Jews Cinema

Gil Toffell
Jews, Cinema and Public Life in Interwar Britain

Gil Toffell
Jews, Cinema and

Public Life in Interwar
Britain
Gil Toffell
London, UK
ISBN 978-1-137-56930-1 ISBN 978-1-137-56931-8 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950510
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication.
Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have
been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published
maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover image: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Cover design: Tom Howey
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Limited
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in writing. To thank all those who have
provided me with assistance or insight would require a short essay.
However, I wish to gratefully acknowledge the assistance given to me by
the Economic and Social Research Council and the Leverhulme Trust.
Colleagues who gave invaluable help include my doctoral supervisors
Fran Tonkiss and Celia Lury, as well as Annette Kuhn, Janet Harbord,
Ben Gidley and Nirmal Puwar. Lena Watson supplied me with first-rate
Yiddish translation. The editorial team at Palgrave have been attentive,
professional and hugely patient. I would like to thank Chris Penfold
for originally agreeing to take on the book and to Lina Aboujieb, Ellie
Freedman and Karina Jakupsdottir for seeing the project to completion.
I have spent many hours in archives and was regularly impressed by both
the knowledge and generosity of archivists. This was particularly the
case at Tower Hamlets Local History Library, the Jewish Chronicle, the
British Library and the Cinema Theatre Association Archive. Although
I cannot name individuals for reasons of confidentiality, I am greatly
indebted to all those that agreed to grant me oral history interviews and
to those that assisted with putting me in touch with interviewees. For
their unwavering encouragement and for being a welcome distraction I
would like to thank my friends Renu, Tom, Ofra, Daniel and, of course,
Naomi and Adam. Most of all I want to thank my family: my parents
David and Judy, my sister Anat and her husband Felix. This book would
not have been written without their support.
v
vi Acknowledgements
Some of the material from Chapter 5 previously appeared as

“Awaiting with Some Anxiety”: The Jewish Response to Jew Suss
(1934) in 1930s Britain in Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and Jewishness in
British Film, Television, and Popular Culture, edited by Nathan Abrams.
Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 The Spaces and Places of Jewish Cinema Culture 21
3 Films of Jewish Interest 61
4 The Public Lives of Jewish Stars 113
5 The Jews Behind the Camera 145
6 Jewish Defence 175
7 Epilogue: The Decline of a Jewish Cinema Culture 201
Index 223
vii
Abbreviations
BBFC British Board of Film Censors

JC Jewish Chronicle
LCC London Country Council
LMA London Metropolitan Archives
THLHL Tower Hamlets Local History Library
ix
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Old Kings Hall, Commercial Road, London (Image courtesy

of Tower Hamlets Local History Library) 28
Fig. 2.2 Film posters on Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London
1938 (Image courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History
Library) 32
Fig. 2.3 Apollo Picture House, Stoke Newington, London
(Image courtesy of Cinema Theatre Association Archive) 33
Fig. 2.4 Rivoli Cinema, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s
(Image courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library) 36
Fig. 2.5 Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s
(Image courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library) 39
Fig. 3.1 Eretz Israel Visualised (Advertisement in Jewish Chronicle,
October 8, 1920. Image courtesy of Jewish Chronicle) 95
Fig. 3.2 Advertisement for Loyalities (Jewish Chronicle, November 3,
1933. Image courtesy of Jewish Chronicle) 105
Fig. 4.1 Advertisement for Yiddle with His Fiddle (Jewish Times,
July 16, 1937. Image courtesy of British Library) 141
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
It was within the horrifying context of a growing wave of political

antisemitism in Europe that the maverick anthropologist Tom Harrison
first dispatched a small team of social investigators attached to his Mass
Observation organisation to live for a short period in London’s East
End. Arriving in the winter of 1939 they were tasked with laying the
groundwork for a “comparative Sociology of Jews and Cockneys” (File
Report A12) that could establish, “scientifically”, whether there existed
any objective reality to the slanderous claims made against Jews by their
detractors. By assessing, for instance, the relative consumption of “dirty
picture machines” by Jews and non-Jews, or the preference of a given
social group for gaudy neckties, it might be possible to definitively refute
accusations of Jewish lecherousness or a propensity for ostentatious and
vulgar personal presentation.
Experiencing first-hand the notoriously insanitary living conditions of
a Whitechapel tenement, one anonymous investigator recorded the grim
detail of his temporary accommodation. Included in these field notes
are a few paragraphs describing the bedtime rituals of a young man who
could be viewed through the uncurtained window of an adjacent flat.
Prior to hopping into a bed shared with a younger brother the unknow-
ing research participant is seen throwing a combination of punches in a
bout of shadow boxing, picking his nose then wiping a finger on his shirt
front, and carelessly tossing a pair of shoes across the room. Voyeuristic
and invasive, the ethical shortcomings of a methodology reliant on unau-
thorised surveillance are obvious—a critique that has been levelled at the
© The Author(s) 2018 1

G. Toffell, Jews, Cinema and Public Life in Interwar Britain,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_1
2 G. TOFFELL
wider Mass Observation project (Hubble 2005). Yet in recording these

unguarded moments, experiences of everyday embodiment in the lives of
interwar working class Jews survive. Here is an individual habituated into
the forced physical intimacy and lack of privacy that come with struc-
tural economic inequality. A final burst of activity before sleep involves a
brief rehearsal of the rhythms of the boxing ring; pugilism then being an
exceedingly popular sporting activity that commanded an almost cultish
devotion amongst proletarian Jews.
For Mass Observation it is clear that the research ends justified the
methodological means; the surreptitious monitoring of unguarded citi-
zens was viewed as a crucial technique in producing meaningful knowl-
edge about Britain’s social reality. Oriented to transient moments the
shifting moods of the nation would be revealed in informal conversation,
aesthetic tastes and the mundane activities of work and leisure. In the
writing of history it is never possible to provide a unified and panoptic
account of any object of study. All historical narratives are partial, and a
shift of perspective brings into view aspects of life not otherwise observ-
able. During the interwar years the spheres of work, religion and organ-
ised politics governed much of what constituted the collective rhythms
of life and the horizon of what was conceived possible for the mass of
working class Jews in Britain. An examination of these contexts can var-
iously shed light on experiences of oppression, shared moral duties, or
even how those unable to transcend their individual anonymity might, as
a group, become a force of history. What these do not address, however,
are the unstructured activities and leisure choices of Jews unencumbered
by more pressing obligation. Beyond those few fragments of data left
behind by ethnographies such as Mass Observation’s the most ephemeral
of those moments are unrecoverable. What does survive are the traces of
a scene of shared leisure marked by its status as a commercial enterprise
seeking to attract customers, its administration by agencies of the state,
and by participant memory.
As in much of the rest of interwar Britain, the cinema occupied a pro-
found cultural centrality in Jewish neighbourhoods as film-going became
the nation’s pre-eminent urban leisure activity. By the mid-1930s the
western section of the East End—the mostly densely Jewish portion of
the quarter—could support a dozen cinema theatres; a substantial num-
ber for a geography comprising approximately three square miles. In
large part the Jewish consumption of film and film culture mirrored that
of gentile audiences—the same stars were idolised, the same Hollywood
1 INTRODUCTION 3
productions enjoyed. Yet in an era in which significant pressure was

brought to bear on Jews to assimilate culturally, the cinema auditoria of
working class Jewish areas stubbornly remained as sites of cultural dif-
ference. Not only was a distinctness from the mainstream registered in
cinema programmes—Yiddish film, Jewish nationalist propaganda and
other items of Jewish interest were regularly screened—but the mate-
rial culture and expressive norms of exhibition sites in neighbourhoods
such as London’s East End, Leeds’ Chapeltown and Cheetham Hill in
Manchester signalled the alterity of an ethnically particular audience.
This is a vision of the cinema as a “counter-public”; a space in which par-
ticipants might, against a background of coercive state and media scru-
tiny, articulate alternative interpretations of their identities.
In the picture houses of Jewish neighbourhoods pleasure and com-
munal solidarity came together in new and unpredictable forms. Yet the
publicness of film impinged on Jewish life beyond the localised geog-
raphies of primary Jewish settlement. Film, in its prominence in British
society, came to be seen as a vessel through which Jewish communal
concerns might be carried to a wider non-Jewish public. As the cinema
developed from an exotic sideshow into an institutionalised entertain-
ment it became incorporated into a universal public sphere. This, as I
am deploying the term, can be conceptualised as an imagined (though
not immaterial) media space preceded by the bourgeois public sphere
but increasingly, in interwar Britain, oriented to the mass consumer.
Throughout the twentieth century new technologies of mass commu-
nication joined the print media in constituting such a space, with film
quickly perceived as an important, indeed worryingly influential, site of
public opinion formation.
According to Habermas (1989) the ideal of a political public sphere
oriented to rational-critical debate faded with the rise of industrial soci-
ety and the welfare state. By the end of the nineteenth century power-
ful business interests had begun to corrosively retool communications
media for political advantage and commercial gain, while the delineation
between public and private blurred as the state increasingly intervened in
civil society. In spite of Habermas’ account of the disintegration of the
public sphere, Charles Taylor (2004) argues a common deliberative space
remains fundamental to a definitive conceptualisation of the Western
social order in modernity. Indebted to Anderson’s (1983) account of the
nation as an imagined community Taylor elaborates the public sphere
as a plurality of dispersed sites of discussion which are understood to
4 G. TOFFELL
comprise a single great exchange. Inhabiting the same social imaginary

as the majority population of gentile British citizens, Jews looked to rep-
resentation in the universal public sphere as a form of participation in a
wider collective entity. Depending on context this might be conceived
as entry into the nation, or even as an integral feature of international
modernity.
Cinema and British-Jewish Historiography

During the years between the conclusion of World War II and the pres-
ent day, the historical study of Britain’s Jews has evolved dramatically.
While few individuals beyond Cecil Roth were committed to a serious
exploration of the topic at the beginning of that period, a host of major
historians are now understood to have established international reputa-
tions through an examination of the British-Jewish experience. Wide-
ranging comprehensive studies include landmark volumes by Lipman
(1954), Alderman (1998) and Endelman (2002), though narrower
accounts of specific aspects of British-Jewish life have been notable both
in their quantity and plurality. Although far too numerous to list in
any exhaustive manner here, it can be recalled that key areas of social
life such as social integration (Feldman 1994), politics (Fishman 1975;
Cohen 1982) and antisemitism (Kushner 1989; Julius 2010) have all
received sustained attention; while topics as diverse as the Jewish youth
movement (Kaddish 1995), the character of individual local communities
(Black 1994; Williams 2008) and the Jewish press (Cesarani 1994) have
been the subject of book length studies by experts in the field.
One area that has, however, received less attention is the sphere of
culture. Significant research into British-Jewish cultural output and con-
sumption has been undertaken, though a notable majority focuses on
elite literary forms rather than popular culture (Abrams 2012). Given
the seriousness with which popular culture has been approached in the
social sciences and humanities since the “cultural turn”, as well as the
influence of the “history from below” movement on key individuals in
British-Jewish historiography (Kushner and Ewence 2010), the reasons
for such a lacuna are not immediately obvious. Whatever the explanation
film in particular has, until recently, suffered from a near total lack of
consideration. Given the prominence of cinema-going in interwar leisure
lives this represents a significant blind spot in assessing the cultural pref-
erences and social behaviours of ordinary British Jews during those years.
1 INTRODUCTION 5
It is equally true that if Jewish Studies has failed to take cinema seri-
ously, then, for the most part, Film Studies has ignored British Jews. For
sure, Jews involved in the business of cinema have not lacked the atten-
tion of biographers, but overwhelmingly these lives are not considered
within the context of a British-Jewish communal existence. Individuals
such as Oscar Deutsch or Isidore Ostrer were defined by their
Jewishness, yet no account exists tracing their specifically Jewish trajecto-
ries into the industry or their public perception as Jews. Moreover, from
Low’s (1950) foundational project until the present, discussions of a his-
toric national film culture in Britain have a continued to elide the dis-
proportionate contribution of Jews to virtually all arms of the industry.
In regard to the interwar years Napper (2009), for instance, has recently
argued for an understanding of cinema as implicated in the creation of
a common national culture. Yet while his highly illuminating account
remains an essential guide to the period, the tensions generated by con-
temporary perceptions of a Jewish, and thus alien, participation in British
film production pass without comment.
In recognition of such absences in the historical record some recent
scholarship has sought to address a British-Jewish production and con-
sumption of popular culture (e.g. Abrams 2016). Film during the inter-
war period has not been ignored, with a significant focus brought to
key areas, particularly production. Gough-Yates (1992) groundbreak-
ing work was for many years a scholarly anomaly, though has now been
has been followed up by Marshall (2010), Hochscherf (2011), and
Bergfelder and Cargnelli, eds. ( 2012) in their examinations of Jewish
émigré production personnel during the 1930s; as well as by Spicer’s
(2012) research into Jewish entrepreneurship in production, distribution
and exhibition. Less attention has been brought to bear on performers,
though Berkowitz (2016) has examined Bud Flanagan and the “Crazy
Gang” troupe as a form of Jewish comedy. Toffell (2009, 2011) has con-
sidered British-Jewish spectatorship and audiences.
The substantive object of study of this current volume is the mean-
ing of film and cinema-going to working class and petit-bourgeois
Jews living in the urban centres of interwar Britain. This will consider
the material context of interwar British-Jewish film viewing, as well as
British-Jewish perceptions of a national public’s reception of filmic mate-
rial containing representations of Jews. More than simply an exercise in
historical completism, this narrative seeks to reveal the extent to which
ordinary Jewish individuals experienced an active participation in, and
6 G. TOFFELL
alienation from, the national family, as well as the manner in which trans-
national affiliations between Jews in Britain, Europe and the USA were
facilitated in the everyday. That British society is now ineluctably mul-
ticultural is taken as a given by all bar a fantasist fringe. To understand
how ethnic difference was first experienced in the media-entertainment
sphere—now regarded a crucial feature of late modernity—both contrib-
utes to the picture of a Jewish presence in the Britain and expands the
scope of study for a British sociology of mass communication as it inter-
sects with race.
The Historical Emergence of Interwar Jewry

The modern history of a Jewish presence in Britain is typically seen to
begin with the informal readmission of Jews during the period of the
Commonwealth in the mid-sixteenth century. A fully official eman-
cipation would, however, have to wait a further two centuries when a
raft of legislation rendering Jews equal in rights followed the pass-
ing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829. As with Catholics and
Nonconformists, Jews had, amongst various restrictions, hitherto been
unable to take a seat in parliament since they could not swear an oath
of office requiring an avowal of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Anglicanism.
In spite of historical structural exclusion a steady flow of Jews would
migrate to Britain following the readmission, and by 1851 the coun-
try’s Jewish population had risen to approximately 32,000, around 70%
of which were British-born adults (Laidlaw 2015). Diverse in composi-
tion, Jewish life in mid-Victorian Britain comprised of both “Sephardic”
and “Ashkenazi” communities, with significant numbers tracing recent
ancestry from southern Europe, the Netherlands, Germany and territo-
ries now identified as Poland.
London has always existed as the centre of Jewish life in Britain, with
the east of the city seeing the most sustained and substantial settlement.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century the district of Aldgate had
a sizeable and long established Jewish population. Continuing to grow
throughout the 1800s the community had expanded into the neighbour-
ing Spitalfields area by the mid-century and was spreading further east
into Whitechapel. In 1882, when the first large-scale wave of migrants
from the Russian Empire reached London, the East End was thus a log-
ical destination for many. Close to the London docks—a common port
of arrival—and with extensive religious and communal structures, some
1 INTRODUCTION 7
semblance of a new Jewish life might be quickly acquired. Driving the

exodus from the Pale of Settlement was antisemitic mass violence set
in motion by the 1881 assassination of Alexander II, an act maliciously
rumoured to be the work of Jewish revolutionaries. Economic hardship,
repressive legislation and further pogroms over the next quarter of a cen-
tury (the most brutal of which occurred between 1903 and 1906) would
ensure an ongoing flow of refugees westward. At the outbreak of World
War I the East End’s Jewish population had swollen to over 100,000
(Rubenstein et al. 2011).
While many of the new arrivals aspired to journey on to the USA
after a temporary stay in London, large numbers found their new sur-
roundings sufficiently bearable to put down permanent roots. Although
sharing a religion with established Anglo-Jewish communities, however,
cultural differences were stark. The language of Russo-Polish Jews was
Yiddish, and their expressive capacities and modes of dress were regarded
overtly foreign. Significant numbers were highly religious and felt alien-
ated by the “anglicised” services of the United Synagogue, others had
embraced political radicalism. The overt Otherness of the immigrant
masses provoked considerable anxiety in an assimilated Anglo-Jewish
elite; men (and women) who had long stood by a strategy of securing
the place of Jews in Britain by designating religious difference a wholly
private matter (Kahn-Harris and Gidley 2010). In an attempt to accul-
turate these people of the shtetl an array of charitable service provision
and educative schemes were inaugurated or expanded. To some extent
these projects proved immediately successful in their mission (e.g. the
Jews’ Free School), but there was also much indifference to such efforts,
and even outright resistance. First-generation settlers continued to
speak Yiddish publically, Socialists and Anarchists expressed hostility to a
Jewish ruling class, and a plethora of small self-organised places of wor-
ship refused to cede to the authority of a religious establishment.
With the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914 the UK imposed a strict
regime of border control. Yet despite Jewish migration from Russia
reaching a near standstill the urban landscape of the interwar East End
remained a visible zone of Jewish habitation. Describing the signifi-
ers by which districts heavily populated by Jews could be distinguished
from majority gentile areas John Sommerfield, in his role as an investi-
gator for Mass Observation, identified “cafes that sell pickled cucum-
bers, synagogues, Turkish baths, shops with kosher signs of Yiddish
writing displayed,…Yiddish heard in street, Yiddish newspaper displays”
8 G. TOFFELL
(62-1-B, 1939). To this list he might have added: self-help and chari-
table institutions, workshops and factories associated with garment
manufacture, public monuments, and the Yiddish theatre. This latter
entertainment remained active throughout the interwar years. During
the earlier part of that period, in particular, internationally celebrated
companies and actors attracted large and enthusiastic audiences, and ven-
ues such as the Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel Road survived as sites of
public Jewish sociability (Mazower 1996).
Although the East End retained its status as the symbolic and actual
nucleus of working class Jewish life in London up to, and including,
World War II, it was neither homogenous in its social composition nor
was it the only site of proletarian settlement in the city. As Cesarani
(1998) demonstrates, a second generation of Jews, born and educated
in England, differed sharply from a parental immigrant generation. While
many understood Yiddish their primary tongue was English, religion
was receding in importance, and the “old country” was a distant and
unknown place. An active Jewish underworld with Jewish-run spielers
(gambling dens) and localised racketeering has been recorded operating
since the end of the Victorian period (Morton 1992; Samuel 1981), so
a culture of the “street” was far from unique to the Jewish East End of
the interwar years. But it became increasingly acceptable for the young
to spend time in unstructured activity in public space, loitering in cafes
or promenading the major thoroughfares in the search for romantic part-
ners. Relatedly, the enthusiastic adoption of an English leisure culture of
sports, dancehalls and amusement arcades similarly spoke of a loosening
of ties to parental notions of propriety.
It was also this second, British-born, generation that felt liber-
ated to travel beyond the familiar boundaries of Whitechapel, Aldgate
and Stepney Green, both in the search for leisure and to set up home.
Migrating east to West Ham and north to Finsbury Park, Clapton and
Tottenham, small extant Jewish communities in these locations expanded
considerably in the interwar years. Initially, a buoyant manufacturing
economy associated with military supply during the 1915–1918 period
enabled a first wave of Jews to escape the privations of the poorest
accommodation in the East End. Following the war changing Jewish
employment patterns continued to drive the migration of Jews away
from primary areas of settlement. While large numbers remained in the
rag trade and furniture manufacturing the small workshops that had
employed an earlier generation of workers began giving way to factory
1 INTRODUCTION 9
set-ups, many of which required larger sites more freely available in the
inner suburbs. Clerical administration, retail or the distributive trades
were also increasingly regarded as more attractive than monotonous and
labour intensive traditional occupations. These positions, too, were often
located away from the old neighbourhoods.
Although the war economy did, temporarily, raise incomes, the wider
trend of interwar migration should not be misunderstood as an expression
of long-term and extensive Jewish social mobility. Lifestyles and accom-
modation in the inner suburbs were often comparable to primary areas of
Jewish settlement, and, for the majority, relocation around the city repre-
sented an economic move sideways. For the minority that did meaning-
fully increase earnings, the terrace housing and tenements of Manor Park
or Hackney were not a desirable destination. Instead success in business
or entry into the professions might mean a move to the affluent commu-
nities of Hendon, Golders Green or Ilford; though it was Stamford Hill
that became the emblematic neighbourhood of a Jewish nouveau riche. An
even more elevated strata of Jewish wealth was concentrated in Bayswater
and Chelsea. Notwithstanding any resettlement to the working class
Jewish community in Soho, only a handful of Jews born in the East End
would ever gain entry to the social circles of West London.
The other two major centres of Jewish life in interwar Britain,
Manchester and Leeds, did not experience economic expansion until the
Industrial Revolution, and thus did not attract permanent Jewish set-
tlement until the latter eighteenth century. In Manchester during the
1780s a handful of families left behind homes in Liverpool to resettle
as shopkeepers in the city, thus creating the first Jewish congregation.
Joining this small group in 1799, and becoming the first communal
benefactor, was Nathan Mayer Rothschild, having arrived to gain direct
access to local cotton markets. Throughout the early to mid-nineteenth
century this community grew steadily, the newcomers seeking, like
their coreligionist forebears, to set up in retail or as cotton merchants
(Williams 2008). The second half of the century saw dramatic commu-
nal transformation with the arrival of increasing numbers of Eastern
European Jews. Speaking little English, and without seed capital for busi-
ness development, for them Manchester’s attraction was ready employ-
ment in the clothing industries, in particular, fabric waterproofing.
The main areas of settlement of this new working class were dis-
tricts on the northern periphery of the city centre: Strangeways, Lower
Broughton and Red Bank—the latter of these described as “a sandstone
10 G. TOFFELL
ridge of jerry-built property (its streets held up by fragile retaining

walls), industrial pollution and civil neglect” (ibid.: 32). In the interwar
years the waterproofing industry was badly affected by new synthetic
products, and many of the most economically vulnerable were forced
to turn to market-trading and other unpredictable self-employment. As
in London a second generation found themselves alienated from the
social and moral universe of their parents, and the chevroth1 that con-
nected a first generation to the culture of the “old country” while ame-
liorating the trials of the new became abandoned. By the early 1930s
the Jewish population of Manchester stood at around 35,000. The old
immigrant quarters remained populated, but had given way as the social
centre of Jewish proletarian life to the neighbouring Cheetham Hill and
Hightown. These were areas previously colonised by a Jewish middle
class, a group that had now moved further north towards Crumpsall and
Prestwich.
Forging a syncretic identity that blended Jewish and English working
class culture, the young Jews of the interwar years were ready consumers
of the Manchester’s leisure culture, and the Lyons Café, the cinema and
the street corner formed important reference points in their social exist-
ence (Cesarani 1998). Although the community continued to be subject
to antisemitic harassment a more assertive generation was willing defend
itself physically, notably founding the “Shaun Spidah”, a street gang that
met physical abuse with equal force (Humphries 1983). A more formally
organised investment of time was the utopian political projects of the
twentieth century. The Zionist movement achieved an early and strong
foothold (Chiam Weitzman called Manchester home from 1904 until
1916), as did the radical left. With relatively close access to the rural wil-
derness of the High Peak area of Derbyshire the rambling craze of the
1930s gained a significant following amongst young Jews. Politicised as
the reclamation of working class birthrights from a landowning class, the
celebrated 1932 mass trespass on Kinder Scout found one of its leaders
in a young Communist activist from Cheetham Hill, Benny Rothman.
While the Jewish population of Leeds numbered less in quantity than
London or Manchester, at its estimated interwar height of 25,000 it
formed a greater proportion of the overall population of its host city. A
1 A chevra(-oth) was a small society, typically set up in a single room within a private
house, that served as a place of worship, a friendly society, a social hub and a point of con-
tact for newly arrived migrants.
1 INTRODUCTION 11
small but active community, mainly of Germanic origin, was in place by

the 1860s, and, as elsewhere, this expanded greatly following the events
of 1881. Located between Hull and Liverpool, respectively ports of
arrival and departure from the “old world” and to the USA, the town
served as a stopping point on a longer migration trail, but inevitably
collected permanent residents. Employment came primarily in tailoring
trades and the manufacture of woollen textiles. Here, working condi-
tions were regarded as superior to other centres of Jewish settlement,
in part through the prominent Jewish involvement in the Trades Union
Movement (Kershen 1995), though the years of the Depression wrecked
extreme hardship on local workers.
Leeds Jewish community remained clustered at the northeast periph-
ery of the town centre into the 1920s, first in the Leylands area before
spreading into the neighbouring Camp Road district. A full complement
of institutions, secular and sacred, marked the social landscape, though
Sterne (1989) has characterised religious life in the city as “likely the most
fragmented…in the country” (15). This he attributes to an abundance of
older Eastern European rabbis keen to maintain independence from any
central authority. While this concentrated community contained a ten-
dency towards traditionalism, or even insularity, a British-born generation
emerged around the end of World War I that was keen to look beyond life
in the Leylands. Chapeltown, lying to the north, rapidly became the cen-
tre of gravity for Jewish working class life, and by the middle years of the
interwar era the population of the old Jewish quarter had plummeted.
For Jews living in impoverished inner-city districts in London,
Manchester and Leeds experiences of poverty, marginalisation and rac-
ist harassment were common and shared across generations. Yet while a
foreign-born first generation of Eastern European Jews sought to offset
the challenges and difficulties of their adopted home through traditional
communal infrastructures, a second generation was increasingly oriented
to the ethics, culture and institutions of British life. This is not to suggest
a British-born generation of Jews was assimilating seamlessly into English
society; rather new modes of hybridity, of being simultaneously Jewish
and British, were emerging in an improvisatory process. Amongst the
cultural material utilised for negotiating this development was the cin-
ema. A technology of modernity, a mundane aspect of the urban land-
scape, as well as being both culturally central and substantively Jewish:
this was a formation adaptable both as an incubator of Jewish commu-
nality and as a point of entry into the wider social collective.
12 G. TOFFELL
Naturally, Jewish settlement in Britain was not restricted to its three

major centres. Liverpool’s Jewish population stood at 7500 in 1921,
while Birmingham could boast a community of 5000. Glasgow, Cardiff
and the coastal towns of Brighton and Bournemouth also contained
significant numbers of Jews during the interwar period. While sharing
common experiences, each of these locales possesses a unique history of
migration. As will be clear as my narrative develops film and cinema held
ethnically particular meanings for Jews across Britain, and a plethora of
sites will receive attention. However, it is the largest concentrations of
Jewish life that demand the closest study. It was in these locations that
the richest cinema cultures existed, and it is thus they that left behind the
strongest trace.
Sources of Data and Chapter Outline

As a discipline, Film Studies emerged from intellectual traditions con-
cerned with the analysis of the visual arts and literature (Jancovich et al.
2003). Here, knowledge is produced through close readings of texts,
identifying meaning through the revelation of underlying aesthetic and
ideological structures. While the textual analysis of film is not wholly
peripheral to this current project, it is a technique that reveals little about
lived experiences of exhibition spaces or the circulation of discursive
material about Jewish studio bosses. As such, it is the disciplines of his-
tory and, to a lesser extent, sociology that have been drawn on, turning
to archival and oral history methodologies to make sense of a conceptual
and social environment now long vanished.
The plethora of archival material examined includes municipal docu-
mentation, maps, promotional material, cinema ephemera, memorabilia
and photographs. Newspaper commentary is a significant source of data,
and national, local, cinema trade, and the Jewish press feature heavily.
Since this latter branch of the print media plays an especially prominent
role, it is worth expanding on the three British-Jewish newspapers uti-
lised: The Jewish Chronicle, The Jewish World, and The Jewish Times
(Die Zayt). Founded in 1841 and distributed nationally on a weekly
basis, The Jewish Chronicle conceived itself as the official voice of British-
Jewish interests: a subheading on the publication’s masthead declared
the paper “The Organ of British Jewry”. Leopold Greenberg held the
role of editor from 1907 until his death in 1931, during which time
he modernised the publication, widening its appeal to the immigrant
1 INTRODUCTION 13
working class (a prominent writer on the staff was East End native
Simon Gilbert). A committed Zionist and British patriot, Greenberg’s
politics clearly informed the paper’s content, though a range of opinion
was published under his reign. Later editors during the interwar years
were, from 1931 to 1936 Jack Rich, and from 1936 Ivan Greenberg
(Rubenstein et al. 2011).
The Jewish Times was a Yiddish daily comprising about eight pages,
with a small English language section on the back page. Produced in
offices on Whitechapel Road in the East End of London, it had a keen
awareness of the cultural dispositions of its proletarian readership.
Founded in 1913 and edited from then onwards by Romanian immi-
grant Morris Myer, its politics were variously socialist and Labour Zionist,
though much of its news-based content was oriented to a general reader.
The Jewish World was a weekly magazine-style publication, originally
independent but from 1913 acquired by The Jewish Chronicle. Like its
parent publication its editorial stance was sympathetic to Jewish nation-
alism, although it was not a stridently political in content and much of its
content was middlebrow light reading. It ceased publication in 1934.
Methodologically, Janet Staiger’s (1992) “historical materialist”
approach to “the event of interpreting a text” (81) informs much of
the utilisation of press generated film commentary and its relationship
to a historical British-Jewish audience. For Staiger, audience interpreta-
tions have historical bases, with the film review mediating between the
on-screen text and the spectator as an aggregation of discourses mobi-
lised to “explain” a given film. The task of the researcher is to trace
“these discourses and their relation to specific historical formations and
the range of reading strategies these formations employ” (92). Although
a total vision of reception is never a possibility with this approach (one
cannot, for instance, examine, admittedly very common, individual acts
of audience resistance), a gap in which historical spectatorship has the
potential to reside can be mapped out. Rather than extrapolate mean-
ing from a film using a text-centred method, a reading of contempo-
rary film commentary considers its potential to produce and delimit
comprehension.
Supplementing archival material as a source of data are oral history
interviews. These have been collected from various locations, with infor-
mation sought on experiences of cinema-going in London, Manchester
and Leeds. With the aid of Jewish communal and religious organisa-
tions I approached ten interviewees, and these generated information on
14 G. TOFFELL
London and Leeds. Data on Manchester was gathered from an extant

body of interviews conducted by, or under the aegis of, Bill Williams
during the 1970s. This material was accessible by arrangement at the
Manchester Jewish Museum. Also examined were interviews undertaken
for the project Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain. This was overseen by
Annette Kuhn during the 1990s, and transcripts recording some 200
hours of interviews are currently held at Lancaster University.
With one exception, all of the interviews, irrespective of source, were
undertaken with Jewish individuals with memories of Britain during the
interwar period. The interviews conducted by myself were semi-struc-
tured, focussing primarily on experiences of film-going. Undertaken
between 2006 and 2011 informants were either older children or young
adults during the period under examination, though a majority of rec-
ollections do not reach back to the era of silent film. In contrast, hav-
ing been recorded in the 1970s, the material pertaining to Manchester
life contained information from the very beginning of the interwar years.
However, undertaken as a broad record of Manchester Jewry, statements
about leisure were contained within a wider set of discussion topics.
Finally, despite the questioning in the Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain
material being oriented to a generalised national experience of cinema,
some was marked by ethnic specificity. Possibly reflecting the concentra-
tion of British Jewry in London, relevant data all made reference to life
in the capital.
In distinction to some recent work in cinema studies that makes use
of oral histories, most notably Kuhn’s pioneering An Everyday Magic
(2002), reminiscences of cinema are not, for the most part, employed
here to examine how film and film-going might structure the mem-
ory. With the tentative exception of a brief discussion of newsreel foot-
age (Chapter 7), memories of exhibition spaces or the consumption of
individual film titles feature as an additional cache of primary historical
data. While the fallibility of memory is beyond doubt, being particularly
vulnerable to subjective distortion, it remains an important tool for nar-
rating marginal and otherwise overlooked historical moments. Here it is
used sparingly and “triangulated” against archival material, textual analy-
sis and secondary literature to put on record the possibility of events and
experiences otherwise lost.
The trajectory of my argument travels from a discussion of Jewish
cinema culture to an account of the cinematic presence of ethnic differ-
ence in the public sphere. This begins in Chapter 2 with an exploration
1 INTRODUCTION 15
of the urban geography and sites of exhibition associated with a Jewish

cinema culture. Picking up on Miriam Hansen’s suggestion that, his-
torically, the cinema contained the potential to operate as an “alterna-
tive public sphere” for migrant audiences, such spaces are examined at
the local level as communal hubs operating within an immediate social
ecology. Offering a detailed account of the everyday life of exhibition
spaces the chapter variously attends to: culturally specific audience
behaviours, the use of exhibition spaces for a diverse range of Jewish
sociocultural events, non-filmic attractions offered at a given screening
in addition to a feature film and the marking of the built landscape by
ethnically specific cinema publicity. Also considered are secondary sites
of Jewish settlement in the suburbs, and film-going in the cosmopolitan
city centre.
Chapter 3 provides an overview of the multiplicity of film texts that
were marketed and exhibited to British-Jewish audiences as Jewish
interest productions. These include Yiddish language films, Hollywood
“ghetto” dramas and European productions preoccupied with Jewish
exoticism. Particular attention is devoted to the screening of documen-
tary films depicting Zionist activity in interwar Mandatory Palestine that
developed out of lantern slide lectures on the subject of Jewish life in the
Levant. A partner piece to Chapter 2, this account clarifies the textual
component to a Jewish cinema culture, illustrating what was screened in
the exhibition spaces of Jewish neighbourhoods.
Chapter 4 stages a transition away from an understanding of British-
Jewish cinema culture that emphasises an introspective sphere of Jewish
cultural activity, and towards a focus on Jewish communal concerns with
how a Jewish presence in film made sense to a generalised non-Jew-
ish audience. In the first instance this progresses through a discussion
of Jewish film stars and their perceived movement between Jewish and
non-Jewish realms. In tracing this motility it is argued that categories of
public and private proved central to structuring the social imagination of
British Jews around an enclaved/mainstream binary. Receiving extended
discussion is the American actor Molly Picon. Embodying the Jewish
social body in her screen presence it is argued that key to her appeal for
British-Jewish audiences was a sense of the Jews as a people moving into
visibility and recognition within the mass public sphere.
Chapter 5 explores the related topics of Jewish involvement in film
production and exhibition, and a Jewish concern with perceptions that
the cinema was being utilised by Jews for propagandistic purposes. It is
16 G. TOFFELL
recorded how the British-Jewish press devoted considerable attention to

the business success of Jews involved in the film industry, particularly cin-
ema owners. By mapping this discourse it is explained how Jews found
themselves at the cutting edge of creating and participating in a new cul-
tural landscape and were taking pride in this fact. The discussion moves
on to explore how the Jewish press strongly championed any film chal-
lenging antisemitism, yet expressed repeated disquiet over the possibility
that such productions could be seen as a manifestation of special plead-
ing by the alien force of “Jewish power”.
Chapter 6 provides an examination of films produced in the run-up
to World War II that openly militated against Nazism and political anti-
semitism. Particular attention is devoted to the censorship battle, and
subsequent exhibition, of The Eternal Wanderer (1933)—a US-made
Yiddish language production that became the first feature film to openly
denounce Nazism. The chapter continues to build on themes introduced
in Chapters 3 and 4, exploring how the potential to use cinema as a tool
of Jewish defence was problematised and stifled by the culture and logics
of a universal public sphere.
Concluding the discussion Chapter 7 examines both continuities
and discontinuities in Jewish patterns of cinema-going and film recep-
tion in the post-war period. In regard to the former, the continu-
ance of screenings of Jewish interest films and the use of cinemas for
Jewish communal activities in new Jewish neighbourhoods is recorded.
However, it is affirmed that the singularity of the interwar period
for Jewish communities remains a crucial element of the historical
record, and discontinuities with an interwar Jewish cinema culture are
expanded upon. In the aftermath of the holocaust Jewish life in Britain
took on an introverted character—an event registered at the level of
film consumption with reviewers in the Jewish press expressing scepti-
cism over the interest a non-Jewish audience would have in films with
Jewish characters or Jewish interest narratives. Additionally, the Jewish
press passed virtually no comment on newsreel footage of the libera-
tion of concentration camps despite the exhibition of the films receiv-
ing huge coverage across other UK media. This absence is interpreted
in relation to the failure of the films’ narration to identify the on-screen
victims as primarily Jewish; and to a wider discourse which understood
the liberation of Bergen-Belsen to be a national story of British decency
over Nazi inhumanity.
1 INTRODUCTION 17
Bibliography
Abrams, Nathan. 2012. “Introduction: ‘Jews in British Cinema’.” Journal of
European Popular Culture 3 (2): 111–15.
Abrams, Nathan. 2016. “Introduction.” In Hidden in Plain Sight: Jews and
Jewishness in British Film, Television, and Popular Culture, edited by Nathan
Abrams, 3–28. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Alderman, Geoffrey. 1998. Modern British Jewry. New ed. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and
Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
Bergfelder, Tim and Christian Cargnelli, eds. 2012. Destination London:
German-Speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1925–1950. New York:
Berghahn Books.
Berkowitz, Michael. 2016. “A British-Jewish Film Genre?” Jewish Film and New
Media, an International Journal 4 (2): 139–60.
Black, Gerry. 1994. Living Up West: Jewish Life in London’s West End. London:
London Museum of Jewish Life.
Cesarani, David. 1994. The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cesarani, David. 1998. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Suburbs:
Social Change in Anglo-Jewry Between the Wars, 1914–1945.” Jewish
Culture and History 1 (1): 5–26.
Cohen, Stuart A. 1982. English Zionists and British Jews: The Communal Politics
of Anglo-Jewry, 1895–1920. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Endelman, Todd M. 2002. The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Feldman, David. 1994. Englishmen and Jews: Social Relations and Political
Culture, 1840–1914. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Fishman, William J. 1975. East End Jewish Radicals. London: Duckworth.
Fraser, Nancy. 1992. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the
Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere,
edited by Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Gough-Yates, Kevin. 1992. “Jews and Exiles in British Cinema.” The Leo Baeck
Institute Year Book 37 (1): 517–41.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hochscherf, Tobias. 2011. The Continental Connection: German-Speaking
Émigrés and British Cinema, 1927–1945. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
Hubble, Nick. 2005. Mass-Observation and Everyday Life: Culture, History,
Theory. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
18 G. TOFFELL
Humphries, Stephen. 1995. Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-

Class Childhood and Youth 1889–1939. Oxford and Cambridge, MA:
Blackwell.
Jancovich, Mark with Lucy Faire, and Sarah Stubbings. 2003. The Place of the
Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption. London: BFI.
Julius, Anthony. 2010. Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-semitism in
England. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kaddish, Sharman. 1995. ‘A Good Jew and a Good Englishman’: The Jewish Lads’
& Girls’ Brigade, 1895–1995. London: Vallentine Mitchell.
Kahn-Harris, Keith, and Ben Gidley. 2010. Turbulent Times: The British Jewish
Community Today. London: Continuum International.
Kershen, Anne J. 1995. Uniting the Tailors. Trade Unionism Amongst the
Tailoring Workers of London and Leeds, 1870–1939. Ilford: Frank Cass.
Kuhn, Annette. 2002. An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory.
London: I.B. Tauris.
Kushner, Tony. 1989. The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society
During the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Kushner, Tony, and Hannah Ewence. 2010. “Whatever Happened to British
Jewish Studies? In Search of Contexts,” Jewish Culture and History 12 (1–2):
1–26.
Laidlaw, Petra. 2015. “Jews in the British Isles in 1851: Marriage and
Childbearing.” The Jewish Journal of Sociology 57 (1 and 2): 7–43.
Lipman, Vivian David. 1954. Social History of the Jews in England: 1850–1950.
London: Watts.
Low, Rachael 1950. The History of the British Film 1918–1929. London: Allen &
Unwin.
Marshall, Edward. 2010. “‘The Dark Alien Executive’: Jewish Producers,
Emigres and the British Film Industry in the 1930s.” In New Directions in
Anglo-Jewish History, edited by Geoffrey Alderman, 163–87. Brighton, MA:
Academic Studies Press.
Mazower, David. 1996. Yiddish Theatre in London. 2nd rev. ed. London: The
Jewish Museum.
Morton, James. 1992. Gangland. London: Little, Brown.
Napper, Lawrence. 2009. British Cinema and Middlebrow Culture in the
Interwar Years. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Rubenstein, William D. with Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein, eds. 2011. The
Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Samuel, Raphael. 1981. East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur
Harding. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Spicer, Andrew. 2012. “A British Empire of Their Own? Jewish Entrepreneurs
in the British Film Industry.” Journal of European Popular Culture 3 (2):
117–29.
1 INTRODUCTION 19
Staiger, Janet. 1992. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of

American Cinema. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sterne, Ernest C. 1989. Leeds Jewry 1919–1929. Leeds: Jewish Historical Society
of England.
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Toffell, Gil. 2009. “Come See, and Hear, the Mother Tongue!” Yiddish Cinema
in Interwar London.” Screen 50 (3): 277–98.
Toffell, Gil. 2011. “Cinema-Going from Below: The Jewish Film Audience in
Interwar Britain.” Participations Journal of Audience and Reception Studies 8
(2): 522–38.
Williams, Bill. 2008. Jewish Manchester: An Illustrated History. Derby: Breedon
Books.
Archive
Anti-Semitism Survey. File Report A12, December 1938. Mass Observation
Archive. University of Surrey.
Typed report with attached letter to TH from J. Sommerfield (investigator) on
his experiences and progress re 1939 Survey. 1939. 62-1-B. Box 1 Reports
On Anti-Semitism East End Study 1939, Essays and Correspondence, Notes
On Anti-Semitic Feeling 1939–1943. Mass Observation Archive. University
of Surrey.
CHAPTER 2
The Spaces and Places of Jewish

Cinema Culture
During the autumn of 1931 the Jewish World newspaper published a

series of articles entitled “Communal Jewish Institutions” (November
19, 1931: 11–12). Each occupying a two-page spread, photographs
of landmark community buildings in London, mostly in the East End,
comprised the core of these pieces. The “Jewish Reading Room” in
Whitechapel thus sat alongside charitable organisations, Jewish schools
and the Bevis Marks synagogue. Given the rather worthy tone of much
of the writing in the Jewish World it is, perhaps, unsurprising that no
spaces of leisure were to be seen amongst the manifestations of godly
and intellectual purpose. Applying somewhat conservative criteria to his
consideration of what might be considered an institution, the author
of the piece identifies only those longstanding organisations involved
in sustaining the most respectable aspects of the social order. However,
if one extends the definition to include social forms implicated in the
organisation and reproduction of collective customs, behaviours and dis-
positions, then a fuller account would surely take in a wider inventory.
Café culture, radical politics and the Yiddish theatre all contributed to a
Jewish collective life, as did the cinema. Indeed, it is only as a “commu-
nal Jewish institution” that the cinema culture of interwar Jewish areas
of settlement makes sense. As incubators of everyday difference spaces
of film exhibition might work to designate an area of city as culturally
Jewish, bring Jewish individuals together in close proximity, as well as
to stabilise, reproduce and develop some of the constitutive elements of
Jewish habitus.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_2
22 G. TOFFELL
In her landmark account of changing spectatorial relations in US

cinema, Miriam Hansen (1991) proposes that prior to World War I
the reception of film in America was a substantively shared experience.
Here, she argues, the typical structure of early cinema programmes as a
concatenation of heterogeneous short films, and the direct spectatorial
address of many titles (i.e. overt acknowledgement of a viewing audi-
ence), combined with the presence of live performances accompanying
screenings (e.g. explanatory lectures, music) to foster a self-identity as
a collective entity in audiences. Rather than be drawn into the seamless
fictional world of an unfolding narrative, viewers retained an awareness
of their immediate surroundings and the activities of their fellow cine-
ma-goers. Additionally, in immigrant neighbourhoods the nickelodeon
took on a chameleon-like character tailoring its appeal to local tastes
and consumption patterns. In Jewish neighbourhoods, for instance,
lecturers providing explanatory dialogue might pepper their discourse
with Yiddish phrases. As such, in locales such as New York’s Lower East
Side the early cinema was one of a number of spaces that offered—and
indeed, helped cultivate—an ethnically particular cultural realm at least
partially autonomous from an emergent national culture of American
modernity.
Viewed in such a manner cinema appears a communalising rather
than individualising technology. Film screenings are collective affairs,
with a common minority cultural specificity elevated and made man-
ifest amongst audience members. This is an account that sensitises us
to the life of auditoria—whether that be the expressive behaviours of
audience members or the extra-filmic components of the entertain-
ment programme. Drawing heavily on the critical theory of Oscar Negt
and Alexander Kluge (1993) Hansen’s ideas are also located in debates
around the development and character of the public sphere. Following
the cultural turn in the humanities it has sometimes been the case that
writing on culture has strived to detect political praxis in even the most
ephemeral minutiae of the socially marginal. While cultural resistance
can spring from the unlikeliest of sources, identifying where the cultural
mainstream sits is a notoriously tricky judgement call, and cultural auton-
omy does not necessarily equate with political opposition. In assessing
whether the life of a given public space meets the conditions for participa-
tion in a counter-public, industrial-commercial public or bourgeois pub-
lic at least affords a conceptual model of social structure through which
to assess different registers of politicised collective life and the nature of
2 THE SPACES AND PLACES OF JEWISH CINEMA CULTURE 23
any relationship to the polity. As will be evident, Hansen’s insights will

inform my analysis.
In addition to drawing on Hansen’s conceptual understanding of
early American cinema, I begin my account of the exhibition spaces of a
British-Jewish cinema culture in the USA. This may appear counterintu-
itive, yet there is a historiographic purpose to the manoeuvre. Naturally,
the social conditions of immigrant Jews in American and Britain differed
greatly. That Jewish migration was but part of a wider mass movement
of Europeans to the American continent is only one factor differentiat-
ing the two contexts. However, during the first decade of the twentieth
century similarities significant for narrating the emergence of Jewish-
run cinemas in primary areas of Jewish settlement on either side of the
Atlantic were in effect. In Britain, as in the USA, many cinema sites that
emerged in Jewish working class neighbourhoods had historical associa-
tions with both established spaces of Jewish leisure (e.g. Yiddish theatre,
banqueting halls), as well as recognisable bodies of elective association
(e.g. landsmannschaften, political organisations) that together formed a
Jewish public culture. Additionally, in the era prior to restrictive legis-
lation governing intercontinental migration there was also significant
movement between locales such as the East End of London and New
York’s Lower East Side, with individuals trying their fortunes in differ-
ent cities. Given this wider Jewish experience across national borders,
and with only minimal historical material available pertaining to Jewish
early cinema entrepreneurship in UK, it thus appears a useful point of
departure.
Early Sites of Exhibition

Central to the mythos of the birth of cinema in the US context is the
image of the nickelodeon at the heart of the immigrant neighbourhood.
This was the alleged space in which the proletarian multitudes were
schooled in an American collective culture. And it is from this founding
moment—the story goes—that Hollywood’s essence as a populist and
democratic cultural form was established. One response to this somewhat
limited narrative has been a sustained corrective revisionism pointing
to small town film exhibition as well as the significance of middle-class
audiences, exhibitors and producers in American cinema’s earliest period.
Some recent research, however, has returned to urban working class
milieus. Yet rather than seeking to reassert the legitimacy of earlier fables
24 G. TOFFELL
of American cinema’s genesis, scholars have sought to reveal the specifi-

cally local patterns of early film consumption in places such as Chicago’s
Southside, and Harlem and the Bowery in Manhattan (see, for instance,
Stewart 2005; Carbine 1990; Thissen 2012). In these specific districts, at
least, the ethnic identity of audiences appears to have exerted an impor-
tant influence in orienting both film exhibition and reception.
In Judith Thissen’s (2012) examination of New York’s Lower East
Side it is a significant revelation that not only was this predominantly
Jewish neighbourhood peppered with—often short lived—picture
houses, but that specific exhibition sites had histories intertwined with
a broader Jewish public culture. Prior to its life as a cinema, for instance,
the Golden Rule Theatre on Rivington Street played host to meetings
of Jewish mutual aid societies and trade unions, and was a popular loca-
tion for wedding parties. Indeed, across a multiplicity of sites Jewish
venue owners and managers converted their spaces to meet the chang-
ing tastes of Jewish consumers. Motivated by the evergreen appeal of
“get-rich-quick” schemes enterprising individuals—far more sensitive to
hyper-local conditions than any sociologist—quickly adapted the leisure
landscape to maximise profits. While it is certainly the case that such a
development increased the exposure of Jewish consumers to a gener-
alised mass culture, it would be a mistake to assume—as early histori-
ans of American cinema did—that this could only lead to a dilution of
ethnic autonomy. Rather, as with the adoption of other communication
technologies by Jewish entrepreneurs operating in the cultural field (e.g.
newspapers, the gramophone), it was wholly possible to reconfigure
the product—in this case, exhibition spaces, (and, as we shall see in this
chapter, film itself)—to enhance an autonomous Jewish cultural realm.
Unlike the USA, the development of cinema is not a meaningful
component of the national story of Great Britain. Similarly, accounts
pertaining to the role of migrants in the shaping of British society have
never achieved the same kind of prominence in public discourse that
has—over several decades—commonly been seen in American life. It is
only relatively recently that a serious scholarly attempt to recover early
British cinema exhibition has been embarked upon. And within these
accounts minimal attention has been devoted to the ethnic identity of
audiences, exhibitors or, indeed, anyone else operating in or around the
early film trades. Yet it was not the case that ethnicity operated as some
value-neutral variable in relation to film production and consumption. As
Andrew Spicer (2012) has demonstrated, as a new area of commerce not
yet subject to the racist barriers of entry that marked many established
trades and professions the film and cinema business was hugely attractive
to British Jews. Additionally, with the exception of the most religious,
it seems Jews proved enthusiastic and early users of an entertainment
form less marked by any ethnically exclusionary practices—whether they
be intentional or incidental—associated with traditional British public
house, gastronomic and sporting activities.
According to Luke McKernan (2007) London’s cinema business saw
rapid expansion towards the end of the first decade of the twentieth cen-
tury, in part modelled on the success of nickelodeons in the USA. As in
New York’s Lower East Side, the Jewish districts of Edwardian London
were the site of an early boom in storefront film theatres and meeting hall
conversions. Within the East End a solid base of Jewish entertainment
consumers could be identified as potential audience members, and Jews
with business interests in commercial premises easily convertible to film
exhibition did not hesitate to set up cheap accessible cinemas to cater to
them. In this early period the absence of an established body of research
rooted in extensive primary sources necessitates caution when offering up
any elaborate characterisation of the scene of exhibition. However, trade
journals attending to Britain’s emergent film industry along with busi-
ness directories such as the Kelly’s, Post Office and Harrod & Co Directory
provide some documentation detailing the location and ownership
or management of picture houses during the period. Of the film exhi-
bition outlets operating in the highly Jewish Aldgate and Whitechapel
neighbourhoods for the years between 1906 and the outbreak of World
War I, the venues “Happy Land” (located in the Commercial Road),
the “Palaseum” (also Commercial Road) and the “Original American
Bioscope Exhibition” (Aldgate High Street) were just a handful of
many outlets run by Jews. Often situated a mere stone’s throw from one
another many of these businesses were short-lived; failing due to com-
mercial reasons, or unable to implement safety requirements necessary for
licensing after the passing of 1909 Cinematograph Act.
Amongst the most prominent of the small-scale East End picture the-
atre proprietors active during this early period was Lazarus Greenberg,
and his varied business career exemplifies the opportunistic and transi-
tory character of the cinema trade at this time. Originally from Russia,
Greenberg took the western end of the Commercial Road (an estab-
lished major thoroughfare through east London) as his territory, even-
tually opening a celebrated Yiddish theatre, The Grand Palais, in
26 G. TOFFELL
1926 that remained a going concern until 1970, the last of its kind in
Britain (interestingly, this had been the Imperial Picture Palace from
1911—a film-screening venue run by a succession of Jewish operators).
Greenberg’s involvement in film exhibition can be dated back to at least
1910 when he is recorded running The Princess Hall, a shop conver-
sion at 120 Commercial Road. In 1914 the site was renamed the New
Electric Empire and appears to have remained under his aegis until
1917, the final year it can be found listed in his ownership in the Kelly’s
Directory. The following year Kelly’s Directory records the new propri-
etor as one Philip Skolnik, presumably, from his surname, also Jewish;
though this undertaking appears rather short lived, and records for the
address in the years immediately following show it as home to unrelated
commercial ventures.
Greenberg’s additional interests in the Commercial Road comprised
two other sites. The 1914 Kinematograph Yearbook records him running
Greenberg’s Pavilion (at number 98), though by 1922 Kelly’s Directory
lists a restaurant in his name there. The Kinematograph Yearbook (1914:
286) also has him running a cinema at number 83a in 1914, the Electric
Theatre. This began life in 1908 as part of the Electric Theatre circuit
founded by New York stockbroker Joseph Jay Bamberger (McKernan
2006). Containing 225 seats it was housed in the “King’s Hall” (later
the “Old King’s Hall”), an established site for social and political events,
and a one-time temperance hall (Phoenix Temperance Hall). Remaining
in operation for almost a decade, its closure was lamented in the
December 1917 edition of the Moving Picture World, which regarded its
closure the “removal of one of the landmarks of motion picture devel-
opment in London” and attributed the site’s demise to the demanding
competition of the local market (Sutcliffe 1917: 1770). Returning to a
meeting hall and event venue in its post-cinema years, The Old King’s
Hall remained under the auspices of the Greenberg family for several
decades.
Of the various East End sites adapted for film exhibition in the early
twentieth century many were long familiar to Jewish audiences. In rela-
tion to the Old King’s Hall historical ephemera reveals an assortment of
meetings, performances and celebrations organised there during the first
two decades of the twentieth century were oriented to Jews. In 1905,
for instance, The Brothers Sheynberg from Lemberg—celebrated actors
of the day—performed a song entitled “Kishinever Pogrom” commem-
orating the massacre of Jews in the Bessarabian town of Kishinev in
1903. The existence of the event is recorded in a song sheet containing

the Yiddish lyrics to the piece that was sold ahead of the performance
for a price of two pence. Even after films began to be exhibited at the
Old King’s Hall non-filmic events continued at the venue. In 1916 the
First London Achuzah Company Ltd., a Zionist organisation founded
in 1913, held a banquet in honour of the organisation’s founder, Dr. J.
M. Salkind, following the completion of his agricultural study in prepa-
ration for an expedition to Ottoman Palestine. Given a photograph of
the façade of the building shows it to be four storeys in height, meeting
rooms separate to the auditorium were presumably available for hire (see
Fig. 2.1).
Tracing first-hand accounts of specific film halls during the early
years of cinema exhibition in Britain is not a straightforward process.
Fortuitously, two separate records of audience experiences of cine-
mas in Greenberg’s Commercial Road empire remain in existence as a
result of both the Old King’s Hall and the Princess Hall moving into
the orbit of powerful institutional apparatus. Animated by widespread
concerns about the content of films and the physical and moral environ-
ment of picture houses, the National Council of Public Morals set up a
Cinema Commission Inquiry to institute an investigation into the effects
of the cinema on British audiences. A subsequent report, The Cinema:
Its Present Position and Future Possibilities, was published in 1917, and
amongst those who supplied testimony was Mrs. Rose Henriques. A pio-
neering figure in youth work in Britain, Rose Henriques, along with her
husband Sir Basil Henriques, established the Oxford and St. George’s
youth clubs for Jewish boys and girls in London’s East End, and it was
in her capacity as advocate for deprived and vulnerable young people that
she offered evidence, recounting a visit to the Old King’s Hall.
Somewhat contradictory in nature, Henriques testimony offered
equivocal support to cinema-going as a pastime for her young charges,
believing it preferable to the “evil which surrounds the children” (239)
in the streets, while expressing concern that the erotic content of “love
stories” might have a warping effect on the psychology of the individ-
ual. Specifically in relation to her visit to the Old King’s Hall Henriques
attested to being seated next to a man writhing and groaning in apparent
uncontrolled abandon as the risqué scene of a romantic comedy played
out on the screen (240). Despite this episode she contrasted the site’s
physical environment favourably to other “dirty and appalling” smaller
cinemas she had inspected. The hall, the commission was told, was
28 G. TOFFELL
Fig. 2.1 Old Kings Hall, Commercial Road, London (Image courtesy of

