as well the Motion Picture Home, and, “She was one of the original pioneers of Hollywood, its highest-paid actress for a time, and a very smart businesswoman,” according to Cari Beauchamp, resident scholar at the Mary Pickford Foundation, who has written several books on Hollywood history. “She grew up fast and was supporting her family by the age of 8,” Beauchamp said. “She was a hands-on philanthropist.”

As to why Pickford would turn her philanthropic efforts toward the Jewish Home, a possible explanation is offered in Pickford’s autobiography, “Sunshine and Shadow,” as reported by William M. Kramer and Norton B. Stern in the Western States Jewish History Quarterly. According to their story, it was in 1939, when the “Nazi campaign against the Jews was unfolding,” that “Miss Pickford said she made an ‘intolerant remark’ ” to a friend, the Jewish actress Carmel Myers. “She blamed wealthy Jews for what was happening, on the grounds that they had ‘bought up German properties at bargain prices after WW I … to exploit the depression in Germany,’ ” the two authors wrote.

“Carmel Myers gently rebuked her, and Mary Pickford took it to heart,” they wrote.

“Each of us has at least one moment in his life that stands out with a burning sense of shame and self-guilt,” Pickford wrote in her autobiography. “I asked God to forgive me and show me the right path to help these persecuted people.

“I made up my mind that I would answer the very first appeal from the Jewish people with my whole being,” Pickford wrote.

The opportunity came in the form of an invitation from Ida Mayer Cummings, sister of Louis B. Mayer, to speak at a Jewish Home for the Aged luncheon, to which Pickford responded by attending, then hosting more such luncheons at Pickfair, her own home, and finally becoming involved with a campaign to build a much-needed new building.

As a result, in 1948, Pickford and her husband, Buddy Rogers, broke ground on what would be dedicated in 1952 as the five-story Mary Pickford Building in Boyle Heights, then the location of the Home.

Pickford’s support for the Home did not end with her death in 1979. According to Beauchamp, her foundation has since contributed more than $700,000 to the Jewish Home.

Other Hollywood stars who were not members of the tribe pitched in to support the Jewish community, as well.

Wilshire Boulevard Temple may be best known for its early Hollywood-Jewish ties, but Temple Israel of Hollywood also has broad roots in the industry — Jewish and non-Jewish, as described in a synagogue history written by Rabbi Lewis M. Barth in 1955 that can be found in the collection of the American Jewish Archives. The congregation was founded in1926 and held services for a time in a Methodist church on the corner of Vine Street and Lexington Avenue. Of its seven founders, five were prominent in Hollywood: Sol Wurtzel, head of Fox Films; Isadore Bernstein, head of production at Universal Pictures; I.E. Chadwick, president of Chadwick Studios; John Stone, a writer at Fox; and Jesse Goldberg, an independent producer. The other two founders were also related to the business: one was a talent agent, and the other was a doctor whose patients were people in the business.

It’s not surprising then, that in 1929, Temple Israel began to use its Hollywood connections to stage an annual “Monster Midnight Show” (later called the “Midnight Benefit”) to fundraise.

According to a 1929 edition of the temple’s bulletin, The Observer, whose early editions had a masthead that read Filmland’s House of Worship, “Scores of motion picture and stage stars of world fame … signified their willingness to do their show in the campaign for Temple Israel.”

The synagogue’s historian, Enid Sperber, said that the lineup in many of the yearly shows featured both Jewish and non-Jewish performers. Over the years, it was presented at both the Warner Bros. Theatre and the Pantages Theatre, and featured big-name Jewish performers like Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Jack Benny, the Three Stooges and Milton Berle, along with non-Jewish entertainers such as Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Rudy Vallee, Will Rodgers, George Raft, Carole Lombard, Stepin Fetchit (Lincoln Theodore Monroe Andrew Perry), W.C. Fields, Ruby Keeler, Ginger Rogers and Bob Hope.

Temple Israel also was an entry point for some in the Hollywood community who wanted to become Jewish; its rabbi, Max Nussbaum, “was the rabbi who converted Elizabeth Taylor,” Sperber said. He also co-officiated at Taylor’s wedding to Eddie Fisher. Although Nussbaum was not responsible for the conversion of Sammy Davis Jr., he did convert his wife, the Swedish model and actress May Britt, as well as Davis’ third wife, the former Altovise Joanne Gore.

Another important exemplar of the crossover between Jewish and Christian communities was one of early Hollywood’s best-known stars, Charlie Chaplin.

“All Charlie’s life, he identified with Jews. He even went to Yiddish theater,” said Wanamaker, who believes Chaplin thought his father might have been Jewish. “He would never say ‘no’ to being Jewish. He had a constant Jewish relationship his whole life,” said Wanamaker, who has researched Chaplin’s background extensively and confirmed that Chaplin’s parents actually were Protestants. As if to accentuate the acculturation, Wanamaker said, when Chaplin was asked if he was Jewish, “He answered, ‘I am a mensch.’ ”