Hollywood and Israel, a love story
In a new book, authors Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman examine the history of modern Israel's representation in cinema – with all its ups and downs.
Israel plays a larger-than-life role on the silver screen. From big-budget epics such as Paul Newman’s 1960 hit Exodus to Adam Sandler’s raunchy You Don’t Mess With the Zohan in 2008, Hollywood films about the Jewish State can evoke a cluster of competing reactions.
A new book takes in the panorama – Hollywood and Israel: A History, by professors Tony Shaw and Giora Goodman.
“There have been a few books dealing with the subject of the representation of Israel in Hollywood films, mainly Exodus,” Goodman said in a joint Zoom interview between the authors and The Times of Israel. “But none of them are about the relationship as a whole, both off screen as well as onscreen, and over a whole century.
“It’s not just film production, but also philanthropy, diplomacy and celebrity advocacy, the whole kind of relationship that can be built between the global entertainment capital and a state, Israel.”
The book is replete with cinematic moments depicting Israel.
They range from the kiss between Newman and his American Presbyterian lover, nurse Kitty Fremont (Eva Marie Saint), atop Mount Hermon in Exodus, to the heart-stopping sight of zombies swarming Jerusalem in World War Z, a Brad Pitt dramatisation of the apocalyptic bestseller by Max Brooks, son of Jewish director Mel.
Photo: AP Photo/Wally Fong
There are also plenty of tidbits backed up by archival research. Did you know that former prime minister Ehud Olmert is credited with suggesting the title Pretty Woman to sabra producer Arnon Milchan back when Olmert was mayor of Jerusalem? Or that the 1990 Julia Roberts blockbuster then became Yasser Arafat’s favourite film? Or that lifelong Israel aficionado Frank Sinatra reportedly smuggled funds to the Haganah?
The book has a near-Hollywood origin story: a Los Angeles-based colleague connected the geographically separated authors. Shaw is a British academic at the University of Hertfordshire, while Goodman is based in the Galilee as the Department of Multidisciplinary Studies chair at Kinneret College.
The book’s cast of characters includes Jewish-American celebrities such as Barbra Streisand, who conversed with ex-prime minister Golda Meir by satellite and sang Hatikvah at a star-studded 30th birthday party for Israel on prime time in 1978.
And then there’s Steven Spielberg, who directed two sombre Israel-connected films: the Oscar-winning 1993 Schindler’s List, which ends with Holocaust survivors headed for Zion accompanied by Jerusalem of Gold, and the controversial 2005 Munich, an exploration of the Mossad’s hunt for the Black September terrorists behind the 1972 Summer Olympics massacre of members of the Israeli Olympic team.
Within the book, Israelis like superstar Gal Gadot and director Gideon Raff reflect an increasing sabra pipeline to Hollywood. There are appearances by non-Jewish luminaries such as Sinatra, whose photo adorns the cover. There’s even a celebrity clergy leader: the rabbi to the stars, Max Nussbaum, who presided over two celebrity conversions to Judaism – Elizabeth Taylor and Sammy Davis Jr.
Beginning in the 1920s and ’30s, the narrative examines a small but growing number of Hollywood films supporting Zionism and opposing Adolf Hitler. After Israel achieved independence, Christian-themed biblical epics such as Ben Hur became in vogue, although arguably the most famous biblical movie of them all was an Old Testament story – Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments – filmed in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt.
Although Jewish studio heads such as Louis B Mayer were sometimes lukewarm in their Zionism, one group in nascent Israel’s camp was Hollywood progressives, according to the book, which credits them for the 1953 film The Juggler. Starring Kirk Douglas as a Holocaust survivor in Israel, The Juggler established a cinematic precedent, being both set in Israel and actually filmed there.
“Hollywood’s early interest in Israel was not just ethnic or religious because of the large number of Jews in the film industry,” Goodman said. “The liberals in Hollywood, often Jewish too, were attracted to what they saw as a new country with progressive ideals.”
The book devotes an entire chapter to Exodus.
“Lots of historians have written about Exodus,” Shaw said. “We think it still is an important movie.” He credits the film with helping “people everywhere regard Israel as a legitimate state, a sovereign country born out of the Holocaust. Major stars like Paul Newman were in it. There was his [character’s] love affair with a non-Jew [Kitty Fremont, played by] Eva Marie Saint and what that says about the overall support, not just Jews, shown for Israel”.
As the authors explain, the film had an eventful backstory. There were many rewrites and three different screenwriters – Leon Uris got fired in the early going. The British government called for gentler treatment of their side, as did local Arab Israeli community leaders. Throughout, the Israeli government made its wishes known, whether it was less emphasis on Irgun violence or more use of the word “Israel”.
The authors also examine the changing ways in which Palestinians have been depicted in film. These range from unsubtle portrayals as terrorists to more nuanced presentations, including Palestinian filmmaker Hany Abu-Assad’s 2005 film Paradise Now about would-be suicide bombers, and the Oscar-nominated 2013 film Omar about an accused Israel collaborator.
Shaw and Goodman also look at Hollywood support for the Palestinians.
Whenever they discussed Mideast tensions permeating Hollywood, Shaw and Goodman looked for an objective approach.
“We really worked hard on making sure the vocabulary we used couldn’t be interpreted as being pro or anti-Israel,” Shaw said. “We are historians, after all. We don’t have an angle or axe to grind.”
This proved useful when examining the impact of such factors as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, social media, and the 2014 Gaza War.
“We are potentially at a turning point here,” Shaw said. “As we see, change was afoot. Many Hollywood types, Hollywood people, became overtly more critical.”
Yet, he notes, just a few years later, in 2018, another birthday celebration for Israel took place in Hollywood – a 70th-anniversary gala. It was private this time, but it still drew a crowd of key players, from Billy Crystal to Noa Tishby.
“Many Israelis are coming over to Hollywood, making that relationship between Israel and the American film industry that much closer,” Shaw said. “On the one hand, overt criticism of Israel has increased, certainly compared with the ’70s. But in many ways, the substructure of Hollywood is still very pro-Israel.”Times of Israel
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