Now for something completely different: Jews, Britain, and American moviemaking during World War II

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Venue:Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, 301 Washington Ave., Miami Beach

It is common knowledge that Jews played an outsized role in the inception of the American movie business. Yet Hollywood Jews are largely unrecognized for filmmaking during the Second World War. Their key role was kept under wraps. With a focus on the motion picture division of the Office of Facts and Figures, led by Leo Rosten, the moviemaking enterprises of the U.S. Army Signal corps, and photographic units of other military branches, we see that Jews as photographers, cameramen, scriptwriters, and filmmakers were not simply a minority among their fellow servicemen. Budd Schulberg, a Hollywood brat and author of a scandalous tinseltown memoir, What Makes Sammy Run? (1941), was arguably the leading operative for the OSS in the use of film in the Nuremberg prosecution of Nazi war criminals, and not coincidentally, the apprehension of famed German director Leni Riefenstahl. But perhaps most surprising of all is the indebtedness of the success of the US wartime film program—to Britain. The lecture will be accompanied by film clips from the period.