Tower Hamlets Local History Library)
“well ventilated”—an articulation of one of the key health anxieties of

the day, where stagnant air was understood to function as a medium
for a minatory microbiology. The audience at the Old King’s Hall—
comprising “mostly of adults and boys and girls over sixteen”—were
also regarded as more decorous in their behaviour than those at some
other cinemas; “on the whole more seemly” (all ibid.) to use Henriques
phraseology. Notwithstanding the somewhat liminal atmosphere gen-
erated by courting couples and on-screen eroticism, then, the Old
King’s Hall appears in her account a well-run and largely unthreatening
environment.
Perhaps offering some justification for Henriques claim that cinemas
in the area had acquired “bad reputations” (239), records of proceedings
from a trial at the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) document
the Princess Hall as the locus of petty street crime. The trial concerned
the prosecution of one Joe Taylor who—along with two associates—was
accused of robbing and then knocking unconscious a Mr. Morris Platz.
According to Platz’ testimony he visited the cinematograph on a May
evening in 1910, stood at the back of the crowded hall to watch the
show, had his silver watch and some money lifted and was then struck
in the face by the accused in a violent confrontation outside the thea-
tre. Although the defence attempted to discredit one witness by claiming
he was infatuated with the accused’s “sweetheart” (Old Bailey Online,
1910), Yetta Zimmerman, Taylor was found guilty and sentenced to
three months imprisonment. Overcrowded and populated by individu-
als with criminal convictions—the trial proceedings were complicated by
assorted claims of maleficence between various witnesses—the Princess
Hall appears not quite as salubrious as Greenberg’s flagship venue just up
the road.
Although limited and fragmentary, when considered accumulatively
the assortment of archival data offers some insight into the emergent ter-
rain of film exhibition in one corner of a heavily Jewish neighbourhood
in Great Britain. Alongside Jewish ownership these sites were attracting
large numbers of Jews as audience members. All the individuals involved
in the Princess Hall fracas possessed Jewish ancestry, reportedly yelling in
Yiddish as the drama spilled out of the cinema into the Commercial Road
(see ibid.). The audiences encountered by Rose Henriques were also
asserted to be significantly Jewish, specifically relating the experiences
of the exclusively Jewish youth at the Oxford and St. George’s clubs.
Additionally, some variation in consumer experience and preference was
30 G. TOFFELL
developing, even within a tightly bounded geography, with cleaner more

respectable halls identifiable and contrastable to cheaper unruly venues
potentially detrimental, at least in the Edwardian imagination, to the
moral and physical health of users. This assemblage of sites was sutured
onto an existing network of Jewish public spaces, with exhibition ven-
ues both superceding and simultaneously occupying established locations
on the Jewish communal map. By the First World War a Jewish scene of
cinema-going was thus coalescing. In the East End of London this scene
would be at its richest and most sizeable, but in the major Jewish centres
across the UK something of the pattern would be repeated.
Interwar Spaces
Discussing the film business with the manager of an East End cinema for
a 1937 article reporter Richard Carr quoted his source as stating:
East End audiences are very critical…If the regular patrons don’t like a
film they make a point of telling me afterwards. They say ‘B____y [sic]
awful film that’ or some such remark. Or else they clap their hands dur-
ing the film or shuffle their feet and whistle. They certainly let me know
whether or not they like the films we show. (9)
In the East End, indeed, across Britain, film exhibitors maintained a close
relationship with their clientele well into the interwar period. Looking
to supply a niche product to patrons in highly competitive local envi-
ronments cinema owners in Jewish neighbourhoods were quick to rent
Jewish interest films. Such programmes could include Yiddish language
film, Jewish nationalist documentaries, or even simply films starring
Jewish actors in prominent roles. In the next chapter we will explore these
and other genres, and the strategies used by various arms of the cinema
trade to promote them to Jewish audiences. However, I want to begin
my analysis of Jewish cinema culture by focussing on that aspect in the
above quote that emphasises the lived experience of the exhibition space;
the whistling and stamping of feet, the sense of ownership of a venue
by audiences. More than a neutral space in which to house a projection
of light onto a canvas screen, cinemas should be understood as complex
and multifarious in their materiality.
From their beginnings film exhibition sites have imposed a claim on
public space. Bedecked in electric lights and architecturally flamboyant,
the spectacular demand for attention as a key principle of the film hall
aesthetic was established in cinema’s first decade. A strategy that quickly
became central in drawing the gaze of a potential audience involved the
prodigious utilisation of billboards, hoardings and flyposters. Spreading
out from the picture house into local streets these enabled exhibitors
to notify patrons of the latest offerings in a continuously changing pro-
gramme, and to communicate some of the excitement and drama of a
given production. When the Cinema Commission Inquiry called on Mr.
Charles Pascall—a past president of the London and United Billposters’
Associations—to offer his expertise for their 1917 report he quoted the
then recent Home Secretary Herbert Samuel’s view that “posters have a
very great influence on the public life and character” (222). In concur-
rence the Commission expressed considerable concern about the unreg-
ulated display of “sensual and sensational” posters on the private boards
and premises of cinema proprietors, perceiving them to be in many ways
“more objectionable than the films themselves” (xxxi). While—from
the perspective of the present—the Commission’s anxieties may seem
alarmist (film posters, it was feared, could tempt children into crime),
they were correct to deduce their visibility contained a power. This was a
media that could recode the urban landscape.
In Britain’s populous working class Jewish neighbourhoods the
visual field was saturated with an ethnically particular semiotics. Shop
signs, advertisements and public notices oriented to a multilingual pop-
ulation were a mundane feature of the streetscape from the nineteenth
century into the interwar period. As early as 1853 the essayist Charles
Manby Smith described a professional billsticker posting “announce-
ments in Hebrew, addressed to our friends the sons of Israel” (119) on
to London’s walls. With some cinemas using no other form of adver-
tising, eye-catching billposters and hoardings targeted to local audiences
were a crucial tool for exhibitors. In a 1938 photograph of the façade
of the derelict Pavilion Theatre in the East End’s Whitechapel Road
(Fig. 2.2) billposters are plastered over every available surface. Amongst
the cinemas advertising upcoming attractions three posters from the
Rivoli Cinema—a large picture palace almost opposite the Pavilion—can
be seen pasted near pavement level. As can be made out on the left of
the notice, a film called Uncle Moses (Goldin and Scotto 1932) is adver-
tised—in both English and Yiddish—as currently screening there. This
was a Yiddish language drama set in garment district New York and
starred Maurice Schwartz, a celebrated Yiddish actor. Other posters
32 G. TOFFELL
Fig. 2.2 Film posters on Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1938

(Image courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library)
in the photograph contain Hebraic lettering or Jewish names (e.g.

the boxer Harry Mizler—hugely popular with Jews for wearing shorts
emblazoned with a star of David when in the ring—is listed as featuring
in some pugilistic display), and the Rivoli poster thus inhabits a mosaic of
Jewish publicity.
Moving to another image, and an emphatic attempt to attract a
Jewish audience can be seen in a 1928 photograph of the Apollo Picture
House (Fig. 2.3). Based a couple of miles north of the East End in Stoke
Newington Road, the Apollo was located in a neighbourhood with a size-
able, and expanding, working class and petit-bourgeois Jewish population.
As can be seen the façade is adorned with hoardings advertising a melo-
drama called Souls in Exile (Schwartz 1926) as the current feature title.
Again starring Maurice Schwartz, this told the story of a Jewish writer
forced to flee to New York from Czarist Russia. Along with the film title
and programme details the intrinsic Jewish content of the narrative dom-
inates the displays. Announced above the title bold black letters on two
Fig. 2.3 Apollo Picture House, Stoke Newington, London (Image courtesy of

Cinema Theatre Association Archive)
34 G. TOFFELL
large boards describe the piece “an extraordinary Jewish drama” leave no
ambiguity about its ethnically inflected appeals. While the interwar years
saw a concerted social pressure exerted on British Jews to publically efface
any cultural difference with a gentile population, the commercial impera-
tives of entrepreneurs sought out audiences as they were, and not as the
ideal a paternalist state or Jewish elite aspired they might become. The
streetscapes offered up by the Pavilion and the Apollo are stubbornly
unassimilated. Events and activities on a Jewish social calendar not only
took place behind closed doors, they had a life on the street.
The sheer number of film exhibition venues operating in working class
districts during the interwar years means that a detailed audit of every
site is impossible. However, a brief synoptic description of sites that oral
history or archival data demonstrate catered explicitly to Jews in the East
End might be offered. We have already encountered the Rivoli Cinema
and Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel Road, and these major venues can
be joined by The Troxy in Commercial Road—the area’s largest and most
luxurious cinema. Mid-size picture houses included the Mayfair Cinema in
Brick Lane; the Mile End Empire Theatre, the People’s Palace, and The
Odeon in Mile End Road; the Palaseum Cinema and the Popular Cinema
Theatre in Commercial Road, and Smart’s Picture House in Bethnal
Green Road. Finally, the Palacedium Cinema in White Horse Road and
the Cable Picture Palace in Cable Street were smaller, cheap theatres—
often referred to as “fleapits”—catering to a clientele living immediately
nearby. All these sites were located within a geography of little more than
three square miles, and all were largely reliant on local trade. Given a size-
able proportion of this local trade was Jewish it made economic sense
to appeal directly to Jewish cultural tastes in billposters and hoardings.
Something like one dozen exhibition sites—in close proximity—thus
placed ethnically specific publicity material in the public realm.
The display of Jewish interest film advertising did not necessarily
appear simultaneously at multiple cinemas, nor did individual sites con-
tinuously utilise it in their displays, but throughout the interwar years it
regularly marked the street. Along with commercial signage in Yiddish
and notices for assorted Jewish cultural events, cinema-related mate-
rial worked to create a visible zone of Jewish habitation. This was a
territory with observable boundaries—entry and exit points perceivable
by any inhabitant or visitor. However, while the streetscape featured a
patchwork of advertisements and signs, it would be a mistake to under-
stand each individual visual object as equally meaningful. Specific to the
material associated with picture houses was its cultural centrality. Cinema
was the era’s defining leisure activity—both glamorously vogue and
intrinsic to the everyday lives of millions. Ethnically particular cinema
hoardings and posters thus positioned Jewish neighbourhoods within
the culture of modernity. These milieu were not peripheral backwa-
ters—shtetlekh transplanted to the new world—but sites networked into
the global flows of leisure commerce.
Spatially heterogeneous, many exhibition sites situated within Jewish
neighbourhoods are best understood as porous in relation to their imme-
diate environment. Prior to its destruction by the Luftwaffe during the
blitz in 1940, the Rivoli cinema at 100 Whitechapel Road seated over
2000 patrons and was regarded one of the premiere picture houses in
East London. Designed by the architecture firm of Adams and Coles
a photograph taken a year or so after its 1921 construction reveals its
façade to be a rather grand neoclassical affair complete with arched
doorways and Corinthian pilasters and semi-columns (see Fig. 2.4). In a
series of articles published in the house magazine of Gaumont-British in
1932 Stanley Collins (2001) recalled his time as assistant manager of the
recently opened Rivoli some ten years previously. While initially a com-
mercial failure according to Collins, the cinema’s fortunes turned when
new owner Walter Wagner began presenting prestige feature films and
booking popular variety acts to appear as part of the programme.
One particularly popular attraction in 1922 was a series of nightly
exhibition bouts featuring the Jewish welterweight boxer Ted “Kid”
Lewis. Born Gershon Mendeloff in an East End tenement—a profes-
sional nickname was “The Aldgate Sphinx”—Lewis was hugely popular
with Jews. By the time he appeared at the Rivoli Lewis was no longer
world champion, though this does not appear to have dampened the
enthusiasm of the local fans that packed the auditorium for every pres-
entation. In anticipation of Lewis’ programmed displays waves of Jewish
fans were attracted to the Rivoli site in synchronisation to the rhythms
of the scheduled performance. The show ran daily for several weeks, and
Collins also reported crowds blocking the Whitechapel Road every time
Lewis appeared at the stage door (36). More random accumulations
were thus conjured together in relation to the chance glimpses of Lewis.
Obstructing pedestrians and halting traffic the flows and concentrations
of Jewish bodies generated by this event provided an external urban
spectacle as a counterpart to the pugilistic spectacle playing out nightly
inside the Rivoli.
36 G. TOFFELL
Fig. 2.4 Rivoli Cinema, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s (Image courtesy of

Tower Hamlets Local History Library)
Conversely, as much as exhibition sites extended into local geogra-

phy they were also subject to the force of a social ecology immediately
adjacent to their walls, a force that could flow into auditoria. Following
Wagner’s ownership of the Rivoli it became part of the United Picture
Theatres circuit in 1928 before being acquired by Gaumont-British in
1930 (O’Rourke 2013). Despite these commercial transitions the cinema
retained an intimate relationship with its sociocultural surroundings.
Perhaps the most striking examples of this relationship are the Rosh
Hashanah (Jewish new year) services the Rivoli hosted over several years
during the 1920s and 1930s so as to accommodate the large congrega-
tion that a small nearby synagogue could not attend to during this hol-
iday period. The episode is mentioned in a short notice in the Jewish
Chronicle stating the cinema would be closed for mid-week film screen-
ings, and that the Welfare Committee of the United Synagogue would
be organising the event (“News About the Stars”, September 14, 1934:
42). Giving way to the sacred rhythms of the religious calendar, the sec-
ular schedule of the film programme temporarily halted as the cinema
adopted the identity of its neighbour. If an enfolding of Jewish cultural
specificity, urban living and spectacular modernity was realised in displays
of cinema publicity, this assemblage enmeshed with an equally compli-
cated arrangement of events and experiences that simultaneously took
life within and without exhibition sites, and would situate cinemas both
in and of their spatial context.
Expressive Cultures
Embedded in the local area the neighbourhood cinema occupied the
same social terrain as a range of proximate Jewish communal institutions.
Unencumbered by a majoritarian gaze locations such as the Rivoli were
experienced as home ground for many working class Jews. In this atmos-
phere licence was given for the transgression of middle-class standards of
audience behaviour, and a range of accounts suggest the conditions for
a spirited expressive culture took root. In his 1940 biography charting
Jewish life in Edwardian and interwar Stepney, East End My Cradle, the
writer Willy Goldman recounts an afternoon visit to an unspecified local
cinema:
In the half hour preceding a show they turned the place into a circus.
They stood up and shouted jests to each other. Some sought out relatives
and friends and when they caught sight of them screeched across: ‘Hey
Becky!…Here’s a seat I saved for you—come on over!’. (139)
Once the programme is underway “the noise does not so much quieten
down as change its character”. Some in the audience whistle along to a
theme-tune while others shout out jokes at a moment of high drama,
“and underlying these intermittent noises the incessant crackling of pea-
nuts and the squelch of sucked oranges makes a ‘theme-tune’ of its own”
(ibid.).
Anarchic and unapologetic this account finds its echo in numer-
ous descriptions of film screenings situated in non-Western milieu,
and, indeed, minority ethnic and working class milieu within the West.
Performances of Bollywood masala movies, for instance, are famously
lively in both South Asian and diasporic contexts, with audiences
38 G. TOFFELL
participating in musical numbers and volubly commenting on the

on-screen drama (Puwar 2007). In his celebrated account of the eight-
eenth-century theatre in The Fall of Public Man ([1977] 1986) Richard
Sennett vividly illustrates the disorderly character of that period’s audi-
ences, describing theatregoers as openly conversing amongst themselves,
indulging in horseplay, or loudly offering advice to actors in the midst
of a performance. Only in the Victorian era were audiences disciplined
into stationary silence as emotionally restrained forms of spectatorship
became widespread. Sennett associates this transformation with the
behavioural preferences of the bourgeoisie, a class fraction then estab-
lishing its cultural dominance in Europe and America. For those whose
dispositions were not in accord with this historically and geographically
specific class it was far from inevitable that they would internalise alien
behavioural protocols, and more unruly forms of spectatorship per-
sisted—or found their genesis—across multiple contexts.
Viewed in this way it should not be surprising that many Jews of the
interwar period, still, at least partially, culturally located in the Jewish
topographies of eastern Europe, should reject a spectatorship requir-
ing bodily immobility and a curbing of vocal expression. Amongst the
richest accounts of Jewish experiences of entertainment consumption
in the interwar years are the oral histories David Mazower (1996) gath-
ered for his examination of Yiddish theatre in London. These attend
to individuals who had witnessed, or were involved in, performances
at the Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel Road, once the premier venue
for watching Yiddish theatre in Western Europe. Discussing the famil-
iarity of audiences with performers, the daughter of the Yiddish actor
Joseph Fineberg explained how patrons would address her father on
stage attempting to direct his actions: “anything they…didn’t like they’d
shout out. When he was cursing on stage, they’d shout out, ‘Joe, shoin
genig [enough already]. Enough! Enough!’” (24). Intertextual fore-
knowledge was a key component of consumption of the repertoire of
the Yiddish stage for many, and Pavilion audience regular Louis Behr
explained that during a performance “everyone practically you sat with
could tell you the cast inside out, instant. If an actor forgot a line or
two, the prompter wasn’t necessary really. The gallery could answer
word by word exactly” (23).
The Pavilion Theatre dated back to 1827, though was reconstructed
following a fire in 1856, remodelled a first time in 1874 by Jethro
T. Robinson, a notable theatre architect, and then again in 1894.
Incorporating classical and Moorish themes in both its interiors and exte-
riors the site had long been recognised as a landmark in the East End,
and its entrance was situated on a busy stretch of the Whitechapel Road
(see Fig. 2.5), almost opposite the Rivoli Cinema. Equipped with com-
plex stage machinery the venue initially featured a mixed repertoire of
popular and serious theatre—opera, Shakespeare, pantomime—though
this altered as the area saw increased numbers of Jews in the late nine-
teenth century and the site became better known for concerts, political
meetings, boxing matches and Yiddish theatre. This latter attraction ran
in seasons from 1906 and 1934, and with luminaries of the Yiddish stage
such as the tragedian Joseph Kessler directing operations it developed a
formidable reputation for quality. Also presented at the Pavilion Theatre
around this time were films of Jewish interest, and the venue trans-
formed into a cinema when some production thought likely to attract
local audiences could be booked. It was at the Pavilion, for instance, that
the first Yiddish talking films to be screened in Britain were presented in
1931.
Fig. 2.5 Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s (Image courtesy

of Tower Hamlets Local History Library)
40 G. TOFFELL
Running for a fortnight during May of 1924 E. A. Dupont’s (1923)

drama The Ancient Law screened as the feature entertainment at the
Pavilion Theatre. The film dealt with the then voguish topic of intergen-
erational tension, narrating the familial struggles that unfold when the
son of a devout Rabbi rejects a life of religious orthodoxy in a Galician
shtetl for a stage career in Austria. According to the Jewish Chronicle the
screenings at the Pavilion involved “special musical and vocal effects”
(“Music and Drama”, May 9, 1924: 28) as a supplementary enhancement
adding to the appeal of the event. Reviewing the film the same paper was
largely positive about the production, remarking on the sincerity of the
piece and the “faithful representation of a good deal of Jewish ritual”
(“Film Notes”, May 16, 1924: 30). While the reviewer endorsed the
film, however, s/he was less enthusiastic about the Pavilion’s audience.
At one point in the film rituals associated the holiday of Yom Kippur are
depicted, and with the event regarded the most solemn day of the year
in Judaism the paper asserted it “humiliating to find a picture of the Kol
Nidre service being greeted by an audience which, presumably, consists
almost exclusively of Jews, with stupid and unmannerly laughter” (ibid.).
At the Pavilion a boisterous and iconoclastic behavioural culture
appears to have been normalised for audiences across the programmed
entertainments. Stating The Ancient Law “a good film and deserving of
a better reception” the Jewish Chronicle’s reviewer clearly believed a rep-
resentation of a sacred rite should require spectators to comport them-
selves in a respectful and sober manner—something more in line with
the disciplined contemplative theatregoer of bourgeois preference. Yet
despite his/her endorsement of the film the reviewer did acknowledge
it could “benefit from judicious cutting” (all ibid.) suggesting the nar-
rative may have dragged at times, likely irritating many in the audience.
Irrespective of the nature of the show, a significant number of patrons
may have felt a dreary production a poor exchange for the price of
a ticket and unworthy of their limited leisure time. If regulars at the
Pavilion considered a stage performance in some way unacceptable they
made their displeasure known; in continuity with this principle cinematic
screenings could expect a similar lack of deference.
In the interview testimony solicited by Mazower, ethnic specificity tex-
tures its character. Agitated audience members remonstrating with actor
Joseph Fineberg are recalled as doing so in Yiddish; and it was soliloquies
from the Yiddish dramatic repertoire that patrons were reciting from their
seats in the Pavilion. While the demonstrative spectator can be identified
in a wide range of historical and geographic contexts, the actual content

of expressive utterances made by real-world audience members can be
often highly particular, correlating with the specifics of collective identity.
Recorded in raw data for Mass Observation’s 1939 antisemitism survey
one observer—identified only as “LT”—made detailed notes on a group
of Jewish working class young men from Whitechapel that he accompa-
nied as they engaged in various leisure activities. Joining them for a Friday
evening visit to an unidentified cinema in the East End his diary records
the response of patrons to a newsreel covering the events of the Spanish
Civil War. Culminating in what the observer describes as “the glorification
of Gen. Franco” this final scene was “greeted by general hisses through-
out the audience which was predominantly Jewish”. The young men the
observer was with are also noted to have “hissed and booed with the rest
of the crowd”, with one of the group, “Charlie”, turning to comment
“Fucking swine isn’t he?”.
Elsewhere in LT’s fieldnotes it is recorded that “Charlie”—a promi-
nent and assertive character within the group—possessed a strong com-
mitment to Communism, wearing a hammer and sickle pin badge on his
lapel. In many Jewish neighbourhoods during this period, far left politics
was a commonplace feature of social life, with anti-fascist organisation
regarded an essential activity of communal defence. Political awareness of
cooperation between Hitler’s explicitly antisemitic regime and other fascist
states was high, and whether an individual was as ideologically engaged
as “Charlie”, or less doctrinaire in their commitments a profound opposi-
tion to any manifestation of the far right was a familiar stance for Jews. At
the conclusion of the evening’s film programme the national anthem was
played through the cinema’s loudspeakers, and the observer considered it
meaningful to record that his group had exited during the music, and that
“very few of the people stood to attention whilst it was played”. To what
extent this audience felt active animosity to the conventions of demon-
strating national loyalty is not investigated. It is clear, however, that during
the interwar years it was not unusual for British Jews to feel somewhat
excluded from participation in the national family, or that to gain entry
into such an entity required a level of linguistic, cultural and religious
assimilation that was too objectionable to consent to, or even be possible.
Politically located in diametric opposition to the perceived address
of the newsreel, and resistant to the appeals of ceremonial nationalism
this group of young men—along with the majority of the audience—
animated their social position in expressive behaviours. Refusing to
42 G. TOFFELL
acknowledge the “fourth wall” they harangued their on-screen political

enemies with jeers. The conventions of the space permitted the unbri-
dled venting of raw emotion, but this only came into being in relation
to the particular circumstance of Franco’s appearance—for the duration
of the two programmed narrative films the observer noted his compan-
ions stayed silent. Although a less active form of challenge than anti-fas-
cist catcalls, an ethnically specific form of embodied dissent might also
be read in the audience’s disregard for the protocols surrounding the
performance of the national anthem. Wandering out into they street or
remaining slumped in cinema seats when the social expectation was to
remain silent, static and upright appears a performative rejection of a set
of values felt distant or irrelevant by this particular ethnic group. The
neighbourhood cinema could be a site of social comfort for Jews since it
was a location in which expressive behaviours could be given free reign;
but the qualitative content of this expression was an act of place-making
in itself, coding the auditoria as Jewish space.
Jewish Entertainments
As we have seen with the example of the retainment of pugilist Ted
Lewis at Whitechapel’s Rivoli cinema, local cinema operators could be
highly inventive in presenting non-filmic attractions to draw in local
audiences. From the earliest cinematograph displays films were shown
alongside other entertainments, and irrespective of whether a cinema
had been adapted from an extant theatre or was purpose-built to exhibit
films, most venues were equipped with some kind of stage prior to World
War II. By the 1930s the grandest cinemas laid on elaborate cine-variety
programmes comprising two films (usually a high production value main
feature and a lesser “B” film), trailers for coming attractions, a newsreel,
a cartoon as well as some kind of stage show. This could include danc-
ers, a singer, comedians or any number of other live acts, some of which
might be accompanied by the house organist—raised hydraulically to the
stage—on an Wurlitzer type organ illuminated with electric lights and
able to acoustically imitate the plethora of orchestral instruments.
In the East End the Troxy cinema in the Commercial Road was uni-
versally regarded as the area’s premier picture theatre following its 1933
construction. A glamorous art deco building with an interior featuring
ornate geometric plasterwork on walls and ceilings, black marble floors
and a seating capacity of 3520 it was designed by George Coles, one of
the architects behind the Rivoli in Whitechapel (see Berk and Kolsky
2016). Subject to significant overheads the Troxy required high ticket
sales and the venue made a considerable effort in connecting to local
audiences—the slogan “where east is best” appearing on all its publicity.
An article in the Jewish Chronicle estimated “that about fifty per cent. of
the cinema’s patrons are Jewish” (“Troxy’s First Birthday”, September 7,
1934: 66) making this demographic crucial to the successful running of
the business. Clearly keen to maintain good relations with the commu-
nity notices were placed in the Jewish press offering new year greetings
to patrons from the cinema’s owners, the Hyams family, shortly before
Rosh Hashanah of 1934 (see JC, September 7, 1934: 63).
The Troxy was well known for its high-quality variety acts with many
celebrated artistes appearing on its stage, and amongst these were per-
formers and events targeted to appeal to Jews. This strategy was recalled
by a Jewish interviewee offering testimony for Annette Kuhn’s investi-
gation of 1930’s cinema-going, remarking that “being the East End
they had a lot of Jewish turns…Like Sophie Tucker” (Maurice Bloom,
CCINTB Archive). One high profile performance at the Troxy that
sought to elicit a Jewish audience was the appearance of Molly Picon in
June 1936, then touring her act in Europe. Dubbed “the most famous
Yiddish comedienne in the United States” (“Molly Picon at the Troxy”,
June 19 1936: 49) by the Jewish Chronicle, Picon had made a career on
the Yiddish stage, before branching into film and radio. While her show
was created for ethnically mixed audiences it included Yiddish songs and
relied heavily on Jewish humour, presenting a series of comedic social
types from Jewish New York. For the Jewish Chronicle “one of the
advantages over other folk possessed by the Jewish people is…its abil-
ity to enjoy to the full the art of Molly Picon” (“Molly Picon’s Jewish
Concert”, February 5, 1937: 52). The booking was thus a shrewd one
for the Troxy. In September 1934 the site celebrated its first birthday,
and a special cine-variety presentation was put together to mark the
occasion. The venue had a house orchestra—the Troxy Broadcasting
Orchestra—led by Joseph Muscant, and his musicians featured promi-
nently in the anniversary show playing what was described an “arrange-
ment of Jewish music” (“Troxy’s First Birthday”, September 7, JC,
1934: 66). In a landmark week for the venue Jewish culture was placed
at the centre of its live entertainments.
While unable to compete with the high profile acts presented by the
“super cinemas”, exhibition sites in Jewish neighbourhoods of lesser
44 G. TOFFELL
size and prestige proved equally keen to complement their programmes

with extra-filmic attractions. When the Yiddish language film The Eternal
Wanderer (Roland 1933) screened at the Mile End Empire in March of
1935 the programme included a stage show featuring the Dutch-Jewish
singer Leo Fuld. Developing his singing talent as a chorister in his child-
hood synagogue Fuld had recorded several Yiddish songs by the time
he appeared at the Empire, and an advertisement for the event placed
in the Jewish press carried the information that he would be “singing
Jewish Melodies [sic] with Jack Goldy and Sidney May” (see JC, March
20, 1935: 52). Perhaps most idiosyncratic, however, were the theatrical
performances offered alongside screenings at Manchester’s Bijou Picture
Theatre in the Cheetham Hill Road. Located a short distance from the
imposing Great Synagogue in a heavily Jewish neighbourhood, the Bijou
was a small family run affair with seating for three hundred that catered
to the local community. Listings in the 1914 Kinematograph Yearbook
(346) reveal the venue’s proprietor to be Arthur Cheetham, a pioneer-
ing Welsh filmmaker that turned to cinema ownership later in his career,
acquiring several interests in Manchester.
Interviewed as part of a project recording the social history of Jewish
Manchester organised by the historian Bill Williams respondent Joe
Philips recalled the Bijou being run by a Mr. Fischer (presumably manag-
ing the site as an employee of Cheetham). Fischer, according to Joe, was
an experienced and passionate actor from the Yiddish stage, and it was
these talents he brought to his role as cinema manager, putting on play-
lets in Yiddish for his predominantly Jewish audience. As Joe recalled:
…in between films he would put on sketches, and they were very good—
well produced, well acted. He took a leading role. And they lasted about
20 minutes, half and hour, in Yiddish,I did speak Yiddish, and naturally I
liked them, I enjoyed them. (Manchester Jewish Museum Archive, J193)
Marshalling family and friends into supporting roles, Fischer’s cinema

was an intimately local space juxtaposing recognisable faces from the
immediate neighbourhood with international film stars in an innovative
form of cine-variety; unsurprisingly Joe thought the attraction “unique”.
The Bijou, stated Joe, was his favourite cinema and he remembered a
heterogeneous audience comprised of children and adults of all gener-
ations—in this blending of entertainment forms all apparently found
something of appeal.
An Alternative Public Sphere

In identifying the alterity of the cinema culture of pre-World War II
Jewish neighbourhoods, the possibility of producing decontextualised
exotic tableau in descriptions of scenes of activity is always a potential
pitfall. Jews have long provided a theme to animate the Orientalist imag-
ination, often being framed in terms of a sensualist and emotionally
demonstrative feminised Other with which to counter-pose a self-pos-
sessed masculinist European identity. It is, in fact, of both ethical and
analytical importance to recall not just the transgressive disorder and
vibrancy of the Pavilion, Rivoli and Bijou—now so seemingly improb-
able in their historic colour—but their lived everydayness. Recorded in
the notes taken by the observer “LT” dispatched by Mass Observation
to shadow “Charlie” and his friends around the East End of 1939 is
the trace of the mundane. While the audience’s pugnacious response
to the newsreel footage of Franco stands out as a moment of unantic-
ipated drama in their evening at the cinema, this spontaneous uprising
of emotion occurs within an otherwise recognisably ordinary event of
film-going.
Occurring on a Monday night in late February the group’s decision
to see a film is somewhat last minute, with one of the friends—Mike—
expressing doubt over their chances of getting entry to the programme
before it begins. Despite queuing for ten minutes the young men get to
their seats just prior to the start of the first film. The observer records
some chatting amongst the group during the trailers but reports they
remain silent for the screening of two films. Following the end of the
show they pay a short visit to a favourite café before making their sep-
arate ways home. Taking place on a winter’s evening at the beginning
of the working week an atmosphere of routine permeates the account.
An expectation and understanding of procedure marks each stage of the
event: knowledge of the programmed schedule, the necessity of queu-
ing for tickets, taking the opportunity to speculate about future attrac-
tions in response to the trailers, and half an hour for tea in a local haunt.
Prefigured by a wait in the cold and undertaken in the absence of a more
stimulating activity this visit to the cinema seeks simply to kill a few
hours in a familiarly pleasant way.
By bringing into focus the totality of the event and the mundane
procedural aspects that structure it, a way of connecting the remarka-
ble—the public berating of Franco—with its everyday context is made
46 G. TOFFELL
more concretely imaginable. What we should not lose sight of, however,
is the possibility that what, from the perspective of the present, seems
extraordinary may have been conceived as familiar by the social actors
embedded in the event. The ethnically inflected attractions on offer in
neighbourhood cinema halls and the demonstrative audience may have
occupied the same plain of experience as the recognisably procedural
aspects of cinema-going. For sure, the specificity of a Jewish cinema cul-
ture would have stood in contrast to film-going practices of the wider
society, but within the geographic context of the East End or Cheetham
it may have seemed as stable and predictable as any other aspect of film
consumption.
Grasping the ordinariness of the lived experience of the neighbour-
hood cinema is crucial to understanding the political potential of the
site. In his The Practice of Everday Life, Michel de Certeau (1988) argues
that the resistance (tactics) adopted by individuals in their negotiation of
imposed systems (strategies) can take the form of a quiet, unassuming
reconfiguring of cultural forms without a conscious battle plan of subver-
sion. Making creative use of the structures offered by the dominant can
be an instinctual manoeuvre, a seemingly natural behaviour flowing from
need. It seems unlikely that either patrons or cinema owners willed the
mutation of spaces established to screen films into communal institutions
as a deliberate act, but this is what they became. As Hansen (1991) has
noted, in the early twentieth century immigrant neighbourhoods con-
tained a host of formal and informal public spaces in which a distinct cul-
tural life could play out. Ranging from social clubs and political groups
to entertainment spaces and cafes “such institutions constituted a local,
separate, and relatively autonomous sphere which, although not overtly
oppositional, still presented an alternative to dominant social norms”
(103). In Jewish areas the cinema thus arrived in the context of a realm
of ethnically specific public spaces. Its evolution into a communal hub
integrated into this landscape took place as audiences and entrepreneurs
worked in a kind of unconscious collusion to improvise the remodelling
of the scene of film exhibition as a space acclimatised to local habits and
tastes.
This understanding of the cinema as embedded in power rela-
tions rests on the idea that a cultural politics can be done without the
reflective participation of social actors. The life of cinema halls is seen
as a sanctuary from social contexts in which ethnic difference was met
with antipathy. Individuals did not need commitment to a coherent
ideology of opposition, merely a desire to live out a contested social

being, and the creativity to meaningfully appropriate the cultural mate-
rials at hand. This “soft” form of politics—what we might term “pro-
to-politics”—could, however, be implicated in the existence of “hard”,
more self-conscious forms. We have seen how the cinema unexpectedly
became a site of overt political expression in the audience response to
imagery of Franco, but film exhibition spaces in Jewish neighbour-
hoods were booked for planned political events with some regularity. In
October of 1928, for instance, the Leeds Central Zionist Council held a
public meeting at the Victory Picture Palace in Camp Road, Leeds (see
Advertisement, JC, October 26, 1928: 30). The Victory was located in
the Little London neighbourhood just north of Leeds’ city centre, an
area that had been home to a significant Jewish population since the end
of the nineteenth century. Speaking at the event were various senior fig-
ures in British Zionism, including Selig Brodetsky, then a professor of
mathematics at the University of Leeds and a major force in organising
and raising the profile of Jewish Nationalism in the city the during the
1920s (Kent 2010).
Discussing Jurgen Habermas’ famous The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere (1989) Nancy Fraser (1992) provides a corrective
interpretation to Habermas’ history. While acknowledging the impor-
tance and power of his account she takes issue with his emphasis on
the public sphere as a unitary form. By drawing on a series of empirical
examples Fraser notes the existence of multiple discursive and material
spaces in which minoritised groups could deliberate about common con-
cerns, develop self-definition and mount campaigns for political transfor-
mation. From the outset the bourgeois liberal model was challenged by
a host of excluded groups including “nationalist publics, popular peas-
ant publics, elite women’s publics, and working class publics” (123). The
chartists, suffragettes and the anti-slavery movement might all fall under
such a banner. For Fraser, these publics can be termed “subaltern coun-
ter publics in order to signal that they are parallel arenas where members
of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter-discourses to
formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests and
needs” (ibid.).
It was as host to communal events of Jewish political interest that
neighbourhood film exhibition sites most clearly became part of a Jewish
counter-public. Spaces such as the Victory Picture Palace were mate-
rially well suited to mass meetings and rallies, being able to hold large
48 G. TOFFELL
numbers of supporters and equipped with stages for speakers to address

the crowd. Crucially, though, they were amongst they few suitable build-
ings located in proximity to sizeable Jewish populations, and they were
recognised by these communities as territorially familiar. As the 1930s
drew on and the fascist threat to Jewry intensified—both in Britain and
mainland Europe—Jewish political involvement grew, and events were
staged to raise consciousness and organise opposition to the far right.
At Whitechapel’s Rivoli Cinema the Board of Deputies of British Jews
staged a public meeting in November 1938 with the title “The Fight
Against Anti-Semitism” (see Advertisement, JC, November 18, 1928:
41). Established in 1760 the Board of Deputies was the key representa-
tive body of British Jews and possessed sufficient resources to situate the
event at virtually any meeting hall of their choosing. That it went ahead
at the Rivoli demonstrates the venue’s propinquity, both geographically
and imaginatively, to the mass of London Jewry.
Beyond Primary Areas of Settlement

During the interwar years British Jews were not, of course, restricted
to living in working class neighbourhoods, nor were they unable to
travel around the cities they inhabited. While a majority were employed
in working class trades, there existed both an established Jewish mid-
dle-class population, and increasing numbers of recently affluent individ-
uals who had been able to take advantage of a booming consumer sector,
particularly in the south of the country. In London prosperous commu-
nities resided in districts lying to the west, while a professional and entre-
preneurial, predominantly Ashkenazi, class clustered in Stamford Hill as
well as the suburbs to the north-west of the city (e.g. Edgware, Hendon,
Golders Green). In Manchester economic success typically meant a move
north from Cheetham Hill to Crumpsall and Prestwich, or to a some-
what lesser degree, south to Didsbury. Chapeltown in Leeds began life as
a site of middle-class Jewish settlement around the World War I period,
though by the mid-1930s the area was economically mixed, and many
migrating from the Leylands were exchanging like for like in terms of
living standards. The suburb of Moortown—eventually the centre of
Jewish life in the city—also began to see the arrival of more affluent fam-
ilies during the period.
While the British interwar cinema audience was predominantly work-
ing class—both in overall numbers and in the percentage of regular
attendees within each class fraction—a middle-class appetite for cine-

ma-going was well established by the beginning of the era (Richards
1984). Some preference in taste for a literary middlebrow product may
have been in evidence amongst this group (Napper 2009), but the activ-
ity itself was not proscribed as socially indecorous. Film consumption
was, however, spatially circumscribed with middle-class audiences pre-
ferring to attend screenings in respectable local theatres, and for many
middle-class Jews cinema visits were thus undertaken in comfortable,
rather genteel, surroundings in the suburbs. As in working class neigh-
bourhoods exhibitors worked hard to establish good relations with local
audiences. In west London the Maida Vale Picture House provided an
extremely pleasant environment in which to watch films. Built in 1913
the imposing exterior featured two castellated towers, each topped with
a cupola. Inside the foyer was marble-floored, plasterwork on auditorium
walls was gilded, and the site contained a small tea-room. According to
the Jewish Chronicle the venue was “well patronised by a very large sec-
tion of the Jewish community” (“Music and Drama”, November 13,
1931: 29), a reality recognised by the cinema’s management who, just
prior to Rosh Hashanah of 1931, took the opportunity to publically
wish “their many Jewish Patrons a Happy and Prosperous New Year”
(Advertisement, JC New Year Greetings Supplement, September 11,
1931: xxvi).
As Geoffrey Alderman (1992) has argued, those Jews that moved away
from inner-urban sites of settlement during the interwar period were
not fleeing their religious or cultural identity, but rather were seeking
greener, less intensely populated surroundings. While the new suburbs
were proportionally far less Jewish than the East End or Cheetham Hill,
it did make economic sense for local film exhibitors to tailor their pro-
grammes, if only occasionally, to appeal to Jewish tastes. In Cricklewood
in north-west London, for example, the Queen’s Hall Cinema screened
Yiddle with His Fiddle (Green 1936) in November of 1937. A Yiddish
language feature starring Molly Picon, the film was distributed around
Britain appearing almost exclusively at cinemas with large numbers of
Jews living nearby. Non-filmic attractions with a Jewish flavour might also
be included as part of the programme if an exhibition site was frequented
by Jews. At the Ambassador Cinema in Hendon the house organist, Mr.
Edgar Peto, played “the whole of the Kol Nidre during the organ inter-
lude” (“The Ambassador Hendon”, JC, February 22, 1935: 44) when
the venue presented The House of Rothschild (Werker 1934).
50 G. TOFFELL
Although the programming at cinemas situated in locales with a

sizeable Jewish middle class may bear some similarity to the attrac-
tions offered at working class sites, contemporary sources suggest the
atmosphere and behavioural cultures differed starkly. Elaborating on
the Ambassador Cinema the Jewish Chronicle noted the performance of
the Kol Nidre was included as a special accompaniment, and that more
typically “the music played is a mixture of classical, semi-classical and
popular melodies presented with a touch of cynicism”. In addition to
estimating that “about forty per cent. of the patrons are Jewish” some
detail on the audience’s aesthetic dispositions was offered. “Restraint”
was reported to be the principle guiding the entire operation—archi-
tecture, décor, publicity—and this was contrived to be in accordance
with the “restrained tastes of those who frequent it” (“The Ambassador
Hendon”, JC, February 22, 1935: 44). In contrast to East End cinemas
the Ambassador was evidently not a place of spirited public expression.
Self-discipline, built into the fabric of the site and apparently internally
habituated in the bodies of audience members, could even be detected
acoustically, echoing around the auditorium in the organist’s perfor-
mance. While the house musicians at sites such as the Troxy regularly
played a mixed repertoire, none were reported to possess the required
ironic detachment necessary for Peto’s cynical interpretations.
One further way in which cinemas were used as sites of commu-
nal Jewish activity outside the major enclaves of primary settlement
was for charity fundraising drives. A diverse and well-organised charity
sector had been a feature of Jewish life in Britain since the eighteenth
century, attending to the bodies, minds and souls of the less privileged.
Booked as special one-off events Jewish charity shows took a variety of
forms including cine-variety and prerelease screenings, but also lectures
and concerts. To be sure, these events did take place in long established
Jewish working class areas too; the Troxy, for instance, hosting a vari-
ety matinee in aid of the London Jewish Hospital in February 1935
(see News Items, JC, February 7, 1935: 33). But in locations with pro-
portionally smaller Jewish populations a cinema offered a public lei-
sure setting for the occasional community gathering, reverting back to
an ethnically unmarked space when the event ceased. Stamford Hill in
north London contained two sizeable cinemas—the Regent Theatre and
the Stamford Hill Cinema—and several charity events were presented at
these prestige venues. Of the Jews that had settled in Stamford Hill many
were self-made entrepreneurs, becoming affluent through running small
businesses, and thus likely an enticing target for fundraising committees.

It therefore made sense for the Stamford Hill Ladies Committee of the
Jewish National Fund to arrange a local matinee concert at the Stamford
Hill Cinema in aid of their organisation in February of 1927. With some
tickets selling for over ten shillings, only those with a substantial dispos-
able income could be expected to attend.
In many British cities and small towns away from the major areas of
Jewish settlement, small Jewish communities had become established by
the interwar years. Not strong enough in numbers to found dedicated
communal leisure facilities, they too hired local cinemas for fundrais-
ing events. Published weekly the Jewish Chronicle ran a regular column
detailing provincial news, and it was not uncommon to see a cinema had
been drawn into service for a communal activity in some corner of the
country. While some events solicited charitable contributions for large
organisations such as the Jewish National Fund, more immediately local
causes could also be beneficiaries. In 1930, for example, a concert at
the Scala Cinema Hall in South Shields—a coastal town in North East
England—was used to raise money for a synagogue building fund (see
Advertisement, JC, November 21, 1930: 41). As in the new London
suburbs the local cinema became a temporary site of Jewish activity, fad-
ing again into an ethnically undifferentiated leisure landscape when the
concert ended.
The most common location for the screening of films for charity,
however, was London’s West End, and barely a month passed in the lat-
ter half of the 1930s without some event taking place. Particular exhibi-
tion spaces seem to have been utilised more regularly for this purpose,
with the Phoenix Theatre on Charring Cross Road proving especially
popular. In essence entertainments were organised on the same model
as those that occurred elsewhere, being advertised in the Jewish press
and with an assortment of international, national and local Jewish causes
benefitting. The centrality of the West End did, however, differentiate
the events put on there from those hosted in the provinces or the sub-
urbs, and audiences could be drawn from any area of the city using trans-
port systems designed to move a population from periphery to core. In
addition to being at the geographic heart of the city the West End also
possessed a cache due to its cultural centrality. This was a glamorous
fashionable space, and events that took place there were elevated out of
the ordinary. Top price tickets may have come at a premium (typically
around ten shillings; in contrast, the maximum patrons were asked to
52 G. TOFFELL
pay for charity events at the East End’s Troxy was 3/6), but the expense
made sense in the context of the surroundings.
It was not only the well heeled and philanthropic that were attracted
to cinemas in the West End. For many Jews film-going here offered a
distinct experience that could involve both an opportunity for the con-
sumption of ethnically specific cultural material, but also a cosmopoli-
tan mixing particular to the geography. Returning for a final time to the
young men that agreed to accept a researcher from Mass Observation
into their number, a Saturday night excursion is recorded as the high-
light of their week. On this one evening they travel from the East End
to London’s centre to attend a dance in Soho arranged to raise funds
for the Westminster Communist League of Youth. While there the group
encounter some Jewish young women from the affluent north London
suburb of Hampstead, and they all return to the parental home of two of
the girls where some minor romantic adventures take place (described in
amusingly earnest detail by the observer “LT”). At the end of the night
the young men begin a long walk home to Whitechapel, but fortuitously
meet a Jewish taxicab driver at Euston station who, taking pity on them,
offers the friends a reduced fare to the East End.
On this occasion the evening does not involve any trip to the cin-
ema. Never the less, it is a useful optic through which to view the appeal
and social dynamics of the West End as a Jewish space. A condenser of
social class the West End is the end point for two separate radial journeys
from strikingly different areas of London. In neither the working class
East End nor bourgeois north London would these two groups of young
people be likely to encounter one another in such an instantly intimate
manner. This is not to argue those moving into this space lost the mark
of class, or that central London wasn’t shot through with ostentatious
displays of wealth and class privilege. However, within sections of the
West End—particularly bohemian Soho—a historic intermingling of high
life and low life offered a form of transgressive, if temporary, social free-
dom. Within the public spaces of streets and leisure sites the hierarchies
and divisions of social class were not policed by quite the same rules as
elsewhere, and a permeability between class boundaries allowed for some
experimentation with class identities. This applied to Jews as much as to
non-Jews, and, as in the example of the dance party, could lead to new
aggregations of Jewish sociability.
Relatedly, a significant chunk of the West End had an identity as a
cosmopolitan space (Walkowitz 2012). Around the Soho and Fitzrovia
neighbourhoods lived established French and Italian communities; black

entertainers and hosts were a feature of nightclubs; and recently paid
sailors—their internationally bound cargo ships temporarily docked in
east London—were drawn to the area’s sex trade. As Gerry Black (1994)
has shown there was also a significant Jewish settlement in the eastern
half of Soho. This was sizeable enough to support several synagogues,
the Westminster Jews Free School, and ethnically specific entertainment
such as Yiddish theatre. Many in the community were employed in the
tailoring trades situated around Berwick Street, though Jewish restaura-
teurs offering kosher favourites to both visitors and local residents were
also part of the local economy. Indeed, the dance visited by the Mass
Observation group was housed in a room below a business described
by the observer “LT” as a “Jewish restaurant”, and advertised its Kosher
status with a neon Star of David in its window. Jews, then, were part
of cosmopolitan spectacle of the West End, drawing in consumers look-
ing for experiences at odds with the everyday. But this was also an envi-
ronment where Jews did not experience their social being as something
out of place. Difference was a fact of the geographic context; one could
move between the East End and West End and retain a stable sense of
ethnic self.
Amongst the offerings made available in West End cinemas it was not
unusual to see the programming of films that contained some Jewish
interest content. On some occasions these screenings would take place at
locations associated with Jewish leisure consumption, such as when the
New Scala Theatre in Charlotte Street screened The Golem [Der Golem]
(Wengerer 1920) for a fortnight in 1923. Used for both stage and screen
productions the Scala was familiar to Jews due to its occasional presenta-
tions of Yiddish theatre; the venue gaining kudos for hosting Maurice
Schwartz’s highly regarded Yiddish Art Theatre of America in 1924.
While surely convenient for a local Jewish community, the venue was
sizeable enough to require patrons visit from across London to remain
economically viable, and the theatre thus placed a prominent advertise-
ment for The Golem’s run in the widely read Jewish Chronicle (March 16,
1923: 46). A few years later in 1931 the same site would be first central
London cinema to present Yiddish language talking films.
More commonly, productions with Jewish interest themes were pre-
sented in cinemas not typically associated with ethnically specific audi-
ences. During the interwar years several West End venues oriented
their programming to art-house and foreign film exhibition, and niche
54 G. TOFFELL
interest titles with Jewish content (e.g. Yiddish film) were incorporated
into schedules. The Forum Cinema (situated in Villiers Street), Cinema
House and the Academy Cinema (both in Oxford Street) were all such
spaces, with the latter managed from 1931 by Elsie Cohen, a one-time
film journalist, champion of art cinema, and herself Jewish. Films with
strong Jewish interest content but broader appeal were distributed
throughout the plethora of those more conventional venues that ori-
ented their bookings to popular taste, though some sites offered such
fare with more regularity than others. The Rialto was one such venue,
screening a series of titles with Jewish interest narratives throughout
1920s (see this chapter).
Located directly adjacent to Leicester Square in Coventry Street,
the Rialto was situated in the heart of London’s entertainment district.
Purpose built as a cinema in 1913 the venue contained an interior with
an abundance of beautifully ornate plasterwork, and, from 1924, housed
the fashionable Café de Paris nightclub in its basement. It was thus an
elegant and glamorous place to watch films, offering that significant pro-
portion of the workforce that laboured producing goods or services for
more affluent others the opportunity to, in turn, consume the experience
of spectacular luxury. For at least some Jews in the audience the site con-
tained the potential for additional pleasures. While, for those that inhab-
ited neighbourhoods where Jews were the cultural dominant a trip to a
West End cinema necessitated a reduction in the quantity of Jewish bod-
ies within the immediate vicinity of the auditorium, this did not mean
that one entered social marginalisation. If, given the socio-geographic
context, the mixed audience could be understood as intrinsically cosmo-
politan then the event involved a new kind of experience of publicness.
This was a participation in a heterogeneous collective that could account
for ethnic difference.
For Charles Taylor (2004) the social imaginary—that is, the ideational
shared horizon of collective life—particular to modern Western societies
has been characterised by three cultural formations: the economy, the
principle of self-government, and the public sphere. This latter entity
can be understood as a common deliberative space that emerged in
the coffee houses and print culture of eighteenth-century Europe, and
expanded to include the assorted mass media that developed during
the course of the twentieth century. It would be an overreach to assert
that during the interwar years every film that represented Jewish life was
overtly oriented to contributing to a critical discourse that sought to
affect the polity (though as we will see later, some were). But the inclu-
sion of Jewish interest film within the most culturally prestigious spaces
of cinematic production and exhibition was an inclusion in a realm of
discourse that was understood as a key manifestation of collective life. In
a screening at the Rialto a position of spectatorship opened for Jewish
audiences that involved an overlaying of two forms of public experience:
the physical presence of the collective in the cosmopolitan audience,
together with the visibility of Jewish life in the metatopic mass public
sphere. In contrast to participation in the counter-public of Jewish com-
monality this positioned the Jewish subject as internal to a singular social
entity, and not as a member of one of a host of inferior spheres struc-
tured in opposition to a larger more powerful bourgeois public.
Although London’s West End almost uniquely combined cosmo-
politan difference and cultural centrality to make the possibility of this
utopian position of cinema spectatorship thinkable, something of this
experience may have been apparent in city centre picture houses outside
the metropolis. In Leeds, the centrally situated Briggate Street Picture
House used an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle to bring to prom-
inence the detail that its presentation of A Daughter of Israel (Jose
1925) was “DIRECT FROM ITS ENORMOUS SUCCESS AT THE
RIALTO, LONDON [sic]” (see October 22, 1926: 33). The Rialto’s
position on the top tier of the cultural hierarchy was invoked here to
establish the status of the Briggate Street Picture House. By arriving
“direct’ to the site from London the film was apparently making the next
most important stop in the distribution network. Leeds is understood to
possess the cache of regional centre as a kind of equivalence to London’s
identity as national cultural centre. Elsewhere in Leeds city centre around
this time the Majestic Cinema screened His People (Sloman 1925), and
the Savoy Cinema put on Kaddish (Licho 1924). Like A Daughter of
Israel these too were generously budgeted feature length explorations of
the Jewish experience.
Conclusion
In Britain during the interwar years cinemas became a prime locus of
leisure activity in Jewish neighbourhoods. In areas of first settlement—
particularly working class locales—these developed into communal hubs.
As Todd Endelman (2002) has argued, it was only after the mass migra-
tions of people from ex-colonies in South Asia and the Caribbean during
56 G. TOFFELL
the 1950s and 1960s that Britain became less obviously homogenous
in terms of ethnicity. Prior to World War II Jews were the most iden-
tifiable—and often most obsessively discussed—minority, and the social
landscape could be an uncomfortable place for those marked as some-
how alien. The cinemas of the East End, the Leylands and Cheetham,
however, were spaces of everyday leisure where “passing”—as disci-
plined, as genteel, indeed as British—was not expected or even necessar-
ily desirable. And it was the social comfort that unfolded in such spaces
that formed the basic condition for a rich expressive culture to take root.
These circumstances did not characterise the whole of Jewish cinema-go-
ing. Suburban halls situated on migratory routes out of primary areas
of settlement appear to have been qualitatively different in atmosphere,
as were city centre sites. Yet these spaces too played a significant role in
Jewish public life, variously affording communal gathering facilities and
an extension into the public sphere.
Thus far only a handful of specific film titles have been touched on.
While an exhibition site such as Whitechapel’s Rivoli Cinema could oper-
ate as a Jewish communal space irrespective of the films that appeared
on its programme, this should not be taken to infer the content of the
screened material was irrelevant. On the contrary, to thicken an under-
standing of the specificity of the life of picture houses frequented by sig-
nificant numbers of Jews it is necessary to identify those films that were
presented as having some intrinsic Jewish cultural resonance in their sub-
stantive content. By moving on in the next chapter to identifying such
material, and considering what it meant to the Jewish audiences that
consumed it, a diagram of an interwar Jewish cinema culture can con-
tinue to take shape.
Bibliography
Alderman, Geoffrey. 1992. Modern British Jewry. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Berk, Louis, and Rachel Kolsky. 2016. Whitechapel in 50 Buildings. Stroud:
Amberley Publishing.
Carbine, Mary. 1990. “‘The Finest Outside the Loop’: Motion Picture
Exhibition in Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1905–1928.” Camera Obscura 8
(2) (May): 8–41.
Carr, Richard. 1937. “Peoples Pictures and Peoples Palaces.” World Film News 1
(10) (January): 8–9.
Certeau, Michel de. 1988. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Collins, Stanley C. 2001. “Two Years at the Rivoli, Lively Times in London’s
East End, at Whitechapel’s Super Cinema, in the Early Twenties”.
Republished in Picture House (26) (Summer): 33–38.
Dupont, Ewald Andre, dir. 1923. The Ancient Law. Comedia-Film GmbH.
35MM.
Endelman, Todd. 2002. The Jews of Britain, 1656 to 2000. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Goldin, Sidney M., and Aubrey Scotto, dirs. 1932. Uncle Moses. Brandeis
University, MA: National Center for Jewish Film, 1991. VHS.
Goldman, Willy. 1940. East End My Cradle. London: Faber and Faber.
Green, Joseph, dir. 1936. Yiddle with His Fiddle. Brandeis University, MA:
National Center for Jewish Film, 1995. VHS.
Habermas, Jürgen. 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An
Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hansen, Miriam. 1991. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent
Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Jose, Edward, dir. 1925. A Daughter of Israel. London: Wardour Films. 35MM.
Kent, Aaron M. Identity, Migration and Belonging: The Jewish Community of
Leeds, 1890–1920. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
The Kinematograph Year Book Program Diary and Directory 1914. London: The
Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly Ltd.
Licho, Adolf E., dir. 1924. Kaddish. Germany: Licho-Film GmbH. 35MM.
Jewish Museum.
McKernan, Luke. 2006. Unequal Pleasures: Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd. and
the Early Film Exhibition Business in London. Paper Given at the Emergence
of the Film Industry in Britain Conference, University of Reading Business
School, June 29/30. Accessed April 3, 2016. http://lukemckernan.com/
wp-content/uploads/unequal_pleasures.pdf.
McKernan, Luke. 2007. “Diverting Time: London’s Cinemas and Their
Audiences, 1906–1914.” The London Journal 32 (2) (July): 125–44.
National Council of Public Morals Cinema Commission Inquiry. 1917. The
Cinema: Its Present Position and Future Possibilities. London: Williams and
Norgate.
58 G. TOFFELL
Negt, Oscar, and Alexander Kluge. 1993. The Public Sphere and Experience:
Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois and Proletarian Public Sphere. Translated
by Peter Labanyi, Jamie Owen Daniel, and Assenka Oksiloff. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press.
O’Rourke, Chris. 2013. Wonderland. Accessed April 26, 2016. https://london-
filmland.wordpress.com/tag/whitechapel/.
Prager, Leonard. 1990. Yiddish Culture in Britain: A Guide. Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang.
Puwar, Nirmal. 2007. “Social Cinema Scenes.” Space and Culture 10 (2):
253–70.
Richards, Jeffrey. 1984. The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in
1930s Britain. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Schwartz, Maurice, dir. 1926. Souls in Exile. New York: Jaffe Art Films. 35MM.
Sennett, Richard. (1977) 1986. The Fall of Public Man. New York: Alfred A. Kopf
Inc (Reprint London: Faber and Faber).
Smith, Charles Manby. 1853. Curiosities of London Life: Or, Phases, Physiological
and Social, of the Great Metropolis. London: W. and F. G. Cash.
in the British Film Industry.” Journal of European Popular Culture 3 (2):
117–29.
Stewart, Jacqueline Najuma. 2005. Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black
Urban Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Sutcliffe, J. B. 1917. “British Notes.” The Moving Picture World, December 22.
New York: Chalmers Publishing Company.
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press.
Thissen, Judith. 2012. “Early Cinema and the Public Sphere of the
Neighborhood Meeting Hall: The Longue Durée of Working-Class
Sociability.” In Beyond the Screen: Institutions, Networks and Publics of Early
Cinema, edited by Marta Braun, Charles Keil, Rob King, Paul Moore, and
Louis Pelletier, 297–306. London: John Libbey.
Walkowitz, Judith. 2012. Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Wegener, Paul, dir. 1920. The Golem. London: Eureka, 2003. DVD.
Werker, Alfred L., dir. 1934, The House of Rothschild. Los Angeles: United
Artists. 35MM.
Archive
Interview with Maurice Bloom. Catalogue Reference: 95-199-11H. The Cinema
and Culture in 1930’s Britain (CCINTB) Archive. Lancaster University.
Interview with Joe Philips. Catalogue Reference: J193. Manchester Jewish
Museum Archive.
Invitation from the First London Achuzah Co. Ltd. to a Banquet in Honour of
Dr. J. M. Salkind. 1916. Catalogue Reference: GASTER/1/A/FIR/1. UCL
Special Collections.
Song Sheet for ‘Kinishever Pogrom’ by The Brothers Sheynberg from Lemberg.
1905. Catalogue Reference: 1986.87.1.5. Jewish Museum, London.
Trial of Taylor, Joe (24, salesman). 1910. Catalogue Reference: t19100531-56.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online. Accessed April 20, 2016. https://www.oldbai-
leyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t19100531-56.
Working Class Jews in Whitechapel 1939. 62-2-A. Box 2 East End Survey 1939.
Mass Observation Archive. University of Surrey.
CHAPTER 3
Films of Jewish Interest
In 1937 journalist Richard Carr produced a special report on film exhi-

bition in East London for the trade magazine World Film News. Entitled
“People’s Pictures, People’s Palaces” (8) the article addressed the diverse
populations of the East End, assessing their preferences across a range
of exhibition sites. Several cinema managers were interviewed anon-
ymously, and the topic of Jewish audiences recurred over a number of
conversations. In the conclusion to the piece Carr claimed that little dif-
ference in the cinematic preferences of Jews and gentiles could be iden-
tified, though noted Jews may be a little more “sophisticated” (9) in
their tastes—whatever that might have meant—compared to non-Jewish
audience members. While Carr’s conclusion may be a faithful representa-
tion of the information his respondents disclosed, it is interesting that
one manager interviewed provided an account that complicated the idea
of an essentially undifferentiated audience. In this proprietor’s venue—a
smaller site typically presenting films on a second-run—he stated, “any
film with Jewish interest will draw large crowds”, and added “a recent
revival of the eight year old Jazz Singer drew record crowds” (ibid.).
It is quite possible that, for both Jewish and non-Jewish East Enders,
the most eagerly awaited film titles were generously financed Hollywood
spectaculars with dramatic plots, top rank stars, and catchy musical num-
bers. Releases of films such as these were major cultural events with a
broad appeal, and perhaps Carr was keen to communicate that most
British Jews were not isolated away in sealed enclaves. However, as the
quoted exhibitor suggests, it was simply not the case that cinematic

