An Empire Of Their Own

Adolph Zukor, Louis B. Mayer, the brothers Warner, Carl Laemmle, Harry Cohn — these men created not only Hollywood but also what might be called the great American myth. It’s still alive and well today. What these empire builders had in common was their origins…East European and Russian Jewish. But borscht and bagels didn’t sell. What did was cowboys and Indians, the frontier, virile men and chaste women, red-blooded two-fisted opportunity, patriotism and America. This was the myth, in which the creators had a dangerous psychological stake. In perfecting it, they largely lost themselves. “Many have written about the tail and trunk of Hollywood. But no one has quite gotten the whole animal the way Neal Gabler does.” (The New York Times)