By Don Feder, Creators Syndicate
July 1996 – Marlon Brando has a son who did time for murder and a daughter who committed suicide. He hasn’t had a decent part in 24 years. Don Corpulente looks like he exceeds the weight of the Chrysler building, and Irv Rubin of the Jewish Defense League (JDL) has threatened to make his life a “living hell.”
Is the JDL contemplating bombing the McDonald’s closest to Brando’s abode?
The cause of Rubin’s rage is the actor’s comments on Larry King Live that Jewish “ownership” of Hollywood has led to the negative portrayal of other minorities – presumably, due to Jewish insensitivity.
About a year ago, Barbra Streisand, another thespian and deep thinker, addressed the Kennedy School. Why is it that every time celebrities speak out on serious subjects they call us “bubble heads” who latch on to bizarre and loathsome ideas, Babs asked. I can’t imagine.
Brando is a certified Hollywood liberal, as well as a certifiable lunatic – a civil rights activist and friend of Pocahontas, who has offered to open his house to the illegal immigrants beaten by California deputies.
He also exemplifies a strain of left-wing anti-Semitism that shares the fever swamp conspiracy fantasies of skinheads and militia types.
Admittedly, though, most of the muttering about Jewish control of show business comes from the right, as much from those who are fearful and confused as inveterate anti-Semites. The former think they see a connection between the Jewish names in movie credits and the increasingly rancid product that Hollywood delivers.
Michael Medved, an Orthodox Jew and cultural conservative, addressed this in his 1992 book, Hollywood vs. America. If Jews really have a pernicious effect on entertainment, Medved mused, then as movies got worse, Jewish influence should have grown.
But in the ’30s and ’40s, when Jewish “control” of Hollywood was at its apex and legends like Louis B. Mayer, Sam Goldwyn and the Warner brothers held sway, American movies were paeans to patriotism, faith and family.
Today, none of the major studios is a Jewish family business in the sense most were during Hollywood’s golden age. Many are owned by WASPy moguls or foreign corporations. The industry’s product wavers between the sewer and the slaughter house.
That’s not to say that most Hollywood Jews of the ’90s are noble. But there is nothing distinctly Jewish about them or their work. To say that the typical Jewish director or actor is animated by the Torah is like saying the films of Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Francis Ford Coppola reflect Catholic dogma.
If Jews really ran Hollywood and exercised their control toward the attainment of common goals, we would expect to see nothing but positive images of Jews on the big screen.
So where are the Jewish heroes in movies? Sorry, Marlon, but Jews in Hollywood are far more negative in their depiction of the Jewish people than in their treatment of any other minority.
Enemies, a Love Story, directed by Paul Mazursky, had Alan King as a thoroughly repulsive rabbi. Films like Homicide, The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick, and Radio Days have gone out of their way to demean Judaism or religious Jews.
Woody Allen delights in making Jews look pathetic and absurd. There’s hardly an Allen film without a wimpy, neurotic Jewish male (usually played by Allen himself) or a whiny, overbearing Jewish woman.
There are plenty of prominent Jews in the industry, but – like Allen’s – their worldview is un-Jewish. By and large (Steven Spielberg is a prominent exception), Hollywood Jews are alienated from the roots that most never knew and thoroughly assimilated in the cultural milieu in which they live and work.
This is also true of Hollywood Catholics and Protestants – terms signifying no more than ancestry. According to one survey, only 7% of those influential in the industry ever attend religious services.
The values of Hollywood Jews, like those of Hollywood gentiles, are anti-Jewish, anti-biblical, anti-Torah. Anarchic sex isn’t a Jewish value, neither is cynicism, situation ethics, attacks on the family or nihilistic violence.
Brando has apologized for his remarks and pledged to make a pilgrimage to the Simon Wiesenthal Center. I for one am not impressed. Far better that those who worry about Jews controlling Hollywood understand that there is nothing Jewish in the prominence of individuals whose names end with “berg” or “stein.” 