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_3
62 G. TOFFELL
programming in areas of significant Jewish settlement paid no atten-

tion to the ethnic specificity of local audiences. Whether it was films that
could command cross-ethnic appeal (e.g. prestige features from major
producers with plots concerning Jewish characters, films with Jewish
stars), or productions that had been made explicitly for Jewish audiences
(Yiddish language film, Jewish nationalist film), exhibitors presented a
raft of titles as being of particular relevance to Jews. This took place at
a variety of cinemas, from older, cheaper sites with limited capacity, to
plush sizeable houses such as Whitechapel’s Rivoli.
That Jews could be considered potential consumers of niche prod-
uct and thus drawn to specific films was a belief held by both the Jewish
press and various branches of the film industry. Throughout the period
Jewish newspapers regularly ran preview articles and reviews of films
believed likely to resonate with their readerships. Typically appearing
in entertainment pages, though occasionally also in current affairs col-
umns, these articles were often considerably more expansive in scope
than pieces about films imagined to have general appeal. Plots, perfor-
mances and production details received extended discussion, and pho-
tographic stills of key scenes might also be included. These publications
were also used for advertising by the exhibition and distribution arms of
the film business. Promoting titles through targeted advertising regu-
larly involved the creation of special artwork, and this could incorporate
Yiddish lettering or emphasise some element of a production understood
to appeal to Jews such as imagery of a favoured performer. Following
prerelease trade screenings arranged by film renters, the trade press
would also offer predictions about the likely popularity of a title for the
benefit of exhibitors. As with continental art cinema or documentary
films, the recommendation for material such as Yiddish language film
tended to be that bookings should only be made for halls catering to
specialist audiences.
In Britain’s most populous Jewish neighbourhood, the East End, films
intended to attract a Jewish audience were being presented even prior
to World War I. Discussing east London’s Commercial Road exhibition
scene in 1917, the Moving Picture World noted “There are theatres in
this district which carry specialization to a fine art. The Polish Jews’ kin-
ema, for instance, has a set of Russian1 titles made for every film shown
1 Given Yiddish was a more widely understood language that Russian amongst Eastern
European Jews, it seems likely that the intertitles mentioned here were in fact in Yiddish.
3 FILMS OF JEWISH INTEREST 63
there” (Sutcliffe 1917: 1770). No specific name is given to this picture

house for Polish Jews, but the article may well have been referring to
Commercial Road’s Palaseum Cinema. This was an exotic Moorish struc-
ture complete with cupola and minarets, and contained a seating capacity
for 1000 patrons. Built to stage Yiddish language drama as The Feinman
Yiddish People’s Theatre, poorly managed finances rendered the site’s
original purpose short lived and the theatre was forced to close its doors
in 1912 six months after opening, before quickly converting to a cinema
(see Mazower 1996: 72). Leonard Prager (1990) lists two silent pro-
ductions with Yiddish intertitles being screened at the venue in May of
1914: Der Yid (The Jew) was set in Poland and dealt with inter-religious
love, while Der Meshiekh (The Messiah) was shot in Ottoman Palestine
using the novel Pathecolor process (64).
Jews have featured as characters in film virtually from the genesis
of the medium. During the period of nickelodeon expansion at the
beginning of the twentieth century representations of Jews—along with
other minority ethnic groups—often consisted of unsophisticated racist
caricature for comic effect. In Edwin Porter’s Cohen’s Fire Sale (1907)
the swindling protagonist arranges an insurance fraud when an initial
scam fails to pay off, while A Bad Day for Levinsky (Gobbett 1909) finds
humour in a Jewish man’s financial misfortune. Unsurprisingly Jewish
cinema audiences saw little to be amused by in such fare. However, as
Stallybrass and White (1986) perceptively note in their cultural history
of transgression, that which is cast as socially peripheral has an uncanny
propensity of returning as culturally central. For an array of silent film
producers the outsider status of Jews meant they held an interest that
could go beyond supplying the punch line to cheap jokes. For those keen
to explore the boundaries (and, indeed, leakages) between the socially
central and the peripheral, Jews have long proved an appealing device.
Additionally, Otherness and exoticism carry an erotic charge that was
central to both early European film-making traditions and pre-Hay’s
Code American film, and the figure of the Jewess could be marshalled to
supply that piquant ingredient.
Europe’s Other
Seeking to escape the Russian advance large numbers of unassimilated
Eastern European Jews entered Germany and Austria during World War
I, engendering both a fascination and disgust in their difference by host
64 G. TOFFELL
populations. A new intimacy with Europe’s long-time internal Other

came into being, and Hoberman (1991) understands the short burst of
films produced in these territories during the early 1920s that deal with
Jewish themes and characters as contextualised within a wider increase in
discourse about Jews. The most celebrated title to have emerged from
this cycle is Paul Wengener’s expressionist The Golem: How He Came
into the World (Der Golem), produced in Germany in 1920. Drawing
on a mythology surrounding the historical figure of Judah Loew ben
Bezalel, the late sixteenth-century scholar, mystic and leading rabbi of
Prague, the film narrates Rabbi Loew’s creation of a Golem—a terrifying
strongman fashioned from clay—as an attempt to protect his community
following an edict from the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II order-
ing Jews to be expelled from their ghetto on the periphery of Prague.
Although Loew’s scheme eventually secures the safety of the city’s Jews
the unstable Golem acquires a minatory autonomy, murderously ram-
paging through the ghetto’s streets.
In The Golem the Jews and their world are a mysterious otherworldly
entity. Art direction in the film was overseen by the architect Hans
Poelzig, and the atmospheric sets he created to reconstruct Prague’s
ghetto comprised a jumble of crooked mediaeval houses that crowd in
over labyrinthine streets. Within this uncanny space Jews are seen per-
forming a range of occult practices, from mass incantations to halt a fire
spreading through the ghetto, to sorcery and astrological prediction.
This is an image of Jews as keepers of an arcane knowledge, bequeathed
to them in the time of the patriarchs and transmitted down through
the centuries. Mysticism is not the only form of irrationalism in the
film associated with Jews, however, and Rabbi Loew’s daughter Miriam
is presented as sexually irresistible as well as subject to a destructive
ungovernable sensualism. Dressed in gypsy headscarf and flowing skirts
she swoons in the presence of the Emperor’s messenger to the Jews—
Florian, a foppish and conceited Christian knight—before recklessly
agreeing to a tryst with him that will set in motion the disastrous finale.
Although films that staged a forbidden love affair between a Jew
and a non-Jew, or contained scenes depicting the alterity of Jewish
religious ritual and the sensual Jewish body were produced for a gen-
tile gaze, the Jewish characters that featured in these scenarios were fre-
quently portrayed sympathetically, and many Jews were not alienated
by such representations. Indeed, it is clear from contemporary sources
that exhibitors and distributors believed Jews to be a useful secondary
audience—or, on occasion, even a primary audience—for these produc-

tions, and ethnically specific aspects of such narratives were emphasised
in specialist promotions. The British premiere release of The Golem was
a two-week run in March 1923 at the New Scala Theatre in Central
London, a site with an established relationship with London’s Jewish
population. Advertising the production in the Jewish Chronicle a prom-
inent notice asserted to the piece to be “of intense interest to Jewry”
(see March 16, 1923: 46), and—declaring the film’s spiritual propriety—
noted the presence of the Chief Rabbi at an advance screening. A review
in the same issue of the paper echoed the advertisement, stating the
film to be “of considerable Jewish interest” (“Film Plays”: 47), before
going on to give details about the content of the narrative. Although the
review identified sorcery as central to the plot, at no point is it suggested
that associating Jews with the supernatural might be problematic, and
The Golem is treated as harmless fantasy.
In the early 1920s two other German films that focussed on Jewish
life were discursively prominent in the British-Jewish press: E. A.
Dupont’s The Ancient Law (Das Alte Gesetz, 1923), and Adolf E. Licho’s
Kaddish (Kaddisch, 1924). Prefiguring The Jazz Singer (Crosland 1927)
by four years The Ancient Law narrates the rejection of religious ortho-
doxy by the son of a Rabbi for a secular life on the stage. The film’s exhi-
bition in Britain included a run at the Pavilion Theatre in London’s East
End where it screened for two weeks in 1924. The director, Dupont,
was Jewish, and as Hoberman (1991) notes he took great care in repre-
senting Jewish ritual, devoting extended scenes to the portrayal of reli-
gious practice within a synagogue. The Ancient Law’s discursive identity
in the Jewish press made much of the apparently authentic Jewish con-
tent, and the Jewish Chronicle’s reviewer noted both the “faithful rep-
resentation of a good deal of Jewish ritual” and the “remarkable fidelity”
(“Film Notes”, May 16, 1924: 30) of the reconstruction of shtetl life.
Advertised in the Jewish Chronicle notices emphasised the appeal of the
film to Jews, presenting the title in both English and Yiddish, and assert-
ing it had been “acclaimed in many of the World’s Principal Cities as
THE GREATEST JEWISH PICTURE OF ALL TIME [sic]” (see May
9, 1924: 27).
As in The Ancient Law, Kaddish looked to rural Poland for a setting.
A tragedy involving inter-communal suspicion and violence following the
disappearance of a Christian child last seen near to the site of a Jewish
wedding, the narrative culminates in the vengeful murder of a young
66 G. TOFFELL
Jewish bride; the child is, of course, found safe and well. Films explor-
ing the persecution of Eastern European Jewry had been in production
from as early as Pathe’s 1905 Anti-Semitic Atrocities (Zecca), with a sub-
set exploring the theme of “blood libel” following the “Beilis affair”2 of
1913 (Hoberman 1991). Produced in 1924 Kaddish was a later addition
to the genre, but exhibitors clearly believed its subject matter remained
of interest to Jewish audiences and prominent notices were placed in the
Jewish press during its 1927 release in Britain. It first screened at the
Avenue Pavilion in Central London during August of that year where
a new policy of presenting unusual films was being trialled, and adver-
tisements for its run there contained a line drawing of Askenazi famil-
ial affection, the Star of David, and included the information the film
would be accompanied by “Isadore Berman’s Male Voice Choir” (see
Jewish Times, August 5, 1927: 5). Berman had founded his Jewish
choir in 1926, having established his reputation as Music Director at
Whitechapel’s Pavilion Theatre, and his participation in the event would
have enhanced a sense of the screening as a Jewish communal activity.
Positively reviewed in Jewish newspapers the Jewish Times described
Kaddish a “beautiful Jewish moving picture” (“Kaddish”, August 22,
1927: 3), recounted its plot and gave details of show times. For this
Yiddish language publication film reviews were a rarity, and only those
productions believed to be of significant relevance to its readership
received comment. In the Jewish Chronicle it was remarked that the title
had been produced with the “co-operation of a well known continental
Rabbi” (“Variety and Cinema News”, March 4, 1928: 45), an observa-
tion that suggested Jewish participation was integral to the production’s
realisation and that Jews were thus not situated simply as objects of
anthropological curiosity. Further to its West End release Kaddish moved
to provincial and local screens, appearing at the Mile End Empire in the
East End during November of 1927, and the Stamford Hill Cinema a
few weeks later where the film was advertised as being accompanied by
“Radom’s Male Vocal Quartette [sic]” performing “Old Jewish Folk
Songs [sic]” (see JC, December 2, 1927: 36). Some seven months after
2 A key theme of Jewish persecution the term ‘blood libel’ refers to the longstanding
accusation that Jews kidnap and murder Christian children to make use of their blood
for ritual purposes. The ‘Beilis Affair’ involved the imprisonment, trial and subsequent
acquittal of Menahem Mendel Beilis, a Russian Jew accused of killing 13-year-old Andrei
Yushchinsky in 1911.
its London premier the film screened at the west London Maida Vale
Picture House in March of 1928, where again Radom’s Quartet pro-
vided live accompaniment.
While a post-World War I interest in Jewish difference was registered
most distinctly in the cinema cultures of Germany and Austria, produc-
ers in other territories recognised the commercial potential of Jewish-
themed narratives. In France La Terre Promise (Roussell) went into
production in 1925, exploring the familial strife between two brothers,
one a rabbi the other a moneylender, and their sisters who have fallen
in love with the same Christian aristocrat. Released under the title Her
People an advertisement for its presentation at the Maida Vale Picture
House described the film “a wonderful Passover drama” (see JC, April
18, 1927: 28). Also produced in France during 1925 Le Puits de Jacob
(Jose) narrates the story of Agar, the granddaughter of a Turkish rabbi
who turns to cabaret dancing in Constantinople before travelling to
Palestine to live as a Zionist pioneer. Adapted from a Pierre Benoit
novel the film was saturated with Orientalist fantasy, a recurrent trope
in Benoit’s writing. Offering the mystique of the East to European
cinema-goers some of the action was filmed on location in Mandatory
Palestine, and the lead role of Agar was taken by the American star Betty
Blythe, a performer famed for appearing scantily clad in diaphanous cos-
tumes. As the Cinema News and Property Gazette wrote “she is both
desirous and desired, and is seen in various stages of dress and undress
in a picture appealing more to the eye than the mind” (quoted in ibid.).
Released in Britain in August 1926 as A Daughter of Israel the
Kinematograph Weekly felt the production would appeal “chiefly to
Jewish audiences” (quoted in ibid.). While the Bioscope did not concur
with this analysis, believing “Betty Blythe’s name will appeal in popu-
lar houses” (quoted in ibid.), those responsible for promoting the film
decided to hedge their bets and placed a sizeable half page notice in the
Jewish Chronicle. Advertising the film’s premier presentation at the Rialto
cinema in Coventry Street—a site used to screen Jewish interest film
with some regularity during this period—the notice combined the ethnic
and star appeal of the production by setting a photograph of Blythe’s
face into a prominent Star of David symbol (see August 20, 1926: 25).
From London the film moved to the major provincial towns exhibiting
in city centre cinemas in Manchester, Cardiff and Liverpool. By October
it was screening at the Coliseum Cinema in Glasgow, and later in early
1927 received its Birmingham premier at the Regent Picture House—a
68 G. TOFFELL
cinema, like London’s Rialto, used on a number of occasions to exhibit

films with Jewish themes. These latter two presentations were accompa-
nied by direct solicitations for Jewish audiences with dedicated adver-
tisements in the Jewish Chronicle, the Regent notice claiming the title
possessed “exceptional Jewish appeal” (see January 21, 1927: 30). It was
also advertised in the Jewish Press when distributed to screens in subur-
ban sites with a significant Jewish presence; in April of 1927 a notice in
the Jewish Chronicle established its exhibition at the Maida Vale Picture
House (see April 1, 1927: 58).
By the mid-1920s the post-World War I cycle of European films that
took Jewish particularity or exoticism as subject matter had petered
out. Other films from this cycle were produced—Henrik Galeen’s
Judith Trachtenberg (1920) and Carl Dreyer’s Love One Another (Die
Gezeichneten, 1921) being, perhaps, the best known of the clutch—
though they do not appear to have generated discussion in the British-
Jewish press, nor were they promoted to Jewish audiences as holding
some ethnically specific appeal. However, during the early interwar
period films containing Jewish characters or Jewish-themed narratives
were not restricted to exploring Otherness and life at society’s margins,
nor were they limited to the industries of Central and Western Europe.
The Bible had been a significant source of cinematic material from the
“one-reeler” films of the beginning of the century, and with its intrin-
sic high drama and miraculous events the Old Testament was especially
suited to the spectacular capacities of the medium. As such, an entire
genre of cinema contained Jewish heroes and heroines in the shape of
prophets, sages and warriors.
Ancient Jews
In the 1920s a number of biblically inspired films were directly promoted
to Jews in Britain. Since the representation of Jewishness in these titles
was often more incidental than in films such as Kaddish or The Golem
advertisements were usually only placed in the Jewish press when, fol-
lowing a premier release, a given title was being distributed on general
release and had arrived at a cinema located in an area of significant Jewish
settlement. The Queen of Sheba (Edwards 1921), starring Betty Blythe
in the title role, appeared at the Hackney Pavilion in 1922. Situated
on the major thoroughfare of Mare Street, the Hackney Pavilion was
a sizeable purpose-built cinema with an ornate Edwardian Baroque
interior. The working class inner-suburb of Hackney in East London was

home to a large number of Jews, and the cinema management clearly
felt that a tale of romance involving King Solomon would likely attract
this local audience, placing a notice in the Jewish Chronicle utilising both
English and Yiddish lettering (see April 7, 1922: 33). Also promoted
more heavily to Jews on a secondary run was Salome (Edwards 1918) at
the Hackney Pavilion in 1920, The Wandering Jew (Elvey 1922) at the
Maida Vale Picture House in 1923 and again in 1927, and Ben-Hur: A
Tale of the Christ (Niblo 1925).
The premier release of this latter title took place at the Tivoli Theatre
in Central London, where this epic story of an enslaved Jew who rises
to become a celebrated charioteer in Imperial Rome proved hugely pop-
ular, running for ten months from November 1926 until September
1927. Given its success it is not surprising that promoters did not feel
it necessary to allocate much expense to chasing a secondary audience
and merely placed a modest listing in the Jewish Chronicle. However,
when the film moved to the Maida Vale Picture House in October
1927 and then to the Stamford Hill Cinema in December both exhibi-
tors placed prominent notices in the Jewish Chronicle. The Stamford Hill
Cinema advertisement featured an attractive still of a brooding Judah
Ben-Hur (Ramon Novarro) nuzzled against his love interest Esther
(May McAvoy), and notified readers that the film was being presented
“in response to an Unprecedented Number of Requests [sic]” (see
December 9, 1927: 43). Adapted from the LewWallace bestseller the
narrative of Ben-Hur is deeply Christian in sensibility, and it is instruc-
tive that exhibitors seemingly believed Jewish audiences would bracket
the message of Christ’s sovereignty and selectively take pleasure in the
representation of a handsome and courageous Jewish hero.
During their premier releases in Central London both Moon of Israel
(Die Sklavenkönigin, 1924)—directed by Michael Curtiz during his years
in Vienna—and The Wanderer (Walsh 1925) were given some limited
promotion in the Jewish press, the former film also being advertised for
its later exhibition at the Maida Vale Picture House with a notice that
pointed out the “stupendous background” to the story included “the
escape of the Israelites out of the land of bondage” (see Jewish Chronicle,
April 17, 1925: 24). More prominently promoted on its premier run was
Noah’s Ark (Curtiz 1928), a melodrama set primarily in Europe dur-
ing World War I but with a parallel narrative detailing biblical events—
mostly the story of the great flood. Advertised in the Jewish Chronicle
70 G. TOFFELL
in a succession of attractive notices, these featured an assortment of

illustrations relating only to the Noah story. All the notices were for the
film’s 1929 presentation at the Piccadilly Theatre in London’s West End,
a plush art deco venue that, equipped with Warner’s Vitaphone system,
was one of Britain’s early sound cinemas.
The biblical film that received the most vigorous promotional
campaign to Jews was Cecil B. de Mille’s (1923) epic The Ten
Commandments, which opened at the London Pavilion in Piccadilly
Circus in March 1924. Divided into two narratives the first third of the
film constitutes a prologue recreating the Exodus story, while a second
section transitions the action to a contemporary setting for a morality
tale of two brothers: John, an honourable carpenter who faithfully lives
by the Ten Commandments, and Danny, a wealthy property developer
who disastrously breaks them. In common with many reviewers the
Jewish Chronicle regarded the biblical narrative by far the superior piece
of film-making, describing the prologue an “extraordinarily impressive
spectacle” and picked out key scenes for praise. In contrast the “very
much less distinguished” modern story was judged “paltry” and “full
of sentimentality” (“Film Notes”, March 21, 1924: 32). Apparently
wise to the film’s strengths, promoters placed large eye-catching adver-
tisements emphasising the prologue’s biblical content in the Jewish
Chronicle. These were dominated by line drawings of Moses parting the
Red Sea and the Israelite slaves hauling some enormous stone statue.
Accompanying the imagery was copy referencing “the splendours of the
Pharaohs” and the “tribulations of the children of Israel” (see March 21,
1924: 33). Clearly it was desired to give the impression that the Moses
episode formed the core of the film, and only a brief mention of the
modern story was included in the promotion.
The Jewish Chronicle also devoted commentary to those aspects of the
production and exhibition of The Ten Commandments believed to be of
relevance to their readership. Included in scenes requiring a vast army
of extras, it was reported, were some two hundred and fifty Yemenite
Jews who “sang their ancient hymns” and then “broke down and cried”
during the filming of the Jews’ passage through the Red Sea—an event,
it was claimed, resultant from the power of “racial memories” (“Film
Notes”, March 14, 1924: 34). A somewhat less mystical connection
between the production and the Jewish people was seen in the fortui-
tous timing of the London exhibition of the film. It is the Exodus story
that is recalled in the festival of Pesach (Passover), and the paper was
keen to point out that given the eight day holiday was then about to
begin “the exhibition of this picture at this present moment is singularly
appropriate” (“Film Notes”, April 18, 1924: 34). This was a synchronic-
ity the exhibitor did not fail to miss, and a second sizeable advertise-
ment was placed in the Jewish Chronicle. Bluntly declaring “WHY YOU
SHOULD SEE Cecil B. de Mille’s Wonderful Picture ‘THE TEN
COMMANDMENTS’ DURING PESACH [sic]” (see April 18, 1924:
33), the notice went on to claim that taking children to see the film
would help fulfil the religious injunction of explaining the why the first
night of the festival is different from all other nights.
A highly successful booking for the London Pavilion, The Ten
Commandments ran for four months before being released for general
distribution. In March of 1925 an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle
showed it to be screening at the Kenninghall Cinema, a mid-size unpre-
tentious picture hall in the east London district of Clapton. Appearing
at the site for a second run, copy on the notice claimed the film had
returned to the venue “due to a number of repeated requests received
from our patrons, and the enormous success scored at the former pres-
entation” (see March 20, 1925: 36). Discussing cinema-going in the
1920s Manchester in an oral history interview, respondent Julius Süss
recounted taking his father to see The Ten Commandments at the Temple
cinema, a neighbourhood landmark in Cheetham Hill with a significant
Jewish customer base.
…I took him to the Temple, for the simple reason, there was er, The Ten
Commandments were on. I says to him ‘Dad’, I said, ‘if you want to see a
picture, if you want to see Moses, then come with me’. (MJM 242)
Explaining that his father was a conservative and religious man, some-
what alienated from secular modernity, Julius believed this to be his only
foray out to the cinema. Apparently a popular booking at local cine-
mas with significant Jewish audiences it seems likely that many British
Jews—particularly those most comfortable within the confines of an area
of Jewish settlement—saw The Ten Commandments at a neighbourhood
venue, whether for a first time or to enjoy a repeat performance.
72 G. TOFFELL
American Modernity
In her encyclopaedic account of the Jewish presence in American cin-
ema, Patricia Erens (1984) argues that the 1920s represents a golden
age in the creation of film narratives featuring Jews. If an explora-
tion of a Jewish uncanny was a primarily European trend, and the bib-
lical world was an industry staple on both sides of the Atlantic, then
the city of modernity was a milieu used overwhelmingly to thematise
American films about Jews. Coined the “Ghetto Film” by Erens, pro-
ductions exploring the difficulties of Jewish life in the unforgiving neigh-
bourhoods of the new world metropolis—predominantly New York’s
Lower East Side—dated back to around the 1910 mark, with titles such
as Griffith’s A Child of the Ghetto (1910). Drawing on sources includ-
ing Victorian literary traditions, as well as then recent trends on the
American stage (Westgate 2014), narratives were typically highly mel-
odramatic, reliant on unlikely events and coincidences to reach resolu-
tion, often focussed on the dynamics within a single family, and featured
a stock set of character types (e.g. the “Rose of the Ghetto”, the “Stern
Patriarch”). According to Erens the Ghetto Film went into hiatus in
1915, largely dropping out of production for half a decade until the
genre was reinvigorated in 1920 with the release of the Frank Borzage
directed Humoresque.
A highly sentimental adaptation of a short story by the Jewish popular
novelist Fannie Hurst, Humoresque charts the rise of one Leon Kantor
from a poor childhood in Lower Manhattan to artistic success and high
society; a journey enabled through his natural talent for the violin and
the unwavering support of his mother. Thematically, the second phase of
the Ghetto Film still dealt with the trials of surviving the economic pre-
carity and slum housing of immigrant quarters, but increasingly incor-
porated social mobility and intermarriage—and the intergenerational
tension this would cause—into the plot. As such, narratives became
preoccupied with exploring the possibilities, and difficulties, of Jewish
assimilation into America’s social body. Exhibited in Britain in 1920
Humoresque received a review in the Jewish Chronicle—a rare honour for
any film at this early date—where it was asserted it was not often that “a
‘Jewish’ film receives such enthusiastic reception” (“Music and Drama”,
August 20, 1920: 25). Somewhat more preoccupied with the plaudits
the title had won than the potential pleasures offered to Jewish audi-
ences, the column went on explain that President Wilson had seen the
film at a special screening in New York, though “scenes of the New York
Ghetto” (ibid.) were singled out for praise.
The milieu of the “ghetto” was an enticing object for the gaze of a
generalised cinema audience. A curiosity in the urban interior was not
restricted to the most daring flaneurs and social reformers prepared to
embark on real-world explorations, and a market for vicarious journeys
into the dark continent of the immigrant neighbourhood had been
engendered since the nineteenth century (Walkowitz 1992). Previously
revealed in photographs, novels, plays and journalistic reports, the cin-
ema was only the latest in a plethora of media to describe this habitat.
When Humoresque appeared at the Hackney Pavilion on its general
release an advertisement placed in the Jewish Chronicle noted the “glam-
our of the great Ghetto [sic]” (see June 10, 1921: 32) as a component
of the film. From the perspective of the present, it is not immediately
obvious how to interpret this use of the term “glamour”. Was the inten-
tion to convey the seductive excitement of an exotic setting, or did the
word retain something of its archaic meaning as a magical spell and sug-
gest life in the Lower East Side contained qualities that could enchant
or charm? For sure, some more affluent Jews may have been as dis-
tanced—socially and physically—from primary areas of Jewish settlement
as audience members who remained ethnically unmarked. For these spec-
tators the hustle of street life and the raw struggle of economic survival
might be said to contain a titillating glamour. However, for many British
Jews—particularly in east London—the “ghetto” was home.
The term “ghetto” had been a feature of discourse describing the
Jewish East End of London—and, indeed, the sites of primary settlement
in Leeds and Manchester—since the end of the Victorian period. Across
a series of books author Israel Zangwill—himself a denizen of Spitalfields
for some years—used the word “ghetto” to refer to the East End, his
1892 Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People being the earli-
est of the works. The term remained in use well into the interwar period;
the East London Observer newspaper, for instance, ran a regular column
detailing Jewish communal matters called “Ghetto Gossip”, and for
their eightieth anniversary issue the Jewish Chronicle commissioned the
journalist George Robert Sims—a well-known chronicler of London’s
slums—to write an impressionistic account of the East End under the
title “Glimpses of the Ghetto” (December 2, 1921: 27).
With British Jews living the space of the ghetto as an everyday famil-
iarity, it might make more sense to read the term “glamour” in the
74 G. TOFFELL
Hackney Pavilion’s advertisement for Humoresque as connoting a kind of

captivating charm. The warmth and support offered by the Kantor family
to the young Leon, in the context of financial impoverishment, are the
locus of an epic emotional drama casting a spell over audiences. At the
end of the advertisement’s blurb came a warning about the immersive
capacities of the film. So overwhelming were performances that the emo-
tionally repressed or fragile might not wish to attend: as the copy had it
“if you can’t stand a good cry, you had better stop away” (see JC, June
10, 1921: 33). Far from taking on the position of voyeuristic detach-
ment, the spectator conjured through the promotional discourse in the
Jewish Chronicle was almost dangerously proximate to the action.
Rather than an invitation to marvel at the alterity of New York’s
Jewish quarter Humoresque was promoted to Jews as a flattering rep-
resentation of a recognisably Jewish mode of living. Attending to an
audience desire for self-representation promotions of further “Ghetto
Films” placed considerable emphasis on the common transnational
experience of new world Jewry, even going so far as to elide the loca-
tion setting of a fictional narrative and the geographic context of exhi-
bition. Distributed in Britain in late 1925 His People (Sloman 1925) was
probably the “ghetto” narrative most heavily promoted to British Jews.
A high production value title from Universal—one of the company’s
prestige “Jewel” releases—the focus of the film is the Cominsky fam-
ily, living hand to mouth in the Lower East Side. Exploring the theme
of intergenerational tension, the main thrust of the story concerns the
moral superiority of David and Rose Cominsky’s least favoured son—a
streetwise boxer called Sammy—over his brother, the pampered and
self-serving Morris, a lawyer. By the end of the film Sammy’s qualities
are allowed to shine through; not only does the winning purse of a prize
fight allow his sickly father to travel to a sanatorium, but he drags the
disloyal brother from uptown Manhattan back to the old neighbourhood
to repent before his parents.
After receiving its premier screening at the London Pavilion in early
December of 1925, His People immediately moved a few hundred yards
to the Rialto cinema where it stayed for some two months. It was dur-
ing its exhibition here that a sustained promotional campaign targeted
Jewish cinema-goers, and numerous prominent notices were placed
in the Jewish press. The first of these contained an illustration of actor
Rudolph Schildkraut, who featured in the film as David Cominsky. A
familiar figure to Jewish audiences, Shildkraut had grown up in a Jewish
family in Romania, was a veteran of the Yiddish stage and had previously
appeared in other prominent film roles as a Jewish character. Dominating
a notice in the Jewish Times an illustration of the star staring solemnly
from the page in skull cap and bushy white beard had him every bit the
declining patriarch (see December 20, 1925: 3). While this advertise-
ment clearly established the Jewish interest content of the title, a full-
page notice placed in the Jewish Chronicle a few weeks later suggested an
equivalence between the social and physical geography of Jewish London
and New York. Although the film was set in Manhattan advertising copy
read “East End—West End—everywhere you’ll find HIS PEOPLE”
(January 15, 1926: 32). Reconfiguring New York’s Jewish topography
to reference points more familiar to the local audience the distinctness
of the filmic locale is absorbed into a single surface of experience. The
ghetto is imagined a multisited space; the East End, Lower East Side,
Southside Chicago, Cheetham Hill are interchangeable nodes on a dis-
tributed network.
His People, like many Ghetto Films, explored—and espoused—a melt-
ing pot ideology through staging a zone of contact between Jewish
and Irish characters. One common plot device had second-generation
migrant characters reject endogamy for intermarriage, and in His People
Sammy has an Irish sweetheart, Mamie, who lives in a neighbouring
tenement. Pinpointing this aspect of the drama to further suggest a uni-
versalised transnational Jewish mode of life, another line of copy in the
advertisement reads “Half Jewish—half Irish—All British—that’s HIS
PEOPLE” (ibid.). The “people” of the local audience and of the filmic
diegesis are rendered interchangeable, with both figured a hybrid group
who simultaneously find unity in a national identity. While such a struc-
ture may plausibly have made sense in regard to the American context
(half Jewish—half Irish—all American), it was a stretch to apply it to
Britain. Popularised in America in the early twentieth century—notably
in relation to a Zangwill play—the idea of a societal melting pot became
animated in a nation rapidly expanding and transforming with the ongo-
ing arrival of multiple new nationalities and ethnicities. The image of a
national identity actively in a process of fusing together was contingent
on mass migration. In Britain the dominant discourse shaping expecta-
tions about appropriate behaviour for the much smaller Jewish minority
advocated assimilation into an established and stable dominant cul-
ture—a process typically referred to as Anglicisation (see Kahn-Harris
and Gidley 2010).
76 G. TOFFELL
The suggestion that British and American national contexts were

interchangeable may have been fanciful, but, for British exhibitors, there
was an obvious commercial logic to asserting the immediate relevance
of American films. To be sure, His People did contain ethnically specific
material that many British Jews could identify with. Speaking English
as a first language and alienated from the values and hierarchies of the
“old country” large numbers of second-generation British and American
Jews shared the same qualitative experiences. However, as is clear from
the copy in the advertisement it was not only Jewish generational spec-
ificity His People addressed; the status of the national identity of Jews
was also somehow germane. In the film American Jews were repre-
sented as uninhibited and active participants in the making of a harmo-
nious common culture; one scene has Rose Cominsky’s Irish neighbour
Kate Shannon request a recipe for gefilte fish so she may prepare it “for
Father O’Malley”. For the mass of Ashkenazi heritage British Jews,
who were expected to passively adopt the existing manners and mores
of the dominant society, this subject position was never offered to them
by either Jewish or gentile elites. Being sold in the suggestion that Jews
occupied an equivalent place in the social order of America and Britain,
then, was a vicarious experience of national inclusion. In the Ghetto Film
the capacity of holding agency, of taking a creative role in the shaping
and cultivation of the national family was presented as a possibility to a
British-Jewish audience.
The conceit of using the interactions of Jewish and Irish characters
to play out the dynamics of the melting pot was also central to two
more dramas of the ghetto that screened in Britain: Private Izzy Murphy
(Bacon 1926) and For the Love of Mike (Capra 1927). The former title
sees George Jessell as Isadore Goldberg, a Russian Jew who adopts the
“Murphy” surname when he opens a delicatessen in an Irish neighbour-
hood before going on to join an all-Irish regiment during the Great War.
For the Love of Mike added even more ethnic diversity to the cultural mix
when a German, a Jew, and an Irishman adopt an abandoned infant (the
eponymous “Mike”). Mike, for his part, falls in love with Mary, a local
Italian girl. Exhibited in London in 1928 For the Love of Mike received
a brief mention in the Jewish Chronicle, and unobtrusive advertisements
in the paper listed the film screening at the Stoll Picture Theatre in
Kingsway on the fringe of the West End, and at the Maida Vale Picture
House. Private Izzy Murphy received a similarly modest notice for its
1927 exhibition at the Stoll.
Why exhibitors promoted these titles to Jews with only minimal

enthusiasm when so much advertising space in the Jewish press was
devoted to His People is difficult to determine. As with certain biblical
films, exhibitors may have reckoned some productions simply unlikely
to attract much revenue irrespective of any apparent Jewish content.
Director Capra, who claimed never to have received payment for his work
on For the Love of Mike, regarded the title an artistic failure and it is possi-
ble that cinema owners concurred with his assessment that the film “just
stunk” (Poague 2004: 43). Of course, smaller local cinemas were una-
ble to invest in expansive and costly advertising campaigns, though they
could enhance a programme with ethnically specific live performances.
Two further Ghetto Films are worth devoting some attention to in this
regard: Souls in Exile and The Jazz Singer. In contrast to Humoresque
and His People—titles with Hollywood backing—the Maurice Schwartz
directed Souls in Exile was made in New York by the short-lived inde-
pendent Jaffe Art Films. Despite not having Hollywood backing, the
makers were able to secure the services of the top-tier star Lila Lee to
appear in the lead female role as Ruth, a cantor’s daughter living in New
York. Maurice Schwartz himself plays the lead male as Benjamin Rezanov,
a writer who flees Tsarist Russia for the Lower East Side, where he and
Ruth fall in love, much to the consternation of her father.
Premiering in London in 1928, the film first exhibited at the centrally
located Astoria Theatre in Charring Cross Road where it appeared as
the less attractive “B” film, screening alongside a light-hearted German
romance. Although taking a subordinate place on the bill, Souls in Exile
was promoted as an attraction in its own right in the Jewish press, with
the generic identity of the film clearly described as “an emotional drama
of the ‘Melting Pot’ order” (see JC, March 23, 1927: 59). Together
with a short blurb notices featured that ubiquitous symbol of Jewishness,
the Star of David, to signal the ethnically specific content of the pro-
duction. From London the film travelled around Britain and, judg-
ing by advertisements in the Jewish Chronicle, appeared in Cardiff at
The Queens Cinema (a site that had previously screened A Daughter of
Israel) and The Pavilion Cinema; at the end of May 1928 it was exhib-
ited at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester. Accompanying the film across
the country was the Jewish choir the Radom’s Male Voice Quartet.
Enhancing the “Jewish” atmosphere of screenings their live accompani-
ment comprised a prologue performance and “special folk-lore songs”
(see JC, May 18, 1928: 32). By August the film had returned to London
78 G. TOFFELL
and was screening at the Apollo Picture House in Stoke Newington.

Radom’s Quartet were apparently not contracted to appear with the film
here, though the screening was advertised in the Jewish press and, as we
have seen, prominent custom-made cinema hoardings established the
title’s Jewish appeal.
As in Souls in Exile, misunderstood offspring rejecting the authority
of a rigidly religious father provided the ground for a generational stand-
off in The Jazz Singer. An adaptation of Samson Raphaelson’s stage play
about the early life of Al Jolson, this time the rebellious child is Jakie
Rabinowitz who refuses to follow in the family tradition of taking the
role of synagogue cantor, instead opting to escape from the Lower East
Side and hit the road as Jazz performer Jack Robin. Famously the film is
credited with inaugurating the “talkie” revolution in cinema, and using
Warner’s Vitaphone system the title featured synchronised sound record-
ings for several musical performances and two short dialogue scenes.
In England the film premiered at the Piccadilly Theatre in London’s
West End in September 1928, the site having recently been taken over
by Warner Brothers and equipped for sound. It was distributed in
both silent and sound versions, the latter only becoming widely seen in
Britain in 1929 when more venues had installed the required technol-
ogy. Previewed in advance of its premiere by the Jewish Chronicle, a sig-
nificant proportion of the column was devoted to the innovative use of
sound, though there was also some comment on the Jewishness of the
production, particularly in relation to the ethnicity of several performers
(“Variety and Cinema News”, September 21, 1928: 31–32).
Targeted promotions for a Jewish audience were a part of the market-
ing strategy for the film’s run at the Piccadilly Theatre, and simple but
prominent advertisements were placed in the Jewish press. Predictably
these identified the Vitaphone technology and Al Jolson’s presence
in the lead role, though they also stated “CANTOR ROSENBLATT
HIMSELF, SINGS KOL NIDRE [sic]” (see JC, September 28, 1928:
25). Cantor Rosenblatt was Josef “Yossele” Rosenblatt, a Ukrainian-
born cantor who commanded an unprecedented reputation and celeb-
rity amongst the Jewish diaspora. Performing both secular and religious
music Rosenblatt toured Europe and America to huge acclaim through-
out the 1920s, and in the film the Jolson character happens across a mat-
inee concert featuring the star. Appearing on stage singing the Yiddish
song Yahrtzeit Licht Rosenblatt’s performance has Rabinowitz/Robin
mesmerised, an inner turmoil provoked by memories of his father’s
liturgical recitals embodied in his agitated state. Thematically key to

The Jazz Singer’s narrative is the tension between Rabinowitz’s emo-
tional bind to family, religion and the Lower East Side, and the careerist
Robin’s yearning for an assimilated secular identity. After much angst the
renegade Jew returns to the old neighbourhood to recite the Kol Nidre
at the Yom Kippur service, his father expiring in his deathbed within ear-
shot of the synagogue. The film ends, however, on opening night of a
vaudeville show on Broadway with Robin the headline act. Appearing in
blackface singing “Mammy”, his make-up affords him a radically trans-
formative assimilation: perversely in communion with America’s ‘negro’
spiritual essence he simultaneously aligns with a whiteness that is the pre-
condition for applying the burnt cork of blackface (see Rogin 1992).
As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, The Jazz Singer was able
to draw significant Jewish audiences in sites of primary settlement even
eight years after its premier release, suggesting the title’s appeal was in
excess of its temporary technological novelty, and that its themes con-
nected powerfully. Yet whatever actual Jewish audiences made of the
representation of the conflict of assimilation that formed the core of the
film, the complexity of the drama was not foregrounded in the discourse
or events promoting the title to British Jews. In the advertisements for
the screening of the film at the Piccadilly Theatre the performance by
Rosenblatt was advanced as a key attraction for Jewish audiences. No
mention was made to the challenge to tradition by modernity, rather
the promotion was positioned to appeal to identifiably conservative
Jewish cultural tastes. Similarly when the title was released for general
distribution exhibitors with a significant Jewish clientele utilised estab-
lished extra-filmic attractions to orient the presentation of the film.
Unequipped to offer synchronised sound local cinemas were forced to
find some substitute for the novelty of hearing Jolson perform. When
the film appeared at the Apollo in Stoke Newington “MUSICAL ITEMS
IN THE FILM RENDERED BY THE CELEBRATED RADOMS
MALE CHOIR [sic]” were an advertised attraction (see JC, February 2,
1929: 31). In the same week the title screened at the Maida Vale Picture
House, the venue notifying customers they had booked the bass singer
Enrico Garcia to “chant the KOL NIDRE at each performance [sic]”
(ibid.: 33). For Hoberman, The Jazz Singer may have been “the blunt-
est and most resonant movie Hollywood ever produced on the subject
of American Jews” (1981: 32), but in its localised marketing and pres-
entation British-Jewish spectators were addressed as still inhabiting an
80 G. TOFFELL
ethnically specific sphere of cultural activity, rather than the contested,

fractured social landscape Jack Robin finds himself in.
While the classic Ghetto Films were essentially melodramas, not
all titles in which the milieu of the immigrant neighbourhood and the
figure of the urban Jew were central played out as lachrymose sagas of
economic hardship. Comedies featuring Lower East Side life became a
fairly common feature of American production during the twenties,
and many were distributed in Britain. The first to appear was Solomon
in Society (Windom 1922), which was identified as “of interest to Jews”
when it screened at the Maida Vale Picture House (“Film Notes”, JC,
January 4, 1924: 29). This tells the story of a dressmaker who opens a
successful shop on Fifth Avenue, but must win back the affections of
his wife when she falls for a scheming pianist. A significant number of
ghetto comedies found humour in interethnic interactions—primar-
ily between Jews and Irish. These were by far the most common type
to be distributed in Britain, possibly hoping to attract a large ethnically
Irish audience. In Kosher Kitty Kelly (James W. Horne 1926) it is an Irish
heroine that is the key figure in the plot, and the Jewish Chronicle paid
homage to both ethnicities noting the film was one “in which the wit
and humour of the Irish and Jewish races play so merry a part” (“Notes
and News”, October 28, 1927: 40). Clancy’s Kosher Wedding (Gillstrom
1927), and Frisco Sally Levy (Beaudine 1927) were other examples of the
subgenre directly promoted to Jews, the former billed as “ANOTHER
HILARIOUS IRISH-JEWISH COMEDY [sic]” (see JC, March 9,
1928: 33) when its exhibition at the Avenue Pavilion was advertised in
the Jewish press.
As with the more earnest Ghetto Films intermarriage was a key plot
device for bringing together different ethnicities, though shared or rival
business interests could also provide the motor for humorous interac-
tions. The most celebrated of the interethnic comedies was the Cohens
and Kellys series of films, the first of which—simply titled The Cohens and
the Kellys (Pollard 1926)—sees two warring families move from open
enmity, to intermarriage, and finally a shared fortune and business part-
nership. This was assertively advertised to Jews when on premier release
at the West End’s Rialto cinema in April of 1926. Exhibited a couple of
months after His People was presented in the same venue, the half page
notice included copy tying the title to the earlier film: “YOU SAW ‘HIS
PEOPLE’ SEE THIS ONE & LAUGH FOR A MONTH TO COME”
(see JC, April 30, 1926: 21). Some months later in early 1927 the film
screened at the Regent Picture House in Birmingham. Again following

shortly after His People, this venue too became an ongoing site of Jewish
leisure, advertising its attractions in the Jewish press. The later films
from the series were The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris (Beaudine 1928),
The Cohens and Kellys in Atlantic City (Craft 1929), The Cohens and
the Kellys in Scotland (Craft 1930), The Cohens and the Kellys in Africa
(Moore 1930), The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood (Dillon 1932), and
The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble (Stevens 1933). All were exhibited in
Britain, and all were advertised in the Jewish press, though not with the
same prominence as the initial film.
While Ehrens argues the triumph of assimilation in The Jazz Singer
brought the Ghetto Film to its logical conclusion, it is clear from the
longevity of the Cohens and the Kellys films that producers still saw some
mileage in the subgenre. Although by the end of the 1920s the pro-
duction cycle had diminished significantly, key elements of the Ghetto
Film aesthetic returned to a greater or lesser extent in titles into the
1930s, and several of these were considered worthy of distribution to
Britain. Produced in 1930 by Columbia—then still regarded a lesser stu-
dio—Around the Corner (Glennon) traded on the success of the Cohens
and Kellys films, utilising its lead male stars, George Sidney and Charles
Murray, as, respectively, a Jewish pawnbroker and Irish policeman who
raise an abandoned baby girl together. Sidney’s performance received
a positive write-up in the Jewish Chronicle where his “soft-hearted and
unselfish” (“Variety and Cinema News”, December 19, 1930: 38) char-
acter was compared favourably to other cinematic representations of
Jews. Various cinemas advertised the title in the paper including the
Maida Vale Picture House (see ibid.: 36). Working the same vein was
another low-budget Columbia film, Divine Love (Seiler 1932), about
an ageing Jewish deli owner who adopts a physically disabled Irish girl.
Originally titled No Greater Love, its derivative quality was obliquely
acknowledged in advertising copy for its exhibition at the Dominion
Theatre in Central London: “Irish and Jew team up again in a combina-
tion of Pathos and Comedy [sic]” (see JC, September 2, 1932: 25).
Films that were more serious in tone were Melody of Life (La Cava
1932) and Forgotten (Thorpe 1933). The former production (original
title Symphony of Six Million) was based on a Fannie Hurst short story
and explores the estrangement of a talented Jewish doctor from his fam-
ily and community when he neglects the poor of the Lower East Side to
attend to the wealthy hypochondriacs of Park Avenue. While the film does
82 G. TOFFELL
not explicitly stress the characters’ ethnicity in the manner of His People or
The Jazz Singer, musical motifs, “ghetto” street scenes, and the inclusion
of Jewish prayers unambiguously establish the cultural milieu. Reviewed
in the Jewish Chronicle the paper assured there “no gainsaying the fact
that this is rightly described as a Jewish film” (“Melody of Life at the
Tivoli”, June 10, 1932: 25), identifying the settings, acting and “sincere
if abundant emotion” (ibid.) as evidentiary. Publicity material prepared
for the Jewish press was similarly title would go “STRAIGHT TO THE
HEART OF EVERY JEW [sic]”, and identifying cast member Gregory
Ratoff as “America’s Greatest Hebrew Actor [sic]” and Anna Appel as
“America’s Greatest Hebrew Actress [sic]” (see JC, June 3, 1932: 33).
Exhibited in Britain at the Gaumont-British circuit of cinemas the
film made its London premier at the Tivoli Theatre in the Strand,
before moving on to local screens and the provinces. A number of ven-
ues were situated in Jewish neighbourhoods (e.g. Maida Vale Picture
House, Whitechapel’s Rivoli, Stamford Hill Super Cinema, Dalston
Picture House), and many of these advertised the programme in
the Jewish press. Melody of Life’s general release coincided with Rosh
Hashanah of 1932 and Gaumont-British took the holiday period as an
opportunity to promote the film directly to Jews, placing a full-page
notice in the Jewish Chronicle’s New Year Supplement. In addition
to a large still of key cast members this declared the company wished
“patrons a happy and prosperous new year” (see September 30, 1932:
v), gave details for all screening venues, and described the title “THE
GREATEST PICTURE OF JEWISH FAMILY LIFE [sic]”. A major
release from RKO, this was the last of the ghetto melodramas screened
in Britain to receive serious financial backing. Only Forgotten—a prod-
uct of Hollywood’s “Poverty Row”—came after. Like its prestige pre-
decessor it too explores the corrupting effect of money on the Jewish
family. A “B” film running at only sixty-five minutes, Forgotten was
used to support the moralistic exploitation film Damaged Lives (Ulmer
1933) at the East End’s Troxy Cinema in 1933. Despite the title’s hum-
ble status, however, it was both advertised and reviewed in the Jewish
Chronicle (see November 24, 1936: 39).
American films about Jews were not exclusively preoccupied with
life on the Lower East Side; The Good Provider (Borzage 1922) and
Surrender (Sloman 1927) being two titles that looked beyond this set-
ting during the 1920s. Others were produced, though apparently
not promoted directly to Jews on anything but an ultra-local level if
distributed in Britain. In The Good Provider a small-time pedlar turned

successful businessman is forced to swap his life in a provincial American
town for a New York Hotel suite by a family hungry for metropolitan
living. Surrender, a reprise of the pogrom drama, is set entirely out-
side of America, concerned instead with a Jewish village on the Austro-
Hungarian border during the outbreak of World War I. Both films were
identified as being of particular relevance to Jews in much the same
way as the Ghetto Films with advertisements in the Jewish press (dur-
ing its run at the West End’s Rialto Cinema Surrender was billed “THE
GREATEST HEBREW STORY EVER TOLD [sic]” [see JC, October
21, 1927: 33]). The Jewish World was also supplied with stills from
The Good Provider that they published shortly after its premier run (see
December 28, 1922: 14). Interestingly, this took place in central Leeds
at the Scala Cinema, and it is notable that while the film’s initial release
was outside of London—a somewhat unusual occurrence—it screened in
a city with a large Jewish population.
Yiddish Film
As with the Ghetto genre, the 1930s saw a downturn in production of
non-ghetto based films about Jews. As a general trend Hollywood was
looking to turn away from ethnic specificity as a theme in itself. Away
from the established centres of film production, however, the rapid con-
version to sound opened possibilities for new forms of cinema. Yiddish
language talking pictures were one such form. Judith Goldberg (1983)
has estimated that approximately 130 feature films and 30 short Yiddish
language films were made between the years 1910 and 1941. Several
histories of Yiddish film have been written, with Hoberman (1991) iso-
lating four distinct stages in its development. The first of these encom-
passes the period 1911 to the middle of the World War I with Warsaw
providing a focus for production. The main source of material was the
work of New York based Yiddish writers, perhaps with plays by Jacob
Gordin proving most popular. According to Hoberman numerous films
were produced, virtually none surviving to the present day. The next
period began with the success of the revolution in Russia and a rema-
pped Europe following the end of the war. Poland, Austria and the newly
communist Russia all housed important studios. During this time films
based on Yiddish plays were somewhat less prominent; instead the work
of Jewish novelists Shalom Aleichem, Isaac Babel and Joseph Opatoshu
84 G. TOFFELL
was drawn on. It was during the final years of the 1920s that this phase
of production came to an end.
In distinction to the above, the third stage of Yiddish cinema, coin-
ciding with the early development of talking pictures, took place almost
without exception in the USA. Several original well-produced features
were made—Uncle Moses (Goldin and Scotto 1932) perhaps standing
out as most technically accomplished—though many titles were des-
ignated shund, that is, trash. Typically, shund movies were set-bound
overwrought melodramas with poor sound recording and awkward
camerawork. The cheapest films were merely old silent pictures that
contained some Jewish interest and had been over-dubbed in Yiddish.
Importantly, however, shund—as Nahma Sandrow ([1977] 1986)
notes—“was the first art form to express the distinctively American
Yiddish community” (129). It was also widely distributed, and films
made in this phase of production were regularly exhibited in countries
other than that of their origin. Of all the Yiddish language sound films
shown in Britain a majority were produced in America during the first
half of the 1930s.
The fourth and perhaps most widely known phase of Yiddish film pro-
duction can be dated to begin with the release of Yiddle with His Fiddle
in 1936 (Green). Production centres were in Poland and America, and
a steady flow of notable films came from both sides of the Atlantic until
the outbreak of war in Europe. During this period Yiddish plays and
novels were again adapted for the screen, though much new material was
originated. This was reflected in the diversity of the films that went into
production at this time. Features rooted in a tradition of Yiddish mod-
ernist enterprise, vied with jolly musicals and favourites from the Yiddish
stage. In comparison to primitive earlier efforts at a Yiddish language
cinema, these films contained relatively high production values. The
directors working on these films were also increasingly keen to stamp a
mark of authorship on their creations. Discussing his approach to making
the landmark Green Fields (1937), Edward G. Ulmer stated “I’m going
to have my own style and I’m going to do it like I see it” (quoted in
Goldberg 1983: 84).
As home to a thriving Yiddish theatre it is perhaps slightly surprising
that no Yiddish films were produced in Britain. Nevertheless, from the
early part of the twentieth century a number of Yiddish language titles
were shown in the country. As detailed above, Prager (1990) lists sev-
eral silent productions with Yiddish intertitles being screened in the East
End’s Palaseum Cinema as early as 1914. Further north “Eddie”, an oral

history interviewee from Leeds, had vague recollections of occasional
silent Yiddish films exhibiting at the Alexandra Picture Palace during his
childhood in the 1920s. A small venue seating about four hundred and
situated in the Leylands district of the city, the “Alex”, like the Palaseum,
catered to a significantly Jewish and highly local clientele. There is, how-
ever, something of a question mark that hangs over the “Yiddishness”
of these silent titles. Throughout the silent era a single film might be
tailored to allow it to be exhibited in different ways to different ethnic
groups and nationalities. Thus, it is entirely possible that films with lit-
tle to distinguish them as relating in any way to a Yiddish culture were
screened with Yiddish intertitles. Conversely, there may have been some
films exhibited that contained a Yiddish element to the show that has
now been overlooked.
Exhibited in Britain during autumn of 1927 Henryk Szaro’s The
Chosen People (Lamedvovnik, 1925) is one clearly identifiable silent title
that can be brought to demonstrate this somewhat ambiguous space
with regard to Yiddish content. Shot on location in southern Poland the
film is set in a Jewish shtetl during the 1863 January Uprising that saw a
patriotic insurrection against the Russia Empire. Drawing on the Jewish
mystical notion that at all times thirty-six anonymous saints ensure the
continued existence of mankind, the film sees a humble woodcutter—
one of these hidden righteous individuals—selflessly give his own life to
save fellow villagers from execution by occupying Tsarist troops. The
film’s premier release in Britain came in October 1927 when it appeared
at the Academy Pavilion in Central London, shortly after Kaddish’s run
at the same venue. Here its exhibition was accompanied by “special
Jewish music” (“Notes and News”, JC, September 25, 1927: 54), and
advertisements stated a proportion of the proceeds would be donated
to the “Home for Aged Jews” (see JC, October 7, 1927: 30). From
London it moved directly to Manchester’s Temple Pictorium cinema in
Cheetham Hill, where it received a short run of four days.
In commentaries on Yiddish cinema, The Chosen People is not con-
sidered a controversial inclusion in the canon. Much of the cast was
attached to the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theatre (VYKT), and Henryk Bojm,
a photographer and writer who had traded a Chasidic life for Warsaw’s
Yiddish literary scene, wrote the script. In Britain promotions for the
title explicitly associated it with Yiddish culture, with a notice in the
English language Jewish Chronicle using Yiddish lettering to spell out the
86 G. TOFFELL
film’s Yiddish name—Lamedvovnik (see JC, September 25, 1927: 54).

However, as Silber (2012) explains, produced in the context of Poland’s
emergent interwar nationhood the film attempted to suggest a shared
nationalist history between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles. Somewhat
too goyishe for Yiddish critics in Poland the title was accused of lacking
“Jewish spirit” (44). Moreover, when exhibited in Britain the film was
presented with English rather than its original Yiddish intertitles. As
such, the address of The Chosen People was not straightforwardly that of
a film for Jews by Jews. Insufficiently particularistic for some, and with
an intrinsic mutability to its structure that enabled exhibitors to widen
its appeal, the title occupied the borderlands of two cultural zones. Only
with the coming of sound could a film seeped in Yiddish culture be fully
anchored in its orientation to a Jewish audience.
What were advertised as “the first Jewish talkies in Great Britain”
(see JC, 17 April, 1931: 41) were screened at the Pavilion Theatre in
Whitechapel over a fortnight in April and May of 1931. Following a
business trip to London by the New York based Judea Films represent-
ative Moe Goldman in 1930, distribution deals appear to have been
struck with Morris Susman, a Latvian-born Jew who divided his time
between his East End printing and book-selling business and work as an
impresario for the Yiddish stage. Screened at continuous performances
between the hours of 2.00 p.m. and 11.00 p.m. the programme com-
prised various Judea Film productions directed by veteran Yiddish film-
maker Sidney M. Goldin. In the first week these were: Oy Doctor! (Oy
Doktor!, 1930) a comedy starring the “Yiddish Charlie Chaplin” (ibid.)
Menasha Skulnik; Style and Class (1930) a “two reeler” revue with comic
dancers Marty Baratz and Goldie Eisman; a presentation of folk songs
called The Jewish Melody (Der Yidisher Lid, 1930) featuring celebrity can-
tor Louis “Leibele” Waldman, and a feature length adaptation of a Harry
Kalmanowitz melodrama entitled The Eternal Fools (Di Eybike Naronim,
1930). The following week consisted of a double bill with Natasha
(1930), described by the Jewish Chronicle as a Russian romance (“Variety
and Cinema News”, May 1, 1931: 30), together with His People—the
feature length silent film that first had a British release in 1925.
Six months later a fresh batch of Sid Goldin directed Judea Films
productions were distributed in Britain, first screening at the Charlotte
Street New Scala Theatre in the West End of London. The feature
length My Yiddishe Mama (Mayn Yiddishe Mame, 1930)headed the bill,
with advertisements describing it a “powerful drama of mother love!”
(see JC, 18 September, 1931: 23) in eye-catching notices utilising both

English and Yiddish type. Taking its title from a Sophie Tucker song, the
film was a melodrama of discord between first and second generations
with ungrateful children rejecting a dutiful mother. Screened alongside
the main feature were four two-reelers: The Jewish Gypsy (1930) featur-
ing husband and wife dancers Hymie Jacobson and Miriam Kresyn; the
musical The Land of Freedom (Dos Land fun Frayhayt, 1930); Oy Doctor!,
and a cantorial film called Kol Nidre (1930) with “Leibele” Waldman
and boy singer Samuel “Shmulikel” Kelemer.
The cultural impact on contemporary London Jewish life by this
first phase of Yiddish talking films seems to have been considerable.
Deploying that key mark of self-identification for Ashkenazi Jews—lan-
guage—the first advertising notices carried a prominent header reading
(in Yiddish) “COME SEE! AND HEAR! THE MOTHER TONGUE!”
(see Jewish Times, April 19, 1931: 3). In the Jewish press their appear-
ance received heavy coverage. In relation to the first two weeks of pres-
entations in April 1931 the Jewish Chronicle ran two articles about the
films, while the Jewish Times printed eight pieces—four of which made
the front page. These were highly complementary of the films, gave
details of star appearances and plot lines, and urged readers to attend
screenings noting how they “were nice to hear”, and how one should
“support the Yiddish word” (“Today the New Yiddish Talkies in Pavilion
Theatre”, Jewish Times, April 20, 1931: 1). The films were also given
the imprimatur of institutional support when the Mayor of Stepney—a
councillor Davis—presided over the opening ceremony at the Pavilion
Theatre. According to the Jewish Times his speech noted the impor-
tance of showing films in the Yiddish language (“The Yiddish Talkies in
Pavilion Theatre”, April 21, 1931: 3). The later screenings were similarly
well reviewed, the Jewish Chronicle reporting that My Yiddishe Mama
was “a wonderful success at the Metropolitan Opera House in New
York” (“Variety and Cinema News”, September 18, 1931: 25), while the
Jewish Times asserted that “nobody should miss seeing the films at the
Scala Theatre” (“The Yiddish Talkies in the Scala Theatre”, September
25, 1931: 4). As with the first batch of Yiddish films emphasis was placed
on the mother tongue—mama loshn—this time in advertisements for My
Yiddishe Mama (see Jewish Times, September 25, 1931: 5).
Following their London runs the Judea Films titles were distrib-
uted to exploit the large Jewish populations in the northern cities of
Manchester and Leeds. Arriving first in Cheetham the Temple Pictorium
88 G. TOFFELL
played host to the films in late November and early December of 1931.
They then moved directly to the Leylands district in Leeds where the
Alexandra Picture House became their next site of exhibition for a fort-
night, apparently reopening for the event after a period of closure. While
the Jewish press did not cover the release of the films on the provinces,
their arrival received comment in the local Manchester and Leeds press.
Although supportive of the venture coverage was oriented to an ethni-
cally mixed readership, and the perspective taken was that of an outsider
sympathetically observing another social group’s rituals. Thus, reporting
on the first week’s screenings at the “Alex”, the Yorkshire Evening Post
commented that My Yiddishe Mama “appeared to touch the hearts of
the children of Israel” (LM, “An All-Yiddish Talkie Bill”, December 12,
1931: 6).
Over the next few years Yiddish sound films appeared with a degree
of regularity on the cinema screens of London’s East End and West End,
as well as in provincial centres of Jewish life. Described “the first all-Jew-
ish musical comedy talking picture” (“Variety and Cinema News”, JC,
December 4, 1931: 34) His Wife’s Lover (Zayn Vaybs Lubovnik, 1931)
was another Sidney M. Goldin directed effort. It screened in December
of 1931 at the Windmill Theatre, a small venue in Soho near Piccadilly
Circus with a history of exhibiting foreign titles (it would become noto-
rious a couple of years later when nude tableaux vivants became the site’s
premier attraction). Starring the well-known Yiddish comedian Ludwig
Satz the piece is a somewhat convoluted farce involving Satz disguising
himself as a rich but repellent old man, marrying an impoverished shop
girl, and then testing her fidelity by wooing her in his true identity as
stage star Eddie Wein. The title attracted the attention of both Jewish
and mainstream press, receiving most extensive coverage in the Yiddish
language Jewish Times which regarded the film’s Yiddish dialogue
“pleasant for the ear” (“Ludwig Satz in Yiddish Talkie”, December 8,
1931: 2).
A little over a year after its American presentation Uncle Moses (Goldin
and Scotto 1932) arrived in Britain. Written by Sholom Asch and pub-
lished in the New York Yiddish newspaper Forverts, Uncle Moses first saw
light as a serial, being released in book form a year later in 1918. A pop-
ular, if minor, addition to the canon it then became adapted for the stage
by the actor Maurice Schwartz who presented it, with himself as the titu-
lar lead, during the 1930–1931 New York theatre season before proceed-
ing with a filmed version. Set in the Lower East Side Schwartz appears
as a philandering sweatshop owner who falls for an employee’s teenage

daughter, Masha. Despite being in love with a union organiser Masha
agrees to wed the older man for the financial security he offers, though
the marriage falls apart as Moses’ disillusionment with both his own
myth and the American dream becomes overwhelming. In its aesthetics
Uncle Moses draws on the Ghetto Film, opening with location footage of
a Lower East Side street scene, and employing character archetypes long
associated with the genre. Unlike the Ghetto dramas no deus ex machina
arrives to transform the difficult lives of the characters, and the film ends
with the clamour of the sweatshop—a cacophony that would accompany
many audience members in their working lives.
The film undertook two cycles of distribution in Britain. In February
1933 it was released in London screening at Whitechapel’s Pavilion
Theatre for one week. Here it was accompanied by comedy short The
Bailiffs (Cadman 1932) starring the variety duo Flanagan and Allen.
Shot at west London’s Ealing Studios for a British audience this con-
tained no Jewish content, though the Jewish Bud Flanagan (real name
Chaim Reuben Weintrop) was a local boy, having been born and
brought up in the East End. In 1938 Uncle Moses was given a second
release, first appearing at the art-house Academy Cinema in Central
London for three weeks, and then moving directly to the Rivoli Cinema
in Whitechapel. Later, in April of 1939, it was advertised for a one-off
exhibition in a midnight matinee at the Essoldo Theatre, a large luxu-
rious cinema in central Newcastle. The venue was owned by Solomon
Sheckman, a prominent Jewish exhibitor based in the North East, and
the screening was put on to raise funds in aid of the resettlement of ref-
ugees fleeing Nazism (“Theatres, Cinema and Entertainment”, Evening
Chronicle, April 4, 1939: 8).
Filmed in 1931 Sid Goldin’s The Voice of Israel (Di Shtimer fun Yisroel)
was another early Judea Films production, though it had to wait until 1933
to be exhibited in Britain. An idiosyncratic piece it presented performances
by nine renowned Jewish religious singers (cantors/chazan). Singing
liturgical pieces their performances were intercut with a Yiddish narra-
tion recounting Jewish history, and a diverse assortment of visual material
cribbed from old silent movies. This included dramatic shots of erupting
volcanoes, Jews praying in Eastern Europe and Jerusalem, and documentary
footage of Zionist work in Palestine. Reviewed in rather purple prose—sus-
piciously similar to advertising copy used to promote the title—the Jewish
Chronicle described it a “dramatic talking motion picture presentation
90 G. TOFFELL
of the experiences of a people whose life throbs with endless drama and
tragedy” (“Variety and Cinema News”, February 17, 1933: 36). Its pre-
miere run was at Cinema House at Oxford Circus in London’s West End in
February 1993. It then moved to the Gaiety Theatre in central Manchester,
returned to London for exhibition at the East End’s Rivoli cinema in
August of that year, before moving to Leeds for a short run at the Newtown
Picture Palace (situated on the edge of the Leylands). A few years later
in 1937 it also featured as part of a “cine-concert” in aid of the Palestine
Pioneers fund. Screening at the West End’s Phoenix Theatre it was pre-
sented alongside various stage acts and the recently produced British musical
comedy Underneath the Arches (Davis 1937) starring Bud Flanagan (see JC,
April 9, 1937: 47).
Reflecting a downturn in the US-based industry 1934 proved a quiet
year with no Yiddish films arriving in Britain, a situation that remained
until March of 1935 when The Eternal Wanderer (Roland 1933)
received its premiere release in London. Recounting the persecution of
a Jewish painter in the 1930s Germany, the film obtained much cover-
age in the Jewish press due to the use of documentary footage of the
then recent Nazi book burning in Berlin. It also garnered some notoriety
due to its uncertain certification status. Considered political propaganda
the British Board of Film Censors refused to certificate the title meaning
that screenings required the special permission of municipal authorities
and local Watch Committees before they could go ahead.3 The first run
of the film took place over two weeks at the Forum Cinema in Central
London. Situated in railway arches underneath Charing Cross Railway
Station foreign language films and oddities were not alien to the venue,
making it an eminently suitable place to host the title.
After its presentation at the Forum The Eternal Wanderer moved
to the East End’s Mile End Empire where it screened alongside a live
musical stage show featuring Leo Fuld, the Dutch-Jewish singer who
specialised in Yiddish songs. From London the print travelled north to
Manchester, exhibiting at the Gaiety Theatre in early April. Returning
briefly to the capital the film’s final 1935 screening in London seems
to have taken place at Woburn House in Bloomsbury, then a centre of
British-Jewish communal life. By the mid-summer it had moved to
Scotland, showing first at the La Scala Cinema in central Glasgow, and
3 See Chapter 6 for a full history and discussion of The Eternal Wanderer.
then at the La Scala Cinema in Edinburgh’s old town. Distributed for a

second run in 1938, the title exhibited around the country in a series of
one-off or limited run screenings. In the July the Forum Cinema in the
Chapeltown district of Leeds gave the film a late night performance, with
proceeds going to support refugees from Nazi Germany. A day later in
London the Phoenix Cinema in Charing Cross Road hosted the title for
two screenings. The final prewar screening in Britain seems to have been
in Liverpool. Shown at Central Hall in Renshaw Street in September, the
event was organised by the Zionist Society.
Also screened in 1935 was Bar Mitzvah (Lynn 1935), featuring the
Yiddish theatre star Boris Tomashevski as a widower who returns to
his homeland from America to attend his son’s bar mitzvah. Taking its
British premiere in Leeds—a testament to the city’s vital and auton-
omous Jewish cultural life—the title appeared at the centrally located
Academy Cinema. It then moved south to London screening at the
Mile End Empire. While the narrative is set in an unspecified location
in the “old country”, advertisements for the piece were concerned with
the geography of the film’s production, referring to it as an “American
all-Jewish talkie” (see JC, December 13, 1935: 48). America had long
been a prominent feature of the discourse surrounding Yiddish film in
Britain; noted in advertising material for the first batch of Yiddish sound
films was the appearance of “the greatest American stars” (see JC, 17
April, 1931: 41), while Uncle Moses was reported to have backing by
“major American producers” (“Maurice Schwartz’ Yiddish Talkies at the
Pavilion”, Jewish Times, February 6, 1933: 4). By the early 1930s the US
industry had established a reputation as the world leader in quality pop-
ular cinema, and it made sense for advertisers to associate their product
with this marque.
However, given it was widely accepted in the Jewish press that Yiddish
film was technically lacking in comparison to the Hollywood main-
stream—Hoberman (1991) describes Bar Mitzvah’s editing as having
the appearance of being “assembled with a trowel” (206)—the repeat-
edly asserted American provenance of the films should, perhaps, not sim-
ply be seen as a claim of film-making competence. By the interwar years
America was always already Americanism: a symbolic archive of cultural
material. As Hansen (1995) has noted, this “encompassed everything
from Fordist-Taylorist principles of production…through new forms of
social organisation…to the cultural symbols of the new era – skyscrapers,
jazz, boxing, revues, radio and cinema” (367). America was a composite
92 G. TOFFELL
image of a new democratic culture; sweeping away what came before

aesthetic forms and social practices overlapped as one apparently irre-
sistible force of history. A voguish topic during this time, an explosion
of discourse on Americanism attempted to gauge what this new society
heralded. Amongst the most celebrated of these analyses—at least on
the political left—is Antonio Gramsci’s essay Americanism and Fordism
([1971] 1991), in which he argues an Americanisation of European pro-
cesses of production would require the abolition of the parasitic class
of rural landowners; what he called “pensioners of economic history”
(281). Although it would be fanciful to suggest that audiences read
American Yiddish film in Gramscian terms, this materialist interpretation
of historical events does offer some insight into the liberatory sheen of
the American way of doing things.
The USA was not only present in the promotions and reviews of
Yiddish cinema that appeared in the British-Jewish press, an “atmos-
phere” of America suffused the content of the films; it is in the way char-
acters move, the way they speak. In Uncle Moses and His Wife’s Lover
characters unselfconsciously pepper their Yiddish with American-English
phrases; greetings start with “Hi”, arguments get defused with a placa-
tory “okay, okay”. In the latter film the protagonist “Eddie” completes
a stuttering acquaintance’s attempt to articulate some word beginning
with the letter “K” (“Ka-Ka-Ka-”) with the suggestion “Coca-Cola?”
Just as the Hollywood produced Ghetto Film went into decline, then,
British-Jewish cinema-goers were presented with a continuation of
the vision of a successful Jewish entry into the West. Taking life both
in the real-world collaborative efforts of film production and in the fic-
tional environments of on-screen narratives, a syncretic Jewish-American
culture could figure as a counterpoint to European modes of life that
remained shackled to entrenched hierarchies.
The Yiddish film with the most profound impact on Jewish audiences
was, however, a Polish/American co-production shot entirely on loca-
tion in Europe. A musical comedy, Joseph Green’s Yiddle with His Fiddle
charts the adventures of a young woman and her father in the Polish
countryside. Forced by poverty to leave their shtetl “Yiddle” disguises
herself as a boy to avoid unwanted attention, and the pair try their luck
as travelling musicians. The title received its premiere in London’s West
End at the Academy Cinema on July 21, 1937, where it was retained
for an impressive nine weeks—a record for the venue. In late September
it then began a lengthy local and provincial release—primarily in sites
of significant Jewish settlement—moving first across town to the Rivoli

in Whitechapel, and Smart’s Cinema in Bethnal Green Road (a small
East End venue). It then moved to Leeds for one week at the Forum
Cinema before returning to the capital for exhibition at the Stamford
Hill Cinema, only to travel north again for its Manchester premiere at
the sizeable Riviera Cinema on Cheetham Hill Road. Returning to
London it played at the East End’s Mayfair Cinema in Brick Lane and
the Queens Cinema in Cricklewood during November, then the Popular
Cinema in the Commercial Road (the fourth East End venue to exhibit
it) and Stoke Newington’s Ambassadors Cinema the following month.
Its final appearance in 1937 was at the Academy Cinema in the seaside
town of Brighton in late December. In 1938 three sites can be identi-
fied as hosting the title: the Forum in Leeds put on second run in late
January; the left Zionist organisation Paole Zion organised a fundraising
screening at the Central Hall in Liverpool on April 20; and the Envoy
Cinema in Kilburn area of North London ran the film for a few days in
the November.
With considerable production values, good songs and a memorable
turn by its star, Molly Picon, Yiddle with His Fiddle received ecstatic
reviews in the Jewish press. It also successfully staged a cultural crossover
with significant numbers of non-Jews reported to have attended screen-
ings. If publicity material is to be believed over ninety thousand tickets
were sold when it was exhibited at the Academy, ten thousand of which
went to gentile cinema-goers (see JC, September 3, 1937: 93). The
final Yiddish film to be distributed in Britain on a first run was Mamela
(1938), another collaboration between director Joseph Green and per-
former Molly Picon. Again filmed in Poland the title had Picon a dutiful
daughter neglecting her own emotional needs to attend to the concerns
of her family. First exhibited at the Academy in February 1940 it moved
on to the Rivoli in May of that year. Although receiving its British exhi-
bition during the “phony war” months of early World War II Jewish
cultural life had already been irrevocably altered, the Jewish Chronicle
noting Mamela was “the last film to be made in Poland before the inva-
sion” (“Cinema”, February 16, 1940: 31). The article also reported that
“Molly Picon is now in New York, but many members of the cast have
not been heard of since the war” (ibid.). The Yiddish markets would, of
course, never recover.
94 G. TOFFELL
Zionist Film
Yiddish language film was not the only cinematic form that was put
into production primarily for consumption by Jewish audiences. The
publication of Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State in 1896 and the con-
vening of the First Zionist Congress a year later saw the genesis of polit-
ical Zionism as almost coterminous with the birth of cinema, and as
the movement developed the moving image was successfully exploited
as a resource to propagandise the ideology amongst the masses of the
diaspora. The trope of vision, of gazing on the homeland, was a recur-
rent feature of the discourse of early Jewish nationalism. Numerous
public events espousing the Zionist cause drafted in some recent vis-
itor to Ottoman or Mandatory Palestine to recall what they had wit-
nessed in lectures with titles such as “What I saw in Palestine” (“Jewish
National Activities”, JC, April 2, 1926: 21) and “Glimpses of Palestine”
(“Glimpses of Palestine”, JC, January 28, 1927: 28). However, despite
the ambitions of individuals such as the Polish Zionist Adolf Neufeld,
during the first two decades of the twentieth century (see Tryster 1999)
Zionist film-making was only minimally pursued and the visuality of the
culture was expressed through already established technologies of the
gaze.
The most widely employed medium was photography, and the still
camera played an important role in constructing an image of Eretz Israel
as raw material to be moulded, as well as depicting the dramatic advances
being made by the pioneering chalutzim in working the soil and install-
ing the technology of twentieth-century civilisation (see Oren 1995).
Such imagery was included in the British-Jewish press with some regu-
larity. In February 1923, the Jewish Chronicle included a special “Land
of Israel” supplement with shots of industrial, construction and agricul-
tural work dominating. Although overtly propagandistic in character,
the consumption of visual material was understood as a diverting leisure
activity, and Dan Kyram (1995) has demonstrated that thousands of ste-
reoscope images of Palestine were produced in the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries. One such set was advertised directly to Jews under
the title “Eretz-Israel Visualised” (see Fig. 3.1). Containing the motto
“And ye shall see the Land” copy explained scenes included both historic
sites and modern Jewish Palestine, and that the domestic consumption of
this imagery might substitute a real-world visit (see JC, October 8, 1920:
11).
Fig. 3.1 Eretz Israel Visualised (Advertisement in Jewish Chronicle, October 8,

1920. Image courtesy of Jewish Chronicle)
96 G. TOFFELL
Amongst the most ideologically influential use of photographs of

Palestine was in magic lantern shows. Typically these accompanied and
illustrated public lectures given on some aspect Jewish nationalism, a
common topic being recent developments in colonisation work. For the
most part these shows were arranged by Zionist organisations, such as an
event staged by the East London Young Zionist League at the Working
Lad’s Institute in Whitechapel Road during January of 1920. Here
the Secretary of the Palestine Restoration Fund, Mr S Lipton, gave an
address on a series of images entitled “Palestine of Today” (“Palestine
Slides”, Jewish Chronicle, January 9, 1920: 28). These sorts of presenta-
tions were an extremely common feature on the Jewish communal cal-
endar, occurring in Britain at any location that could support a Jewish
congregation well into the mid-1930s. With magic lantern projectors
an accessible and transportable technology all manner of premises could
accommodate events. Cinemas were amongst such spaces, and set up for
audience spectatorship and embedded in local communal life must have
seemed especially well positioned for this use. In March 1922 the Bijou
Picture Theatre in Cheetham Hill, played host to the Jewish Working
Men’s Club when a lantern lecture entitled “A Tour Through Palestine”
was given (see “Literary Societies”, JC, March 31, 1922: iii).
Emergent from this model the exhibition of Zionist film mirrored
many of the key aspects of the magic lantern lecture. Events were
largely staged by Zionist organisations such as the Jewish National
Fund (JNF) or Keren Hayesod (Jewish Foundation Fund, JFF), and
these bodies would often have funds invested in producing the film
on display. Lectures were a regular accompaniment to the film, some-
times taking the form of a supplementary narration adding contextual
information and detail, or an invited speaker would discuss the philos-
ophy of Jewish nationalism or encourage attendees to intensify their
activism. Fundraising was also a feature of the occasion, with organisa-
tions such as the JNF soliciting monies for the purchase of land. As in
the imagery presented in lantern lectures the content of films typically
focused on picturesque sites of historical importance to Jews such as the
“Western Wall”, or looked to the new utopia being created by the pio-
neers. In regard to this latter theme the transformation of the land par-
alleled the transformation of the Jew. As physical labour would bring the
parched soil to life, so it would remake weakened bodies, denuded by
the urban slum, into ruggedly muscular material. Culture, the body, the
environment—a complete national rebirth was depicted as taking place

in Eretz Israel.
The first film containing imagery of Mandatory Palestine to be pro-
moted to Jews in interwar Britain seems to have been a commercial
travelogue rather than propaganda. In 1923 With Allenby in Palestine
(1919), produced by the American writer and correspondent Lowell
Thomas during the Great War, went on exhibition in central London at
the Philharmonic Hall and was advertised in the Jewish press. As well as
covering the British advance the title featured footage of Jewish life in
Jerusalem. Also recording Palestine’s transition from an Ottoman terri-
tory to a British Mandate was the pioneering Jewish filmmaker Ya’acov
Ben-Dov. A Ukrainian who had arrived in Palestine in 1907 as part of
the Second Aliyah he would become a dominant figure in Zionist film
production during the silent era. Ben-Dov—together with collaborator
Joseph Gal-Ezer—was largely responsible for establishing the genre’s
thematic and visual format imitated by the overwhelming majority of
propaganda titles.
In December 1924 it was Ben-Dov’s Land of Promise (Banim,
Bonim, 1924) that confirmed the significance of the moving image as
tool for advancing the Jewish nationalist cause in Britain. While at least
one other title was in circulation and subject to some discussion in the
Jewish press at this time (referred to as The New Palestine), Land of
Promise was the first to receive a high profile premiere in the West End.
Appearing at the Marble Arch Pavilion for a Sunday afternoon screen-
ing what was described as a “large and enthusiastic audience” (“Land
of Israel Filmed”, JC, December 26, 1924: 16) was in attendance at
the event. Picked out for mention in a review of the film was imagery
of the arrival in Palestine of Jewish immigrants, agricultural work, and
a display of gymnastic activity (see ibid.). At the end of the film it is
reported the audience sang the Hatikvah as well as the British National
Anthem. Land of Promise was produced by the Keren Hayesod, and
while Zionism was yet to become a majoritarian discourse in British-
Jewish life the logistical capabilities of the body ensured the film had
a lengthy and extensive distribution, screening both at venues with an
established Jewish clientele—such as the Kenninghall Cinema in Clapton
and the Maida Vale Picture House—and further afield in Brighton,
Middlesbrough and Sunderland.
The next major film to arrive in Britain was another Ben-Dov and
Gal-Ezer production, and was given the English title Young Palestine:
98 G. TOFFELL
Eretz Israel in 1926 (Hanoar be’Erez Israel, 1926). Again organised by

the Keren Hayesod this exhibited at least as widely as the earlier title,
and at several performances was accompanied by an address by Josiah
Wedgwood, the Labour Party’s Member of Parliament for Newcastle-
under-Lyme who had recently returned from a visit to Palestine. A con-
viction politician known for his support of the Suffragettes and Indian
self-government, Wedgwood had met Jewish soldiers in the Zion Mule
Corps while serving in World War I, and the experience engendered
a sympathy for the Zionist cause that would remain for the rest of his
life. At a screening in March 1927 at the Alexandra Theatre in Stoke
Newington, he is recorded telling the crowd that despite Jews compris-
ing a minority population in Palestine their industry had essentially ren-
dered the country Jewish, and that the city of Tel Aviv was functioning
as a “Jewish republic” (“Zionism in North London”, JC, March 18,
1927: 30).
Wedgwood was also said to have argued this “building up of Palestine
was the joint job of Jews and Englishmen”, and that the endeavour
would mark the “beginning of an alliance between the two races” (ibid.).
At an earlier screening in the January of that year he was reported to
have expressed embarrassment that Britain had done so little to establish
Jewish colonies within the Empire (see “The Jew at Home”, JC, January
28, 1927: 28). As in other contexts of Jewish film-going in Britain dur-
ing the period the national status of British Jews was ambiguously posi-
tioned at these screenings. Although it will be recalled that the premiere
of Land of Promise saw both the Hatikvah (in which the hope of declar-
ing a sovereign nation in Eretz Israel is expressed) and “God Save the
King” performed—suggesting that for many Zionists British patriotism
and participation in the Jewish national project were not in contradic-
tion—Wedgwood’s thinking reinscribed the raciological distinctness of
the Jewish and English peoples, and conceived the shared destiny of the
two groups as taking place beyond the British mainland.
The two main news publications of British Jewry—The Jewish
Chronicle and Jewish Times—both took a pro-Zionist editorial stance,
with the former paper collecting Jewish Nationalist-related news in a
weekly subsection. Around the time the first batch of interwar Zionist
films were being released the exhibition of occasional fictional films
were also discussed in these pages. The first of these was Otto Kreisler’s
Theodor Herzl, Standard Bearer of the Jewish People (Theodor Herzl, der
Bannerträger des Jüdischen Volkes, 1921), an Austrian production that
sees a young Herzl transform politically as he digests the world history of

Jewish persecution. Exhibited at Whitechapel’s Rivoli Cinema in March
1922, it was described by the Jewish Chronicle as a film “made by Jews
for Jews” (“Zionist Film”, March 10, 1922: 32) and was accompanied,
according to advertisements, with “Special Jewish Music composed for
the occasion [sic]” (see JC, March 3, 1922: 30). The screening was
organised by the Keren Hayesod, and showing as a one-off presentation
on a Sunday afternoon was treated as an event on the political calendar.
Later, in 1925, production information about the French title Jacob’s
Well (detailed above) was also provided under the banner of Zionist news
in the Jewish Chronicle. With significant scenes set and shot on location
in Palestine it was stated these sequences were “expected to arouse much
interest in Palestinian activities” (“A Palestinian Film”, October 23,
1925: 27). Interestingly, according to Tryster (1999), only in Britain
were the film’s distributors willing to include any significant amount of
imagery depicting Jewish nation building in the print.
At least eighteen propaganda films were recorded in the Jewish press
as exhibiting around Britain during the interwar years. Land of Promise
and Young Palestine were the most heavily promoted of the early films,
though another Ben-Dov production—Springtime in Palestine (Aviv
B’Eretz Yisrael, 1928)—did get distributed, and a title associated with
the Jewish Agency for Palestine called New Life in Palestine was widely
shown. An account of the 1930 premiere of this latter film was given in
the Jewish Chronicle. Appearing at the Regal Cinema in central London
a succession of notable scenes were listed, and the report offered the
detail that “whenever there was anything shown with the purpose of
rousing the audience to a pitch of enthusiasm, the organ played Maoz
Tsur” (“New Life in Palestine”, February 21, 1930: 23). Although the
reviewer acknowledged the film might be informative for those new to
the cause, the production was considered technically lacking and hack-
neyed in its content.
By the beginning of the 1930s it was not uncommon for the Jewish
press to air the idea that the medium of film was not living up to its
potential as an instrument to forward the Zionist agenda. The integra-
tion of sound technology seems to have gone some way in revitalising
the genre, and a series of productions in the mid-thirties received signifi-
cant financial backing in order to raise their appeal. Four of the most cel-
ebrated films from this period can be confirmed as exhibiting in Britain.
Sabra [Tzabar] (Alexander Ford 1933), a narrative feature, includes
100 G. TOFFELL
performers from the Habima theatre company and was first screened in
London in 1935 by the Film Society; This is the Land (Zot Hi Ha’aretz,
Baruch Agadati 1935) was an independent documentary later purchased
by the JNF that integrates an assortment of visual material—including
early footage taken by Ben-Dov—to recount a half century of Jewish set-
tlement in Palestine; Helmar Lerski’s Soviet influenced Avodah (1935)
focuses on pioneers toiling in the search for water; and The Land of
Promise (L’Chayim Hadashim, Leman 1935) represents the culmination
of the Keren Heyesod’s production efforts in a polished, if conventional,
format. With the JNF and Keren Heyesod involved, respectively, with
the promotion of This is the Land and The Land of Promise, it was these
two films that were most effectively disseminated, though the latter was
more positively reviewed.
As Tryster (1995) notes, the preproduction for The Land of Promise
was a rather tortuous process marked by communal infighting and
numerous reworked treatments, and the finished film ran way above ini-
tial budget projections. It was, however, a competent piece of film-mak-
ing that, with its sound narration, could function as a self-contained
product of political communication. Familiar in content with earlier pro-
ductions, an opposition is set up between the primitive modes of pro-
duction and cultural antiquity of traditional Arab life, and the civilising
modernity of a new Jewish settler society. Thus picturesque imagery
of bazaars, camels and ancient agricultural methods is contrasted with
scenes of pioneer women taking on industrial labour, institutions of
higher education, and the application of up-to-date machinery to gather
the harvest. The other key theme of the piece is the future of the nation
as expressed in its human capital. Young children are seen caring for live-
stock and nourishing themselves on the fruits of their labours—fresh
milk and eggs in the canteen of a Kibbutz; youth, marching in file with
agricultural tools rested on shoulders like troops with rifles trudge home
at the end of a working day. The address of The Land of Promise was
straightforward: an inventory of the miraculous development already
accomplished, as well as an indication of the happy future to come in
Eretz Israel.
As with a number of earlier Zionist films the British premiere of The
Land of Promise was held in London at the Regal Cinema in Marble
Arch. Taking place in December 1936 the event was prominently
advertised in the Jewish press as (erroneously) “the first Palestinian
Sound Film” [sic] (see JC, November 27, 1936: 22), and noted the
Marchioness of Reading4 would deliver an introductory speech. A

report on the screening commented on the gratifyingly large audience
in attendance, and asserted the film promoted the “Jewish case” (“The
Land of Promise”, JC, December 11, 1936: 30) more effectively than
a public lecture. Exhibited widely throughout the first half of 1937 the
title appeared at numerous one-off presentations, and also—unusually
for this type of film—as a booking over multiple days at some sites. At
the Riviera Cinema in Cheetham Hill, for instance, the film was exhib-
ited for three consecutive days as part of the daily programme in the May
of that year. After ten months of screenings the film was declared a suc-
cess. Addressing a Manchester conference for Zionist workers S. Temkin,
of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain, expressed enthusiasm for the
title regarding it a significant asset for transforming the “sympathetic
indifference” (“The Zionist Case”, Manchester Guardian, October 18,
1937: 11) of unpoliticised Jews into active support.
Devised to be distributed across the diaspora, prints of The Land
of Promise were prepared with the narration supplied in several dif-
ferent languages. In Britain two separate cuts of the film were also
released. According to Tryster (1995) Mark Oster, then chairman of
the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, had expressed concern about
the title to the General Secretary of the Keren Hayesod in London,
Lavy Bakstanksy, as early as May 1935, stating that the original cut
was too stridently propagandistic, and that the contrast drawn between
Jewish and Arab work might prove provocative in this particular terri-
tory. After approximately two years of distribution on the Zionist cir-
cuit it was felt the film should be given a more conventional release, and
Oscar Deutsch—founder of the Odeon Cinema chain—arranged for an
abridged cut to be made. This included a new narration more sensitised
to the context of the British administration of Palestine, with any usage
of the term “colonies” replaced with the more neutral “settlements”.
The amended version of the film first went on show at the London
Pavilion in November 1938, later moving to a limited number of subur-
ban screens and the provinces. Reviewed afresh in the film pages of the
Jewish Chronicle the verdict was highly positive, with the new cut said to
move at a brisker pace and tell a “more coherent story” (“Premieres”,
4 Stella Isaacs, married to Rufus Daniel Isaacs, 1st Marquess of Reading, until his death in
1935. One time Viceroy of India, Rufus Isaacs was the first Jew to be Lord Chief Justice of
England, and the first British Jew to be raised to a Marchionesse.
102 G. TOFFELL
November 11, 1938: 49). It was also noted that the film was appear-
ing at a “very appropriate moment”, “had an excellent reception on the
night”, and held the attention of an audience that included many who
“obviously knew nothing of Jewish achievements” in Palestine (ibid.).
The context of these comments was, of course, primarily related to the
deteriorating situation for Jews in Nazi Germany and the urgent need to
secure support from a broad coalition for a scheme that could see them
flee to a place of asylum. When the title exhibited at the Tatler News
Theatre in central Manchester daily collections were made for settling
German-Jewish refugees on land purchased in Palestine by the Jewish
National Fund.
In addition to the professionally produced titles sponsored by
major Zionist organisations, footage of Mandatory Palestine filmed by
non-professionals was also distributed for consumption by Jewish audi-
ences. As international travel became more accessible, at least for sections
of the middle class, Jews increasingly undertook tours of Palestine dur-
ing the 1930s. Affordable 16 mm “cine” equipment and film stock for
amateur hobbyists was entering the consumer market in greater quanti-
ties around this time, and ideologically minded individuals began to put
together their own propaganda assembled from material shot when trav-
elling. Amongst the most dedicated of amateur propagandists was Fred
Nettler, a Glasgow-based Zionist and communal representative. Nettler’s
filming dates back to at least 1934, and accompanied by a commentary
delivered by S. Temkin of the Zionist Federation, his work was exhibited
at several Zionist meetings in north London during May of that year.
In 1937, he shot and distributed The Holy Land and the Jewish Pioneer,
an early example of colour footage of Palestine. Part travelogue and part
document of development work, the piece segues from quaint scenes of
Jerusalem’s old city and camel trains to irrigation canal construction and
agricultural yields.
With the expansion of non-professional film-making smaller, portable
projectors enabled Zionist films to screen in non-traditional exhibition
spaces. The domestic setting, if sufficiently capacious, could be used for
communal functions, and numerous “at home” meetings took place in
the sizeable houses of middle-class Zionist leaders. In March of 1939,
for instance, Nettler’s colour film was shown at the Kensington home of
Harry Sacher, a prominent lawyer and businessman, and a close friend of
Chaim Weizman. Although more frequent during the 1930s, such meet-
ings were taking place as early as the 1920s; indeed, in January 1928 a
Mr and Mrs Levine screened a film entitled Public Life in Palestine at

their Hampstead residence.
Events held in the bourgeois parlours of prestigious London neigh-
bourhoods were doubtless somewhat exclusive affairs, though the same
technology could transform more egalitarian spaces into exhibition
sites. Synagogue halls became popular and convenient locations to con-
vene screenings, with the communal hall attached to Stoke Newington
Synagogue used to present a variety of Jewish Nationalist films, includ-
ing The Land of Promise in March 1937. As occasions oriented to con-
gregation members, activities organised by the host institution might
accompany films. When the JNF production Eretz Yisrael Building Up
the Jewish National Home (Best 1934) appeared at Walthamstow and
Leyton Synagogue in northeast London, children from the synagogue’s
Hebrew class sang a selection of Hebrew language songs. Although the
major sites of Jewish settlement in London, Leeds and Manchester were
naturally home to the largest congregations such events took place across
Britain, and synagogue halls in Bristol, Dundee and Southend-on-Sea are
all recorded as being used for screenings.
Jewish Persecution and Jewish Personalities

In sharp contrast to the 1920s not one of the major national cinema
industries of the following decade displayed much interest in producing
films about Jews. The exception to this trend was the release of a limited
series of titles dealing with antisemitism, the most prominent of which
were released during Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in the first half of the
1930s. Since the discourse surrounding several of these films is subject to
a sustained examination in Chapter 4 a brief consideration of their appear-
ance on British cinema screens will suffice here. E. A. Dupont’s Two
Worlds (1930), regarded by St. Pierre (2010) a companion piece to his
earlier drama of Jewish life, The Ancient Law, narrates the impossible love
of a young Jewess for an Austrian military officer on the Eastern Front of
World War I following an attempted pogrom. Essentially a British pro-
duction, a version was also made in the German language version with
a German cast and titled Zwei Welten. Not dissimilar in theme was Fox’s
The Yellow Ticket (Raoul Walsh 1931), released in Britain in 1932 under
the title The Yellow Passport. An adaptation of Michael Morton’s 1914
play—previously remade as a silent film in the USA in 1916—this story of
government injustices against Jews in prerevolutionary Russia is regarded
104 G. TOFFELL
by Erens (198) as an anachronistic final example of the pogrom film. In

spite of being thematically situated in an earlier phase of production both
titles were identified as being of interest to Jewish audiences in the Jewish
press. Two Worlds attracted the greater comment during its 1930 release,
though the latter film was more prominently advertised in the Jewish
Chronicle.
More fully located in the historical moment were Loyalties (Dean
1933), The House of Rothschild (Werker 1934) and Jews Süss (Mendes
1934). Based on John Galsworthy’s 1922 stage production, Loyalties
explores antisemitic prejudice amongst the English upper class with
a plot that sees the reputation of a wealthy Jew sullied following the
theft from him of one thousand pounds at a weekend party. Both The
House of Rothschild and Jews Süss take a historical setting. The former
chronicles the emergence and rise of the Rothschild banking dynasty,
and the role of Nathan Rothschild in financing the British war effort
against Napoleonic tyranny; the latter, a tragedy, explores the rapid
ascension, and subsequent imprisonment and execution of Joseph “Jew
Süss” Oppenheimer in the eighteenth-century Wurtemberg Court of
Karl Alexander. Although set many years prior to the rise of National
Socialism, the depiction of Jewish persecution in Germany in The House
of Rothschild and Jews Süss was widely understood to resonate with cur-
rent events. Subject to extensive discussion across the Jewish press, it was
suggested the mass appeal of these three mainstream films might assist
with the battle against racial discrimination at a pivotal time. In addi-
tion to drawing a gentile gaze, however, the titles had a presence in a
defined Jewish cultural sphere. They were exhibited extensively in areas
of Jewish settlement, and all assertively advertised to Jewish audiences
upon release: promotions for Loyalties, for instance, contained the slogan
“The Picture All Jews Should See” (see Fig. 3.2).
Shot on location in Prague, Julien Duvivier’s French language The
Golem (Le Golem, 1936) was conceived as a sequel to Wengener’s 1920
Der Golem. Emperor Rudolph II, declining physically and mentally, has
become obsessed with recovering the Golem that the now deceased
Rabbi Loew had hidden in the attic of Prague’s New-Old Synagogue.
Again the Jews of Prague suffer indignity and oppression, with many
rounded up and awaiting execution until Rachel, the wife of commu-
nal leader Rabbi Jacob, reactivates the clay monster so he can wreck
havoc on the Jews’ enemies. The film received two releases in Britain.
The first came in April 1937 when it exhibited exclusively at the Forum
Fig. 3.2 Advertisement for Loyalities (Jewish Chronicle, November 3, 1933.

Image courtesy of Jewish Chronicle)
Cinema in Central London. This was advertised prominently in the

Jewish Chronicle with weekly notices emphasising the film’s Jewish con-
tent. The title of the film was provided in both English and Yiddish, and
the piece described “the greatest Yiddish story ever produced for the
screen” (see May 14, 1937: 45). Well reviewed in the Jewish press, the
film was kept on at the Forum for some two months due to, according to
advertisements, popular demand. A year later in April 1938 a new version
of the film dubbed into English received a wider distribution. This time
the premiere took place at the People’s Palace in the East End’s Mile End
Road. A repeated slogan in the film is “revolt is the right of the slave”,
and as the Yorkshire Post commented at the time, such content ensured
the piece had “special appeal for a strongly Jewish neighbourhood” (Our
Film Correspondent, “The Cinema World”, 12 April, 1938: 6).
Screening in Britain on the cusp of war, the Russian propaganda
title Professor Mamlock (Rappaport and Minkin 1938) mounted a direct
attack on Nazi antisemitism. Loosely based on Friedrich Wolf’s stage
production, the narrative concerns the persecution by Nazi authorities
of an apolitical Jewish surgeon and his communist son, Rolf. As with the
earlier Yiddish title The Eternal Wanderer, the censor refused to grant
certification for Professor Mamlock believing to do so risked inflam-
ing tensions between Britain and Germany, and a special licence to
screen it had to be obtained from local municipalities. With permission
106 G. TOFFELL
granted by the London County Council the film had its public premiere
at the art-house Academy Cinema in Central London in August 1939.
Unsurprisingly the title received support from the Jewish press, with
the Jewish Chronicle covering its ordeals with the BBFC and affording
it a substantial review in which political quietism was condemned (see
“Premieres”, September 1, 1939: 29).
Finally, though not featuring Jewish characters or examining antisem-
itism, several films dealing with the minatory character of German fas-
cism were addressed to Jewish audiences as being of topical relevance.
The most prominent of these was Warner Brother’s Confessions of a Nazi
Spy (Anatole Litvak 1939), about an FBI investigation into Nazi espi-
onage in prewar New York. Upon its release in June 1939 the Jewish
Chronicle’s response was especially animated, urging every “Jewish man,
woman and child” to see the film, though warning that “however tempt-
ing it is to boo or hiss a Nazi…there is the rest of the audience to con-
sider” (“Confessions of a Nazi Spy”, June 16, 1939: 51). News films and
documentaries also attracted much attention. These included episodes of
the March of Time series of short films, and the feature length Whither
Germany (1933). Made by Mansfield Markham—the scion of a distin-
guished industrial family who entered the film business—this offered a
pictorial history of Germany from the build-up to World War I through
to Hitler’s successful assumption of power. Imagery of Nazi storm troops
parading was included, and the piece implied the possibility of a return
to aggressive militarism. Forcefully advertised to Jews a notice in the
Jewish Times read “It is every Jew’s duty to see the most powerful peace
film that has ever been made” (see January 26, 1934: 5). Audiences were
reported to have been enthused by such a public warning about the per-
ils of Hitlerism, with the Yorkshire Post remarking that Jewish patrons
expressed their satisfaction “even to the unusual point of applause”
(“Leeds Cinemas”, 21 April 1934: 9) when the film was screened in
Leeds.
…
Across a range of generic forms Jewish consumers were offered, and
took up, narratives that claimed to represent the lives of Jews. These
encompassed films that were produced for the generalised audiences
of new mass consumer markets, and niche titles narrowly oriented to
ethnically marked dispositions and interests, such as Yiddish language
film. Exhibitors operating cinemas in, or near to, areas of significant
Jewish settlement were foremost in booking and promoting such fare,
organising programmes that might generate a healthy return in ticket

sales. Produced across the discursive space of film reviews, news articles,
promotions and advertisements, and the material space of exhibition
site was something that might be termed a Jewish cinema culture. At its
most distilled this constituted a social scene; an assemblage of intertex-
tual and filmic address, extra-filmic entertainments oriented to Jews, and
the context of a Jewish audience culture and a familiar topography.
Narrative is not, however, the only form through which ethnic spec-
ificity can be inflected in a filmic text. Yet to be considered is the place
of star performers in the meshing of British-Jewish life with the institu-
tion of cinema. Several significant personalities of the cinema operating
during the interwar years were practicing Jews, or possessed some Jewish
ancestry. That both the Jewish press and film promoters felt it meaning-
ful to inform Jewish audiences of the presence of such individuals is the
subject of the next chapter. As we shall see, figures such as Eddie Cantor
and Molly Picon can be understood as the pivot point at which an auton-
omous sphere of Jewish leisure was balanced against a more fully public
culture. Understanding British-Jewish perceptions of the boundaries of
these two zones is key to recognising the horizons of the social imagi-
nary of both Jewish and non-Jewish citizens of Britain at this time.
Bibliography
Agadati, Baruch, dir. 1935. This Is the Land. Palestine: AGA Films. 35MM.
Bacon, Lloyd, dir. 1926. Private Izzy Murphy. USA: Warner Bros. 35MM.
Beaudine, William, dir. 1927. Frisco Sally Levy. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
(MGM). 35MM.
Beaudine, William, dir. 1928. The Cohens and the Kellys in Paris. USA: Universal
Pictures. 35MM.
Ben-Dov, Ya’acov, and Gal Ezer, dirs. 1924. Land of Promise. Palestine: Keren
Hayesod.
Ben-Dov, Ya’acov, and Gal Ezer, dirs. 1926. Young Palestine: Eretz Israel in
1926. Palestine: Keren Hayesod.
Ben-Dov, Ya’acov, and Gal Ezer, dirs. 1928. Springtime in Palestine. Palestine.
Best, Joseph, dir. 1934. Eretz Yisrael Building Up the Jewish National Home.
Jewish National Fund (JNF).
Borzage, Frank, dir. 1920. Humoresque. USA: Paramount Pictures. 35MM.
Borzage, Frank, dir. 1922. The Good Provider. USA: Cosmopolitan Productions.
35MM.
108 G. TOFFELL
Cadman, T. E. F., dir. 1932. The Bailiffs. UK: Associated Talking Pictures
(ATP). 35MM.
Capra, Frank, dir. 1927. For the Love of Mike. USA: Robert Kane Productions.
35MM.
Carr, Richard. 1937. “People’s Pictures and People’s Palaces.”World Film News 1
(10) (January): 8–9.
Craft, William James, dir. 1929. The Cohens and Kellys in Atlantic City. USA:
Universal Pictures. 35MM.
Craft, William James, dir. 1930. The Cohens and the Kellys in Scotland. USA:
Crosland, Alan, dir. 1927. The Jazz Singer. Burbank: Warner Home Video,
2002. DVD.
Curtiz, Michael, dir. 1924. Moon of Israel. Austria: Sascha-Film. 35MM.
Curtiz, Michael, dir. 1928. Noah’s Ark. USA: Warner Bros. Pictures. 35MM.
Davis, Redd, dir. 1937. Underneath the Arches. UK: Julius Hagen Productions.
35MM.
De Mille, Cecil B., dir. 1923. The Ten Commandments. USA: Famous Players-
Lasky Corporation. 35MM.
Dean, Basil, dir. 1933. Loyalties. UK: Associated Talking Pictures (ATP). 35MM.
Dillon, John Francis, dir. 1932. The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood. USA:
Dreyer, Carl, dir. 1921. Love One Another. Germany: Primus-Film GmbH.
35MM.
Dupont, Ewald Andre, dir. 1923. The Ancient Law. Germany: Comedia-Film
GmbH. 35MM.
Dupont, Ewald Andre, dir. 1930. Two Worlds. UK and Germany: British
International Pictures (BIP), Greenbaum-Film. 35MM.
Duvivier, Julien, dir. 1936. The Golem. Czechoslovakia: AB. 35MM.
Edwards, J. Gordon, dir. 1918. Salome. USA: Fox Film Corporation. 35MM.
Edwards, J. Gordon, dir. 1921. The Queen of Sheba. USA: Fox Film Corporation.
35MM.
Elvey, Maurice, dir. 1922. The Wandering Jew. UK: Julius Hagen Productions.
35MM.
Erens, Patricia. 1984. The Jew in American Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Ford, Alexander, dir. 1933. Sabra. Palestine: Sabra Film. 35MM.
Galeen, Henrik, dir. 1920. Judith Trachtenberg. Germany: Neos-Film. 35MM.
Gillstrom, Arvid E., dir. 1927. Clancy’s Kosher Wedding. USA: Robertson-Cole
Pictures Corporation. 35MM.
Glennon, Bert, dir. 1930. Around the Corner. USA: Columbia Pictures
Corporation. 35MM.
Gobbett, T. J., dir. 1909. A Bad Day for Levinsky. USA: Precision Films. 35MM.
Goldberg, Judith. 1983. Laughter Through Tears: The Yiddish Cinema.

Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. Oy Doctor! USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. Style and Class. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. The Jewish Melody. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. The Eternal Fools. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. My Yiddishe Mama. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. The Jewish Gypsy. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. The Land of Freedom. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1930. Kol Nidre. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1931. His Wife’s Lover. Brandeis University, MA:
Goldin, Sidney M., dir. 1931. The Voice of Israel. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M., and Aubrey Scotto, dirs. 1932. Uncle Moses. Brandeis
Gramsci, Antonio. 1991 [1971]. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Edited and
translated by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. London: Lawrence
and Wishart.
Green, Joseph, and Jan Nowina-Przybylski, dirs. 1936. Yiddle with His Fiddle.
Brandeis University, MA: National Center for Jewish Film, 1995. VHS.
Green, Joseph, and Konrad Tom, dirs. 1938. Mamela. Brandeis University, MA:
Griffith, D. W., dir. 1910. A Child of the Ghetto. USA: Biograph Company.
35MM.
Hansen, Miriam. 1995. “America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on
Cinema and Modernity.” In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, edited
by Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Hoberman, J. 1991. Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. New
York: Museum of Modern Art and Schocken Books.
Horne, James W., dir. 1926. Kosher Kitty Kelly. USA: Robertson-Cole Pictures
Corporation. 35MM.
Jose, Edward, dir. 1925. A Daughter of Israel. France: Productions Markus.
35MM.
Kreisler, Otto, dir. 1921. Theodor Herzl, Standard Bearer of the Jewish People.
Austria: Helios-Filmproduktion. 35MM.
Kyram, Dan. 1995. “Early Stereoscopic Photography in Palestine.” History of
Photography 19 (3): 228–30.
La Cava, Gregory, dir. 1932. Melody of Life. USA: RKO Radio Pictures. 35MM.
110 G. TOFFELL
Leman, Judah, dir. 1935. L’Chayim Hadashim. Palestine: Keren Hayesod.

35MM.
Lerski, Helmar, dir. 1935. Avodah. Palestine: The Palestine Picture Ltd. 35MM.
Litvak, Anatole, dir. 1939. Confessions of a Nazi Spy. USA: Warner Bros. 35MM.
Lynn, Henry, dir. 1935. Bar Mitzvah. Brandeis University, MA: National Center
for Jewish Film, 2009. DVD.
Markham, Mansfield, dir. 1933. Whither Germany. UK.
Jewish Museum.
Mendes, Lothar, dir. 1934. Jews Suss. UK: Gaumont British Picture Corporation.
35MM. Accessed via BFI National Archive YouTube Channel, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=dMTHwuQnIKA.
Moore, Vin, dir. 1930. The Cohens and the Kellys in Africa. USA: Universal
Pictures. 35MM.
Nettler, Fred, dir. 1937. The Holy Land and the Jewish Pioneer. UK.
Niblo, Fred, dir. 1925. Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. USA: Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer (MGM). 35MM.
Oren, Ruth. 1995. “Zionist Photography, 1910–1941: Constructing a
Landscape.” History of Photography 19 (3): 201–10.
Poague, Leland, ed. 2004. Frank Capra Interviews. Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi.
Pollard, Harry A., dir. 1926. The Cohens and the Kellys. USA: Universal Pictures.
35MM.
Prager, Leonard. 1990. Yiddish Culture in Britain: A Guide. Frankfurt: Peter
Lang.
Porter, Edwin, dir. 1907. Cohen’s Fire Sale. Brandeis University, MA: National
Center for Jewish Film, 1991. VHS.
Rappaport, Herbert, and Adolf Minkin, dirs. 1938. Professor Mamlock. Soviet
Union: Lenfilm Studio. 35MM.
Rogin, Michael. 1992. “Blackface, White Noise: The Jewish Jazz Singer Finds
His Voice.” Critical Inquiry 18 (3) (Spring): 417–53.
Roland, George, dir. 1933. The Eternal Wanderer. Brandeis University, MA:
Roussell, Henry, dir. 1925. Her People. France: Exclusivités Jean de Merly.
35MM.
Sandrow, Nahma. (1977) 1986. Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish
Theater. New York: Harper & Row (Reprint New York: Limelight Editions).
Schwartz, Maurice, dir. 1926. Souls in Exile. New York: Jaffe Art Films. 35MM.
Seiler, Lewis, dir. 1932. Divine Love. USA: Columbia Pictures Corporation.
35MM.
Silber, Marcus. 2012. “Motifs as Seismograph: Kazimierz, the Vistula and the
Yiddish Filmmakers in Interwar Poland.” Gal-ed: On the History and Culture
of Polish Jewry (23): 37–57.
Sloman, Edward, dir. 1925. His People. Brandeis University, MA: National
Sloman, Edward, dir. 1927. Surrender. USA: Universal Pictures. 35MM.
St. Pierre, Paul Matthew. 2010. E.A. Dupont and His Contribution to British
Film: Varieté, Moulin Rouge, Piccadilly, Atlantic, Two Worlds, Cape Forlorn.
Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Stallybrass, Peter, and Allon White. 1986. The Politics and Poetics of Transgression.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Stevens, George, dir. 1933. The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble. USA: Universal
Pictures. 35MM.
Sutcliffe, J. B. 1917. “British Notes.” The Moving Picture World, December 22.
New York: Chalmers Publishing Company.
Szaro, Henryk, dir. 1925. The Chosen People. Poland: Leo-Forbert. 35MM.
Thomas, Lowell, dir. 1919. With Allenby in Palestine and Lawrence in Arabia.
USA: Lowell Thomas.
Thorpe, Richard, dir. 1933. Forgotten. USA: Invincible Pictures Corp. 35MM.
Tryster, Hillel. 1995. “‘The Land of Promise’ (1935): A Case Study in Zionist
Film Propaganda.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 15 (2):
187–217.
Tryster, Hillel. 1999. “Silent Films in Palestine.” The Israel Review of Arts and
Letters (109). http://www.israel.org/MFA/MFA-Archive/1999/Pages/
Silent%20Films%20in%20Palestine.aspx.
Ulmer, Edgar G., dir. 1933. Damaged Lives. USA: Weldon Pictures Corp.
35MM.
Ulmer, Edgar G., dir. 1937. Green Fields. Brandeis University, MA: National
Walkowitz, Judith. 1992. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger
in Late-Victorian London. London: Virago Press.
Walsh, Raoul, dir. 1925. The Wanderer. USA: Famous Players-Lasky
Corporation. 35MM.
Walsh, Raoul, dir. 1931. The Yellow Ticket. USA: Fox Film Corporation. 35MM.
Wegener, Paul, dir. 1920. The Golem. London: Eureka, 2003. DVD.
Artists. 35MM.
Westgate, J. 2014. Staging the Slums, Slumming the Stage: Class, Poverty,
Ethnicity, and Sexuality in American Theatre, 1890–1916. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan US.
Windom, Lawrence C., dir. 1922. Solomon in Society. USA: Cardinal Pictures
Corp. 35MM.
112 G. TOFFELL
Zangwill, Israel. 1892. Children of the Ghetto: A Study of a Peculiar People.

London: W. Heinemann.
Zecca, Ferdinand, dir. 1905 Anti-Semitic Atrocities. Pathe. 35MM.
Archive
Interview with Julius Suss. Catalogue Reference: MJM 242. Manchester Jewish
Museum Archive.
CHAPTER 4
The Public Lives of Jewish Stars
The emergence of a star system in cinema has been well documented.

While the key film companies that came together to make up the Motion
Picture Patents Company sought to restrict detailed information about
performers leaking into public discourse during the earliest phase of
commercial production, the star actor had become a crucial aspect of
film promotion by the beginning of World War I. Such was the con-
sumer appetite for imagery and information about actors that a sec-
ondary industry emerged devoted to disseminating performer related
material to consumers. Posters, postcards and fan magazines comprised
the greater part of the merchandise, with some of the latter also pub-
lishing hardback “annual” books as an enhanced version of their weekly
publications. In Britain the film magazine Picture Show was launched in
1919, and began producing a yearly annual shortly after—an event that
continued throughout the interwar period. Typically these would include
short biographies of stars and production information about the year’s
major titles, though most space was devoted to still images of popular
performers—many of which were full-page portraits.
Amongst the plethora of star photographs in the 1935 edition
Picture Show Annual was an assortment of stills of the Marx Brothers
(see 1934: 15). These included shots of the troupe in their vaudeville
days as “The Six Mascots”, as well as a zany group photo (Harpo com-
plete with curly wig and maniacal expression). Accompanying the images
was a potted history of the brothers’ entertainment careers—the copy
being restricted to a few banal facts with no suggestion of Jewish origins.

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_4
114 G. TOFFELL
Many Jewish film fans perusing the publication, however, would have
brought intertextual knowledge gained from Jewish news sources, and
an awareness of the ethnicity of Jewish performers would have been
common. As we have seen, exhibitors placing film advertisements in
the Jewish press regularly emphasised any ethnic specificity of their
programme to Jewish audiences, and this could apply to the inclusion
of Jewish performers as much as to narrative content. In an advertise-
ment in the Jewish Chronicle for the Marx Brothers’ debut feature The
Cocoanuts (Florey and Santley 1929) their act is billed as the “World’s
Funniest Hebrew Comedians [sic]” (see July 8, 1929: 39).
The identification and promotion of Jewish film actors in the Jewish
press was in effect from the beginning of the interwar period, though the
trend became more pronounced from the outset of the sound era when
titles with narrative content relating to Jewish life began to fall from fash-
ion in mainstream American film. Given the cultural impact of The Jazz
Singer (1927) is it unsurprising the Jewish Chronicle was keen to inform
its readership that in addition to the intrinsic Jewish appeal of the plot,
they shared Al Jolson’s religious heritage. He was, it was reported, a
“native of Leningrad” and the son of a “Chazan whose family had sung
at the synagogue for five generations” (“Variety and Cinema News”,
February 24, 1928: 37). Amongst the most sustained discussion of a
Jewish performer was that relating to the Hollywood star Paul Muni.
Born Frederich Meshilem Meier Weisenfreund in 1895 in Lemberg,
Galicia (then a province of Austria-Hungary), Muni had travelled with
his family to the USA at an early age and embarked on a career on the
Yiddish stage when still in his teens. Moving to film in the late 1920s
success came quickly and he received a nomination for the Academy
Award for Best Actor for his role in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang
(LeRoy 1932), a development noted by the Jewish Chronicle under the
title “Jewish Film Star Honoured” (March 4, 1934: 52).
Although reputedly somewhat reserved in his personal life, Muni
was never bashful about his ethnic identity, a quality the Jewish press
enthusiastically endorsed and repeatedly reported on. In the estimation
of one critic his “honesty, modesty and racial loyalty…[were]…perhaps
even finer than his acting ability” (“Paul Muni Is Here”, JC, March 18,
1938: 58). In 1938 he made a public visit to Tel Aviv where he was said
to have told journalists “he had come to see what Jews had achieved in
the country” (“Paul Muni in Tel Aviv”, JC, February 25, 1938: 26).
4 THE PUBLIC LIVES OF JEWISH STARS 115
It was also noted he was greeted by cheering crowds, addressed port

workers in fluent Yiddish (congratulating them on their nation’s achieve-
ments) and donated money to a JNF campaign. Following his trip to
Palestine Muni arrived in London though avoided publicity, apparently
stating he could not imagine his presence being regarded significant
given the “shocking things…happening on the continent” at that time
(quoted in “Paul Muni Is Here”, JC, March 18, 1938: 58). This com-
bination of humility and social responsibility was key to the manner in
which his character was portrayed in the Jewish press, suturing seamlessly
on to his “man of conscience” roles in the biographical film titles The
Story of Louis Pasteur (William Dieterle 1936) and The Life of Emile Zola
(William Dieterle 1937).
Amongst the more curious discussions of film star ethnicity in
the Jewish press was that of Charlie Chaplin’s disputed Jewish iden-
tity. Although not Jewish Chaplin had presented himself as such on
the music hall stage early as 1907, and continued to make occasional,
if oblique, references to his supposed Jewishness throughout his career.
Additionally, his screen persona of the “little tramp”, peripatetic and dex-
terously negotiating uniformed authority, was often read as possessing a
spiritual affinity with the Jewish experience. As such, it was not uncom-
mon for the mainstream press to misattribute a Jewish heritage to the
star, a habit picked up by the Jewish press in the early 1920s though later
called into question. In 1923 it was reported in the Jewish Chronicle the
writer Israel Zangwill had discussedChaplin’s roots when delivering a
speech at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, irritably asserting “Of course
Chaplin is a Jew” (quoted in “Charlie Chaplin a Jew?”, JC, November
16, 1923: 18), before going on to chastise him for not being clearer on
the matter and suggest that antisemitism was rooted in Jewish attempts
to efface ethnic identity in a quest for gentile approval.
In 1931 the matter was again raised when a visit by Chaplin to
Berlin rendered the question of his ethnicity particularly germane. The
Jewish Chronicle published two articles about his trip, one filed by their
own correspondent, the other by an independent writer. The latter
piece was more committed to the narrative of Jewish ancestry, remark-
ing that when questioned about his origins Chaplin replied “I am cer-
tainly a son of father Abraham” (quoted in “another Correspondent”,
“A Son of Father Abraham”, March 20, 1931: 22), and claimed to
have “experienced the sufferings of a people treated as racially inferior”
(ibid.). The paper’s official correspondent was, however, rather more
116 G. TOFFELL
sceptical. While noting with some amusement the Nazi vexation with the
notion of a Jewish film star with international standing, it was asserted
the performer had personally divulged the fact of his Christian parentage
(see our Correspondent, “Charlie on the Continent”, March 20, 1931:
22). A few months later the publication laid to rest any ambiguity when
a recent biography of the actor was quoted giving detailed information
about his background. Expressing some discomfit with the ongoing pre-
occupation withChaplin’s ethnicity the piece suggested “We Jews have
an incorrigible habit of annexing ourselves celebrities”, and accounted
for this predilection by way of an “inferiority complex” (“Charlie
Chaplin”, June 5, 1931: 7).
Despite his designation as gentile Chaplin remained regarded an
important ally. When his films screened in cinemas located in areas of
Jewish settlement they were advertised in the Jewish press, and a strong
interest in his affairs persisted. Particularly newsworthy was his status
as a hate figure for German National Socialists. Irrespective of the real-
ity ofChaplin’s ethnicity Nazi propaganda continued to categorise him
as Jewish, and as the Nazi control of public discourse intensifiedChap-
lin’s oeuvre were excised from German public life. In 1935 the Jewish
Chronicle reported that Das Shwarze Korps (the official newspaper of the
SS) had objected to the display of postcards of Chaplin next to those
of Adolf Hitler (“Hitler and Charlie Chaplin”, November 29, 1935:
17), and a few months later observed that, as with other Chaplin titles,
the recently released Modern Times (Chaplin 1936) had been banned
(“German News Items”, February 28, 1936: 17). The only German
audiences permitted to see his films were, in fact, Jewish. Reported
under the headline “GOOD FOR THE JEWS! To Be Allowed to See
Charlie Chaplin [sic]” (JC, July 17, 1936: 16) this special dispensation
was arranged by Der Jüdische Kulturbund,1 and took place at a “ghetto
cinema house” (ibid.) that required identity documents for entry. That
a public figure as popular as Chaplin was so openly aligned with Jews
against the Nazis clearly contained a symbolic value for the Jewish press.
1 The Cultural Federation of German Jews was formed in 1933 to put on artistic events
across Germany and employed Jewish entertainers who were no longer permitted to per-
form in public. Its activities went ahead with the permission of the German state who sanc-
tioned it as a pretence confected to camouflage the true extent of oppression.
Bodies in Public
In addition to being a source for information about Jewish actors
involved in mainstream film production, the Jewish press supplied news
about the stars of the Yiddish stage as well as celebrity cantors made
famous from radio performances and phonograph recordings. These
performers, all—obviously—openly Jewish, had loyal followings, and
audiences hankered after news of their appearances and upcoming plans.
Always already international Yiddish culture operated across a geographic
circuit based around Jewish patterns of settlement. Thus, Yiddish per-
formers moved between traditional centres of Jewry in Russia and
Eastern Europe, the new communities in Western Europe and the US,
and the furthest reaches of the diaspora: Canada, South America, South
Africa, Australia. As Nahma Sandrow (1986) has written “it was not
uncommon for a Yiddish actor to have played in all these places – and
not along a neat geographic route, but constantly criss-crossing” (85).
One of the ways that Jews entered and inhabited modernity was in mass
transmigrations across the globe, and the peripatetic quality of the Jewish
experience was allegorised in the patterns of travel of Yiddish performers.
A distinctly Jewish leisure and artistic culture comprised of multi-
ple interconnected zones of public performance helped define a sepa-
rate sphere of Jewish life. Situated as separate to (but within) the public
culture of host societies, Shandler (2003) has gone some way to con-
ceptualise the collectivity of these zones with the term “Yiddishland”.
For Shandler Yiddishland can be defined as “a virtual locus construed
in terms of the presence or usage of the Yiddish language, especially –
though not exclusively- in its spoken form” (125). It is thus a product
of a Yiddish imaginary, a homeland which, in the absence of an actuality
existing Jewish state, can notionally come into being through language.
In advertisements for explicitly Jewish entertainments the cosmopoli-
tan status of star performers was brought to the fore. When Jacob Adler
arrived with his troupe to present a Yiddish play at the Pavilion Theatre
in Whitechapel he was billed “The World’s Greatest Jewish Actor” and
was noted to have arrived “direct from his own theatre in New York”
(see JC, September 26, 1919: 17). Similarly, in a promotion of David
Roitman’s first appearance at the same venue notices referred to him as
“The one and only World-Cantor” and listed locations in which he had
been engaged to sing: “Petrograd-Odessa-Vilna-New York” (see JC,
June 3, 1927: 39). At the mundane level of the everyday British Jews
118 G. TOFFELL
were addressed as located, spatially and imaginatively, in a distributed

network.
As cinema became an increasingly significant cultural form Yiddish per-
formers were offered, and took up, opportunities to feature in motion
pictures. These included both mainstream and Yiddish language titles,
and with reasonable frequency a well-known player from the Yiddish
stage would appear in London closely in time to the screening of a film
with which they were linked. Joseph Schildkraut—the actor son of His
People (1925) star Rudolf Shildkraut—made a public visit to the Pavilion
Theatre in May 1931 shortly after his father’s film screened there as
part of the first Yiddish talkies programme. A photograph published in
the Jewish World recorded the occasion (May 28, 1931: 11). Similarly,
Ludwig Satz caused something like mild hysteria in the Jewish press when
his on-stage appearance at the Pavilion coincided with the London release
of His Wife’s Lover during late 1931. In response to Satz’s performance in
the play All for Children the Jewish Times commissioned an ink sketch of
the actor to be published on the front page (see December 4, 1931: 1).
Accompanying the drawing was a report on his visit stating Satz had
“excited a storm in the London public” (ibid.). The paper was equally
enthusiastic about his film release, producing lengthy reviews in which the
acting, music and technical standard of the film were praised. “Satz is not
only the greatest character actor on the Jewish stage” it was asserted “but
he has also created the first musical comedy in a talking film” (“Satz’s
Talkie”, December 4, 1931: 2). Likewise, the Jewish Chronicle wrote the
film featured “the famous American Jewish actor Ludwig Satz, who is at
present making a very successful personal appearance at the Whitechapel
Pavilion” (“Variety and Cinema News”, December 4, 1931: 34).
As Yiddish actors and celebrity cantors began appearing on film they
facilitated the entry of cinema on to the circuit of interconnected zones
of Jewish public life. Venues that presented the actual bodies of star
performers in plays and concerts also now screened imagery of the star
body. Moreover, the logic of celebrity value suggests that the exposure
of a given individual to greater numbers of consumers leads to greater
recognition and thus elevated worth. As performers, such as Satz and
Roitman, were encountered by increasing numbers of Jews through their
appearances in His Wife’s Lover and The Voice of Israel, the symbolic value
of their actual real-world presence in live events was amplified. Not only
did the shift to film production eventuate in increased instances of Jewish
star appearance through their virtual presence as a projection of light,
but when performing live or making public visits to Jewish centres any
elevated status accrued by an individual increased the significance of the

event. Thus, the presence and boundaries of a Jewish public culture were
reaffirmed in promotional discourse, and in the enhanced material activ-
ity of the scene of event.
In the Jewish social imaginary two spheres of public cultural life
operated across the diaspora: there was a Jewish public culture, and the
cultural activity of a generalised public. While figures such as Charlie
Chaplin inhabited the latter, performers like Ludwig Satz existed primar-
ily in the former. However, the lines of division between these spheres,
while clearly defined, were not absolute. It was well known, for instance,
that Paul Muni had begun his career playing to Jewish audiences, but
had progressed to taking parts in prestigious Hollywood features. The
star performers that, in fact, proved most interesting to the British-
Jewish press were those that commanded popular appeal, yet seemed
entirely at home in the discursive and material enclaves of Jewish life.
Britain was a society in which the ethnically marked struggled to have
their interests recognised as being of general relevance, and any indi-
vidual that contained the potential to universalise Jewish concerns was
afforded significant attention.
Born in New York in 1892, the American comedian Eddie Cantor
began garnering the interest of the British-Jewish press in the late 1920s.
In the USA he had already found fame on Broadway and with phono-
graph recordings of comedy and popular songs, but it was in relation
to his film roles that his name initially started appearing in the Jewish
Chronicle. His Jewishness was first identified in an article about the pop-
ularity of his film Whoopee! (Freeland 1930) with audiences at the Astoria
Theatre in central London, where it was reported public demand had
led to the rebooking of the title for an extra week (“Variety and Cinema
News”, December 26, 1930: 23). Whoopee! was also heavily advertised in
the same publication, with a prominent caricature of Cantor—complete
with trademark oversized eyes—dominating the promotion. Over the
next few years Cantor developed a strong following from British Jews,
his films being regularly reviewed and advertised in the British-Jewish
press. In 1935 he travelled to London, and while there visited the East
End with his wife and daughters. News of his visit quickly spread and a
crowd estimated at around 5000 assembled outside the Jewish restaurant
he was dining in—“Feld’s” in Whitechapel. The incident was covered in
both Jewish and mainstream papers, with the New York Post adding some
amusing colour. Whitechapel Road, it was reported, was jammed for
120 G. TOFFELL
several blocks by Cantor’s admirers, and the Hollywood star still had a
herring in his hand when making good his escape (“Eddie Cantor; Good
Cockney Act”, January 7, 1935: 9).
During this visit to London Cantor granted the Jewish Chronicle an
interview in which presented his Jewishness as a public matter. The arti-
cle began with a declaration of ethnic self-affirmation: “I am proud to be
a Jew”, he stated, “I should have been broken hearted had I been born
of any other race” (quoted in “Eddie Cantor”, January 11, 1935: 20).
Later in the piece he approvingly asserted that he had recently witnessed
Jewish-American acquaintances becoming more forthright about their
religious affiliations. He also identified two interrelated political causes
to which he was committed. Firstly, he was reported to be “deeply inter-
ested in the Zionist movement” (ibid.) and had donated money to estab-
lishing scholarships at the Hebrew University. Additionally, his role in
the raising of funds to aid German-Jewish refugees was mentioned. This
was clearly a matter of huge concern to him, and more than any other
entertainment figure he was associated with leadership in this area - later
devoting significant personal effort in assisting Jewish children escape
Nazi territory for a new life in Palestine.
It was this campaign that brought Cantor back to Britain in 1938
when he spearheaded a drive to raise £20,000 over sixteen days on a
national tour. Naturally the trip was of tremendous interest to the Jewish
press, and they followed his journey around the country delivering
updates about the events he attended. Significantly, he visited locations
and organisations explicitly associated with Jewish life, as well as sites
undifferentiated ethnically. In London he spent time in the East End,
again eating at Feld’s where again he was mobbed, before visiting the
“Oxford and St George Club”—a Jewish youth organisation. Here he
clowned with club members, enjoyed a game of ping-pong and was pho-
tographed wearing a wide-brimmed boy-scouts’ hat (see “Eddie Cantor
at St. George’s”, JC, July 22, 1938: 46). Travelling to the provincial cen-
tres of British Jewry, Manchester and Leeds, he availed himself of com-
munal hospitality. In the former location he attended a reception at the
Midland Hotel organised by the Zionist Central Council of Manchester
and Salford, while in Leeds he received a “riotous welcome” (“EDDIE
CANTERS HOME” [sic], JC, July 29, 1938: 17) by Jewish workers at a
garment factory.
Of course Britain’s Jewish communities would be an important source
for donations, but as a major star Cantor’s appeal was broad and he
undertook several high profile public engagements not specifically aimed

at Jews. In Glasgow he attended the Empire Exhibition—an interna-
tional exposition held in one the city’s public parks—where he delivered
a speech endorsing democratic values to an enthusiastic crowd. Most
culturally significant was a midnight entertainment gala where he played
the role of compere. This took place at the Gaumont State Cinema in
Kilburn, north London, a recently opened venue with a vast seating
capacity of over 4000. The event brought together an impressive array
of the most popular British acts including Gracie Fields, George Formby,
and Lupino Lane (together with his troupe performing the “Lambeth
Walk”—then a full blown national craze). Discussed across the press the
event achieved significant publicity for Cantor’s cause. In the specialist
entertainment publication, The Era, it was regarded as history making in
its ambition (“History Made at Kilburn”, July 28, 1938: 14).
By the time Cantor had finished his tour of Britain over £100,000 had
been raised, far in excess of his original target. Even in his absence, how-
ever, the fundraising continued in his name. In the East End a boxing
event at the Mile End Arena saw M. C. Lew Cohen joined in the ring
by the Jewish-American comedy actor Harry Green to solicit funds. The
Hull Judeans—a Jewish social club—also staged a concert for the charity
at the Yorkshire town’s Regal Cinema, and included amongst the acts
were the Peter Sisters, an African-American vocal trio that had appeared
in the Cantor comedy Ali Baba Goes to Town (Butler 1937). According
to the Hull Daily Mail the star himself cabled the organisers stating:
“Best wishes for the huge success, and I mean that huge” (quoted in
“Eddie Cantor’s Cable to Hull”, December 30, 1938: 5). Most high
profile was a phonograph record put out by the Decca label featuring
Cantor performing a version of “The Lambeth Walk”, the advertise-
ments for the disc reading “BUY A RECORD! HELP SAVE A CHILD!
[sic]” (see JC, August 12, 1938: 6).
As with the personal appearances Cantor attended during his tour
these later events appealed variously to a predominantly Jewish public
as well as to a mass public. Able to move between these spheres effort-
lessly, he appeared equally at home in Jewish or ethnically unmarked
space. Key to this motility was his simultaneous insistence on both par-
ticularism and universalism with regard to his ethnicity. Emphasised in
an interview conducted with the Jewish Chronicle was Cantor’s belief
that it was the duty of “every Jew to act as though he were an ambas-
sador for his people” (quoted in “Eddie Cantor in England”, July 15,
122 G. TOFFELL
1938: 20) as a tactic to combat antisemitism. Although rightly located

in her difference, the ideal Jew should be mindful of producing a favour-
able impression amongst gentiles since the individual would be read as
standing for the collective. Across the press it was felt relevant to identify
Cantor’s involvement in public campaigns and charitable causes not spe-
cifically oriented to assisting Jews. Upon his visit to Leeds the Yorkshire
Evening Post ran an article which mentioned his American charitable work
had secured over one million pounds for “non-Jewish causes” (“Eddie
Cantor’s Busy Holiday”, July 23, 1938: 4), while the Jewish Chronicle
detailed his contribution to an American national road safety campaign
and to Roosevelt’s New Deal (“Eddie Cantor”, January 11, 1935: 20).
It should also be remembered that while Cantor’s outspokenly prin-
cipled stance against Nazism was explicitly situated in his Jewishness, his
film persona was contingent on an identification with whiteness rather
than difference. Blacking up had long been an aspect of his repertoire,
perhaps finding its most famous expression in the performance of a cel-
ebrated musical scene in Roman Scandals (Tuttle 1933). Covering his
skin in mud to conceal his identity and evade capture, Cantor—appear-
ing as a Roman slave assisting with his master’s schemes—allows him-
self to be mistaken for an Egyptian beauty therapist and performs the
song “Keep Young and Beautiful” accompanied by a chorus of attrac-
tive women. With a host of young black women attending to the needs
of a roomful of blonde-haired maidens race saturates the scene, and one
gag has Cantor raise his tunic to reveal white thighs contrasting with
mud-caked shins and knees. At the end of the number Cantor plunges
into a bathing pool, his improvised make-up washing away to reveal his
authentic “white” skin tone. Like Jolson in The Jazz Singer, the act of
blacking up moved this Jewish performer closer to whiteness, a position
still not unproblematically offered to Jews in the raciological thinking of
the period. As Cantor’s image travelled across the discursive space of the
pages of the Jewish press and those of the mainstream press, intertextual
knowledge of the Cantor’s membership of the community of whiteness
formed something of a continuity between these sites.
The particular appeal of Cantor to the British-Jewish press was as the
embodiment of his philosophy of the Jew as an ethno-ambassador. In
his habitation of the mass public sphere he staged a demonstration to
Britain’s gentile population that a Jewish performer possessed the popu-
lar appeal and talent to secure a prominent position within the era’s most
culturally significant entertainment arena. Not only did his status enable
him to raise awareness about a political event disproportionately damag-

ing to Jewish life and ensure some meaningful action might ameliorate
something of the emergent disaster, but it suggested that the forces that
posed a threat to his co-religionists posed a threat to him and thus to
the cultural formation of which he was part. This was a decisive centring
of matters that were often cast as peripheral Jewish interests. However,
in Cantor’s movement between Jewish and generalised publics his jour-
ney began very much in the latter sphere. This was, of course, key to
his appeal; the pleasure Jews took in his personal appearance in locations
such as the East End was contingent upon the glamour and prestige he
carried with him from the world of the culturally elevated.
A New Yiddish Talkie

For a brief moment the excitement that surrounded the figure of Molly
Picon during the British release of Yiddle with His Fiddle (1936) was
an outcome of the reverse process. Originating in a Jewish alternative
public, her appearance in the most celebrated Yiddish film of the period
saw Yiddishland elide with the cultural mainstream. To be sure, Picon
was not unknown to a British non-Jewish public. Indeed, not long
before Yiddle with His Fiddle’s release in 1937 she presented her live
act to mixed audiences at the Holborn Empire in cosmopolitan central
London. Nevertheless, from her earliest appearances in Britain during
the 1920s venues in areas of Jewish settlement such as the East End’s
Rivoli Cinema and Shoreditch Town Hall hosted the bulk of her
tour dates, and she participated in several Jewish charity fundraisers.
Moreover, from performers to creative staff Yiddle with His Fiddle was
a product steeped in the Yiddish cultural world. Using Yiddish dialogue
throughout and featuring songs written by celebrated Yiddish poet Itzik
Manger, the primary audience for the title was always imaged to be Jews
for whom some cultural autonomy remained a lived reality.
Typically described a musical comedy Yiddle with His Fiddle begins
in the Polish town of Kazimierz with scenes of financial desperation.
Quickly introduced is the protagonist, Molly Picon, raggedly dressed
and trying to earn a few copecks entertaining people in the town square
so that she and her ageing father, Abie, might have something in the
way of an evening meal. Returning home with barely enough to feed
one person the pair take stock of their dire situation and decide to take
their chances on the road as travelling musicians. With Picon adopting
124 G. TOFFELL
the name Yiddle and disguised as a male youth in order to ward off
unwanted attention they begin their journeying—in the words of the
accompanying song—“Yiddle with a fiddle, Abie with a bass”. After
arguing with rival musicians, Froim and Isaac, in a nearby shtetl the four
rapidly realise that playing together will yield the most cash and in a
short time the team are living well. All is not simple for poor Yiddle,
however, as she soon falls in love with the handsome Froim and begins
dreaming of romantic situations in which they both figure. Such a union
is unlikely to reach fruition, though,—as Yiddle states: “who ever heard
of a man falling in love with another man”!
With the addition of another member to the troupe the scenario is
complicated still further. Having developed a sound reputation Yiddle,
Abie, Froim and Isaac are employed to provide music at the wedding of
the rich Saul Gold, a local bigwig in one of the towns. His bride, how-
ever, is the considerably younger Tauba, whom unbeknownst to him is in
love with a younger but poorer man who has left the provinces for the
city. Seeing her distraught after the ceremony has taken place, the musi-
cians take pity on her and allow her to accompany them and flee the mis-
erable life she has found for herself. Tauba, remarkably, has a wonderful
singing voice and the musicians achieve even greater success with her help.
Yiddle, though, is less than enthusiastic about her presence, believing that
Froim will be inevitably attracted to her. With a fiancée in Warsaw Isaac
persuades his friends to accompany him to the city, a move that initially
spells disaster for Yiddle and Abie. It is not long before Tauba is spotted
by an impresario as an essential new act for his theatre. To Yiddle’s dismay
she leaves the group accompanied by Froim who has, with Tauba’s help,
secured a job playing in the theatre orchestra. The band then rapidly drops
from three to two members when Isaac declares his fiancée has persuaded
him to hang up his clarinet. Just when all seems lost Tauba makes contact
with her true beloved and leaves for a life with him minutes before her
debut performance. Yiddle is drafted in at the last moment, proves hugely
successful with an improvised act, and dramatically reveals her true gender
identity on stage. With inevitability she and Froim duly fall in love and she
goes on to conquer first the Warsaw and then the New York stage.
The cogs to the making of Yiddle with His Fiddle were set in motion
when the Yiddish performer Joseph Green made a trip to Poland in
1933. As Hoberman (1991: 236) recounts, Green had been born in
Poland in 1901, but had spent recent years in America on the Yiddish
stage, as a bit player and extra in Hollywood and as a minor distributor of
Yiddish film. Passing through Warsaw while on tour he showed a print of
George Roland’s (1932) Joseph in the Land of Egypt [Yoysef in Mitsraim]

(an Italian silent film that had been dubbed into Yiddish) to some Jewish
film exhibitors who insisted he sign a contract with them to screen it.
The movie proved hugely successful with Poland’s sizeable Jewish pop-
ulation, so much so that Green wired a friend in the USA requesting
he send him another Yiddish film. The Boris Thomashevsky vehicle Bar
Mitzvah (1935) was duly dispatched in 1936 and this too was received
with enthusiasm. Convinced there was money to be made from Yiddish
language productions Green set up “Green Films” and resolved to invest
$40,000—$50,000 of his own money on a debut feature.
In what seemed like a stroke of good fortune an old acquaintance of
Green’s, the Yiddish actor Maurice Schwartz, was performing in Warsaw
during the 1935–1936 theatre season. However, although Schwartz
agreed to star in a Green made movie the pair could not agree on
a project and Green was forced to look for another lead. With a keen
eye for an opportunity he switched focus to the New York based com-
edy actress Molly Picon, who was touring Europe with her show at that
time. Despite being somewhat down on her luck with several failures
ventures to her name Picon had experience in front of the camera and
was highly recognisable to Jewish audiences. A contract was signed and
a script provided by Polish-Jewish actor and writer Konrad Tom was
reworked to give Picon a substantive role. Green struggled with a title
for the piece eventually telegraphing Picon in with the name Yidl mit’n
Fidl. She is said to have cabled back “we emptied twelve bottles of cham-
pagne on that title” (quoted in Goldberg 1983: 106). Filming took place
in Warsaw and Kazimierz during the summer of 1936 and the finished
piece was released in Poland in the September of that year. One of the
top three grossing Polish films of 1936, Green’s picture was a hit. In
December it moved on to New York screening on the last day of 1936,
then recrossed the Atlantic to Western Europe and on to South Africa,
Palestine and Australia. Perversely, through mediation with Der Jüdische
Kulturbund, it even screened to Jews in Germany.
In London the film received its British premiere following several
anticipatory notices in the Jewish press. Throughout the mid-1930s
Molly Picon had visited the English capital on various occasions while on
tour. It was in relation to articles publicising her stage appearances that
news of her involvement in a Yiddish film was first reported. On June 19,
1936, a notice in the Jewish Chronicle alerting readers to an upcoming
stage appearance of the star at the Troxy also noted that “Miss Picon
is to make an all all-Yiddish film in Warsaw at the end of the month”
126 G. TOFFELL
(“Molly Picon at the Troxy”: 49). Similarly, six months later, along with
information relating to an upcoming concert appearance by the actress
at Shoreditch Town Hall, the same paper reported that Picon had made
a film entitled Yiddle with His Fiddle, that it had screened in New York,
and that it would soon arrive in London (“Molly Picon’s Concert”,
January 29, 1937: 45). The film did indeed duly arrive, screening at
the West End “art-house” Academy Cinema on July 21, 1937. As else-
where the film was a major success, and after nine weeks in Oxford Street
moved to suburban and provincial picture houses, exhibiting at four cin-
emas in the East End and receiving two successful runs at Chapeltown’s
Forum Cinema in Leeds (see Chapter 2 for a full exhibition history).
Potential Fulfilled
Receiving attention rarely devoted to Yiddish language films Yiddle with
His Fiddle was reviewed across the press. Specific to the Jewish press,
though, was a notion that the film had managed to fulfil a promise; that
a material manifestation of something long hoped for was finally in exist-
ence. Such a trend was most strongly felt in the Yiddish language daily
Jewish Times. In an extended review one writer described the film as an
“important achievement that has long been aspired to” and announced
that “perhaps for the first time here in Western Europe a good, realis-
tic, romantic depiction of the folkloristic Jewish life has been success-
fully achieved with the film Yiddle with His Fiddle” (“The Interesting
Yiddish Film”, July 21, 1937: 3). Similarly, in a later lengthy article
on the picture (“special for the Jewish Times”) by Vilna Troupe actor
Wolf Zilberberg, the author admitted a “feeling of doubt came over me
when I was on my way to see Green’s film” due to past experiences of
Yiddish cinema. But then felt he “must state straightaway that the film
Yiddle with His Fiddle right from the onset took the right path of film
art” (“Yiddle with His Fiddle”, August 12, 1937: 3). In large part the
favourable comparisons to earlier efforts at Yiddishfilm-making were
surely rooted in an appreciation of Yiddle’s production values, and the
talent and professionalism of its creative team. However, since much of
the discussion in the Jewish press focussed on content it might also be
suggested that the success of the film with Jewish audiences went beyond
style. In contrast to the “wrong roads” of earlier titles this film expressed
something of the Jewish experience hitherto unarticulated with clarity.
In The Long Revolution (1961) Williams’s formulation of the notion
of structure of feeling emphasises the experience of contradiction. Social
change produces a sense of unevenness as old, once hegemonic, ideas

are forced to occupy the same ground as newly emergent beliefs. The
structure of feeling “is the register of the living result of all the elements
in the general organisation” (1961: 64). The interplay and antagonism
between these elements are in many ways the distinct and commonly felt
character of any historical period. Like tectonic plates moving into one
another the grinding together of differing sets of concerns and inter-
ests produce surface disturbances. And like volcanic eruptions and earth
tremors, cultural forms are both the outcome and the record of these
abrasive meetings. While a little overblown such a geographic metaphor
seems appropriate here given that an uneasy and unresolved relation
to space is apparent in the film Yiddle with His Fiddle. Three contrary
positions are invoked in conjunction with homeland, all of which were
themes identifiable in the contemporary Jewish cultural palette. The
first and second of these of these positions, as described by Jeffrey
Shandler (1999), are nostalgia and anti-nostalgia, the last an assertion of
internationalism.
In contrast to the earliest Yiddish sound films Yiddle with His Fiddle is
set in the diasporic “old world”, and in the British-Jewish press it was
reviewed as a locus for nostalgic reflection. For the Jewish Times part
of the appeal of the film seems to have been as sentimental travelogue.
“Everyone who sees the film is inspired by the…everyday scenes from
the old home in Poland” (“Molly Picon in Yiddle with a Fiddle”, August
5, 1937: 3) read one report. Likewise: “the picture Yiddle with His
Fiddle is full of …warm Jewish sensation that anyone can remember from
the old country” (“A Yiddish Film in the West End”, Jewish Times, July
20, 1937: 3). Exactly when in the film these feelings might be provoked
is not detailed. There are no individual scenes cited in which an appeal
to homesickness was staged. Viewed in relation to production this is not
particularly surprising. Since the movie was intended to play to a large
population of Polish Jewry as well as to American and Western European
audiences, a straightforward invocation of nostalgia for place would have
been unlikely. Yet recognition of a diffuse desire for a plenitude figured
around geography is not entirely misplaced. What is apparent in the film
is an ambiguous melancholy of the central character played by Molly
Picon. Central to her performance is the emotional quality of yearning.
Already extant across the variety of popular Yiddish entertainments
in the diasporic setting was a tradition of nostalgic reminiscences of
the old country. The American Yiddish theatre was full of productions
128 G. TOFFELL
featuring songs describing homesickness. To name a few titles one can

note Ludwig Satz and Joseph M. Rumshinsky’s I Yearn for Home, Rubin
Doctor’s I Yearn for My Little Shtetl, and Jacob Silbert’s I Yearn for and
Remember My Home (see Shandler 1999). Unsurprisingly, the articula-
tion of experiences of dislocation from the environments of childhood
and youth was a cultural commonplace. However, while some virtual
return to Eastern Europe might have been facilitated by Yiddish film
such desires were not extensively thematised, and there is minimal trans-
lation of expressions of homesickness from song into celluloid. Curiously,
though, a similar emotional frame is occupied by many characters
throughout Yiddish cinema. Land may not have been lost or longed for
but love is. From Celia Adler pining for the son she gave up for adoption
in Where Is My Child (Lynn and Leff 1937) to the tragic unrequited love
of Zygmunt Turkow in The Jester (Green 1937) a yearning for an absent
other provides a key element in numerous narratives.
In Yiddle with His Fiddle Molly Picon is besotted with the musician
Froim. In the guise of a male youth, however, her romantic ambitions
will only be frustrated. This forms the basis for an ongoing anguish of
unrequited love. Of course, there is no simple correlation between the
representation of similar emotional states in the genres of nostalgic song
and popular film. Presumably, unrequited love is—in Yiddish cinema—
sometimes just unrequited love. In the Picon film, though, the introduc-
tion of the theme is staged in a peculiarly distinct manner. After Abie and
Yiddle join forces with Ikey and Froim the latter pair invite the heroine
and her father to stay with them in a barn in which they are sleeping.
Ikey shows Abie around the place, some minor slapstick is played out,
and then, incongruously the scene shifts in tone. A few chords are heard
playing on a harp and the image cuts to three artfully framed shots of a
wide river. The camera lingers on ripples on the water, the play of light
on its surface and lily pads. We are, it is understood, now in a place far
removed from the pratfalls of Ikey.
It is at this point that a violin begins a plaintive melody. The image
cuts to a close-up of the instrument, the bow moving over the strings.
A medium-long shot shows Yiddle contemplating the tune and looking
to see where it is emanating from. A return shot of her point of view
allows us to see Froim is playing the instrument. We are again shown
some idyllic views of nature, this time rays of light cut through beech
forest and clouds move across the sun. Yiddle now begins a song. “Play
my fiddle play” she sings, “sing to me a song of love…nobody knows
but you…what is in my heart”. The camera holds on her, her song con-
tinuing with instruction for the fiddle to “play until the strings break”,
and she tells how she feels “so lonely today”. The piece enters a cre-
scendo and once again the image cuts to a montage of shots of natu-
ral beauty. Now, though, it is the drama of a storm. Lightening snakes
across the sky and a strong wind batters reeds at a river’s edge. Finally,
the intensity fades and the number finishes with a return to calm, Yiddle
once more repeating “play my fiddle play”.
Although the object of Yiddle’s longing is unambiguously depicted—
the shot-reverse-shot sequence between Yiddle and Froim firmly estab-
lishes this—the lines “nobody knows but you…what is in my heart” and
“I feel so lonely today” are attached to referents located outside of the
narrative logic. Juxtaposed in these moments is the presentation of the
inner life of Picon’s character and striking images of rural Poland. Land
and emotion are figured as one, they occupy the same plane. As the
intensity of affect increases in her performance so does elemental insta-
bility. The film now enters a space that both accords with the plot and
exceeds it. A sense of the overwhelming is mobilised that must express
more than fledgling romance. Like the storm something destructive is
at work, evinced by Picon’s demand the violin “play until the strings
break”. Some aspect of experience is striving for articulation, though
there is acknowledgement that it might finally be unrepresentable. The
absence of homeland felt by diasporic viewers returns in coded form.
As Shandler (1999) has noted, an impulse towards anti-nostalgia
was present in Yiddish literary forms from the middle of the nineteenth
century. Such a history can be traced through the satirical destruction of
folklore in writers such as Isaac Meyer Dik and Y. Y. Linetski to the mod-
ernist poetry of Yiddish writers in the early part of the twentieth century.
Across a range of materials a desire to belittle Jewish custom, to lam-
poon tradition and to generally stage some dissociation of modern Jewry
from its rural Eastern European past was evident. The poet Moyshe Leyb
Halpern even ended his poem My Home Zlotshov by asserting how glad
he felt holding the knowledge that he wouldn’t be buried in the village
of his birth. Interestingly, a tendency for anti-nostalgia can be seen in
Picon’s first screen appearance in the silent Austrian Yiddish film East
and West [Ost und West] (Goldin and Abramson 1923). A veritable
exhibition piece of anti-nostalgia, the viewer is treated to anarchic scenes
in which Picon variously gorges on food during the Yom Kippur fast and
cross-dresses as a Hassidic boy. Although, such extreme transgression
130 G. TOFFELL
could not be said to exist in Yiddle with His Fiddle there is evidence that
moments of nostalgia for the old country might be tempered by a resi-
due of anti-nostalgia.
According to Shandler a common literary genre of early twenti-
eth-century Yiddish culture was the immigrant memoir. Typically, in
these accounts, “the mud filled streets, the lack of electricity, indoor
plumbing or central heating, the limited diet, the reliance on horse and
wagon…are key images for codifying the disparity between the Old
World and the New” (1999: 77). Shots of emaciated horses, along with
documentary style material of ragged children and bedraggled old men
(one dribbling into his beard) seem thus as likely to have corresponded
to a cultural archive of primitive squalor for diasporic spectators as
they would have been to activate the naïve picturesque. In contrast
to English press reports on the film Jewish newspapers certainly rec-
ognised the dire situation of Yiddle and Abie. The Jewish Times noted
that “the action of the film begins with a tragic picture of Jews” (“The
Interesting Yiddish Film”, July 21, 1937: 3), while the Jewish Chronicle
understood the simple fact that “Yiddle accompanied by her father,
takes to the road with her fiddle to avoid starvation” (“Yiddle with His
Fiddle”, July 16, 1937: 45).
Cutting across tendencies both for nostalgia and anti-nostalgia is
something like an affirmation of the migratory history of contem-
porary Jewry. With its episodic structure the film is not dissimilar to a
road movie; and in common with this later cinematic genre the jour-
ney itself is an object of representation. The tramping feet of the play-
ers are shown, and montages depicting the developing success of the
troupe communicate their movement across space. Moreover, the most
significant musical number, which proved for many to be the film’s high
point—the singing of the title song “Yiddle with His Fiddle”—thema-
tises the experience of travel. Sitting atop a hay cart Yiddle and Abie
begin their journey in high spirits proclaiming the freedoms of their new
life. “This existence is a song”, they sing, “Why should I be upset?”.
And as they travel their progress is marked out. The lyrics “A goat
stands in the meadow…A bird flies by - ‘Good morning’” is accompa-
nied by footage of the pair passing these features along with agricul-
tural workers who wave them on their way in the fields. Ultimately, to
keep moving means new opportunity; misfortune should be met with
humour and then left behind - the final line of the piece proclaiming:
“Laughing in the wind’s face…Yiddle travels on!”
An ongoing joke in Yidl involves the character of Ikey asserting his

cosmopolitan status. Any situation is sufficient for him to begin reminisc-
ing about some location he claims to have visited. Informing the group
“I’ve been wandering around the world for 30 years” he lists Paris,
Constantinople and Tel Aviv as just a few of his one-time homes. Whilst
in justifying his decision to settle in Warsaw the group is told “I’m a man
of the world - city lights are what I need”. Such a relation to geography
brings to mind Zhiklinsky’s Yiddish poem The Weather. Recording the
author’s pleasure in an international imaginary the poem takes as its sub-
ject a radio weather forecast, and in the second verse imitates an excerpt
of a broadcast systematically cataloguing expected temperatures for Paris,
London, Mexico and Puerto Rico. As Shandler (2002) notes an invento-
rying of the diaspora’s international distribution was a key motif of inter-
war Yiddish poetry. In A. Almi’s 1930 poem Yiddish, for instance, he
produces a topography of the Yiddish-speaking world:
Along the Vistula, along the Dniester and the Dnieper.

Along the Thames, Hudson, Mississippi…
…In the tropical heat of Africa and in Rio de Janiero,
In Mexico, in Cuba and Canada. (quoted in ibid.: 134)
Thus, part of a project of defining “Yiddishland” was an “inventorying

of its international diaspora” (ibid.). As background to the comedy of
Ikey’s insistent rostering of nations was a developed set of reflections on
the value of a supra-national consciousness.
A discourse of internationalism surrounded the film in the Jewish
press. The Jewish Times began one extended review by commenting on
the relevance of Yiddle with His Fiddle “to all the nations in the world”
(“The Interesting Yiddish Film”, July 21, 1937: 3) and later reported
that the film was subject to “major interest in the whole world”
(October 18, 1937: 4). Prior to the release of Yidl much attention was
devoted to the Molly Picon’s cosmopolitan profile, with her status as
an American and New Yorker frequently referenced. Continuing this
trend once the film was on screens the Jewish Chronicle noted that she
had been “specially brought over from New York, her home town, to
play the lead” (“Yiddle with His Fiddle”, July 16, 1937: 46), while the
Jewish Times frequently attached the label “famous international actor”
(“A Yiddish Film in the West End”, July 20, 1937: 3) to her name.
Max Bozyk’s performance as Ikey with his constant claims to travel
132 G. TOFFELL
was also reflected upon. Remarking on his “tales of romantic visits to

Vienna, Constantinople and Tel Aviv” (“Premieres”, July 23, 1937:
48) the Jewish Chronicle was charmed.
For Raymond Williams ([1961] 2001) the notion of structure of feel-
ing was situated within a broader theoretical understanding of the com-
munal formation of symbolic meaning. As Filmer states “structures of
feeling are generated through the imaginative interactional social and
cultural practices of initiation and response – quintessentially social prac-
tices of reflexive communication of experience which are at the root of
the stability of social order and changes in human society” (2003: 201).
While the earliest “practices of initiation and response” result in the
emergent quality of structures of feeling, a secondary phase of reflec-
tion has a potential for the production of ideology. After communal
consciousness is recorded in cultural forms its symbolic distinctness is
available as an externalised resource for contemplation. For Jews in the
late 1930s the dark clouds of Churchill’s “gathering storm” were all too
apparent on the horizon. No one could, of course, predict the full extent
of the coming disaster, but the Jewish press was constantly running sto-
ries on the rise of fascism across the European continent, the increasingly
hostile climate for the Jews in Poland and, naturally, the commonplace
atrocities of Nazi Germany. If a structure of feeling organised around
conditions of life for Jews had existed in a characteristically incho-
ate mode throughout the thirties, history was demanding some more
explicit assertion of community.
By 1937 conditions were ripe for the emergence of material cul-
tural forms in which some version of Jewish self-determination could
be understood to be staged. It is thus my suggestion that a productive
understanding of the film Yiddle with a Fiddle might look at the film as
a moment in which to discern a conversion of “the most delicate and
least tangible” (Williams [1961] 2001: 64) parts of Jewish experien-
tial activity into something altogether more public. This is the sort of
work that Fraser (1992) understands as taking place in alternative public
spheres—a creative practice of identity formation. However, for Fraser
a key challenge for minoritised groups is the gaining of recognition in
a bourgeois public sphere avowedly opposed to particularised inter-
ests. Although articulated using a wholly different discourse the Jewish
press understood the importance of Jewish cultural material in a way not
totally dissimilar to Fraser. In a series of articles Yiddle with His Fiddle
was advanced as a kind of vanguard manoeuvre in the placing of Jewish

publicity in the realm of a generalised British publicity. Implicit in the
logic of their statements was a belief that Jewish difference might be
legitimated through acknowledgement.
In an article on the film in the Jewish Chronicle much was made of
the potential for a kind of universal identification with the characters
and their situations. It was a film, the reader was told, that “manages to
arouse a greater sympathy for the Jew by showing him as an ordinary
human being, liable to the same humorous and tragic misfortunes as any
other human being” (August 20, 1937: 34). This factor, however, was
not of importance in itself, rather its value was in relation to the high
profile the film had achieved. Central to the discourse produced in rela-
tion to Yiddle with His Fiddle was a discussion of its popularity with a
broad range of cinema-goers, and its extensive discursive and material
visibility. Titling the piece that the above quote is taken from is the head-
line “Success of ‘Yiddle with His Fiddle’, Appreciative Audiences”; the
thrust of the article being the film’s long run at the Academy and the
expressions of appreciation given to the cinema’s manager by “many
people, Jewish and non-Jewish” (ibid.).
In the Jewish Times the film’s high profile and enthusiastic reception
were also seized upon. Through a series of articles published over five
months a kind of template for describing the film was created in which
the film’s popularity and its widespread public recognition were inevi-
tably referenced. In addition to one-off statements such as the gushing
“everyone who sees the film becomes inspired” (“Molly Picon in Yiddle
with His Fiddle”, August 5, 1937: 3), certain phrases were repeated.
Implying broad critical approval “shown to great acclaim” (“The English
Press About Molly Picon’s Film”, July 23, 1937: 3) quickly became a cli-
ché in these pieces. “Screening to full houses” (“Yiddle with His Fiddle”,
August 17, 1937: 3) was a common way to point to movie’s popularity,
though given the its long exclusive run at the cosmopolitan West End
art-house Academy cinema it could additionally suggest a recognition
and enjoyment of the film by an audience with a diverse range of eth-
nic and class backgrounds. And imparting a sense of the film as a pub-
lic event of some cultural importance was the often-stated exhortation
“don’t miss the chance to go and see Yiddle with His Fiddle” (“Molly
Picon in Yiddle with His Fiddle”, August 5, 1937: 3).
134 G. TOFFELL
As details in the basic outlines of these articles were a variety of facts

or incidents that would exemplify or highlight assertions of the popular-
ity and visibility of the piece. Both the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish Times
reported on visits to the film by the “greatest personalities” (“Great
Praise for Yiddle with His Fiddle”, Jewish Times, August 26 1937: 3),
including special reference to the then Liberal MP for Ely, James De
Rothschild. The popularity of the film was also discussed in relation
to the apparently objective measure of ticket sales. Echoing public-
ity material (e.g. JC, September 3, 1937: 33) the Jewish Times ran an
article specifically to report the significant box office returns during the
film’s run at the Academy. In addition to noting that “many people have
seen the film many times” it stated that “by now the film has been seen
by 80,000 Jews and 10,000 non Jews” (“The Big Success for Molly
Picon”, September 8, 1937: 3). Exactly how such figures were arrived
at—especially in relation to the calculation of ethnic breakdown—was
not explained. Later, in an advertisement for upcoming screenings, the
sense of the film as an event of mass-participation was again invoked in
ticket sales with the reporting of “35,000 admissions in one week at the
Rivoli” (see JC, October 22, 1937: 51).
There was also much discussion in the Jewish press relating to the
film’s coverage by non-Jewish mainstream newspapers. The Jewish Times
was quick to run an article entitled “The English Press About Molly
Picon’s Film” which reported that the film had been discussed “with
great interest in the English press” (July 23, 1937: 4). The film’s pub-
licists wasted little time in harnessing the widespread reviews for pro-
motional purposes, quoting The Star, Today’s Cinema, The Evening
Standard and The Times under the headline “What the press says” in an
advertisement for the movie (see JC, July 30, 1937: 37). Irrespective
of the content of the reviews, the fact that they existed at all, that the
English press acknowledged the existence of a Yiddish film, was an event
considered noteworthy. Certainly some of the quotes from British papers
seem rather meagre in their praise. Taken from an actually somewhat
lukewarm piece in The Times, for instance, is the hardly superlative filled
sentence “the dances are new to us” (see “A Jewish Comedy”, July 22,
1937: 9).
It is in relation to contemporary reflective conceptions of a dis-
crete sphere of Jewish publicity, and its relationship with a more dom-
inant British public sphere, that further discussion of the discursive
identity of the film in Jewish newspapers might be contextualised.
On several occasions the film’s technical accomplishments were praised.

The Jewish Chronicle referred to the “fine camerawork…excellent act-
ing” and “delightful” direction of the piece (“Premieres”, July 23, 1937:
48). Likewise, the Jewish Times believed that while past Yiddish film had
not looked to the “rich equipment…of …Hollywood technique” (“The
Interesting Film Yiddle with His Fiddle”, July 21, 1937: 3) this had now
changed. Contrary to previous amateurishness the paper asserted that
director “Joseph Green went with serious responsibility to his task”
(Zilberberg, “Yiddle with His Fiddle”, August 12, 1937: 3), an attitude
that had resulted in a film “worthy of Rene-Clair’s artistry” (ibid.: 3).
Such a paean was not, however, sung in the English press. Compared to
“the early Viennese talkies” in The Star (“Music-Hall Star in a Film”, July
21, 1937: 7) and considered to have “an amateur feeling about it” by
the Evening Standard (Ian Coster, “Yiddish Musical”, July 24, 1937: 9)
the film’s production values were not something that caught the eye of
British critics. In fact, whilst a couple of scenes are well constructed—in
particular, the wedding scene—the majority of the film is merely an ade-
quate display of classical narrative cinema techniques.
Writing on the conditions required for participation in public dis-
course Nancy Fraser notes the tendency for dominant spheres to
“privilege the expressive norms of one cultural group over others and
thereby make discursive assimilation a condition for participation in
public debate” (1992: 126). To talk with those in hegemonic ascend-
ancy, one must talk as those in hegemonic ascendancy. Perhaps then,
the obvious pleasure taken in the stylistic elements of Yiddle with His
Fiddle by Jewish reviewers was not so much a delight in groundbreak-
ing aesthetics—the film was not conceived as taking cinematic form in
new directions—rather, the excitement displayed devolved on the abil-
ity of Yiddish film producers to cover the same ground as mainstream
cinema. Put slightly differently, the groundbreaking aesthetic of Yiddle
with His Fiddle was in its mirroring of those filmic techniques that had
become the established standard. One major payoff of such a devel-
opment would be the ability to enter into a realm of British social life
from which many Jews—particularly those of first or second-generation
immigrant status—were structurally excluded. To be represented as one
wishes to be, within a space in which it is imagined mass opinion is con-
structed, contains a promise of recognition the power of which cannot
be underestimated.
136 G. TOFFELL
A Star of the People

We have already seen that in articles about Yiddle with His Fiddle pub-
lished in the Jewish Times a sort of template through which the film
was discussed quickly emerged. However, in addition to the film’s pop-
ularity and widespread recognition a third element was ubiquitous in
these reports. This was the figure of Molly Picon. From July of 1937
to November of that year fourteen articles about the movie were pub-
lished with Picon referenced in them all. In some articles her acting skills
were analysed, remarking, for instance, on her “nice unforced humour”
(Zilberberg, “Yiddle with His Fiddle”, August 12, 1937: 3). Elsewhere
she is attributed the status of authorship, such as in the headline “…Molly
Picon’s Film Yiddle with His Fiddle” (August 6, 1937: 5). In others arti-
cles still she is mentioned simply because she had to be—she and the film
were inextricably linked. Even after the film had been screening for sev-
eral months it remained relevant to point out “The famous Jewish film
Yiddle with his Fiddle…(had)…Molly Picon in the lead role” (“Yiddle
with His Fiddle Again in the East End”, November 1, 1937: 3). In the
Jewish Chronicle it was much of the same. The film was referenced as “the
Molly Picon Polish Yiddish production” (“Premieres”, July 23, 1937:
48), and her “natural vivacity and charming singing voice” (“Yiddle with
His Fiddle”, July 16, 1937: 46) were commented upon in reviews. She
was, it became unequivocally understood, the star of the piece.
The appeal of film stars is a curious thing. The classic account of star
popularity is given by Richard Dyer in his book Stars ([1979] 1998).
Here he asserts that the power of certain iconic film actors is their poten-
tial to mobilise dominant discourses of personhood. Through a combi-
nation of intertextual knowledge and a concatenation of key film roles
particular stars become embodiments of such ideological constructs
as, say, honourable individualism, dangerous otherness, or in the case
of John Wayne, an “easy and confident masculinity” (40). It may be
entirely possible to write a similar star study of Molly Picon. This would
necessarily look to how her persona was built throughout a long career,
with its beginnings as child actor and construction across genres of stage,
variety, and film and radio comedy. However, my interest in Picon is not
to do with any staging of one facet of identity. Rather, in specific relation
to Yiddle with His Fiddle there appear to be elements of her role through
which she was made available as a trope of a far more generalised expres-
sion of the social: the Jews as a people. She is, in other words less a
representation of an inhabitable mode of being or habitus, and more a

presentation of a mass body.
Two factors seem to be central in this presentation of abstract one-
ness within the logic of the film. Firstly, there is a kind of simultaneous
offering and deferment of individual identification with her character.
Historically, Molly Picon’s stage act had consisted of a schematic dis-
play of a series of metropolitan social types. A reviewer for The Times
noted that in her show “the New York Symphony she shows the power
to create not only individual figures, but an impression of the figures in
action, leading us deeper and deeper into a half fantastic, wholly con-
vincing region that is born of the persistence of the Old World into the
life of the New” (“A Jewish Comedy”, July 22, 1937: 9). Key to this
act was cross-dressing: the playing of male characters in masculine attire.
Indeed, so strong was her association with cross-dressing, in 1982 she
even accepted an award wearing a bow tie, dinner jacket and trousers.
This dimension of her stage repertoire determined the writing of her role
in the film, her performance, and its reception by Jewish audiences. Wolf
Zilberberg, for instance, noted her “specific Molly Picon-ness” (“Yiddle
with His Fiddle”, August 12, 1937: 3) in his Jewish Times review.
However, while her past performances influenced her role it was not
simply a reprisal. As contemporary commentators noted, her on-screen
behaviour was somewhat less intense in comparison to her stage act; the
Jewish Chronicle remarking how a “greater restraint…softens her person-
ality” (“Premieres”, July 23, 1937: 48). Called on to play a singular fig-
ure she turned down the volume in the name of continuity. Yet with her
established brand her essential appeal she had to retain the essence of her
routines. Thus, drawing on her talent for a quick fire presentation of dif-
ferent social types she switched rapidly between different emotional reg-
isters and characterisations within the same part: from lovesick maiden to
tipsy youth; and from sassy girl to cocky adolescent and then to mature
woman. At the end of the film this oscillation occurs in a telescoped form
when she takes to the stage and in the space of a few minutes re-enacts
key episodes from the story. The emotions are portrayed in rapid succes-
sion: in one moment she is cracking wise, the next weeping desperately.
The effect of this is to make her both available and unavailable for audi-
ence identification. In relation to a particular dramatic situation the char-
acter invites empathy—who has not experienced some unrequited love or
worried for their future? Yet the diversity of these routines is overwhelm-
ing; even if there is something for everyone sustained identification is
138 G. TOFFELL
impossible. As such, in the character of Yiddle the narcissism of specta-

torship and the distance of abstraction sit in fine balance.
The use of the name “Yiddle” for Picon’s character also seems to open
up a possibility for reading her as sort of meta-character. The literal trans-
lation from Yiddish for the word Yiddle is “small Jew”. Yet tracing some
of the grammatical nuances that were at work in the speech community
of the film’s original Yiddish-speaking audience suggests a richer mean-
ing for the word. In Yiddish the word Yid simply means Jew. However,
for Yiddish speakers, to refer to an individual as a Jew—a Yid—is not to
dwell on difference. On the contrary it is a general category of person-
hood—a way of articulating the universal. Thus, the common Yiddish
phrase “fun vanen kumt a yid?” (“from where comes a Jew?”) simply
means “where do you come from?”. Of course, such a phrase could only
be used when addressing someone Jewish, but perhaps that bespeaks the
conditions of a priviliged insider sociality for this diasporic speech com-
munity that required a sharp conceptual definition of identity from a host
culture, but where possible, physical interaction with it.
Additionally, in Yiddish the adding of the Hebrew letter “lamed”
(equivalent to the letter “L” in the Roman alphabet) to the end of a
noun forms the diminutive. A small nose (“nos”) would be referred to
as a “nesl”. However, placing something in the diminutive form can also
connote affection for the object of the statement. Children’s names are
often formed in the diminutive for this reason. In the name Yiddle, then,
in addition to a reference to Molly Picon’s small stature there is a possible
signification of a generalised personhood, and tenderness for it. Certainly
there would seem to be an implication of such a reading in the last lines of
the rousing and hugely popular eponymous title song. When hearing the
defiant lyrics “Dem vint a lakh in ponem, un Yidl, Yidl for!” (“Laughing in
the wind’s face, Yidl travels on!”), it is hard not to imagine a collective his-
tory of transnational and intranational migration, or to think of the future
trials that Jews were readily acknowledging were well on their way.
In an essay entitled The Mass Public and the Mass Subject, Michael
Warner (1992) discusses the particular appeal of iconic public figures in
contemporary western life. For Warner a key feature of the public sphere
of letters that emerged in eighteenth century Europe was the “routine
form of self abstraction” (381) employed by those that participated in
the discursive circuit of publicity. Through a mediating rhetoric of pub-
licness the status categories of those that contributed within such a space
might be bracketed. In public debate it was what a person said that was
judged—and possibly attacked—not who he was. The public sphere
was thus conceived as kind of prosthetic body inhabited at the moment

the speaker/writer became disincorporated from the particularity of his
embodied identity. As Warner states however, “the ability to abstract
oneself in discourse has always been an unequally available resource”.
Only those “white, male, literate, and propertied” (ibid.: 382) might go
unmarked as the universal subject. All those others: women, the poor,
people of colour—those who defined the parameters of the univer-
sal—“could only be acknowledged in discourse as the humiliating posi-
tivity of the particular” (ibid.).
According to Warner “a residue of unrecuperated particularity” (ibid.:
384) has always been left behind in the process of self-abstraction. Both
participants and non-participants in public discourse were placed in
unsatisfactory relations to their own bodies. Privileged subjects—white,
male, free citizens—“found themselves abstracted from the very body
features that gave them the privilege of that abstraction, found them-
selves in a relation of bad faith with their own positivity” (ibid.). To rec-
ognise their privileged particularity would designate it as less than public
and thus entail its loss. For the minoritised, on the other hand, of the
“few strategies open to them…one was to carry their unrecuperated pos-
itivity into consumption” (ibid.). Without access to a discourse in which
to express particularised interests as legitimate concerns, consumption
offered (particularly for women) entry into a form of “publicness that
would nevertheless link up with the specificity of difference” (ibid.). It
is through this bind, in the face of a contradictory “dialectic of embod-
iment and negativity” that Warner locates what he calls “the appeal of
mass subjectiviy” (ibid.).
Leap forward two hundred and fifty years and the media of public-
ity has undergone massive change. With a rhetoric of consumption
occupying the same ground as political discourse a display of bodies is
now apparent across the visual media. “To be public in the West” says
Warner, “means to have an iconicity, and this is equally true of Qaddafi
and of Karen Carpenter” (ibid.: 385). The modern political personality,
par excellence, is that which Warner (borrowing from Claude Lefort)
calls the “Egocrat” (ibid.: 388). Prior to the bourgeois revolution the
power of the state was made manifest in the publicly displayed corporeal-
ity of the prince. There has recently been something like a return to this
embodiment of publicity that existed in feudal Europe. In the Egocrat,
however, “the otherwise indeterminate image of the people is actual-
ised” (ibid.: 388) in his person. Offered by the state is a fantasy image
140 G. TOFFELL
of social plenitude, of popularity itself. But the Egocrat is a perverse fig-

ure collapsing within himself categories that must logically remain dis-
crete. Blurring a distinction between the normative disembodiment of
self-abstraction and the mass accessibility of branded consumables he
stages a promise of an impossible reconciliation. This is the myth of the
mass public sphere: inclusion—a stake in recognition while retaining
particularity.
Warner’s interest in public personalities is located in the televisually
mediated publicity of the post-war period; writing in the early 1990s
his ideal typical Egocrat is Ronald Reagan. However, his use of Lefort
implies a potential to apply his ideas to a slightly earlier point in history.
Apparently influenced by Solzenitsyn, Lefort was writing about total-
itarian publicity and thus about a moment when the masses were first
becoming organised in relation to spectacle. It may be an imperfect fit,
but it is my assertion that there is something of the transitivism of mass
publicity that Warner speaks of in the discourse surrounding Yiddle with
His Fiddle. In the figure of Molly Picon some symbolism appears to
have been at work. There is an emphasis on her performance, her critical
reception, and her very image in the Jewish press and in the film’s pub-
licity that borders the obsessive; invested in her is a quasi-sacred quality.
Deployed within a context of spectacular mass publicity she was able to
offer an image a Jewish social body moving into mass public space.
If it can be sustained that an idea of the Jews as a people was artic-
ulated through the figure of Molly Picon in the film, a supplementary
counterpart was available in news images. As with other film stars of
the era Picon’s image was used extensively in publicity for Yiddle with
His Fiddle. In advertisements for the film placed in the Jewish press a
medium close-up of her head and shoulders was a standard component
accompanying the exhibition details. Smiling and with her head tipped
back (laughing in the wind?) her features were on daily display in the
Jewish Times (see Fig. 4.1). Given the text heavy nature of the paper—it
often comprised of little other than six pages of solid Yiddish writing—
the picture achieves a particular prominence. Equally arresting was a still
from the film published in both the Jewish Chronicle and Jewish Times.
Picon is shown full body in long shot playing her violin alongside her
fictional father Abie, who is accompanying her on his double bass. In
the Jewish Times the image is captioned as “a characteristic picture from
the film Yiddle with a Fiddle in which the famous actress Molly Picon
plays the lead role” and appears under the headline “Interesting Picture”
Fig. 4.1 Advertisement for Yiddle with His Fiddle (Jewish Times, July 16, 1937.
Image courtesy of British Library)
(August 6, 1937: 5). The text thus acts as framing device directing the
reader to the presence of Picon. However, as way of bringing the film
off of the screen and into the realm of personal possession the photo-
graph appears as an item of interest in itself, the wording remaining
subordinate.
As the photo-filmic representation of her body crossed the pages of
newspapers and the cinema screens of London, it is a provocative to con-
sider whether it carried the idea of the (Jewish) people as one with it.
While other Jewish star images appeared on the pages of the Jewish Times
and Jewish Chronicle throughout the 1930s none had the sustained pres-
ence of Picon’s during the release of her film. Moreover, Picon’s image
was visible in the plurality of the mainstream British press. In The Star
a still taken from the film depicted her playing her violin (“Music-Hall
142 G. TOFFELL
Star in a Film”, July 21, 1937: 7) while The City and East London
Observer carried a standard publicity portrait (“Molly Picon”, September
18, 1937: 3), and The Illustrated London News used a group shot of the
four main players with Picon front and centred (Orme, “The World of
the Kinema”, August 7, 1937: 244). Across a period of months the serial
reproduction of her photographic representation offered a body in pub-
licity. The visual theorist W. J. T. Mitchell (1995) has written on in the
unsuitability of a Saussurian-based semiotics to analysing images, stat-
ing that linguistic texts and pictures are apprehended wholly differently.
Certainly it is true that in sharp contrast to the text articles in newspapers
the images of Picon offer an immediacy and continuity of recognition.
For a public brought into being through the media and discourse of con-
sumption all the elements were in place for it to be activated in this way.
With the release of Yiddle with His Fiddle in London Molly Picon
became the first star of Yiddish cinema to acquire a strategic role in
Jewish cultural life. In the Jewish press she was invested with a capacity
to enable a Jewish participation in a generalised public sphere. Eagerly
noting the visibility of her film outside the enclaved environments of
Yiddish culture, some process of legitimating Jewish difference was
believed to have been enacted. Other performers such as Eddie Cantor
and Paul Muni were fascinating in their secure and settled position in the
phantasmic space of consumer based mass publics. Simply raising ques-
tions about the rights and destiny of Jews in such a place was felt to lend
credence and gravity to these questions. In short, if Judaism was going
to thrive in an increasingly mediatised society it was seen as essential the
interests of Jews could circulate in some broader forum than an alterna-
tive public sphere. Star performers were perceived as vessels for such a
mission.
A fine line was being walked in this manoeuvre, however. In his auto-
biography the Jewish playwright Bernard Kops—who spent his boyhood
in London’s East End—recalled his attendance in the crowd that laid
siege to Eddie Cantor’s Whitechapel restaurant visit in 1935. Despite
being “the fabulous Jewish boy, the star of our dreams” ([1963] 1973:
33), Kops recalled the shock he experienced when overhearing a nearby
woman mutter “Bloody Jew-boy!” (ibid.) about the actor. A little later
he witnessed fascists hurl stones at the Jewish singer and actress Sophie
Tucker as she left the Troxy Cinema following a personal appearance.
Although these two individuals were undeniably popular with mainstream
audiences their visibility could become a site for communal tension. Not
all welcomed the rise of Jewish stars, believing the meanings and mes-
sages they carried in their being a symbolic and unwelcome intervention
in national life. As we shall in the next chapter, the industry and insti-
tution of cinema was itself perceived as a Jewish entity, and its increased
significance became increasingly framed as a threat to British cultural sov-
ereignty as the interwar years progressed.
Bibliography
Anon. 1934. Picture Show Annual for 1935. London: Amalgamated Press.
Butler, David, dir. 1937. Ali Baba Goes to Town. USA: Twentieth Century Fox.
35MM.
Chaplin, Charles, dir. 1936. Modern Times. USA: Charles Chaplin Productions.
35MM.
Crosland, Alan, dir. 1927. The Jazz Singer. Burbank: Warner Home Video,
2002. DVD.
Dieterle, William, dir. 1936. The Story of Louis Pasteur. USA: Warner Bros.
35MM.
Dieterle, William, dir. 1937. The Life of Emile Zola. USA: Warner Bros. 35MM.
Dyer, Richard. (1979) 1998. Stars. London: British Film Institute.
Filmer, Paul. 2003. “Structures of Feeling and Socio‐Cultural Formations: The
Significance of Literature and Experience to Raymond Williams’s Sociology of
Culture.” British Journal of Sociology 54 (2) (June): 199–219.
Florey, Robert, and Joseph Santley, dirs. 1929. The Cocoanuts. USA: Paramount
Pictures. 35MM.
Freeland, Thornton, dir. 1930. Whoopee! USA: Samuel Goldwyn Company.
35MM.
Goldberg, Judith. 1983. Laughter Through Tears: The Yiddish Cinema.
Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Goldin, Sidney M. dir, 1930. The Voice of Israel. USA: Judea Films. 35MM.
Goldin, Sidney M. dir, 1931. His Wife’s Lover. Brandeis University, MA: National
Goldin, Sidney M., and Ivan Abramson, dirs. 1923. Brandeis University, MA:
Green, Joseph, dirs. 1937. The Jester. Poland: Green Film. 35MM.
Green, Joseph, and Jan Nowina-Przybylski, dirs. 1936. Yiddle with His Fiddle.
Brandeis University, MA: National Center for Jewish Film, 1995. VHS.
Hoberman, J. 1991. Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds.
New York: Museum of Modern Art: Schocken Books.
144 G. TOFFELL
Kops, Bernard. (1963) 1973. The World Is a Wedding. London: Vallentine

Mitchell.
LeRoy, Mervyn, dir. 1932. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. USA: Warner
Bros. 35MM.
Lynn, Henry, dir. 1935. Bar Mitzvah. Brandeis University, MA: National Center
for Jewish Film, 2009. DVD.
Lynn, Henry, and Abraham Leff, dirs. 1937. Where Is My Child. Brandeis
Mitchell, W. J. T. 1994. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual
Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Roland, George, dir. 1932. Joseph in the Land of Egypt. USA: Guaranteed
Pictures Inc. 35MM.
Sandrow, Nahma. (1977) 1986. Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish
Theater. New York: Harper & Row. Reprint New York: Limelight Editions.
Shandler, Jeffrey. 1999. “Ost und West, Old World and New: Nostalgia and
Anti-Nostalgia on the Silver Screen.” In When Joseph Met Molly: A Reader on
Yiddish Film, edited by Sylvia Paskin. Nottingham: Five Leaves.
Shandler, Jeffrey. 2003. “Imagining Yiddishland: Language, Place and Memory.”
History and Memory 15 (1): 123–49.
Sloman, Edward, dir. 1925. His People. Brandeis University, MA: National
Tuttle, Frank, dir. 1933. Roman Scandals. USA: Samuel Goldwyn Studios.
35MM.
Warner, Michael. 1992. “The Mass Public and the Mass Subject.” In Habermas
and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Williams, Raymond. (1961) 2001. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto and
Windus. Reprint Peterborough, ON: Broadview.
CHAPTER 5
The Jews Behind the Camera
From the mid-1930s the Jewish Chronicle newspaper included an annual

overview of the year’s notable film releases in its entertainment pages.
Published to coincide with the Jewish New Year (typically occurring
during the month of September in the Gregorian calendar), the focus
of these pieces was primarily on Jewish interest film narratives, or the
inclusion of Jewish personnel in a given production. Much space was,
of course, devoted to film stars with some Jewish heritage, and gush-
ing praise was offered in appreciation of performers such as Paul Muni,
Elisabeth Bergner and Luise Rainer. With Jews situated in significant
roles across the industry, however, acclamation was not restricted only
to the most visible individuals. In 1935, for instance, an extended sec-
tion was devoted to the achievements of Jewish directors, whom, it was
argued, had brought an admirable level of skill to their craft despite a
lack of quality source material. More than just names on a page two
of these figures were afforded the honour of photographic representa-
tion, and accompanying the article’s text was portraits of directors Karl
Gruner and George Cukor, having, respectively, worked on Abdul the
Damned (1935) and David Copperfield (1935) in the previous twelve
months (see “Not a Vintage Year”, September 27, 1935: 20).
With film a glamorous and pre-eminently popular aspect of Britain’s
leisure culture the substantial Jewish presence behind the camera
was figured as a source of pride by the Jewish press, and an interest in
Jewish creativity and influence in this area was not restricted to a once-
yearly audit. In both film reviews and stand-alone articles scriptwriters,

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_5
146 G. TOFFELL
producers and other talented types of Jewish origin were all subject to
discussion. At the leading edge of transforming what was often regarded
a low-brow and juvenile aesthetic form into something more seri-
ous, German cinema had acquired a prestige unrivalled by most other
national film cultures by the early 1920s. Jews played a substantial role
in the advancement of the industry there, and given the elevated sta-
tus of German film the achievements of Jewish artists and executives
cropped up in the pages of the British-Jewish press with some regularity.
Tragically, in 1927 the pioneering Jewish producer, Paul Davidson, com-
mitted suicide following a period of psychological distress (see Prawer
2005). Having founded the first publically traded film company in the
country (PAGU), and sat on the board of UFA the Jewish Times consid-
ered the event to be significant enough to carry a piece about his death
in their English language section. Remarking on his achievements it was
noted he had discovered the Jewish director Ernst Lubitsch (see “Death
of Jewish Pioneer of Film Industry”, July 22, 1927: 6).
Following the Nazi rise to power many in the German film industry
went into exile, looking to re-establish a career overseas (see Bergfelder
and Cargnelli 2012). Hollywood was, of course, a popular destina-
tion, though a number of important figures sought new lives in Britain.
Having been involved in bringing many of the most innovative and
celebrated German expressionist titles to the screen while at the Decla
and UFA studios, producer Erich Pommer justifiably generated ongo-
ing comment when he immigrated to Britain in 1936 to work for
Alexander Korda’s London Films. Upon his arrival the Jewish Chronicle
secured a short interview, and the resultant piece began by contextual-
ising his career in terms of geopolitical events remarking that “Hitlerism
in Germany has unintentionally benefitted many countries by reason
of the large number of splendid intellects it has…expelled” (“Erich
Pommer”, April 17, 1936: 42). Central to the significance of the man
was his Jewishness, a fact reiterated in subsequent articles in the same
publication, where it offered an apparently meaningful supplement to the
reportage of his many successful endeavours.
Spectacular Exhibition
One area of the film business subject to extended discussion throughout
the interwar years was exhibition. Jews comprised a significant propor-
tion of cinema owners, whether operating as local independent traders,
or running regional and national circuits of venues under a recognisable
5 THE JEWS BEHIND THE CAMERA 147
brand. In Chapter 1 we saw how the streets around the western end of
the Commercial Road in London’s East End were dominated by Jewish
exhibitors. Regarded as a rapidly expanding area of the economy where
fast money could be earned the ubiquity of the business amongst Jews
was recorded in the Jewish Chronicle. Reporting on an overheard con-
versation between a Petticoat Lane market trader and his customer, the
paper’s communal gossip column detailed how this apparently indigent
fowl dealer had a controlling interest in a local picture house and, from
his kerbside stall, encouraged shoppers to take advantage of his other
business - ensuring them “you’ll have a good time there” (“Children of
the Ghetto”, June 6, 1919: 27). A month later the same column claimed
that of an average synagogue congregation at least a third was “either
directly or indirectly interested in film enterprises” (“Children of the
Ghetto”, July 25, 1920: 40).
As minor trivia such anecdotes may not qualify as primary historical
evidence. What is clear, however, is that by the immediately post-World
War I period a Jewish perception of widespread Jewish involvement in
cinema ownership was common and mundane. From the early 1920s
Jewish entrepreneurship in film exhibition became a recurrent topic in
the entertainment and home news pages of the British-Jewish press, and
the opening of a new cinema was often thought worthy of comment if
Jewish individuals could be identified as financing or managing the con-
cern. As Jeffrey Richards (1984) has shown, these years saw the begin-
ning of a boom in cinema building. Venues, specifically designed for film
consumption, became larger and more luxurious. The overall number of
cinemas increased, and many existing older cinemas—often converted
theatres—were remodelled and upgraded. An example of this latter trend
was the transformation of the Theatre Royal in Birkenhead into the
Scala Picture House in 1921; the Jewish Chronicle detailing the cost of
the works as reaching an impressive £75,000 (see “Music and Drama”,
May 20, 1921: 30). The project was taken on by local Jewish business-
man Alfred Levy, and the paper seemed pleased to be able to report the
warm words offered to him by the town’s Mayor upon the venue’s offi-
cial opening (see ibid.).
With audiences for film rising throughout the 1920s, some involved
in the exhibition business were able to acquire multiple sites and estab-
lish cinema chains. In the East End Phil Hyams began his trade working
evenings in the Popular Cinema in the Commercial Road, a venue his
father, a local baker, had helped to finance in 1912. Joined by younger
brothers Sid in 1919, and later Mick, the team put together a small
148 G. TOFFELL
London circuit, eventually building their first “picture palace” in 1927

in Stratford, East London, by converting a huge tramshed into the
Broadway Super Cinema. After selling their circuit to Gaumont-British
the following year, the Hyams entered into partnership with Major A.
J. Gale to form H&G Kinemas, and went on to construct some of the
grandest picture houses in Britain (see Eyles and Skone 1992). This
period—from the late 1920s until the outbreak of World War II—saw
the creation of ever more ambitious and spectacular venues, with archi-
tectural and interior design aesthetics adopted from America and
Continental Europe, though home-grown styles also emerged and the
neoclassical exteriors of an earlier period remained popular.
The H&G Kinemas’ empire grew to comprise six opulent cinemas,
mainly located in inner-London’s working class boroughs. This portfo-
lio included the Metropole Kinema in Victoria, the Trocadero Cinema in
Elephant and Castle (the venue’s opening night featuring three live ele-
phants), and the colossal 4004 seat Gaumont State in Kilburn. As Jewish
entrepreneurs the Jewish Chronicle was keen to report on all the Hyams
brothers’ projects, though it was their Troxy venture that commanded the
most attention. Designed in art deco style by their long-time architectural
collaborator, George Coles, this venue situated luxury modernity in the
Jewish heartlands of the East End’s Commercial Road. Upon its 1933
opening a series of articles were published detailing every extraordinary
feature and statistic associated with the site. A fortnight prior to its launch
a piece previewing some of these attractions asserted that on “stepping
into the auditorium from the drabness of the street…patrons will be con-
fronted by a vast and airy spaciousness and unusual décor” (“Variety and
Cinema News”, August 25, 1933: 29). A tribute to the site’s transforma-
tive potential the materiality of the building was seen as a segregated zone
within which claustrophobic clutter and the mundane was banished.
This vision of the Troxy was central to the discourse used in a souve-
nir brochure distributed by the cinema as a promotional giveaway upon
the venue’s opening. With “graceful sweeping lines and vast airiness” the
auditorium was said to be a space of “beauty and spaciousness”, and the
objective of the project was to “provide an entertainment centre which…
created a new high standard of Cinema luxury and comfort [sic]”
(THLHL, 794.1). Several pages were devoted to profiles of key figures
involved in the construction and running of the establishment, allow-
ing for an extended focus on the technological complexity and innova-
tion of the site. Building Services engineer, H. A. Stirzaker, contrasted
the blighted grey lungs of city-dwellers with the healthy pink respira-
tory system of one who breathes country air as a lead into lauding the
purification capabilities of the venue’s air conditioning; while electrical
consulting engineer Major C. H. Bell O.B.E explained how the “mighty
force” of electricity had been harnessed to control everything from inno-
vative lighting schemes, to Wurlitzer organ and stage machinery. The
imagined awe that the cumulative effect of these technologies would
evoke in the consumer was suggested in the repeated use of the term
“wonder”. The article in the brochure discussing the use of electricity in
the cinema was subtitled “The Wonders of Modern Equipment”, and the
house Wurlitzer was a “wonder organ”; the venue was, in fact, a “won-
der theatre” (ibid.).
Following the Troxy’s launch the Jewish Chronicle published an
extended article evaluating the site. As with their earlier reports noth-
ing was to be found lacking. Describing the venue a “palatial edifice for
the entertainment of the inhabitants of East London” (“The Troxy”,
September 15, 1933: 69) the piece went on to catalogue an impres-
sive array of data. The screen was the largest in the country, no other
London theatre had so many dressing rooms backstage, and the much
vaunted ventilation system was said to pump and filter over two hundred
tons of fresh air every hour. Accompanying the copy was a photograph
of the interior of the auditorium—the deco uplighters, ornamental grille
work on walls, and geometric plaster mouldings of the stepped ceiling
all clearly visible. Much was also made of the “romantic” (70) endeav-
ours of the Hyams brothers in the cinema trade, of which the opening
of the Troxy was regarded a culminating triumph. Described in terms
of poetic symmetry it was pointed out the family’s involvement in the
picture house business had begun precisely twenty years previously a few
hundred yards up the road at the humble Popular Cinema. Professional
and personal lives were presented in continuum, and it was revealed that,
like all devoted Jewish sons, the inspiration for the Hyams’ achievements
was the “potent force” of their “energetic mother” (ibid.).
A similarly breathless assessment was made of other Jewish exhibition
ventures. In November 1937 the Odeon chain opened a flagship venue
in central London’s Leicester Square, the symbolic centre of film exhibi-
tion in Britain. Situated on the site of the nineteenth century Alhambra
Theatre, the new building was uncompromisingly of the moment with
an imposing polished black granite façade outlined in neon lighting,
and a modern interior. According to the Jewish Chronicle the guiding
150 G. TOFFELL
principle behind the project was “everything of the latest and everything
of the best” (“The Odeon, Leicester Square”, November 5, 1937: 48),
and a “new type of screen”, a “sound-intensity meter”, and an “organ
with five keyboards” were just a few of the “wonders” (ibid.) listed as
installed. As with the Hyams’ Troxy project the launch of the Odeon
Leicester Square provided an occasion to elaborate on the background
of the Jewish exhibitor - Oscar Deutsch, the founder and Governing
Director of Odeon Theatres, Ltd. Born in Birmingham, his status as
Warden President of the city’s prestigious Singer’s Hill Synagogue was
identified, as was his engagement in communal charitable activities.
These included assisting Jews exiled from Germany, and, as detailed in a
later report, support for Jewish Nationalism (see “Appeal For Persecuted
Children”, JC, October 28, 1938: 38).
As Annette Kuhn (2002) has noted, the picture palace became a site
powerfully imbued with affect, with consumers deriving pleasure from
the ambience and materiality of the space. Interviews conducted for
Kuhn’s investigations into the experience of film audiences during the
1930s contain repeated accounts of feelings of excitement that accom-
panied an atmosphere of “busy-ness, activity and energy” (221) at these
venues, as well as sensations of dreamlike immersive escape. Such a
response was echoed by “Raymond”, a Jewish octogenarian from Leeds
that I questioned to assess specifically Jewish experiences of cinema-go-
ing. Of the Forum Cinema, which opened in the Jewish neighbourhood
of Chapeltown in 1936, he stated:
I lived in Leeds in a very, very working class area…and when the cinema
opened I was thrilled. I don’t know particularly why. I was a nine or ten
year old schoolboy and to me to have this modern…smart building in the
middle of…where we lived was wonderful.
Even more emphatic was his response to The Paramount Theatre in the
city centre (taken over by Odeon Theatres Ltd. in November 1939).
Here, his recollections concentrated on specific fixtures and fittings. Of
the carpeting he described its sumptuous deep pile asserting: “I can still
remember the feeling of wonder”. Enquiring if other respondents had
mentioned the washrooms at the venue, he spoke of these with par-
ticular relish: “I used to go there just to marvel…at the toilets”. Using
terms such as “fabulous” and “marvellous” he contrasted the almost
preposterous opulence of this normally base and peripheral space with

the unsanitary primitive plumbing of everyday proletarian housing.
Across personal experience, promotional material, and newspaper
discourse the picture palace was imagined a place apart from its imme-
diate topographic and temporal context. Contrasting Berlin’s picture
palaces with reactionary neo-gothic Wilhelminian architecture, Siegfried
Kracauer (1995) discussed the architectonics of the city’s interwar mod-
ernist cinemas in terms of surface-level expressions of the social order.
Although not Kracauer’s primary interest, it might be useful to consider
the picture palace a materialisation of modernity’s teleological struc-
ture. As actually existing expressions of a utopian future, sites such as the
Troxy and the Odeon Leicester Square presented urban populations with
an inhabitable manifestation of then pregnant fantasies of the collective
imagination. That Jews were demonstrably active in this project was of
particular interest to the Jewish press. Not only did a successful Jewish
participation in this most glamorous area of the burgeoning consumer
economy position Jews as culturally central, but a location from which
one could conceive of Jews as involved in a new rational and democratic
culture to come was mapped out. Like Gramsci, Kracauer saw a chal-
lenge to old Europe in the arrival of Americanism in Germany (following
the 1924 Dawes Plan), with cinema a privileged figure of this cultural
force (see Hansen 1995).
In the Jewish Chronicle’s paeans to the new “super cinemas” an affinity
with a spectacular, distinctly twentieth century, modernity was affirmed.
Although never stated boldly, it is possible to pressure a reading of this
discourse as a strategic manoeuvre within a culture war. At stake was a
claim for a more participatory engagement in collective life that could
only emerge in a remade society. Numerous other Jewish exhibitors and
their venues were identified and discussed in the same publication. These
included Sidney Bernstein, an anti-fascist, passionate cineaste and owner
of the Granada circuit of cinemas; Arthur Segal, whose Astoria Theatre
in north London’s Finsbury Park contained the first “atmospheric audi-
torium” in the city (evoking an Andalusian village at night); as well as
several owners of minor circuits such as the Kay Brothers, whose interests
were situated in the expanding suburbs around London’s eastern periph-
ery. These men, and others, were decisive in creating destinations where
architecture and design were attractions in themselves, irrespective of any
advertised entertainment programme.
152 G. TOFFELL
Executive Decisions
While there is clear evidence that audiences visited exhibition sites based
on the specific appeal of their atmospheric charisma, it would be a mis-
take to assume that individual film titles were of minimal consequence to
patrons. When, for instance, the Troxy held its gala launch in September
1933, the already hugely successful King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and
Ernest B. Schoedsack 1993) was selected to screen as the opening fea-
ture, and this attraction figured as prominently in advance publicity as
the dazzling fixtures and fittings of the new venue. On both sides of the
Atlantic film companies that contained noticeably abundant numbers of
Jewish senior executives undertook production of the most celebrated
titles of the era. For the Jewish press the affairs of these Jewish individu-
als, at the apex of the film industry, were naturally considered worthy of
comment, and details of their professional endeavours and personal lives
were regarded as being of interest to a Jewish readership.
Within the British film industry the Gaumont-British Picture
Corporation was widely considered the pre-eminent organisation dur-
ing the 1930s. The president of the company was Isidore Ostrer, a
Jewish East Ender who entered the business through production finance.
Gaumont-British was originally the British subsidiary of the Gaumont
Film Company, and Ostrer worked with brothers A. C. and R. C.
Bromhead to acquire the company in 1922 and, together with his own
four brothers, expanded the outfit during the late 1920s following the
imposition of film quota legislation laid out in the Cinematograph Act
of 1927 (see Spicer 2012). Evolving into a complex vertically integrated
combine GBPC absorbed and amalgamated with an assortment of estab-
lished production, distribution and exhibition companies, many of which
were similarly operated by Jewish entrepreneurs. As noted above, the
Hyams brothers were one of several exhibition chains that sold out to
Gaumont-British. In the sphere of distribution Charles Woolf arrived with
his W & F Films Service and became Deputy Chairman, while Michael
Balcon took the role of General Manager of Film Production when his
Gainsborough Pictures became a sister company in 1928. Formed with
film director Victor Saville, a fellow Birmingham Jew, Gainsborough had
been financed with backing from Oscar Deutsch (also from Birmingham)
and Charles Woolf in 1924. While professional frustration and acrimony
would later see major figures depart from GBPC, at the time of its dom-
inance the organisation’s power was, at least in part, rooted in the long
established business and personal relationships of key individuals.
The prevalence of Jews in the upper echelons of Hollywood stu-

dio management has been amply documented (see, for instance, Gabler
1988). With the sole exception of Daryl Zanuck at Twentieth Century
Pictures (later Twentieth Century Fox), Jews were studio heads at all the
Hollywood majors during the industry’s so-called Golden Age, and the
men that established this remarkable monopoly remained an object of fas-
cination for the British-Jewish press throughout the period. In 1929, for
instance, an announcement delivered by William Fox explaining that Fox
Films would no longer produce silent moving pictures was reported in
the Jewish Chronicle under the headline “Jewish Movie Magnate’s Lead”
(April 19, 1929: 21). At no point was the particularity of Fox’s ethnicity
relevant to the story; it was, apparently, of interest in and of itself. Such
was the enthusiasm for the public prominence and success of these indi-
viduals that writing on the subject could become somewhat unrestrained.
Indeed, one piece on “Jewish film magnates” considered their “rise from
obscure beginnings…a romance of the films in itself”, before going on
to describe Harry and Jack Warner as “Napoleons of the picture world”
(VEE, “Miscellany”, May 17, 1929: 12).
With the passing of the Enabling Act in Germany’s Reichstag and
Reichsrat on 24 March 1933, Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist
German Workers’ Party secured control over the Reich government. This
was the culmination of an extended campaign for power set against a
background of social disorder, physical violence and vicious rhetoric. A
day of obvious tragedy for German Jewry, the events leading to it had
long been by tracked in the British-Jewish press, initially with dismissive
disbelief around the time of the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, and
later with intense anxiety as the appeal and influence of Nazism could
be seen to expand. Increasingly, the precarity of Jewish life in Europe
and the reality of antisemitism became a feature of everyday discourse,
not only in enclaved Jewish settings, but also in a generalised British
public sphere. Despite being integral to that country’s descent into fas-
cism, the fate of the Jews of Germany famously went unrepresented by
the mainstream cinema. Even with a significant number of power players
in Hollywood claiming Jewish ancestry, the major studios produced no
explicitly anti-Nazi feature films until the end of the decade.
For Gabler (1988) the studio bosses’ political conservatism and
financial concerns over foreign markets proved crucial in this thematic
purging. Further, as Felicia Herman (2001) has shown, key Jewish
organisations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the
154 G. TOFFELL
American Jewish Committee (AJC) had back-channel access to the US

film industry. In contrast to the combative approach involving pub-
lic denunciation, mass rallies and boycott campaigns taken by Rabbi
Stephen Wise and the American Jewish Congress, these groups feared
emphasising the centrality of antisemitism to Nazi ideology would appear
as particularist special pleading to gentile audiences, and they encouraged
Jewish producers to steer clear of attacks on Germany. Meanwhile, in the
UK, the official censor refused to certificate any film considered politi-
cally sensitive. Although Gaumont-British submitted two scripts to the
British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) during the early 1930s that were
straightforwardly critical of Nazi antisemitism, through fear of their incit-
ing public disorder on home soil or provoking offence abroad both were
rejected at the preproduction stage.
However, for those British Jews, or anyone else, believing a cinematic
endorsement of Jewish humanity or a challenge to blind prejudice was
desirable at this time, not all was lost. At the moment of Hitler’s ascen-
sion to power a short burst of mainstream titles exploring antisemitism
did appear on British cinema screens. The films in question were Loyalties
(Dean 1933), The House of Rothschild (Werker 1934), and Jew Süss (Mendes
1934). Also released in this period were The Yellow Ticket (1931) and The
Wandering Jew (Elvey 1933), though neither of these latter titles was sub-
ject to much discussion in the British-Jewish press despite examining the
collective oppression of Jews. It should be remembered that, as we saw in
Chapter 3, the figure of the Jew had a representational history in narra-
tives engaging with themes of social marginalisation. Indeed, the “Pogrom
Film”, emergent in the first decade of the twentieth century and reappear-
ing into the 1920s, is treated as a form of subgenre by Erens (1984). As
such, there was a precedent for the productions that did surface in the early
1930s, and it would be prudent not to assume that they would be inevi-
tably perceived as a response to political developments still unfolding and
uncertain in outcome. However, of the three films that achieved significant
attention in the British-Jewish press, all were subject to commentary that
contextualised their public status as contingent on the historical moment.
The first to receive a release was Loyalties, an Associated Talking
Pictures production made at Ealing Studios, which premiered in London
in May 1933. An adaptation of John Galsworthy’s 1922 philosemi-
tic play of the same name it starred Basil Rathbone as Ferdinand De
Levis, a wealthy Jew who has a large sum of money stolen by a fellow
guest, Captain Dancy, at a weekend party in an English country house.
Following the theft De Levis is ostracised by his society friends for refus-
ing to ignore the matter, is accused of slander and is later blamed for
Dancy’s subsequent suicide when the culprit’s guilt is revealed. Although
De Levis is simply concerned that his property rights be respected, his
position as outsider sees him refused the status automatically granted to
“authentically” English gentlemen. While the gentile characters demon-
strate a ruthless allegiance to their class and race, De Levis is unwilling to
forsake his ancestral identity.
In January 1933 Galsworthy died following a period of ill health, and
a year after his death, when Loyalties was still on cinematic release, his
play was evaluated in a tribute article in the Jewish Chronicle by the leftist
writer Maurice Edelman. Much of the analysis was devoted to the com-
plexity of De Levis’ character, identifying his determination to express
and preserve the honour of the Jewish collective, once insulted, a privi-
leged form of Jewish selfhood. The tragedy of De Levis, it was stated, is
that in spite of his efforts to assimilate, his belonging is never absolute.
De Levis’ ordeal was contextualised within an eternal conflict between
justice and injustice in human affairs, with the then current mistreat-
ment of Jews in Nazi Germany cited as a manifestation of this ongo-
ing battle. Like De Levis these Jews, while having expended “money,
energy and not least soul” on gaining entry to German social life, were
likely to “reap a harvest of weeds instead of the corn which they sowed”
(“A Study in Loyalties”, January 1934: v).
During the initial release of the film Edelman’s article was not the
only instance of the Jewish Chronicle explicitly associatingLoyalties’ nar-
rative with Nazi antisemitism. The title was subject to ongoing com-
mentary in the publication, and in one overview this story of a “clash
between races” was considered to be of “particular interest” due to
“prevailing conditions” (“Variety and Cinema News”, Jewish Chronicle,
November 3, 1933: 37). As the euphemistic terminology would suggest,
this reading was not a dominant feature of the discourse surrounding the
film, though it did legitimate a frame of reference through which inter-
pretation of the text might take place. A more overt entry of the forces
of history into the on-screen events was De Levis’ apparent embodiment
of “a new type of galut1 Jew” (GJ, “Loyalties Filmed”, Jewish Chronicle,
1 The Hebrew term galut expresses the notion of the Jewish people as a people in exile of
their ancestral homeland.

156 G. TOFFELL
May 26, 1933: 43). Playing out at the level of individual bearing, the
figure of De Levis “standing with dignity” was contrasted to “the cow-
ering, mean, prideless, unmanly specimen” (ibid.) bred in the ghetto.
Expanded upon in a lengthy review, this dispositional transformation
had supposedly taken place in British Jewry through the activities of the
Jewish nationalist movement, though it might be argued that De Levis
better represents an ethos of European patrician honour.
Whatever the genealogy of De Levis’ habitus, presented as key to the
pleasures of the film for Jewish audiences was the portrayal of an individ-
ualistic and assertive Jewish masculinity. Marketing for the title echoed
this idea, with advertisements quoting the Jewish Chronicle’s assertion
that “Everyone who is proud of his Jewishness should welcome this per-
formance” (see JC, June 30, 1933: 48). Ironically, although the Zionist
ontology of personhood valorised by the Jewish Chronicle’s reviewer was
a rallying call for Jewish self-determination, a significant aspect of the
discursive framing of Loyalties made reference to a gentile reception of
the film. Rathbone’s De Levis was predicted to “win the warm apprecia-
tion of every intelligent Jew and Gentile” (“Variety and Cinema News”,
May 26, 1933: 43). Here was a demonstration to non-Jews of the
equal worth of the Jewish moral actor. Additionally, non-Jews would be
impressed that “the problem of what Zangwill called ‘the dislike of the
unlike’ is handled with a just appreciation of both sides of the question
and shows a conflict which reflects prejudicially on neither side” (“Basil
Rathbone in Loyalties”, JC, July 7, 1933: 45).
Unlike, for instance, the minor titles of Yiddish cinema, Loyalties’
audience was understood to be ethnically mixed, and its Jewish specta-
torship was positioned as contingent upon the character of its non-Jew-
ish reception. A kind of “being-for-others” was described in the Jewish
Chronicle’s preoccupation with a gentile audience’s purported assess-
ment of the production. Famously, W. E. B. Du Bois (1903) developed
his notion of “double consciousness” to describe the divided identity of
black Americans, perceiving the self through the optical regime of the
white gaze. This idea has been extended to a variety of social contexts
where asymmetric power relations play out. Specific to a Jewish concern
with a gentile observation of Jewish characters on the screen was the fact
of the centrality of Jews to the business of making and exhibiting films.
This reality could legitimate an argument that Jews occupied a position

from which a privileged area of public culture could be tendentiously
influenced. An anxiety about the circulation of such ideas makes sense of
the gesture by the Jewish press to endorse narratorial impartiality. If cin-
ema was to have any role in combating the rising tide of antisemitism, an
objective narrative address was essential.
Such a position was affirmed with even greater force with the
release of Twentieth Century Pictures international success, The House
of Rothschild. Telling a highly fictionalised account of the rise of the
Rothschild banking dynasty the title is set predominantly against the
backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. The main focus of the film is Nathan
Rothschild (George Arliss) as head of the London branch of the busi-
ness, who finds himself frozen out of society even after funding the
British Government in their struggles against the French autocrat.
Despite this rebuff it is Nathan and his brothers that come to the aid
of the allied European powers once again when Napoleon returns from
exile and resumes his campaign for continental hegemony. Stabilising the
London stock exchange through massive personal investment Nathan
risks all, but when Wellington triumphs at the Battle of Waterloo Nathan
secures immeasurable personal wealth, the gratitude of Europe, and dig-
nity for the continent’s Jews.
Throughout The House of Rothschild narrative drama is intensified
through Nathan’s interactions with his chief adversary, the Prussian
Count Ledrantz. Explicitly antisemitic, Ledrantz attempts to exclude
Nathan from a lucrative deal to supply a recovery loan to France and
then instigates riots against Prussia’s Jews when his plot fails. Ably played
by Boris Karloff—who draws fully on his capacities to intimidate—
Ledrantz embodies Germanic antipathy towards the Jews, and is thus
the vehicle by which contemporary events are introduced into an oth-
erwise historical narrative. The title received its British premiere in May
1934, well into Germany’s period as a one-party state, and the on-screen
action was widely, if not uniformly, read as resonating with recent geopo-
litical developments. In her Observer review, for instance, C. A. Lejeune
associated Count Ledrantz with “the figures of Hitler, Goering and
Goebbles”, and went on to note “the plea of Nathan Rothschild for his
people is palpably directed towards a persecution very much less remote
than that endured by the Jews in Prussia on the eve of Waterloo” (“The
House of Rothschild”, May 27, 1934: 14).
158 G. TOFFELL
In the Jewish press the context of current events was present, though
not for the most part explicit, in reviews. The film’s premiere took place
at the Tivoli Theatre in central London, and in both the Jewish Chronicle
and Jewish Times it was noted that a proportion of the profits from the
gala would be directed to the Central British Fund for German Jewry.
Also drawing together the temporality of the nineteenth century fictional
setting and real-life events in the present was an emphasis on the title as a
public object. For the Jewish Times the film was:
particularly relevant to the present day in that it shows the great services
of the Rothschilds to England at the time of the war with Napoleon not
only as bankers, but also as friends of peace and as Jews. In that particular
respect the film is a piece of Jewish propaganda. (“House of Rothschild”,
May 24, 1934: 3)
The use of the term “Jewish propaganda” was not pejorative in this
instance, instead merely suggesting a dissemination of facts that demon-
strated the meritorious behaviour of a defined social group. Jews and
Englishmen had a lineage of shared values, and the topical urgency of
the circulation of such an idea was the condition upon which its dissemi-
nation rested.
Reviews in the Jewish press for The House of Rothschild were largely
positive. The Jewish Chronicle did quibble over several historical inaccu-
racies, but dubbed the film the most significant Jewish achievement in
cinema for the Jewish year 5694 (see “The Year on the Screen”, Jewish
Chronicle, September 14, 1934: 40). Less enthusiastic, however, was
that paper’s opinion writer “Watchman”, who discussed the title’s British
reception in his regular column.2 In contrast to colleagues writing in
the entertainments pages—where it was asserted the production would
“wield happy influence on the many that will see it” (“The House of
Rothschild”, Jewish Chronicle, May 25, 1936: 31)—Watchman expressed
concerns about its public status. Noting “it is a film about money”, and
that through the events depicted “the Jew’s cash nexus with the outer
world is solidly planted in the audience’s mind” (“The Rothschild Film”,
JC, June 8, 1934: 13) he argued a non-Jewish audience might be left
2 A long-time contributor to the Jewish Chronicle Watchman was Simon Gilbert. A native
of the East End, Gilbert was an energetic community activist, a political Liberal and was an
insider to the British film industry having spent a decade (1921–1931) as a publicist.
with a negative perception of the Rothschilds’ influence on national

affairs. The ancient slur of the manipulative Jewish ursurer was seen as
worryingly proximate, and despite the inclusion of scenes that depicted
Nathan Rothschild committed to a humanitarian mission, it was an
image of Jewish economic power that might “linger longest in the mind
of the Gentile observer” (ibid.).
Picking up on the idea that The House of Rothschild was propagandist
in nature, Watchman identified himself as unopposed in principle to the
notion of “Jewish propaganda”. His intention, rather, was to question
any representation of Jewish characters to which the “tricky Hitler’s
retort…[might be]…‘I told you so’” (ibid.). Yet in spite of a pur-
ported support for a cinematic promotion of Jewish collective interests,
Hollywood itself—or rather, public knowledge of the biographical details
of its senior executives—was also found to be problematic. In the final
paragraph of his article he explained:
…the film is largely, probably predominantly, in Jewish hands. The

non-Jewish world is quite aware of that. Will it not always discount heavily
on that account any pro-Jewish screen propaganda… (ibid.)
Compromising any film sympathetic to Jewish disadvantage that was

produced in the USA (and, indeed, Britain) was a widespread perception
of large numbers of Jews in the industry. A claim for universal justice and
equal citizenship could all too easily be imagined, and rejected, as the
special pleading of particularist interests.
With specific reference to The House of Rothschild, the extent to which
Watchman’s analysis characterised everyday discourse is not easy to
gauge. The film did receive attention across the press, and discussion of
it often moved beyond an appraisal of its formal dimensions. Identifying
what language and ideas might marginalise or diminish Jews was uncer-
tain and highly contested, and the film was situated within a broader
public debate about the place of Jews in British society and the nature
of racialised thinking. In the Evening Standard it was judged objectively
“anti-Jewish propaganda” (quoted in ibid.), while a Daily Mail editorial
assessed its popularity with British audiences as indicative of an absence
of antisemitic feeling in Britain (see “Vindicating the Jews”, June 30,
1934: 12). Watchman’s fears about perceptions of the title’s production
background do not appear to have been realised, at least in relation to
the popular press. However, his instincts on this matter were not flawed
160 G. TOFFELL
and a concern with bias and objectivity continued to be a feature of the

commentary around future titles dealing with the victimisation of Jews.
Jew Süss
In October 1934, the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation released Jew
Süss, a historical tragedy starring Conrad Veidt as the eighteenth-century
Stuttgart “court Jew” Joseph Süß Oppenheimer. As Richards (1984)
asserts, during the early 1930s Gaumont-British had been determined to
produce a film denouncing antisemitism. Indeed, BBFC scenario reports
record the company submitting two synopses overtly critical of political
antisemitism for assessment by the censor in mid-1933. A German Tragedy
narrated the ostracism of a brilliant Jewish doctor from German society fol-
lowing the imposition of Nazi legislation, while City Without Jews explored
the devastating cultural and economic consequences that befall a fictional
contemporary Austria when the country’s Jews face banishment. Both syn-
opses were rejected by the BBFC as political propaganda, with fears raised
that A German Tragedy “might easily provoke a disturbance” (BBFC
Scenario Report for A German Tragedy, May 10, 1933) given the strength
of public feeling in regard to recent events in Germany.
Refusing to drop its commitment to putting out a feature deal-
ing with the persecution of Jews, Gaumont-British submitted the sce-
nario for Jew Süss to the BBFC in November 1933. Based on Lion
Feuchtwanger’s best-selling 1925 novel Jud Süß and having had a suc-
cessful run in London as a 1929 stage production, it seems likely that its
status as legitimate culture—together with its historical setting—helped
protect the script from the censor’s knife. Mainly concerned with ton-
ing down assorted expressions of sexual desire deemed too direct, the
BBFC recommended only minimal amendments (Scenario Report for
Jew Süss, November 2, 1933), and the film went into production in
early 1934 with the full financial weight of the company behind it. When
completed, Jew Süss boasted a first-rate cast, finely detailed sets and lav-
ish costumes. With such production values, the film was guaranteed to
attract significant critical attention, and every section of the British
press—national, trade, local—devoted column space to reviews or pho-
tographic stills of notable scenes. Although notices were not uniformly
gushing, many were extremely positive. Writing in the Evening Standard,
a young John Betjeman declared it “undoubtedly the best film of the
week” and praised Veidt’s “outstanding performance” (“A Great Thrill
Film”, October 6, 1934: 8). Some of the most complimentary comments

came in the Jewish press. For the Jewish Times the piece was “one of the
grandest films ever to be created” (Myer, “Film Triumph of Jew Süss”,
October 7, 1934: 2), while the Jewish Chronicle labelled it “A Stupendous
Production” (G. J., “‘Jew Süss’ at the Tivoli”, October 12, 1934: 43).
As in Feuchtwanger’s novel, the movie Jew Süss portrays the ascend-
ancy, and brutal fall, of Joseph Süss Oppenheimer in the Württemberg
court of Duke Karl Alexander. The story begins with Süss confessing
his hunger for power to his loyal friend Landauer, explaining his desire
to secure respect not just for himself but for all Jews. The opportunity
for advancement soon presents itself when Süss ingratiates himself with
Alexander through a gambling loan, and he quickly becomes incorpo-
rated into the duke’s household. Proving himself an indispensable serv-
ant, Süss rises to the point where he is able to secure the release of a
poor ghetto Jew falsely accused of ritual murder. However, this charmed
existence is not fated to last, and following the death of his daugh-
ter Naomi—who falls from a high roof while attempting to escape the
advances of the lascivious duke—Süss plots the duke’s ruin. Although
successful in his plan to sabotage the duke’s attempts to do away with
the Diet and grasp absolute rule, Süss becomes scapegoated during the
inquiry into the affair and dies a tragic hero, reciting the Shema on the
execution scaffold.
With eighteenth-century Württemberg as the film’s setting, it is
unsurprising that no direct reference to Hitler is made throughout. An
absence of references to Nazism notwithstanding, the piece is described
by Rachael Low as “loaded with obscure significance” (1985: 142), and
textual allusion to the contemporary position of German Jews is appar-
ent at several moments, albeit delivered at an oblique angle. During the
film’s opening, a title card reads, “It was a time of universal intolerance
and the Jews above all suffered oppression and boycott”. As Susan Tegel
(1995) has noted, the boycott was very much a tactic of Nazi antisemi-
tism, and the embargo of Jewish shops in Germany had received signif-
icant attention in the British news media in the spring of 1933. Further
title cards refer to the unfinished nature of Süss’s efforts in breaking
down the ghetto walls, stating “his story lives”. Perhaps most pointed
is a sequence of dialogue between Süss and Landauer. Dismissing his
friend’s report of anti-Jewish persecution, Süss asserts, “Ach! Old
fables… we are now in 1730!” To which Landauer responds, “They can
do it in 1730, they can do it in 1830, they can do it in 1930!”
162 G. TOFFELL
To what extent the import of such references was readily decoded, or

proved too subtle for contemporary viewers, is now impossible to judge.
What is clear is that both the mainstream and British-Jewish press posi-
tioned the film as inevitably located within the context of the mount-
ing crisis in Germany. Although mention of Nazism was provided in
only a minority of reviews in mainstream British news sources, its rel-
evance to Jew Süss was unambiguously stated. The Observer referred to
the “present political situation in Germany” (C. A. Lejeune, “Jew Süss”.
October 7, 1934: 18) in its review, while the Spectator claimed, “But for
Hitlerism, this film would perhaps, never have been made” (quoted in
Tegel 1995: 227). Interestingly, parallels with contemporary events were
offered somewhat guardedly in appraisals of Jew Süss in the Jewish press.
The Jewish Times gave some details about the persecution suffered by
Feuchtwanger in Germany (Myer, “Film Triumph of Jew Süss”, October
7, 1934: 3), while the Jewish Chronicle made reference to the film’s
“valuable lessons” (G. J., “Jew Süss” at the Tivoli, October 12, 1934:
43). Jew Süss, it was claimed, “lays bare certain foundations of modern
European popular opinion on which have been built the Jew hatred that
we know today” (ibid.). Why Germany was not singled out is ultimately
unknowable, but, as we will see, much coverage of the film in the Jewish
press was marked by a clear hesitancy.
It is somewhat paradoxical that some of the clearest discursive asso-
ciations of Jew Süss with Nazi antisemitism came into being through
accounts of its censorship in Austria. Shortly after its release in London,
the film exhibited in Vienna. Quickly arousing the ire of both Roman
Catholic groups and Austrian Nazis it was removed a mere six days
after its opening. Again, only a minority of British mainstream newspa-
pers covered this development. The Daily Mail ran a few lines noting
the proscription, though it was attributed only to Catholic disapproval
(see October 23, 1934: 11). The Manchester Guardian was somewhat
more expansive, stating that there had been “considerable propaganda”
directed against the film from “both Nazi and Clerical [sic] sources”
(“Austrian Ban on ‘Jew Süss’ Film”, October 23, 1934: 12). Also cov-
ering the story was the Jewish press. The Jewish Chronicle recorded
the involvement of various reactionary groups—including National
Socialists—and remarked on the irony of the situation, given the trou-
ble Austrian distributors were having in getting their films shown in
Germany (see “‘Jew Süss’ Banned”, October 26, 1934: 29), while
the Jewish Times added that the “scene in which Jew Süss is executed
particularly provoked antisemitic demonstrations” (“Film Jew Süss

Banned in Vienna Due to Anti-Semitic Demonstrations”, October 23,
1934: 3).
That the Jewish press was keeping a close eye on Jew Süss is not a sur-
prise, and the production was subject to comment well before it reached
cinema screens. In early 1934 the Jewish World reported on produc-
tion developments and set design, noting “a complete replica of the
Ghetto of Frankfort [sic] has been built” (“Kinema, Gramophone and
Broadcasting Notes”, January 11, 1934: 17). The Jewish Chronicle’s
interest went back even further. In 1928 the paper was reporting that
film rights had been sold to the Jewish inventor, cinema owner and
would-be studio magnate, Ludwig Blattner, and that an anticipated pro-
duction was expected to cost one hundred thousand pounds (“Variety
and Cinema News”, February 3, 1928: 34). Following the passing on
of rights to Gaumont-British the same publication listed the film as the
first item in a piece on upcoming titles in 1934. Addressing the reader
as a distinctly Jewish consumer, it was stated that “Jewish patrons of the
cinema will assuredly be intrigued by “Jew Süss”, which is announced to
be released in the autumn” (“Some British Films for 1934”, October 20,
1933: 43).
Upon the film’s release it was not only the Jewish press that believed
Jews would be interested in the picture. Those areas of the film indus-
try dedicated to marketing and exhibition clearly felt that there was a
significant Jewish audience for Jew Süss. Both the Jewish Chronicle and
the Jewish Times featured large pictorial advertisements announcing the
film’s exhibition at the West End’s Tivoli Cinema. Three months after
opening in central London, the film moved to local screens and the
provinces, and it was again advertised in Jewish newspapers. In the Jewish
Times one ad carried copy declaring that the film had been “praised in
two continents”, featured choice reviews (translated into Yiddish) from
both London and New York–based newspapers, and listed the picture
houses at which the film was screening (see January 4, 1935: 8). This
list of local cinemas exhibiting the title is itself instructional. Of the six
at which it appeared in London, four were in neighbourhoods with sig-
nificant Jewish populations (Whitechapel, Stamford Hill, Dalston, and
Hendon). The wisdom of such a strategy seems to have been validated in
anecdotal data. Investigating exhibition in London’s East End, reporter
Richard Carr was informed that Jew Süss did “good business…mainly
because of its Jewish interest” (1937: 9).
164 G. TOFFELL
Double Consciousness
Anticipated as an event on the Jewish social calendar and consumed in
locations coded as Jewish spaces, the contours of Jew Süss as site of Jewish
cultural consumption are beginning to come into view. Yet film recep-
tion is not wholly reducible to these extratextual factors of exhibition
context, and as Henry Bial (2005) has argued, minority ethnic readings
of cultural texts are frequently marked by specialist knowledge unavail-
able to majority audiences. Reviewing the film in the Jewish Times, for
instance, Morris Myer remarked that while Cedric Hardwicke delivered
a first-rate performance, “his Rabbi is a little gentile” (“Film Triumph of
Jew Süss”, October 7, 1934: 2). However, while Jewish audiences doubt-
less took interest and pleasure in the film’s formal qualities for a host of
reasons, one specific aspect of its reception discourse is particularly strik-
ing. Overshadowing the Jewish papers’ coverage of the film was a keen
awareness of its non-Jewish consumption. In addition to any appraisal of
aesthetics (including script and acting quality, production values apparent
in the mise-en-scène) evident in mainstream news titles, the Jewish press
expressed concern with the majority’s reception. By taking the perspective
of the outsider, speculation over how gentile audiences would respond
to the piece was articulated at various registers. This represented a signal
moment in the animation of a specifically Jewish reception of the film.
A repeated trope in the Jewish press was the status of Jew Süss as a
public object. Noting the piece’s origin in Feuchtwanger’s novel, the
Jewish Chronicle referred to its transformation into a feature film as
a rendering “into ultimate visibility” (G. J., “‘Jew Süss’ at the Tivoli”.
JC, October 12, 1934: 43). Such a characterisation was entirely accu-
rate. Not only was the film reviewed extensively, but the presence of
Prince George, Duke of Kent, at the London premiere ensured that a
large crowd gathered in the Strand for the opening at the Tivoli Cinema,
and the event received coverage in the news pages—rather than just
the entertainment columns—of the mainstream press. The film also
had a significant presence in public space through the display hoarding
mounted on the exterior of the Tivoli. The design was felt worthy of
an article in the Kinematograph Weekly, and under a photograph of the
cinema’s facade the decorations were described. Said to match the lavish
interiors of the film, the design consisted of “a frieze richly embellished
with plaster decorations in gold relief” that extended along the front of
the theatre. This frieze was accompanied by a mildly risqué still from the
film—showing Conrad Veidt attending a bathing Benita Hume (as the
Duchess Marie Auguste)—displayed across the entire facade, which was

framed “in a setting richly adorned in relief work” (“‘Jew Süss’ display at
Tivoli”, October 11, 1934: 40).
As Richards (1984) has observed, the 1930s represented something
of a high point in exhibition site film promotions. Often imaginative and
elaborate, billboards and displays in or around a cinema would typically
reproduce some key aspect of a featured film; a spilling of the fictional
world into reality. The promotional displays for Jew Süss at the Tivoli
were designed and built by the banner specialists Suprema Publicity
Service, and the designers apparently decided to emphasise the opulence
and decadence of court life and the high production values required to
effectively recreate this spectacle. A common criticism of the film was
its lack of popular appeal—even the staid and stately Times newspaper
described the piece as slow (see “Jew Süss”, October 5, 1934: 12)—and
it thus seems probable that the display of the immediately hedonistic
pleasures of rococo excess and sexual frisson was somewhat cynically uti-
lised to entice a mass audience who might not otherwise be interested in
this rather dour and literary production.
Although the trade press enthused about the promotional decorations
at the Tivoli, not all the attention the cinema’s eye-catching marketing
strategy received was positive. Writing in the Daily Herald, the left-lean-
ing journalist Hannen Swaffer primly chastised “the film industry” (“I
Heard Yesterday”, October 16, 1934: 12) for the suggestive billboard
of Süss conversing with the bathing duchess. While nothing in his article
gives reason to believe that Swaffer’s objections were motivated by anti-
semitism, it does warrant considering to what extent the public display
of a Jewish figure interacting with an obviously flirtatious gentile woman
might prove discomfiting to non-Jews, particularly those individuals with
minimal sympathy for a Jewish presence in Britain. While the satirical
magazine Punch did not discuss the Tivoli’s marketing tactics, one article
did concentrate on the physical space of the cinema following Jew Süss’s
opening. In a supercilious piece listing Jewish-themed films recently
shown at the Tivoli (in the twelve months prior to Jew Süss’s exhibition,
The Wandering Jew and The House of Rothschild were both screened at
the Tivoli.), it was provocatively asserted that the location “must begin
to Aryanise itself or it will be thought of as the abode of Hebraic emi-
nence and idiosyncrasy” (quoted in Tegel 1995: 227). For Punch the
ongoing presence of ethnic difference had polluted the site, and if this
undesirable mark were not to be made permanent, some purification had
166 G. TOFFELL
to occur. As much as Jew Süss’s overt presence in the public realm could
confer legitimacy, then, this same visibility could be antagonistic enough
to Jewry’s adversaries to provoke them into comment.
Given the social context of Jew Süss’s release, it is not wholly surpris-
ing that prior to the film’s exhibition, the Jewish Chronicle’s film writer,
“G. J.”, expressed some doubt over the venture, noting that s/he was
awaiting it “with some anxiety” (“Judaism on the Screen”, January 12,
1934: 42). This apprehension was founded on the idea that the film’s
content would provide a catalyst for anti-Jewish sentiment. As the arti-
cle continued, the film could, “if handled with anything but the most
expert discretion … produce an impression upon the minds of the
masses very different from that desired by authors” (ibid.). While G.
J. did not expand on what this impression might look like, it does not
require much imagination to understand why the representation of a
Jew as a cunning manipulator of powerful men could sound alarm bells.
According to Tegel (1995), Süss’s life was subject to a variety of literary
treatments during the nineteenth century, both philosemitic and anti-
semitic—the latter imagining Süss a sexual predator. This contradictory
status continued into twentieth-century adaptations, with the Süss story
variously presented on the Yiddish stage in New York under the direction
of Maurice Schwartz in 1929 and used by Veit Harlan as the basis for his
infamously antisemitic 1940 Nazi propaganda film. Drawing on Wilhelm
Hauff’s 1837 novella of the same name, Harlan’s Jud Süß would see
him twice tried for crimes against humanity in the years following the
war. Highly ambiguous, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer was a figure open to
widely contrasting artistic interpretations.
It should also be recalled that only a few years previously, Jews on
both sides of the Atlantic considered Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of
Kings (1927) a dangerous libel in its blaming of Jews for Jesus Christ’s
death (Ohad-Karny 2005). Indeed, the Jewish Chronicle branded the
film “the lie of lies” (“The King of Kings”, December 9, 1927: 12),
conducting an ongoing campaign against the piece. For the Jewish
press, films featuring Jewish characters were generally to be welcomed,
but this did not mean they did not contain a minatory aspect, and it
was often regarded as wise to approach their exhibition with some cau-
tion. There was a sense of relief, then, when upon Jew Süss’s release it
could be confirmed that it contained “nothing that could give rise to
or intensify anti-Semitism” (G. J., Jew Süss at the Tivoli, JC, October
12, 1934: 43). Indeed, its depiction of Süss’s honour and courage, and
the irrational brutality of racism, were seen to offer “valuable lessons”

and “throw open the whole ugly, disgusting mentality of persecution
and mass hatred” (ibid.). Far from presenting a threat to Jews, then,
the film’s highly public nature—its “ultimate visibility”—was to be wel-
comed. It was the condition on which the text’s moral instruction could
take effect.
The spectre of antisemitic representations was not the only men-
ace the Jewish Chronicle was glad to dismiss. Equally significant was
the declaration that Jew Süss contained “nothing that could be classed
as pro-Jewish propaganda” (ibid.). Of great importance to the paper’s
reviewer was the quality of restraint apparent in the production, its
“tact”. This “tact” was attributed to directorial choice, with Lothar
Mendes asserted to adopt “the method of the intelligent observing
eye… ingeniously giving that impression of factual recording which…
[is]… the best suited method to the subject” (ibid). Unfortunately, how-
ever, the finale of the film struck a wrong note, contrasting unfavour-
ably with the composure of the overwhelming majority of the film. As
the review continued, the gravity of the execution scene was “marred…
by the incontinent howling of Suss’s Jewish friends” that left the audi-
ence feeling “as though our bosoms had been roughly pummelled in a
street row” (ibid.). The Jewish Times was similarly dissatisfied with this
ending, complaining that “the great wailing of the crowd” detracted
from the self-possession of Veidt’s performance (Myer, “Film Triumph
of Jew Süss”, October 7, 1934: 2). Thus, for the Jewish press, the film
was divided into two segments. The overwhelming majority of the film
could be considered a success through its rejection of the manipulation
of emotion; because the dramatic ending employed an appeal to affect,
though, the final minutes were viewed as a failure. In distinction to some
of the mainstream British press that unfavourably compared the bulk of
film to the engaging American style of product but enjoyed the “Great
Climax” (Daily Mail, October 8, 1934: 9) of the finale, the Jewish
press saw virtue only in the aesthetic of detachment. The Jewish press
expressed the feeling that aesthetic austerity was the most appropriate
form for this film. In short, its reviewers liked the first eighty-five min-
utes, which many viewers found boring, but disliked the final five min-
utes, which were highly dramatic.
That a detached and austere aesthetic might be understood as an
appropriate expressive mode for a film dealing with the subject of Jewish
persecution should be understood within its specific historical context.
168 G. TOFFELL
As we have seen, Jewish involvement in the film business was posi-

tioned as a source of communal pride in the Jewish press. However,
as Watchman suggested in his article commenting on the reception of
House of Rothschild, the perception that Jews were central to the business
of film production was recognised beyond the enclaves of Jewish life.
Discussions of such an idea operated at various registers. More benign
articulations merely noted the high numbers of Jews working in the
trade. In the Daily Film Renter, for instance, several articles published
around the time of the 1938 Jewish New Year recorded the significance
of the holiday for the business. In addition to wishing readers a happy
Rosh Hashanah (Commentator, “Wardour Street Gossip”, September
24, 1938: 2), it was noted that the Wardour Street area of Soho (then
the centre of the London film industry) was lacking its customary bustle
(Tatler, “Wardour Street Gossip”, September 27, 1938: 2). Somewhat
more malevolent, however, was the meshing of the idea that cinema
was seen to possess an almost supernatural power to exert influence
over audiences with the antisemitic canard that Jews were in control of
the entertainment industry and mass media. The most extreme mani-
festations of this idea came from organised fascism, with Arnold Lees,
founder of the virulently antisemitic Imperial Fascist League, referring
to Gaumont-British as “Gaumont-Yiddish” in his newspaper The Fascist
(Issue 65, October 1934).
That Jew Süss might be understood as an outcome of the prevalence of
Jews in the film business was not an unrealistic possibility. At the begin-
ning of 1934, the Observer published a piece titled “Judaism on the
Screen” in which critic C. A. Lejeune lauded several upcoming produc-
tions featuring Jewish characters, stating, “In England and America the
epics of Jewry have begun” (January 7, 1934: 23). With a subheading
to the article reading “The Significance of ‘Suss’” Jew Süss was singled
out for special attention, and production information (cast, set detail)
was given along with quotes from the director, Mendes, and the asser-
tion that the film could be read as “a protest of a whole race against bar-
barism” (ibid.). At the end of the piece the writer expanded upon her
theme of righteous propaganda, concluding:
For nearly half a century they [Jews] have been using the motion picture as
a mouthpiece for the ideas and interests of other races. It is not unreasona-
ble that at last, now that the right moment has come, they should contem-
plate using it for the justification of their own. (ibid.)
For Lejeune, then, to make sense of Jew Süss was to understand it as a

collective Jewish response to Nazi persecution. Jew Süss, together with
The House of Rothschild and the aborted Victor Saville project Magnolia
Street, was part of what she saw as a wider propaganda strategy involving
both US and British producers to promote Jewish interests.
Lejeune’s article was acknowledged and discussed at least twice in the
Jewish Chronicle, and although greeted favourably—the piece is referred
to as “excellent”—one senses some discomfit in the author, and Lejeune
is said to merely “allege” (rather than state) that Jews are “using their
own medium as a racial manifesto” (G. J., “Judaism on Screen”, January
12, 1934: 41). Ambivalence around the notion of film as Jewish medium
was an ongoing feature of the Jewish Chronicle’s coverage of the issue,
and as the 1930s developed, the newspaper’s take on the matter shifted
between contradictory positions. In addition to a boosterish attitude to
the prevalence of Jewish talent in the film business, there was significant
investment in the idea that cinema had the power to corrupt and that
Jews involved in the industry had a moral responsibility to curb film’s
deleterious effects.
In early 1931 the Jewish Chronicle’s editor (presumably L.J.
Greenberg) used his column to condemn “undesirable films” in the hope
that his “calling attention to the matter, would be useful, in view of the
large influence, at almost every point, upon the cinema industry of Jews”
(“Undesirable Films”, March 20, 1931: 13). A few months later, a let-
ter submitted to a “Los Angeles journal” by an anonymous “Hollywood
Jew” was discussed at some length in the same paper. Denouncing “Jews
who control the movie industry”, the writer claimed that Hollywood’s
moguls were “engaged only in the feverish acquisition of wealth by
pandering to the worst instincts of humanity” (“Jews and the Film
Industry”, October 9, 1931: 16). Far from condemning such a position
as objectively antisemitic, the editor’s column again appealed to ethics,
stating that “this call to Jews to behave justly … is but part of the Jewish
mission” (“Jews and the Films”, October 16, 1931: 7).
Guiding British understandings of Hollywood during the interwar
years was a wider cultural debate that has come to be known as the “bat-
tle of the brows”. While self-appointed spokespersons for a modern-
ist intellectual elite—the “highbrows”—derided the cultural tastes and
modes of living of those in the socioeconomic middle, “middlebrow”
cultural producers and critics took issue with both the avant-garde pre-
tensions of continental Europe and the profit-driven populism of the
170 G. TOFFELL
USA—instead arguing for a national British aesthetic able to eschew out-

right commercialism yet awake to public taste (see Napper 2009). The
aesthetic dispositions of the Jewish Chronicle were located well within the
middlebrow band of the spectrum, and in the early 1930s the paper’s
comments on cinema aligned with this vision of the cultural landscape.
For Dick Hebdige (1988), the profound social and economic changes
brought about in interwar Britain (namely, the growth of a lower mid-
dle class and the rapid expansion of consumer markets) were registered
most keenly at the level of culture, and the USA—conceived as an alien
force eroding British cultural and moral values—was understood to be
the key catalyst of this upheaval. It was from such a perspective that the
editor of the Jewish Chronicle was to assert that “films sent across here
from America were largely demoralising and disgusting, and designed
to play upon the worst passions of those for whom they are provided”
(“American Films”, August 21, 1931: 6).
By 1932, however, increasingly vituperative attacks on an allegedly
Jewish film industry appear to have become a feature of public discourse.
Far from being merely the preserve of the political extreme right, this
notion was articulated at various levels of authority: culture, state, the
church. In his poem “Naaman’s Song”, Rudyard Kipling transposed
Hollywood for the biblical river Jordan and recounted the Syrian gen-
eral Naaman’s obstinate refusal to bathe in it when the prophet Elisha
suggested doing so as a cure for his leprosy. Responsibility for the sup-
posedly demoralising influence of cinema was laid squarely with Jewish
producers, with one line stating how Jordan’s banks/Hollywood was
“Commanded and embellished and patrolled by Israelites”, while
another sinisterly warned that “Israel watcheth over each”3 (1932).
Somewhat less cryptically, the Conservative M. P. George Hartland was
in no doubt over who was to blame for the “ruin” of “millions of boys
and girls in this country” (quoted in “Give a Dog a Bad Name…”, JC,
May 13, 1932: 7). Elaborating on his conspiracy theory, he was recorded
referring to “a syndicate of dirty American Jews—the Hollywood
3 The poem “Naaman’s Song” accompanied a short story, ‘Aunt Ellen’, in Kipling’s
Limits and Renewals. The verse from which the second quotation is taken reads as follows:
And here is mock of faith and truth, for children to behold;
And every door of ancient dirt reopened to the old;
With every word that taints the speech, and show that weakens thought;
And Israel watcheth over each, and—doth not watch for nought…
magnates; what fine English names most of them have got—who take
damned good care they observe their own Sabbath [sic]” (ibid.). Finally,
both individuals and publications of the church were implicated in a
series of calumnies. In a meeting of the General Assembly of the Church
of Scotland, the Rev. T. B. Stewart Thompson was said to have deliv-
ered a diatribe on the Jews that included the accusation that “The Jew
largely controls the places of amusement” (The Editor, “Damn the
Jew”, JC, June 10, 1932: 7). Later it was reported that Canon Patrick
Palmer of Ilford, in east London, had, in an interview, referred to cinema
as “Jewish filth” (The Editor, “A Clergyman’s Lapse”, Jewish Chronicle,
August 17, 1934: 6).
All too often, then, antisemitism became a feature of debates and
campaigns around film morality. Within this discourse American and
Jewish alterity could coalesce, introducing some ambiguity into the iden-
tity of the cultural invader infecting vulnerable young British minds via
cinema screens. In response to this development, the Jewish Chronicle
directly challenged the blatant antisemitism of the worst offenders, desig-
nating, for instance, Canon Palmer’s comments “Nazi language” (ibid.).
But the newspaper also seems to have become increasingly careful to
moderate references to Jewish control of the industry, drawing a sharp
distinction between the recognition of a prominence of Jewish produc-
tion personnel and the notion of a coordinated Jewish film monopoly.
The existence of this latter entity was readily questioned, voicing doubt
that George Hartland M. P. possessed evidence for his assertions (The
Editor, “Give a Dog a Bad Name…”, JC, May 13, 1932: 7) or—as we
have seen—prefiguring Lejeune’s suggestion of cinematic Jewish collec-
tive action with the adjective “alleged” (G. J., “Judaism on Screen”, JC,
January 12, 1934: 40). Any move by the Jewish press to read Jew Süss
as a sober and considered presentation of reality, and not a tendentious
piece of emotional manipulation, is thus wholly comprehensible. Given
the context of a widespread belief in the idea of Jewish media domi-
nance, any perceived deviation from an objective and neutral narrative
within Jew Süss might risk a public dismissal of the piece as the special
pleading of minority interests or, worse, attract the reputation of conspir-
atorial propaganda.
Whatever judgment the Jewish Chronicle reached, this could not sta-
bilise or limit readings of Jew Süss proffered elsewhere in the British
news media. Despite claims that the film evinced no pro-Jewish ten-
dency, at least two mainstream British newspapers came to the opposite
172 G. TOFFELL
conclusion. Writing in the Evening Standard, John Betjeman con-

sidered Jew Süss “obviously a film of propaganda” (“A Great Thrill
Film”, October 6, 1934: 8); and as we have seen, the Observer’s C.
A. Lejeune was an enthusiastic advocate for conducting Jewish defence
through cinematic means, believing Jews to have “the clearest claim
of all to a national drama of the screen” (“Judaism on the Screen”,
January 7, 1934: 41). Interestingly, Lejeune registered a distinction
between “this new Jewish movement in the cinema” (ibid.) and the
propaganda produced by Russia, the USA, or fascist governments. For
her, the dividing line, or what she called Jewish propaganda’s “odd
and peculiarly characteristic quality”, was in “its diffidence. It is the
only deliberate propaganda on the screen that is reluctant to admit its
authority” (ibid.).
In an era in which English clergymen were denouncing cinema
as “Jewish filth”, it should, perhaps, have been less of a surprise that
films dealing with antisemitism might be marked by hesitancy. The
naïveté of liberal newspaper columnists aside, both film producers and
the Jewish press seem to have been united in the recognition that in
Britain one had to tread gingerly when dealing with Jewish commu-
nal concerns in film. For some Jews, it was wholly desirable that film
might act as a vessel to transport Jewish concerns into the gaze of a
generalised public. What they had to reckon with was the risk con-
tained in the moment of rendering a given production visible. This
risk was fully recognised by Jewish newspapers and was explicitly
reflected on. If, as Raymond Williams ([1961] 2001) suggests, lived
“structures of feeling” can be discerned in the cultural detritus of the
past, a discomfiting social uncertainty appears as a signal characteris-
tic of the everyday experience of Jews in interwar Britain. Although
we can never reconstruct the precise relationship between press dis-
course and actually existing audiences, it is clear that readers of the
British-Jewish press were addressed as a distinct kind of spectator in
the writing about Jew Süss. Offered to them was a position—a space
of habitation in the social field—from which reception of the film
might be oriented. This position of reception was intrinsically con-
tradictory—while a cinematic indictment of contemporary Jewish
persecution was presented to offer some moral satisfaction to Jewish
audiences, it was tempered by imagined projections of gentile con-
sumption as potentially suspicious of the machinations of a Jewish
film monopoly. As source material, the Süss story had historically been
subject to opposing interpretations in various ideological contexts—

as it would continue to be. It seems fitting that the Gaumont-British
Picture Corporation’s one intervention into the precarity of Jewish life
drew on such a mercurial narrative.
Bibliography
Bergfelder, Tim, and Christian Cargnelli, eds. 2012. Destination London:
German-Speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1925–1950. New York:
Berghahn Books.
Bial, Henry. 2005. Acting Jewish: Negotiating Ethnicity on the American Stage
and Screen. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Carr, Richard. 1937. “Peoples Pictures and Peoples Palaces”. World Film News 1
(10) (January): 8–9.
Cooper Merian C., and Ernest B. Schoedsack, dirs. 1993. King Kong. USA:
RKO Radio Pictures. 35MM.
Dean, Basil, dir. 1933. Loyalties. UK: Associated Talking Pictures (ATP). 35MM.
DeMille, Cecil B., dir. 1927. The King of Kings. USA: DeMille Pictures
Corporation. 35MM.
Du Bois, W. E. B. 1903. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A.
G. McClurg. Reprint London: Penguin Books, 1996.
Elvey, Maurice, dir. 1933. The Wandering Jew. UK: Julius Hagen Productions.
35MM.
Erens, Patricia. 1984. The Jew in American Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Eyles, Allan, and Keith Skone. 1992. London’s West End Cinemas. Sutton:
Keytone Publications.
Gabler, Neil. 1988. An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood.
New York: Crown Publishers.
Gough-Yates, Kevin. 1992. “Jews and Exiles in British Cinema”. The Leo Baeck
Institute Year Book 37 (1): 517–41.
Hansen, Miriam. 1995. “America, Paris, the Alps: Kracauer (and Benjamin) on
Cinema and Modernity.” In Cinema and the Invention of Modern Life, edited
by Leo Charney and Vanessa R. Schwartz. Berkeley: University of California
Press.
Harlan, Veit, dir. 1940. Jud Süß. Chicago, IL: International Historic Films,
2008. DVD.
Hebdige, Dick. 1988. Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things. London and
New York: Routledge.
Herman, Felicia. 2001. “Hollywood, Nazism, and the Jews, 1933–41”.
American Jewish History 89 (1): 61–89.
174 G. TOFFELL
Kipling, Rudyard. 1932. Limits and Renewals. London: Macmillan & Co.
Kracauer, Siegfried. 1995. The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays. Translated by
Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Kuhn, Annette. 2002. An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory.
London: I.B. Tauris.
Low, Rachael. 1985. The History of British Film 1929–1939: Film Making in
1930s Britain. London: Allen and Unwin.
35MM. Accessed via BFI National Archive YouTube Channel: https://www.
Ohad-Karny, Yael. 2005. “‘Anticipating’ Gibson’s the Passion of the Christ: The
Controversy Over Cecil B. De Mille’s The King of Kings.” Jewish History 19
(2): 189–210.
Prawer, S. S. 2005. Between Two Worlds: The Jewish Presence in German and
Austrian Film, 1910–1933. New York: Berghahn Books.
Richards, Jeffrey. 1984. The Age of the Dream Palace: Cinema and Society in
1930s Britain. London: Routlege & Kegan Paul.
in the British Film Industry”. Journal of European Popular Culture 3 (2):
117–29.
Tegel, Susan. 1995. “The Politics of Censorship: Britain’s ‘Jew Süss’ (1934)
in London, New York and Vienna.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television 15 (2): 219–44.
Walsh, Raoul, dir. 1931. The Yellow Ticket. USA: Fox Film Corporation. 35MM.
Artists. 35MM.
Williams, Raymond. (1961) 2001. The Long Revolution. London: Chatto and
Windus. Reprint Peterborough, ON: Broadview.
Archive
BBFC Scenario Report for A German Tragedy, May 10, 1933. British Board of
Film Censors Collection Fonds—BBFC, Scenario Reports 1933 File—BBFC-
1-2 1933, British Film Institute, London.
Troxy Souvenir Brochure. 1933. Catalogue Reference 794.1. Tower Hamlets
Local History Library, London.
CHAPTER 6
Jewish Defence
On September 26, 1936, a small group of Mosleyite fascists decided

to spend an evening distributing propaganda and parading outside the
Troxy cinema in the heart of London’s East End. Upon leaving the the-
atre patrons were greeted with cries of “Read the Blackshirt. The only
British paper not financed by Jews”. As the Jewish Chronicle asserted,
this “was an act of undoubted and deliberate provocation”. The East
End was the centre of Jewish life in London, and as the paper con-
tinued, “it is well known that Jews compose a large proportion of the
Saturday night audience at the Troxy”. While “loud shouts against the
Blackshirts” are recorded, a large police presence apparently ensured no
more than a few scuffles broke out. Indeed, more than one bystander
is reported to have commented “It’s lucky the police are here to pro-
tect them, or else those Blackshirts would receive such a lesson that they
wouldn’t come again” (“Fascist Provocation in Commercial Road”, JC,
October 2, 1936: 4). A mere eight days later the area would explode
into violence at the famous “Battle of Cable Street”.
Revealed in this historical vignette is the profound cultural central-
ity of the cinema in 1930s Britain. The BUF men did not conduct their
antisemitic jolly at a public transport intersection or adjacent to a place
of worship; instead they chose the neighbourhood’s premier “picture
palace”. It is thus something of a bitter irony that this same site could
never fully transform into a base from which anti-fascist action might
take place. From the period 1933 to 1939 the sensitivities of the British
censor and the squeamishness of Hollywood conspired to ensure the

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_6
176 G. TOFFELL
most significant mass communications medium of the era—the cinema—

would remain remarkably free of denunciations of fascism. That said,
the same spirit of popular confrontation that animated Jewish defence in
the East End was felt by many Jews across the globe—including those
involved in the film industry. Recognising the “propaganda” potential of
film a few savvy individuals were able to navigate their way around the
dead ends of Britain’s censorship maze, and occasionally some film with a
critical take on Hitler’s regime slipped into the public gaze.
As we saw in Chapter 5, a few major films with scripts covertly critical
of Nazism evaded the censors’ radar, the most prominent being The House
of Rothschild (Werker 1934) and Jew Suss (Mendes 1934). These did not,
however, comprise the full extent of cinematic material positioned as rev-
elatory of German antisemitism. Situated as conceptually distinct from
narrative feature productions was documentary imagery produced for
inclusion in newsreels and other factual film. Although the newsreel was
still understood to be a supplement to print-based forms of news media
well into the interwar period, the footage of real-world events presented
within it was conceived as epistemologically distinct to the fictional con-
trivances of film studios. As such, any circulation of actuality film demon-
strative of the menace posed by National Socialism was eagerly discussed
and publicised by the British-Jewish press. Amongst the most striking use
of such material was in George Roland’s (1933) The Eternal Wanderer.1
Now virtually forgotten, this extraordinary production was the first narra-
tive film anywhere in the world—and the only Yiddish language feature—
to launch an unambiguous attack on the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Film as Response to Nazism

Following the Nazi assumption of power in 1933 Jewish organisations
throughout the world quickly sought to respond to events in Germany.
The Jewish press issued regular reports on antisemitic movements, and
the rise of National Socialism had long been followed. The name “Adolf
Hitler” was familiar to readers of the Jewish Chronicle since the failed
1 The Eternal Wanderer was the title chosen for the UK distribution of the film; its orig-
inal US title was The Wandering Jew (in Yiddish: Der Vanderer Yid). Presumably the name
was changed to ensure it was not confused with The Wandering Jew directed by Maurice
Elvey in 1933. The film was also exhibited in the USA under the titles: Abraham Our
Patriarch, Jews in Exile, Nazi Terror, The Jew in Germany.
6 JEWISH DEFENCE 177
“beer hall putsch” a decade earlier, and many British Jews were alert to
the peril he posed to their co-religionists. In the USA Rabbi Stephen
Wise and his American Jewish Congress had been quick to mobilise,
organising a range of protests and enacting a boycott of German prod-
ucts. Mirroring this strategy British Jews gathered in mass meetings and
refused to buy anything carrying the label “Made in Germany”. Since
the films of Ufa were a significant and high profile export much was
made of the need to purge British cinema screens of them. In a pub-
licity notice placed in the Jewish Chronicle by the “World Alliance for
Combating Anti-Semitism”, for example, specific emphasis was placed on
the need to “Boycott German Films” (see April 28, 1933: 25).
Film was also brought into protest activities in an active sense, and an
early example of the utilisation of cinema to supplement public protest
can be seen in the creation of a “film record” (see JC, July 21, 1933: 10)
of a march of 50,000 on Hyde Park. Taking place in the symbolic heart
of the nation in central London, this demonstration formed a key activ-
ity during a day of anti-Nazi protest on July 20, 1933. An advertising
notice in the Jewish Chronicle carried the information that the film was
to be screened at the Plaza Theatre near to Piccadilly Circus a few days
following the real-world events (see ibid.). Visibility politics taking place
in the material location of the street could thus receive an extended life
and even greater prominence when transferred to the virtual space of the
cinema screen.
As Kushner (1994) has explained, in 1930s Britain a commonly artic-
ulated slur against Jews was they could be found constantly complain-
ing about some perceived slight, as well as seeking special treatment not
extended to the social plurality. While Kushner argues that it would be
mistaken to assert the existence of some all encompassing antisemitism poi-
soning English life during the period, it would not be an overstatement to
posit that Jewish anxieties about the rise of National Socialism in Germany
and the persecution of Jews because of it were frequently dismissed as
“atrocity propaganda” (see 41–42). From government reports to the pages
of the popular press such notions were in wide circulation. In this social
context it was virtually impossible for Jewish writers or campaigners not to
have the veracity of their claims—about, say, concentration camps—ques-
tioned by some commentators simply because of the ethnically marked
status of the speaker. For the Jewish press any public discourse that high-
lighted the plight of Europe’s Jews and could remain untainted by cultural
particularity was thus understood to be valuable currency.
178 G. TOFFELL
During the early 1930s the Jewish press began to take an interest in
a specific category of newsreel story and documentary film. Although
a narratorial tone of political impartiality was strictly adhered to, the
British newsreels traced the rise of Nazism in Germany throughout the
decade. British Movietone News, for instance, provided regular pieces
including items on the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the Riechstag fire
show trials and the Nuremburg rallies. Particularly notable was a report
on the boycott of Jewish businesses staged during the first months of
National Socialist administration in 1933. Eager to pick up on the story
an article in the Jewish Chronicle pointed out the reel was a “special edi-
tion”, and detailed scenes from the piece. In addition to remarking on
shots of “Nazi Storm Troops” displaying “offensive notices” and paint-
ing “inciting symbols on shop windows”, the newspaper highlighted
imagery of “lorry loads of gangsters in Nazi uniforms careering through
the streets shouting anti-Semitic calls and lampoons in raucously repug-
nant tones” (“News Pictures of German Boycott”, April 14, 1933: 31).
For the Jewish press the appeal of the newsreels was located not only
in their potential to galvanise some sort of action on the behalf of the
Jews of Germany, but also in their capacity to promote the fight against
antisemitic feeling within Britain. Reviewing British Movietone News’
reel depicting the boycott of Jewish shops, the Jewish Chronicle noted
how the “vivid scenes” were offensive to “the English mind with its
instinctive belief in fair play”. Responding to these images, the London
audience (at the Rialto News Theatre in Coventry Street) was described
as “evidently deeply moved by the picture” and provoked into shouting
“cries of ‘Shame!’” (ibid.). Such a response was naturally encouraging to
the Jewish Chronicle, not least because the medium responsible for insti-
gating such a reaction, the newsreel, was profoundly implicated in con-
structing the national consciousness.
Receiving especially favourable commentary in Jewish newspapers
were those editions of the American March of Time films that contained
some denunciation of Hitler and the malignant influence of Nazism.
Although adhering to many of the same criteria as the established British
newsreels—producing a story of topical relevance to a regular and pre-
dictable schedule—the March of Time films differed in format inso-
much as episodes would appear monthly rather than weekly. In contrast
to British Movietone News and the other UK produced reels, the March
of Time was regarded as being less objective in analysis as well as more
willing to confront controversial issues. Of the various March of Time
releases to examine the plight of the Jews under the Nazis, the edi-
tions Inside Nazi Germany: 1938 (1938) and The Refugee—Today and
Tomorrow (1938) have come to be seen as the most historically signifi-
cant (Fielding 1978). Certainly it is the case that these two episodes gen-
erated the largest quantity of discourse in the British-Jewish press.
Reflecting the significance of the subject matter Inside Nazi Germany:
1938 was the first March of Time production to explore a single topic
during its fifteen-minute duration rather than cover multiple events.
Framed as a revelatory expose of the Nazi regime’s expansionist ambi-
tions and totalitarian policies the film includes scenes explicitly examining
the treatment of Germany’s Jews, using footage of public signage and
racially designated park benches enforcing the special segregation of Jews
and non-Jews in German towns. Premiering in London in May 1938
the film was warmly received by the Jewish Times where it was reported
that “about one hundred members” of the Jewish Board of Deputies had
been asked “by special invitation of the proprietors of the Cameo News
Theatre, Charing Cross Road” (“An Anti-Nazi Film”, May 19, 1938: 4)
to a screening. Listing the most prominent of the attendees (“…Barnett
Janner, ex-MP; …Lady Spielman; John Diamond, Chairman of the
Parliamentary Committee…”) it was noted that “the visitors were greatly
impressed with the film”. Significantly, this article was placed in the privi-
leged position of publication’s “English Section”. Clearly it was desirable
that news of “anti-Nazi” publicity that “should be good propaganda” be
spread to as diverse an audience as possible and not just to Yiddish speak-
ers. Indeed, it was asserted “it is a film everyone should see” and that
“nothing but good can come as a result of its widest possible showing”
(ibid.).
Distributed in Britain in early 1939 the narrative of The Refugee—
Today and Tomorrow begins in China and then shifts to Spain with armed
conflict identified as driving the mass displacement of peoples, before
a “new” category of refugee, specific to Northern Europe, is exam-
ined. Seeking to escape the repressive policies of the Nazi regime a host
of marginalised social groups are shown searching for asylum beyond
Germany’s borders, with Jews particularly prominent. For the Jewish
Chronicle The Refugee—Today and Tomorrow was regarded a more suc-
cessful, unsparing depiction of the suffering being wrought on European
Jewry than Inside Nazi Germany: 1938, and two extended articles
reviewing this later film were published in its pages. Unsurprisingly it was
those sequences of Jewish privation that were singled out for extended
180 G. TOFFELL
comment, with references made to “shots of ordinary decent people

being driven from their homes by Nazi bullies” (“The Refugee – Today
and Tomorrow”, January 13, 1939: 55). It was also noted the title had
“been shown recently in the United states, where it…[had]…created a
profound impression” (“The Refugees”, January 6, 1939: 44). Such an
impression, it was hoped, might effect action in the “hard publics” of
legislative bodies, and these films were touted as being able to “power-
fully assist in arousing the conscience of the democratic world on behalf
of those most wretched and pitiable human beings – the refugees” (“The
Refugee – Today and Tomorrow”, January 13, 1939: 55).
Amid this enthusiasm for a visibility of anti-Nazi discourse in the
public sphere, occasional reservations were voiced about the covering
of National Socialist policy in news films. A topic of regular consterna-
tion for the left in Britain during the interwar years was the newsreels’
unswerving presentation of national narratives within the terms of con-
sensus. A purging of controversy in news stories was, in fact, deliberate
policy for all the reels. As Nicholas Pronay (2002) points out, “the five
newsreel editors met regularly to decide on their policies concerning
‘touchy’ subjects” (148). Inevitably they resolved to emphasise order
and deliver only what they regarded as the objective facts of an event.
It should be remembered that self-censorship by the newsreels was a
response to the widespread notion during the 1930s of the power of cin-
ematic technologies to influence behaviour. The British Board of Film
Censors operated in a manner that would now be perceived as hysterical,
imposing bans for numerous minor transgressions. As a news source the
reels were not officially subject to the same standards of censorship as fic-
tional releases. However, the reality of this apparently charmed status was
the screech of a “shrill chorus demanding censorship” every time an item
took a “small step away from the principle of ‘nothing which the average
man will not like’” (ibid.: 151).
For the Jewish Chronicle one area of dissatisfaction with the news-
reels’ coverage of events in Europe was the possibility the politically
naïve might not comprehend the full implication of the on-screen events.
While the “innate” sense of “fair play” of the “English mind” had, for
the paper, been productive of catcalls when the thuggish actions of uni-
formed Sturmabteilung were presented in British Movietone’s 1933 reel,
the non-Jewish audience apparently “hardly grasped the real significance
of Nazi brutality” (“News Pictures of German Boycott”, April 14, 1933:
31). The German regime required a more severe indictment than the
news film—with its inclination towards objectivity—could offer. Further,

in contrast to the Jewish Times’ admiration of Inside Nazi Germany:
1938, the Jewish Chronicle was less convinced of its capacities to convey
the malevolence of fascist politics. Although it was acknowledged the
title’s spoken commentary was censorious of German policy, “the actual
film” was felt to cast “a haze of glorification over the present regime with
its labour camps…(and)…regimentation” (“Nazi Germany, 1938”, May
13, 1938: 60). Paradoxically, then, while the newsreels’ reputation for
neutrality enabled an effective circulation of “Jewish” concerns in a gen-
eralised public sphere, this same lack of bias foreclosed the possibility of a
truly forceful attack.
The Eternal Wanderer

The only film during the interwar period that clearly identified the cen-
trality of antisemitism to National Socialism and could claim an enhanced
objectivity through the use of actuality imagery was the Yiddish language
The Eternal Wanderer. Produced in America in 1933 this explicit denun-
ciation of Germany under Hitler tells the story of Arthur Levi, a Jewish
artist and professor at the Berlin Academy of Art. In commemoration
of the institution’s fiftieth anniversary Levi has produced a painting of
a Jewish patriarch, modelled after his deceased father, entitled “The
Wandering Jew”. This references both the legend of the “Wandering
Jew” and the then current status of the Jews as a people without home-
land. However, although a loyal German with a distinguished war record
the artist receives a rapid political education when, successively, his work
is rejected by the Academy, he witnesses an antisemitic street rally, and
his gentile fiancée abandons him. Levi’s disillusionment with the new
regime complete he resolves to destroy his picture. At the moment of
plunging a knife into the canvas, though, the painting’s subject is ani-
mated by the spirit of Levi’s father who steps from the picture before
going on to offer a panoramic history of the persecution of the Jews that
takes in the Babylonian seizure of Jerusalem, mediaeval Crusades, the
Spanish Inquisition and Tsarist pogroms. Concluding that in moments
of strife a saviour comes to the aid of the Jews, Theodore Herzl is com-
pared to Moses and the film ends with the development of a Jewish state
offered as a resolution to their plight.
A curious piece The Eternal Wanderer features an assortment of already
extant visual material, as well as a series of digressive episodes. When
182 G. TOFFELL
Arthur Levi’s father recounts persecutions suffered in Jewish history the

on-screen imagery is culled from a variety of silent epics and travelogues.
Also shown is early footage of nation building in Palestine. Further,
towards the end of the film an unusual fantasy sequence unfolds. This
sees the protagonist dressed in “biblical” garb as optical effects and
matte work situate him in a strange omnitopic landscape. Despite this
disjointed and otherworldly quality the film held an ace card: documen-
tary footage of Nazi rallies and rituals of racial purging had been made
available to the filmmakers from a private source. Integrating this mate-
rial into the film’s narrative proved a powerful technique. In contrast to
bogus interior sets and awkward camera movement, the scenes depicting
public burnings of “Jewish” literature at mass rallies stand out as starkly
visually compelling.2
Some of the film’s oddness may, perhaps, be attributed to its rapid
production schedule. Desiring to create an immediate response to
fast-developing events across the Atlantic producer Herman Ross formed
the production company Jewish American Film Arts in July of 1933.
Gathering together a crew of creative staff and technicians their debut
project would be The Eternal Wanderer. With experience in recycling
old silent films as Yiddish talkies George Roland was hired as director.
Jacob Mestel provided the screenplay and the one-time star of Maurice
Schwartz’s Art Theatre, Jacob Ben-Ami, would perform the lead as
Arthur Levi. Filming soon took place at the Atlas studio on Long Island
and the picture was screening in New York by late October. The film’s
release was not without problems, however. While the New York State
Motion Picture Board granted the film a licence for exhibition some jit-
ters were felt over the use of English subtitles. Potentially opening the
film up to consumption by non-Jewish audiences the Board feared the
film “might create a good deal of friction and trouble, and possibly vio-
lence” (quoted in Hoberman 1991: 197). As such, the film could only
be shown on the proviso that any disturbance provoked by its screening
might result in a withdrawal of the titled print.
In England the distribution of the film provoked similar anxieties.
In contrast to the US institutional response, however, this resulted in
an outright ban. First submitted to the British Board of Film Censors
2 On May 10, 1933 nationalist students at universities across Germany engaged in a coor-
dinated series of public burnings of “un-German” literature. The largest of these gatherings
took place in Berlin, attracting approximately 40,000 people.
(BBFC) by one Mr. J. Pearson on March 9, 1934, it was assessed by

the organisation’s president—Edward Shortt—who issued it with a
total rejection certificate on March 16. A letter from the BBFC to the
London County Council (LCC) dated November 14, 1934, reveals
that “exception was taken to the film on the ground that its propagan-
dist nature rendered it unsuitable for exhibition in this country” (GLC/
DG/EL/01/250, LMA). Also in the letter was the information that
the submitting party—Mr. Pearson—“had been associated with the
American film trade for about six years and had come to the country
with the express purpose of exploiting the film referred to”. For some
reason it was added that Mr. Pearson was “found…[to be] a Parsee”
(ibid.). Accepting defeat Pearson seems to have sold or passed on the
distribution rights to the Marble Arch-based Dan Fish, a man the Jewish
Chronicle referred to as a “well known person in the film distributing
business in London” (“The Eternal Wanderer”, February 22, 1935: 43).
Believing the film to be something other than a hopeless cause Fish
appealed to the London County Council for a review of the ban in a let-
ter dated October 29, 1934, arguing that the “picture possesses exhibition
value only to the limited cinemas that cater for Jewish audiences” (GLC/
DG/EL/01/250). After some confusion locating the original documen-
tation pertaining to the film’s rejection by the BBFC arrangements were
finalised between Fish and the viewing committee at the LCC to see the
film at a private theatre of the Western Electrical Company in Bush House,
Aldwych on November 23, 1934. The viewing committee seem to have
gone about their task with some seriousness, communicating with Fish
that no press were to be invited to the showing and that only those issued
with special passes would be admitted. In an LCC memo dated November
21 the procedure for assessing the film was outlined. In addition to LCC
members attending the screening there would also be representatives from
the neighbouring regional municipal authorities of Middlesex County
Council and Surrey County Council. During the screening no member
was to intimate whether they felt disposed to uphold the censor’s wishes,
and after the film was exhibited a “general discussion” (GLC/DG/
EL/01/250) was to take place between the different groups. Each council
would then return to their respective district and deliberate on whether a
recommendation for certification be granted.
Duly, the screening did go ahead, with the film being passed by the
Chairman of the screening committee Hubert L Foden-Pattison. In the
official report dated November 23, 1934, he commented:
184 G. TOFFELL
“the film is a dignified and passionate protest against the persecution of the
Jews in Nazi Germany”, and the committee was “of the opinion that the
film, which will appeal primarily to Jewish audiences, is not likely, although
admittedly “propaganda”, to be injurious to morality or to be offensive to
public feeling in England”. (GLC/DG/EL/01/250)
This allowed for the film to be shown in any cinema in the twenty-nine
boroughs of the County of London area. However, voices in favour of
upholding the ban were raised. Specific boroughs covered by Surrey
County Council continued to refuse permission to exhibit the film. And
opinion within the LCC could not have been said to have been homog-
enous. In a letter written on the day of the screening, J. A. Gillison, a
Labour Party member of the Council, wrote to the committee stating
he felt it “wise to refuse sanction”. An assortment of reasons were given
including a belief that “the film gives expression to our innate sadism
(love of maltreating others) and equally to our masochism (love of being
maltreated and humiliated)” (GLC/DG/EL/01/250). Apparently
the senior committee members were not enthusiastic readers of Krafft-
Ebing, and the film was showing in central London at the Forum
Cinema on March 17, 1935.
Situated beneath Charing Cross Railway Station the Forum was well
known for offering cinematic curiosities, and The Eternal Wanderer
exhibited both in venues associated with the distribution of for-
eign films and in cinemas catering explicitly to Jewish audiences.
Following a two-week premiere in the city centre the film transferred
to the East End, appearing for one week at the Mile End Empire. In
addition to the main attraction of the film the performer Leo Fuld
appeared on the stage “singing Jewish melodies” (see Advertisement,
JC, March 29, 1935: 5) as part of the program. From London the
print travelled north to Manchester, where it screened at the city
centre GaietyTheatre during the week beginning Monday 8 April.
Returning briefly to the capital the film’s final 1935 screening in
London appears to have taken place on Sunday 14 April at Woburn
House in Bloomsbury (then home to various Jewish communal organ-
isations including the Board of Deputies of British Jews). Part of a spe-
cial event organised by the Federation of Synagogues and the Jewish
National Fund it was shown alongside a Zionist propaganda film with
the title Eretz Israel.
There is some suggestion the film may also have been screened in
Leeds around this time. Certainly it is the case that the Leeds Chief
Constables Office contacted the LCC in a letter dated March 2, 1935,
requesting information on any conditions that been placed on the exhi-
bition of the film in London (GLC/DG/EL/01/25); and Leeds Watch
Committee minutes do reveal an unnamed uncertificated film passed for
exhibition soon after this date (LLC 5/1/24/). The Yorkshire Evening
News also reports witnessing a private view of the film in early March
of the same year (“In Yiddish”, March 2, 1935: 3), but it is unclear
whether a release was achieved at this time since none of the regional
newspapers carry an advertisement for the title during this period. By
the mid-summer, however, the film was showing in Scotland, screen-
ing first at the La Scala Cinema in central Glasgow, and then at the La
Scala Cinema in Edinburgh’s Old Town, the Jewish Chronicle reporting
it being scheduled to appear at the venue during the week beginning
August 5, 1935 (“General Releases”, August 2, 1935: 30).
In 1938, with conditions for German Jews worsening further, The
Eternal Wanderer received a second release exhibiting around the coun-
try in a series of one-night fundraising presentations. With the permis-
sion of Leeds Watch Committee the Forum Cinema in the Chapeltown
neighbourhood gave the film a late night performance on Saturday
23 July. A day later in London the Phoenix Cinema in Charing Cross
Road hosted a “special showing” (see Advertisement, JC, July 22, 1938:
56) of two screenings. The final prewar screening in the UK seems to
have been in Liverpool. Shown at the Central Hall in Renshaw Street
on Thursday September 15, the event was organised as a charity per-
formance by the Zionist Society, with receipts going to the Women’s
Welfare Fund (“Forthcoming Events”, JC, September 9, 1938: 12).
Further screenings of the film were attempted, but even this late into
the decade the film was considered controversial and municipal author-
ities refused exhibition requests. Quoting the trade publication the
Daily Film Renter, the Jewish Chronicle noted that the Smethwick Watch
Committee had recently branded The Eternal Wanderer “racial propa-
ganda” (“The Eternal Wanderer Banned”, JC, September 30, 1938: 42)
and would not permit its exhibition. In the same article the newspaper
reminded readers that Smethwick was the fascist leader Oswald Mosley’s
constituency in the days when he represented Labour in the House of
Commons.
186 G. TOFFELL
Film as a Political Statement

In part, it seems highly likely The Eternal Wanderer’s failure to imprint
itself on the collective memory of film history is a result of the piece’s
low production values. Many of the performances are stilted, sets look
artificial and camera movements are awkward. The technical shortcom-
ings of the film were not lost on contemporary reviewers, and some
stern criticism came from both the mainstream and British-Jewish press.
The Manchester Guardian—which covered the film in three articles—
considered “the cutting and sequences…technically poor” and felt the
piece as a whole “uneven” (“Nazi-Jew Film”, April 9, 1935: 13). The
film reviewer of the Jewish Chronicle responded in even harsher tones,
stating “the direction is poor, the cutting definitely bad, as is some of
the photography” (“The Eternal Wanderer”, February 22, 1935: 43).
Yet despite such reservations no reviewer perceived the film as valueless,
often readily asserting its virtues as transcending aesthetics. Indeed, for
the Jewish Chronicle it was a “really remarkable all-Jewish film” (ibid.).
In part this was due to the performance of Jacob Ben-Ami in the
lead as Arthur Levi. Applauded in reviews that accompanied both 1935
and 1938 releases the Jewish Chronicle announced “one cannot praise
too highly the acting of Jacob Ben-Ami”, and claimed he brought an
“extraordinary grace and a superb presence without any trace of effemi-
nacy” (ibid.) to the role. Given the prominence of the figure of the femi-
nised Jewish male in antisemitic discourse, this satisfaction in Ben- Ami’s
sensitive yet masculine quality seems oriented to an imagined gentile
consumption. In no way could it be anticipated that Levi’s embodied
self might risk alienating non-Jewish audience members by present-
ing as damagingly Other. In addition to his acting skill the same paper
regarded Ben- Ami’s facial features worthy of comment, noting him
“strangely like Paul Muni in appearance” (“The Eternal Wanderer”, July
29, 1938: 44), and remarking the two men had learnt their trade in the
same company (Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre) (“The Eternal
Wanderer”, July 22, 1938: 36). This comparison was also a feature of a
review in the non-Jewish Yorkshire Evening News, where it was suggested
“something of the certainty and understanding of that fine actor” (“In
Yiddish”, March 2, 1935: 3) was apparent in Ben-Ami, and hinted that
his career might go on to follow the path of his illustrious doppelganger.
Most central to the film’s significance, though, was its potential to
function as a public pronouncement, alerting the world to the disastrous
situation in Germany. The Jewish Times asserted it had “provoked a

powerful protest against the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany”
(“Today the Yiddish Talkie Film”, July 24, 1938: 3), while the Jewish
Chronicle understood the piece to be in some dialogic relation to an
imagined interlocutor, casting it as “Jewry’s answer not only to Hitler,
but to all the myriad persecutors who have tried to destroy a spirit that
has always proved greater and stronger than its enemies” (“The Eternal
Wanderer”, February 22, 1935: 43). This political pedigree was affirmed
by the original proscription imposed on the picture by the BBFC.
Wearing the ban as a badge of honour publicity material referred to
“the sensational Jewish film forbidden by the censor” that could only be
shown “with the permission of the LCC” (see JC, March 25, 1935: 3).
Conservative forces had recognised The Eternal Wanderer’s incendiary
potential and had attempted to suppress it, but good sense would ensure
the truth would out.
Crucial to the film’s status as a political object was the use of docu-
mentary footage in a scene depicting the ritualistic burning of “Jewish”
books in May of 1933 in Berlin. Structured around a shot-reverse-shot
editing pattern the spectator witnesses the horror of the event through
the protagonist’s eyes. Following an evening with his fiancée, Gertrude,
Levi is preparing to bid her goodnight on the doorstep of her home.
Upon noticing some nearby disturbance the sequence begins with an
image of Levi’s disbelieving face as he catches sight of the spectacle tak-
ing place on the Berlin streets. There is then a reverse to his point of
view: a long shot. On the right of shot a huge fire is blazing, on the
left figures can be seen throwing books into it. With flames reflected in
his face Levi moves closer to obtain a better look. Again a reverse to his
point of view: a medium-long shot. Now individuals can be seen dump-
ing armfuls of books onto the fire. Cut back to Levi and then to a series
of shots of the event. Numerous bonfires are visible, in one shot the
vastness of the crowd can be seen, in another flaming torches are car-
ried around in a procession, a further shot sees books cascade from all
angles on the blaze. Stunned, Levi returns to his apartment propheti-
cally declaiming “German youths feeding their souls to the flames – what
darkness will result?”.
For the Jewish Chronicle this was a remarkable sequence, and reviews
included explicit commentary on the provenance of the documentary footage
present in the film. It is interesting to note, however, that this information
differed with the releases of the film in 1935 and 1938. When the film was
188 G. TOFFELL
distributed in 1935 shots of the book burning were said to have been
“smuggled out of Germany, having been originally intended for a Nazi
“epic” of the revolution which was never completed” (“The Eternal
Wanderer”, February 22, 1935: 43). When the film was screened later
in the decade, though, it was reported “These photographs, which
were taken by a member of the Vanderbilt family, were smuggled out of
Germany by him when he was ordered by the authorities to leave” (“The
Eternal Wanderer”, JC, July 22 1938: 56). While there is no reason to
think substantially different cuts were released in 1935 and 1938 the
reception of this footage can be understood as historically contingent.
Audience knowledge of what they were witnessing was subject to the
explanatory discourse of the press—during the earlier release imagery pro-
duced by Nazis in the service of the regime was on the screen, a little later
one was looking at the results of a daring and covert evidence gathering
operation.
Since the film contains a large variety of actuality imagery determining
the provenance of each shot is not straightforward. It is the case that
following a trip to Europe in 1933 the journalist and newspaper pub-
lisher Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr. produced an anti-Nazi propaganda film
entitled Hitler’s Reign of Terror (Mindlin 1934) that utilised a range of
newsreel and documentary material (including footage of books hurled
onto large fires). According to a contemporary Time magazine review at
least some of the actuality images were “pictures his cameramen took in
Germany and Austria” (“Cinema: The New Pictures”, May 7, 1934: 19).
That said, many of the images of The Eternal Wanderer’s book burning
sequence can also be seen in The Nazi Plan (Stevens 1945). This was
a documentary compiled by the US military for use as evidence at the
International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on December 11, 1945.
For this the makers strictly used only German source material, suggest-
ing the earlier 1935 account offered by the Jewish Chronicle is the more
accurate narrative with specific reference to imagery depicting the public
destruction of books.
It is also interesting to note that book burning footage had previ-
ously been shown on British cinema screens two years earlier in 1933
editions of British Paramount News and British Movietone News news-
reels. Significantly, however, the British Paramount sequence was titled
“Kultur Cleans Up” (issue number 231) and the event was not pre-
sented as raucous or explicitly antisemitic, while British Movietone
News’ December review of 1933 (issue number 238A) included merely
a few seconds of material sandwiched between Everton Football Club’s

triumph in the F. A. Cup and footage of the champion race horse
Hyperion (see Hollern Szczetnikowicz 2006). Given, then, that Hitler’s
Reign of Terror was not distributed in Britain and received no discussion
in the major Anglo-Jewish news media, and that the newsreels framed
the event in political rather than racial terms these images were first
encountered by British-Jewish audiences as a specifically antisemitic act
in The Eternal Wanderer. Perhaps unsurprisingly, although this sequence
was referenced in the mainstream British press—both the Manchester
Guardian and Daily Herald noted its presence as significant—it was in
the British-Jewish press that it was most enthusiastically seized upon.
According to the Jewish Times “The scenes of the books by Jewish and
radical writers being burnt…[made]…a tremendous impact on all the
viewers” (“The Eternal Wanderer”, March 25, 1935: 4). For the Jewish
Chronicle it was the film’s “highlight…an astounding piece of cine-
matography, completely real and yet completely ‘of the cinema’” (“The
Eternal Wanderer”, February 22, 1935: 43).
Alighting for a moment on this construction offered by the Jewish
Chronicle, the designation of the book burning material as simultane-
ously authentic yet wholly cinematic is highly significant. As we saw in
the previous chapter the notion that the film industry was in the com-
mand of Jews was in wide circulation during the period. Across the polit-
ical spectrum commentators described cinema as marked by ethnicity in
excess of the nature of its textual content. Paradoxically, then, what was
referred to, in the idiom of the era, as “pro-Jewish screen propaganda”
could only be successful in soliciting a sympathetic gentile audience if
a Jewish agency was demonstrably absent from the production process.
For individualistic liberalism a precondition for the legitimacy of public
discourse is that it be universalist in orientation: credibility of argument
resides in disinterest. It is in such a context that the value of documen-
tary material should be understood. To make the ontological claim of
the footage of book burning as “completely real” was to assert the neu-
trality of the sequence. It was the record of an objective eye, a machinic
process incapable of partisan agitation. By simply being for itself the
imagery removed a specifically Jewish agency behind the scene—no one
could reject actuality footage of burning books as a tendentious contriv-
ance deployed to further particularised interests.
In addition to lauding the scene as “completely real” the Jewish
Chronicle also praised its visual drama, considering it “completely of
190 G. TOFFELL
the cinema” (ibid.). This too might be understood in reference to

the film’s effective circulation beyond an enclaved Jewish audience.
Historically, notes Nancy Fraser (1992), dominant public spheres
“privilege the expressive norms of one cultural group over others and
thereby make discursive assimilation a condition for participation in
public debate” (126). Speaking with those in hegemonic ascendancy
thus requires an adoption of their communicative forms. To affirm the
book burning material “completely of the cinema” was to declare its
status as idiomatically identical to an established standard of film aes-
thetics. For Miriam Hansen (1991) the shooting and editing meth-
ods of narrative film developed as a technique to solicit a universal
spectator within a new mass market. Key to the institution becoming
a “democratic” art was its ability to appeal to individuals irrespective
of their class profile. As such, for material to be “completely of the
cinema” was to point out that the film was speaking in a language
understandable by all. It was a mode of communication of unlimited
accessibility.
Public or Private?
While the Jewish press undoubtedly desired The Eternal Wanderer to
be viewed by as wide an audience as possible, gauging its actual pene-
tration into a gentile public consciousness is a challenging and uncer-
tain business. In the discourse surrounding the British exhibition of the
film a tension in its status as a public artefact is discernible. On the one
hand both the official censor in the guise of the BBFC and the Jewish
press made much of the film’s potential to effect the realm of the social
in some way. On the other, the film’s distributor, and the majority view
within the municipal body of the LCC understood the appeal of the pic-
ture as strictly limited in its reach, and thus public in a manner wholly
different to that imagined by those agents who believed the title con-
tained a capacity to stir controversy. This contradictory frame—between
propaganda and invisibility, accessibility and bafflement, publicness and
non-publicness—is not straightforwardly resolvable. To evaluate the
binary we must examine how both sets of claims were articulated.
It is clear The Eternal Wanderer did achieve some mainstream visibil-
ity, with the widely read Yorkshire Evening News, Manchester Guardian
and the Daily Herald all covering the film’s initial release. Of these
established British newspapers the Manchester Guardian offered the
most coverage discussing the film in three separate articles; though P.

L. Mannock’s short piece in the Daily Herald was, perhaps, the most
politicised, noting the Censor’s ban but asserting “I am glad this trench-
ant picture is soon available” (“Despite the Censor”, March 18, 1935:
14). Additionally, the film was exhibited in city centre picture houses in
London, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Spatially associated with
the accessibility of mass consumption these cosmopolitan sites marketed
cinematic events to an audience undifferentiated by ethnicity. Even when
the film was exhibited at a cinema situated in a Jewish neighbourhood an
awareness of its message was not necessarily restricted to the boundaries
of a Jewish cultural realm. Coinciding with his charity fundraising trip to
Leeds actor Eddie Cantor was reported advising people see the film at its
upcoming screening at the Forum Cinema in the Chapeltown district—
then the epicentre of Jewish settlement in the city (see “The Eternal
Wanderer”, JC, July 29, 1938: 44).
The essential condition for participation in a public is attention. If
an individual engages with the discourse of a public they are included
in that public. How one responds to the discourse is a different matter,
but, argues Michael Warner (2002), “by coming into range you fulfil the
only entry condition demanded by a public” (61). While the goal of cen-
sorship is to render a proscribed object invisible it frequently produces
the opposite effect. With each attempt to restrict The Eternal Wanderer’s
exhibition more attention was drawn to it. Prior to the title exhibiting in
Britain, the story of censors at the BBFC and LCC finding themselves at
loggerheads was making its way around the country. In the Lincolnshire
Echo an article addressing the saga recounted not only the deliberations
of the municipal actors, but expanded upon the production’s narra-
tive and explained that while the spoken dialogue was in Yiddish subti-
tles were in place for English speakers (see “Censors Agree to Differ”,
December 22, 1934: 5). Later, when the title was rereleased in 1938 the
continued refusal of the Smethwick Watch Committee to grant an exhi-
bition licence was picked up by Daily Film Renter, ensuring less specialist
publications such as the Era would later report on it. As an object of
censorship the film acquired news interest; indisputably its “range” was
extended.
It can also be contended that to only accept discourse as legitimately
public if it is generated within a singular dominant public sphere is to
ignore a broader definition of what constitutes public behaviour. In
Chapter 1 we considered the potential for exhibition sites oriented to
192 G. TOFFELL
Jewish audiences to function as part of a Jewish counter-public sphere.

For Nancy Fraser, public discourse has always been marked by compe-
tition between multiple publics. From the emergence of the modern
public sphere in the seventeenth century “counter publics contested the
exclusionary norms of the bourgeois public, elaborating alternative styles
of political behaviour and alternative norms of public speech” (1992:
116). In articles and advertisements in the Jewish press The Eternal
Wanderer was presented as a site of collective Jewish expressivity. For
the Jewish Times the appearance of the film at the Phoenix Theatre in
1938 offered the opportunity for Jews to engage in a politicised attack
against their antagonists, and its readership was encouraged to “come,
everyone,…to show your protest against the Nazi atrocities” (“Today
the Yiddish Talkie Film”, July 24, 1938: 3).
Sadly, no record remains of the lived experience of cinema auditoria
during the two British release cycles of The Eternal Wanderer, though
some scraps of information relating to specific screenings do survive.
The Jewish Chronicle reports the title playing to a packed house when it
exhibited during July 1938 at the Forum Cinema in Leeds (“The Eternal
Wanderer”, July 29, 1938: 44). Billed to begin at 10:45 on a Saturday
evening, and with all profits going to a charitable fund for the relief of
Austrian Jewish children the event took place outside of the rhythms of
the venue’s established programming, as well as in contravention of the
logic of profit generation for commercial cinema. With every seat taken
and reportedly hundreds turned away at the doors, this midnight mati-
nee clearly exceeded any mundane and anonymous experience of a trip
to the pictures at the end of a working week. We might also want to
consider how the 1935 exhibition of The Eternal Wanderer at the Mile
End Empire—with its specific ethnic framing in the Jewish press and
the accompanying live rendition of “Jewish Melodies” by a Jewish per-
former—could be something other than an inward-looking culturally
enclaved entertainment.
Rather than isolated screenings of a commercial spectacle to be pas-
sively consumed by individual spectators, the exhibition of The Eternal
Wanderer at sites associated with Jewish film-going might instead be
understood as events connected to an already existing assemblage of
associative bodies—political, charitable, and cultural—that oriented
British Jews to the social world. Indeed, the film even appeared at
Woburn House, the symbolic home of institutionalised Jewish interests.
In a plurality of material and discursive spaces the collective interests of
Jews coalesced into common themes through deliberation and debate.

Additionally such spaces provided Jews with a self-image as a commu-
nal unit organised in a shared endeavour. While the political landscape
inhabited by British Jews could be a notoriously fractious environment,
an overwhelming majority could see the utility of broad-based campaigns
against the mounting Nazi threat. Even if The Eternal Wanderer failed
to achieve widespread visibility its circulation may still have rendered it a
public object. It was a site—amongst others—where consciousness could
be raised, knowledge produced, and where a Jewish collective could be
witnessed and experienced. Without the development of these processes
it would not be possible to issue any kind of demand for recognition in
the “hard public” of parliamentary government.
Within a subaltern counter-public communicative and expressive
forms emerge specific to that scene of interaction. Subordinated groups
define their needs and identities through the innovative creative work of
producing discourses sufficient to capture their lived experience, as well
as enacting novel modes of resistance to structural marginalisation. These
might include, but are not limited to, the development of ideas, slang,
discursive aesthetics, self-presentation and bodily hexis. The ethnic par-
ticularity of The Eternal Wanderer’s formal aspects (i.e. spoken Yiddish,
Yiddish theatrical stagecraft) was a part of a cultural style immediately
intelligible within the Jewish public sphere. However, it is the expres-
sive specificity of counter-publics that can see their political claims
regarded as outside the boundaries of public relevance. The bourgeois
public, in Habermas’s terms, functioned through a coming together of
persons on neutral ground. Social status was to be bracketed and partic-
ipants were required to utilise a rhetorical style regarded as universally
comprehensible.
While The Eternal Wanderer may have demonstrably circulated within
a Jewish counter-public, the clear desire of commentators in the Jewish
press was that it should be made available to a generalised British pub-
lic and consumed widely. That the film’s distribution and social impact
was significantly limited was not simply a result of an effective censorship
regime. As Eley (1992) points out, the normative culture of the emer-
gent bourgeois public sphere coincided with the historical development
of modes of subjectivity that defined what it was to inhabit the place of
the white bourgeois male. The habitus of this class, unevenly distributed
across European society, came to be the medium through which an indi-
vidual could address the arena of public opinion as a disinterested party
194 G. TOFFELL
seeking to enhance the common good. Those that were unable to assim-
ilate the protocols of speech and decorum appropriate for entry into
public life found themselves viewed as representative of private interests.
Styles of self-presentation change over time, but the principle that the
mark of the particular compromised the universal relevance of public
statements remained into the era in which The Eternal Wanderer could
be found appearing on British cinema screens.
With Yiddish as a basic unit of communication The Eternal Wanderer’s
alterity radiated from the screen. So pronounced was this difference even
some sources sympathetic to the plight of Germany’s Jews could not
help but view the narrative as guided by a partisan mentality. As a lead-
ing voice of the liberal-left the Manchester Guardian was both stridently
critical of fascist racial policy and had long maintained support for the
rights of world Jewry. Commentary on the film was provided on three
occasions, and although a largely warm response was offered in its main
review an earlier preview article listed one of the title’s failures as being
“top-heavy with propaganda” (“A Yiddish Film”, March 8, 1935: 2). In
spite of the Jewish press’s insistence on the unmediated veracity of the
book burning sequence in The Eternal Wanderer, the film could still be
undermined by perceptions of a tendentious appeal to special interests.
Exemplary of such a discourse was the dissenting voice of London
County Council member J. A. Gillison. Anxious at what he saw at the
Council’s closed screening, he set out his misgivings in a letter to the
viewing committee. For him, “revenge, plus a superb self-sufficiency”,
was the inspiration for a narrative “untrue in its lack of proportion and
bias” (GLC/DG/EL/01/250). A General Practitioner at the Quaker-
Socialist Dr Alfred Salter’s pioneering clinic in south-east London, John
Allan Gillison was elected in 1934 to join the LCC as a Labour mem-
ber for Rotherhithe. At one time an impassioned evangelical Christian,
his energies had become directed to an ardent socialism by the time he
entered public office. Later in the decade Gillison is reported to have
shown much concern for the plight of refugees from Nazi oppression
(see F. T. in BMJ, 1975: 770), but he did not, in the mid-1930s, at least,
believe The Eternal Wanderer should be permitted to circulate as part of
a campaign to solicit sympathy for any such cause.
For Gillison, the key issue was The Eternal Wanderer’s failure to depict
the “primary right of the Jews to equity and humane consideration
because they are brethren in the human family”. Instead, he claimed, the
title was informed by a spirit of “raucous racialism” that asserted “the
superiority of the Jews qua Jews” (GLC/DG/EL/01/250). Jews, he

claimed, were uniformly portrayed as victims, while gentiles were inev-
itably seen as the agents of intolerance. At no point was this grievance
actually substantiated with details of performances, scenes or lines of
dialogue, nor was it explained how Jews might be understood as any-
thing other than persecuted in representations of mediaeval massacres,
the Spanish Inquisition or the opening months of Nazi rule. In fact,
Levi’s gentile romantic interest, Gertrude, is portrayed sympathetically,
displaying horror at the unfolding events. Her ultimate abandonment
of her fiancé plays out less a suggestion of the impossibility of affection
between Jews and non-Jews, instead signalling the painful inability of
the individual to exist beyond the most rigorously enforced boundaries
of social taboo. Moreover, insomuch as the narrative espouses political
Zionism as formulated by Hertzl, the film can be read as an endorse-
ment of normalised relations between Jews and other nations. While sub-
sequently eventuating in its own oppressions this was an ideology that
explicitly articulated universalist aims, asserting that the common good
of humanity would be enhanced by the recuperation of world Jewry
from its diminished status in diaspora.
Given Gillison’s failure to present any clear data to support the charge
of unjustifiable bias, and his emphatic suggestion, again unsubstanti-
ated, that some form of Jewish supremacy marked the text, it appears
the factor determining the failure of the film to effectively argue from
the position of universality was simply its inability to abstract itself from
the voice of ethnic specificity. Adopting an unmarked discourse was not,
apparently, a difficulty for Gillison, and much effort was made on his
part to speak as the universal subject. In addition to the disclaimer “I
have a great respect for a number of Jews and am not conscious of any
antagonism towards them”, the “scientific” abstraction of a then vogu-
ish psychoanalytic discourse was mobilised with categories of “sadism”,
“masochism” and “inferiority” drawn on to unpick the irrational neuro-
ses and pathological drives apparently conjured into being by the film.
Indeed, so keen was he to transcend private interest that the possibility
“all my strictures on the film may rise from an inferiority in me” (ibid.)
was suggested.
Singularly misunderstanding the centrality of antisemitism to National
Socialism, Gillison saw the film as permeated by particularised point
scoring, arguing that the Nazis too were “suffering from humiliation”
and needed “their wounds healed” (ibid.). Such ideas were in wide
196 G. TOFFELL
circulation during the period, and as the situation worsened for Jews
with rising persecution in Nazi Germany the possibility that cinema
would have little effect on public opinion began to be voiced. Although
the Jewish Times continued to promote The Eternal Wanderer as a site
of protest in 1938, reviews in the Jewish Chronicle took on a differ-
ent tone with the later release. While the paper considered the film “as
topical now as it was then [1935]” (“The Eternal Wanderer”, July 22,
1938: 36) and “extraordinarily moving” (“The Eternal Wanderer”, July
29, 1938: 44) it was also “deeply depressing” (ibid.). Intersecting with
concerns over Jewish life in Germany were anxieties about events in
Mandatory Palestine. As the reviewer stated:
Whereas in 1935, the year of its first showing, shots of a new Palestine cast
a ray of hope over the German scene, today, even the sight of Chalutzim
working happily in the fields with not a ghaffir3 in sight - can only recall
the present terrible situation of affairs. “A leader will surely arise and save
the Jews; it has ever been so” is the message of the film. Meanwhile –
patience. (ibid.)
For the largely Zionist Jewish Chronicle the slow pace of bringing Jewish
statehood into being was affecting Jews over one thousand miles away
in Germany. A few months later this more pessimistic assessment of the
utility of film was reiterated. In an end of the (Jewish) year review of
1938’s films the newspaper referenced The Eternal Wanderer alongside
a handful of productions dubbed “Special Jewish Interest” (“Special
Jewish Interest”, September 23, 1938: 92). None of these films, it was
asserted “could be said to have made any contribution to the better
understanding of the Jew and his problems”.
This is not to argue that with The Eternal Wanderer’s 1938 release
came a truer or more realistic appraisal of its merits. Rather, for the
Jewish press its life as a public object could be understood around two
opposing poles that expressed its visibility (or lack of it), and thus utility,
as a political act. It was a fact that the content of the film—as the BBFC
feared it might—breached the boundaries of a Jewish cultural realm. At
the same time it should be noted that some reviews accompanying the
3 Member of the Jewish Settlement Police. Their role included providing protection
for Jewish villages and Kibbutzim during the Arab revolt of 1936–1939 in Mandatory
Palestine.
later screenings took on a tone of weary impotence, and no evidence

could be brought to suggest the film contributed to any challenge to the
British government’s policy of appeasement. There was thus no easy cat-
egory in which to place the film—it was both a public statement and an
enclaved piece of minority entertainment. At a given historical moment
it may have been possible to understand the piece as closer to one pole
than the other. However, both readings were available at any given
screening.
The Eternal Wanderer was not the final narrative fiction film endorsed
by the Jewish press as revelatory of Nazi malevolence. Both Warner
Brother’s Confessions of a Nazi Spy (Litvak 1939) and the Russian
Professor Mamlock (Rappaport and Minkin 1938) received a British
release during the summer of 1939, the latter, in common with The
Eternal Wanderer, following an overturning of a BBFC ban by the LCC
(Hicks 2012). Even on the cusp of war the Jewish Chronicle considered
it worthwhile to inform its readership of the potential influence these
titles might wield in the battle to sway public opinion. As a Hollywood
production featuring a major star (Edward G. Robinson) Confessions
of a Nazi Spy was subject to particular interest. American audiences, it
was reported, were irate that a hostile foreign power might be actively
involved in subversion on US soil, and it was noted that police were in
attendance to ensure public order when the film screened at the Strand
Theatre, New York (see “Hollywood Takes the Heil Out of Hitler”, May
26, 1939: 48). Moreover, the title was viewed as a sign that a host of
anti-Nazi productions were now in the pipeline following the drying
up of revenue to Hollywood studios from fascist states (see “Will the
Government Control the Cinema?”, May 12, 1939: 50).
So long as cinema-going remained a culturally central activity com-
mentators in the Jewish press continued to believe film could play some
role informing a generalised public of the dire situation of European
Jewry, and the threat posed to all by Hitler. The trials of distributing The
Eternal Wanderer had, however, provided a corrective lesson in what
could be said publically, and who could say it. The most vociferous, even
if well aimed, attacks on Nazi racial policy were liable for proscription
by the censor. And if a given production was marked as speaking from
a position of Jewish subjectivity, then it risked being perceived as advo-
cating for particular and private interests rather than the general good.
News films were seen to provide some critical commentary that would be
regarded as universalist in orientation, but their commitment to an ethos
198 G. TOFFELL
of neutrality could effectively erase the asymmetries of power between

the German state and its Jewish minority. As such, to the extent that a
singular dominant public sphere was a constituent of the social imagi-
nary, a practical exclusion of Jewish interests from the social structure
was enacted, at least if carried by the medium of film.
This is not to argue that the counter-public activities associated with
The Eternal Wanderer lacked utility. As an arena in which hegemonic
discourses could be contested, knowledge produced, and collective sol-
idarity fostered the “scene” of film exhibition and press reflection may
well have proved valuable. Within 1930s Britain, radical assimilation was
understood to be the most legitimate and desirable cultural and polit-
ical practice for immigrants, and affirmations of group identity within
this context should not be dismissed. However, as the decade progressed
and Europe drew closer to war it became ever more evident that Jewish
life was entering a moment of existential threat. Amongst those works
that went into the bonfires during the ritualised book burnings of 1933
were the writings of Germano-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine. Famously his
early play Almansor contained the admonition, “Dort, wo man Bücher
verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen”: “Where they burn
books, they will also ultimately burn people”. In the face of such a pre-
monition becoming a reality it should have been more viable for those at
the greatest peril to employ whatever tools were to hand in amplifying
shared concerns.
Bibliography
British Movietone News. 1933. “Movietone Reviews 1933.” Issue number
238A. 28 December 1933.
British Paramount News. 1933. “Kultur Cleans Up.” Issue number 231. 18 May
1933.
Eley, Geoff. 1992. “Nations, Publics, and Political Cultures: Placing Habermas
in the Nineteenth Century.” In Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by
Craig Calhoun. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Fielding, Raymond. 1978. The March of Time, 1935–1951. New York: Oxford
University Press.
F. T. 1975. “Obituary Notices.” British Medical Journal (BMJ). 27 September
1975.
Hansen, Miriam. 1991. Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent

Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Hicks, Jeremy. 2012. First Films of the Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and the Genocide
of the Jews, 1938–1946. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Hoberman, J. 1991. Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. New
York: Museum of Modern Art, Schocken Books.
Hollern Szczetnikowicz, Susan. 2006. British Newsreels and the Plight of
European Jews. PhD thesis, Univeristy of Hertfordshire. https://core.ac.uk/
download/pdf/29842580.pdf.
Kushner, Tony. 1994. The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and
Cultural History. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Litvak, Anatole, dir. 1939. Confessions of a Nazi Spy. USA: Warner Bros. 35MM.
35MM. Accessed via BFI National Archive YouTube Channel. https://www.
Mindlin, Michael, dir. 1934. Hitler’s Reign of Terror. USA.
Pronay, Nicholas. 2002. “British Newsreels in the 1930s: Their Policies and
Impact.” In Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader, edited by
Luke McKernan. London: BUFVC.
Rappaport, Herbert and Adolf Minkin, dirs. 1938. Professor Mamlock. Soviet
Union: Lenfilm Studio. 35MM.
Roland, George, dir. 1933. The Eternal Wanderer. Brandeis University, MA:
Stevens, George, dir. 1945. The Nazi Plan. USA: U.S. Council for the
Prosecution of Axis Criminality for the Nuremberg Trials.
The March of Time. 1938a. InsideNazi Germany: 1938. Volume 4, Episode 6.
USA.
The March of Time. 1938b. The Refugee—Today and Tomorrow. Volume 5,
Episode 5. USA.
Warner, Michael. 2002. Publics and Counterpublics. Cambridge, MA: Zone
Books.
Artists. 35MM.
Archive
Letter from BBFC to LCC Dated November 14, 1934. Catalogue Reference:
GLC/DG/EL/01/250. London Metropolitan Archive (LMA).
Letter from Dan Fish to LCC Dated October 29, 1934. Catalogue Reference:
GLC/DG/EL/01/250. London Metropolitan Archive.
LCC Memo Dated November 21, 1934. Catalogue Reference: GLC/DG/
EL/01/250. London Metropolitan Archive.
200 G. TOFFELL
LCC Official Report Dated November 23, 1934. Catalogue Reference: GLC/
DG/EL/01/250. London Metropolitan Archive.
Letter from J. A. Gillison Dated November 23, 1934. Catalogue Reference:
GLC/DG/EL/01/250. London Metropolitan Archive.
Letter From Leeds Chief Constables Office to LCC March 2, 1935. Catalogue
Reference: GLC/DG/EL/01/250. London Metropolitan Archive.
Leeds Watch Committee Minutes. Catalogue Reference: LLC 5/1/24/, p. 25.
West Yorkshire Archives, Leeds.
CHAPTER 7
Epilogue: The Decline of a Jewish

Cinema Culture
At the beginning of this volume we were introduced to a young Jewish

man overseen engaged in a few mindless moments of activity in the bed-
room of a Whitechapel tenement. Although utterly anonymous his expe-
rience of social class was wrought large in the shabbiness of his cramped
surroundings, and this short vignette was used as a device to encapsu-
late the social world of thousands of Jews then clustered in poor districts
across urban Britain. Subject to the same forms of discrimination and
economic exploitation, and sharing a cultural horizon the everyday life,
a generation was marked with common experience. With the outbreak of
World War II came a cleavage, in many ways permanent, from the social
dynamics that had come to characterise Jewish life over the previous two
decades. Since the cinema was interwoven into these structures, it too
would cease to occupy the same prominence.
At the height of the London blitz, on the night of October 22, 1940,
the East End’s Rivoli Cinema took a direct hit from a Luftwaffe bomb.
A site that had once been at the centre of the lived materiality of
London’s Jewish cinema culture was instantly reduced to flames and rub-
ble. No longer would Yiddish or Zionist film be presented to those Jews
who refused to jettison culturally particular tastes in leisure activities,
nor would the likes of performers such as Sophie Tucker bring a dash of
Jewish glamour to this most unglamorous, if not uncharismatic, corner
of Jewish life. The war years would also see a Jewish reception discourse
lose its resonance for Jewish audiences. As film receded from cultural
centrality, and the Jewish experience took on an introverted quality in

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8_7
202 G. TOFFELL
the confusion of the post-holocaust moment, a communal desire to enter

collective life through the universal public sphere diminished.
The Jewish experience of the interwar era was branded with a dis-
tinct singularity. During this time Jewish migration from Eastern Europe
and Russia had slowed to a trickle, and a second generation—typically
lacking any meaningful experience of life outside the UK—had come
of age. Since the USA had enhanced its own regime of border control
few now conceived the East End, the Leylands or Cheetham Hill as a
temporary stop on a longer journey to the American metropolis. In the
cities of London, Leeds and Manchester areas of Jewish settlement may
have been the locus of ongoing communal flux, but they were also now
established neighbourhoods. With these districts marked by advanced
commercial and communal infrastructures catering to Jewish religious,
culinary and leisure requirements, the urban landscape became remade.
Within these communities local inhabitants may have perceived their
immediate geographies as subject to pronounced, if informal, bounda-
ries but they were far from isolated from the wider social and economic
transformations of the time, and this included changing leisure trends.
Indeed, Jews played a central role in the development of Britain’s con-
sumer and leisure economy, whether that was in the manufacture and
sale of both hard and soft goods, or in emergent sections of the hospital-
ity and entertainment industries. In this coincidence of topography and
new cultural activity the possibility of a Jewish cinema scene was born.
With significant numbers of Jewish individuals concentrated in defined
urban centres it was only a matter of time before local film exhibitors
recognised that Jewish consumers possessed both as much enthusiasm
for cinema-going as audiences from other sections of society, as well as
specific tastes grounded in Jewish self-identity and cultural traditions.
A New National Consciousness

Although, from the perspective of the lived everyday, modes of life
may seem to endure as a foreseeable recurrence, change is inevitable in
social relations. Following Britain’s declaration of war on Germany anx-
iety was immediately registered over the possibility civilian populations
might become targeted with poison gas or high explosives in strategic
bombing. Inner-city districts with high population densities were judged
especially vulnerable and many Jewish children, as well as some adults,
moved away from urban centres to provincial or rural locations deemed
less likely to suffer attack. Simultaneous to this development conscription
7 EPILOGUE: THE DECLINE OF A JEWISH CINEMA CULTURE 203
into the British armed forces began for young men in late 1939, and by
1942 all males between the age of 18 and 51 years (with certain excep-
tions for health or occupation) had become liable for compulsory mili-
tary service. Over the space of a few years large numbers of Jewish men
thus found themselves undergoing combat training or on active service.
Additionally, key areas of industry deemed essential for the war effort
required an influx of workers, and labour—including both men and sig-
nificant quantities of young women—was diverted to crucial war work.
Often this could take place far away from the towns and districts enlisted
individuals had previously spent the entirety of their lives.
The combination of widespread civilian evacuation and military
conscription affected the perceptions of Jews and non-Jews alike.
Functioning as a form of social condenser war conditions presented
Jewish troops, workers and evacuees with the opportunity for extended
social interaction beyond the confines of often insular Jewish neighbour-
hoods. Similarly, many non-Jews had little primary experience of ethnic
difference, and for the first time the ordinariness of British Jews could
be encountered. As might be expected these interactions could become a
site of conflict, and many evacuees and soldiers experienced antisemitism,
but friendships or even romance between Jews and non-Jews also devel-
oped—increasingly so as the war went on (Kushner 1989). Following
the ending of hostilities significant bomb damage to housing stock in
inner-urban areas (particularly the East End) complicated the prospect of
returning to prewar sites of habitation. Prior to the conflict Jewish migra-
tory trends away from primary areas of settlement had already begun, but
with some diminution of perceptions of Jewish difference these patterns
of movement accelerated. As well as destroying the material fabric of the
old neighbourhoods, then, the war reduced Jewish anxieties about con-
ditions of life outside those spaces. To the extent that a localised Jewish
cinema culture was underpinned by the viability of geographic enclaves,
the events of World War II thus proved significant in its decline.
Relatedly, as a national emergency the hostilities with Germany
engendered an intensified national consciousness. At the instigation of
the state poster campaigns and public information films sought to instil
a commitment to collective endeavour, encouraging citizens to make
household economies or, if not conscripted into the military, sign up
for civil defence responsibilities. Privately owned communications media
was quick to assist in the war effort, and both the fourth estate and
the newsreels proved adept at fostering patriotic sentiment. Deploying
staff to accompany the British Expeditionary Force the newsreel
204 G. TOFFELL
companies understood themselves as having a new national significance,

and a majority of newsreel items soon focussed on the conflict. In a Mass
Observation report from 1940 it was stated that 71% of recent items
contained imagery of soldiers, and non-war related stories had shifted
from 62% of subject matter prior to the start of war to just 15% once the
fighting was underway (England 2002).
Like any other social group, interwar Jewish self-identity was neither
fixed nor homogenous. Depending on context and circumstance an
individual might reflect upon herself as variously Jewish, British, occu-
pying some regional identity, or comprised of some assemblage of con-
stituent parts. Examining some of the reception discourse surrounding
the release of wartime newsreel and public information films it is possi-
ble to understand these titles as a potential site of imaginative entry into
national life for British Jews. Throughout the war the Jewish Chronicle
ran regular reports on the latest films featuring actuality footage covering
the armed campaign or life on the home front. These articles were pub-
lished at least once a month, and there could be as many as three individ-
ual news-cinema items reviewed in the same issue.
Typical was an item on the documentary short The Second Battle of
London (Knight 1945) in which British gunners defending London
were described as “our A. A. defences” (“The Flying-Bomb Battle”,
December 8, 1944: 16). Likewise, the reviewer of Listen to Britain
(Jennings and McAllister 1942), a short film produced by the Crown
Film Unit, assumed an essentially British spectator. In this title “char-
acteristic” sounds of “Britain at war” (“War-Time Documentaries”,
February 27, 1942: 20) were presented including “bird songs mingled
with the roar of planes over a wheat-field…barracks, homes and Civil
Defence posts”. Mobilised here were some of the key motifs of a British
cultural nationalism of the period—the natural world and a timeless rural
landscape—set in harmony with the life of a people unified in struggle.
On the odd occasion the paper did address its readership as Jews in rela-
tion to some war news film, this was to note a Jewish contribution to
the national cause. In a review of the Army Film Unit’s Seige of Tobruk
(1942), covering events in the North Africa Campaign, it was reported
that the piece contained “an illuminating shot that will show all peo-
ple that Jews have taken their place with their comrades in the danger
line”. “Every Jew who sees this film”, it was added, “will feel very proud
indeed” (“The Epic of Tobruk”, June 5, 1942: 19).
In these pieces the reader was addressed as straightforwardly British.

Taking a patriotic tone, it was assumed that imagery located in the spe-
cific cultural tradition of an English picturesque would be evenly con-
sumed by spectators irrespective of ethnicity. To the extent that Jews
remained conceived as a discrete entity visibly distinct before the gaze
of a generalised public, less emphasis was now placed on their status as a
marginalised group. Hitherto, the cinema had been advanced as a mech-
anism to amplify concerns over social injustice and gain political recog-
nition. In contrast, the Jewish Chronicle’s discussion of wartime actuality
film tended to minimise differences in Jewish and non-Jewish experience,
usefully demonstrating Jewish participation in the shared perils of mil-
itary service. And in as much as this entry into the national family was
regarded a beneficial display for gentile consumption, it was also pre-
sented as a source of satisfaction for Jewish viewers.
However, although the reception of news and documentary imagery
in the Jewish press could provide a conceptual framework for the Jewish
spectatorship of this material, it does not follow that real-world audi-
ences were inevitably interpellated fully as British subjects. In spite of a
new national consciousness, Jews remained in a social position at vari-
ance with that of their fellow citizens. Beginning in 1939 individuals res-
ident in the British Isles but classed as alien nationals from states at war
with Britain could find themselves subject to a new regime of national
security. With significant numbers of non-naturalised Jews of German or
Austrian heritage now living in the country, they, along with non-Jewish
Germans, Austrians and Italians—as well as known fascist sympathisers—
could face an assortment of restrictions, including confinement in intern-
ment camps.
An even more profound dissonance between the experience of British
Jews and non-Jews was knowledge of, and a sense of proximity to,
the destruction of European Jewry. Even once the war was underway
Jewish newspapers were amongst the few information sources prepared
to give extensive and prominent coverage to reports of the genocide
unfolding in the ghettos and extermination camps of Eastern Europe
(see Scott 1994). In January 1940 the murder of 1900 Jews near the
Polish town of Chelm was reported in the Jewish Chronicle (“Massacre
at Chelm”, January 26, 1940: 1), and as early as June 1943 the same
paper was stating that “in the Treblinka camp special gas chambers for
murdering Jews have been set up” (“Jewish Victims Vivisected”, June
25, 1943: 1). Continuous figures of mass killings emerged: 70,000 in
206 G. TOFFELL
Kiev (“The Horror of Kiev”, December 10, 1943: 1), 80,000 in Vilna
(“The Massacres in Vilna”, August 4, 1944: 1). With the Russian offen-
sive pushing through the east came more detailed stories on the worst
of the camps. First Majdanek—an image of charred skeletal remains in
the camp crematoria accompanying the piece (“The Martyrs of Lublin”,
August 18, 1944: 7)—and later Auschwitz (“Oswiecim Revelations”,
February 9, 1945: 1).
Throughout this period the disaster was barely registered cinemati-
cally. A handful of fictional films released during the War, such as Pastor
Hall (Boulting 1940), made reference to the brutality of Nazi repres-
sion, but these did not come close to portraying the reality on the
ground. In late April of 1945, however, this situation changed drasti-
cally. As the war in Europe reached its final phase advancing British and
American forces discovered still operational concentration camps within
Germany, and footage of the liberation of sites such as Buchenwald
and Bergen-Belsen was publically exhibited in newsreels. Of the actu-
ality imagery produced since the invention of the motion picture cam-
era this material ranked amongst the most distressing ever recorded and
audiences were stunned. Presented in the films was evidence of cruelty
and sadism that even experienced combat personnel found hard to bear.
Perhaps for the final time during the era that cinema was culturally cen-
tral in Britain, film entered the heart of Jewish experience.
Understanding Bergen-Belsen
On April 15, 1945 the British 11th Armoured Division entered Bergen-
Belsen under truce conditions. Initially, Bergen-Belsen joined the con-
centration camp system as a holding facility for influential Jews who
might have some “exchange value” for captured Germans, and condi-
tions were somewhat less harsh than in other camps. From the begin-
ning of 1944, however, the population in the camp leapt as prisoners
previously destined for Auschwitz were rerouted due to the Red Army’s
advance. A number of sick slave workers were also brought to the camp
to recover from illness. A further development occurred when Josef
Kramer, previously stationed at Auschwitz, was given the role of com-
mandant and decided to establish a harsher regime. The scene that
greeted the British liberators was thus one of unimaginable misery and
squalor. The overcrowded camp housing sixty thousand prisoners was
in the grip of a typhus epidemic and the afflicted lay dying everywhere.
Prisoners were appallingly emaciated and dressed in rags. Drinking water

came from a pool contaminated by rotting corpses (Shephard 2006).
From mid-April British newspapers started running stories on
the liberation of the German camps. On April 19, the BBC reporter
David Dimbleby broadcast a radio report on what he had witnessed in
Bergen-Belsen. Although alarming, many of these early accounts shied
away from detailing specifics. Following a visit and subsequent report
on Buchenwald by a party of two peers and eight British Members of
Parliament, however, the exact situation was made clear. Initiated by
Eisenhower—who was anxious to get as many reliable witnesses to see
the camps as possible—Churchill pressed for a delegation to be organ-
ised with haste. Visiting Buchenwald (the first camp to be liberated by
America) on April 21, they returned to London the following day and
produced a White Paper, extensive portions of which were then reprinted
in the national press. The report scrupulously documented what the
group had seen and whom they talked to, noting the ethnic make-up of
prisoners and details such as the workings of the crematoria.
The evidence in the White Paper was considered irrefutable. What was
not provided in abundance was visual material. Photographs were avail-
able for publication but so horrible were they most newspapers chose
to print only a limited few. Individual pictorial publications such as the
Picture Post did put out special issues in which more distressing photo-
graphs were shown, but these did not place pictures of the camps in the
public gaze in a truly substantial way (Caven 2001). The first newsreels
to cover the story came out on Monday, April 30, 1945. All five of the
major newsreel companies were allocated extra film for their release, and
the same programme was reissued later in the week. The only story fea-
tured was the liberation of the camps. The footage used derived from
essentially two sources: a small amount came from cameramen employed
by individual newsreels, but most came from material that had been shot
by the Army Film and Photographic Unit. Cameramen with the AFPU
had been at Bergen-Belsen from the moment British troops entered.
Despite the psychological strain of working in such an environment they
resolved to see the job through and went about documenting all aspects
of the camp. Remaining at Bergen-Belsen until it was razed several
weeks after the liberation, many of the most recognisable motion picture
images of the episode were the results of their efforts.
The viewing of the films of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation became both
a national event and civic duty in Britain, and demand for cinema seats
208 G. TOFFELL
was extremely high (see ibid.). Spectatorship was understood as a form

of witnessing, and prior to the release of the newsreels newspapers cau-
tioned readers to prepare themselves for screenings. In an article in the
Evening Standard the headline read, “Steel Yourself to See this Film”
(Kirwan, April 23, 1945: 6). Further down the column the advice con-
tinued, “it is your duty not to spare your feelings, but to see them”
(ibid.). In spite of the warnings numerous accounts of responses to the
imagery suggest audiences found it overwhelmingly affecting. Mass
Observation conducted research on the exhibition of the films and
recorded individuals losing sleep or suffering ill health following screen-
ings (see Kushner 1994; Caven 2001). One woman, interviewed leaving
a cinema, informed researchers she “kept turning away- it was so horri-
ble, I just couldn’t go on looking” (quoted in Caven 2001: 245).
Irrespective of audience ethnicity the encounter with visual material of
Nazi atrocities could be highly traumatic. For British Jews, however, the
experience might be personalised in ways that were simply not shared by
non-Jewish citizens. As has been documented, Jewish newspapers pro-
vided detailed commentary on the escalating persecution of Jews to an
extent rarely matched by other areas of the press, and significant num-
bers of Jewish spectators carried an enhanced knowledge of events into
the cinema. For those with family members who had become trapped in
continental Europe with the outbreak of war this was a time of particular
distress. In diary accounts from the war years Jews expressed deep anx-
iety about close relatives with whom they could not communicate (see
Kushner 1994). With detailed visual evidence of the fate of much of
European Jewry now in the public realm, the exhibition of the liberation
films provided a clarification of a long and painful period of expectation.
During oral history interviews that I undertook with Jewish elders
it was occasionally possible to broach the topic of newsreel footage of
the liberation of concentration camps. One respondent, “Sarah”, was
a young woman at the end of the war and her memories conveyed the
grief of this moment. Talking of her response to imagery of the camps
she stated “Oh it was terrible, you sat down and cried didn’t you”.
Asked to expand, she emphasised the specificity of Jewish experience,
noting, “especially when you had your own father’s family [living in
continental Europe]”. With significant numbers of relatives residing in
Holland her family’s personal loss was considerable and she explained:
“My father lost 125 of his family. Yes my father lost 125 of his cous-
ins, his aunts, his great aunts, great cousins, great nieces – counted up”.
She also elaborated on the fate of the grandfather of a close friend.

Returning to Holland from Britain to live with a brother shortly before
the German invasion proved a decisive mistake, and it clearly still affected
her that “him and the brother was put in the Belsen camp”.
Whether rooted in personal experience or culturally specific knowl-
edge the collective reception of the footage of the camps for Britain’s
Jews was marked by identification with camp inmates. Yet despite abun-
dant reliable data on the ethnicity of surviving prisoners relatively few
public references were made explicitly recognising the centrality of
antisemitism to the camp system. In Bergen-Belsen the inmate popula-
tion was dominated by Jewish prisoners; of the 60,000 individuals held
in the camp at the time of liberation around 40,000 were estimated to
be Jews. However, when the story was reconstructed in the communi-
cations media (including newsreels) the ethnic particularity of survivors
was often elided. One explanation for this omission is that during the
period there was widespread concern that any emphasis on Jewish suf-
fering risked invoking public scepticism about the veracity of reports
(see Kushner 1989, 1994; Caven 2001). It has also been argued (see
Kushner 1989, 1994) that an ideology of liberal universalism exerted a
powerful influence over state and media considerations of ethnic differ-
ence, and that, consequentially, the Nazis’ crimes tended to be under-
stood as directed against a broad humanity. Relatedly, surviving prisoners
were regarded as individual citizens of separate national polities rather
than as members of a religious or ethnic collective. British state policy
thus took the position that displaced Jews should return to countries of
origin, and not attempt to resettle en masse in Britain or Palestine.
Unlike the mainstream press the Jewish press was keen to dwell on
the Jewish experience of the camps. This included reports on survivors
singing the Hatikvah, the need for kosher rations at Bergen-Belsen, and
the obstacles to resettling displaced persons in Palestine. In May 1945
Patrick Gordon Walker of the BBC broadcast a short radio documentary
containing recordings of both liberators and inmates of Bergen-Belsen.
Unusually, the programme explicitly referenced the presence of Jewish
survivors, a fact the Jewish Chronicle was keen to highlight. Thus, it was
stated the programme included “the voices of Jewish prisoners…worship-
ping together for the first time in years” (“The Voice of Belsen”, May 25,
1945: 5). Emphasising the need for such material to circulate publicly, the
paper noted how the participants were “in tears. They knew they were
being recorded and they wanted the world to hear their voices” (ibid.).
210 G. TOFFELL
Notably, it is an interesting detail that the Jewish press offered vir-

tually no coverage of the exhibition of the newsreels depicting the
camps. Taking the two major Jewish newspapers of the day, not a sin-
gle story remarked upon them in the Jewish Chronicle, while the Jewish
Times merely ran one brief article. This was a rather deadpan report on
municipally organised screenings in France and Belgium of the “The
Buchenwald Horror Film”, which was being distributed to work as “a
medicine against antisemitic agitation” (May 3, 1945: 2). Interpreting
a silence is not an easy task. Historically the major organs of the Jewish
press understood the Jewish experience of oppression as a collective and
communal matter irrespective of where it occurred, and legitimately
of public relevance. As such, the rationale for an absence of commen-
tary on the liberation footage in the Jewish press clearly differed from
the mainstream refusal to name Jewish victimhood. While any analysis
must remain speculative, it is striking that an overtly nationalist discourse
was mobilised to give some narrative shape to the liberation of Bergen-
Belsen, and that this dominated commentary on the matter.
While the films of the camps may purport to present Nazi atrocity
what is actually shown is its aftermath. The newsreels cover the pro-
cess of liberation, not extermination (see Losson 1999). It was at this
moment, when the allied powers finally entered the “event” of the camp
system, that some narrative order could make sense of an apparently inef-
fable barbarism with the resolution of rescue. From the time of its liber-
ation the Bergen-Belsen camp occupied a quite distinct place in British
discussions of the defeat of the Third Reich. As Kushner has noted,
“through the intimate connection brought about by both the military
and the medical liberation of Bergen-Belsen, it became “our”, that is,
Britain’s camp” (Kushner 1997: 191). In the British press a repetition
of binary contrasts between a Nazi savagery embodied by preliberation
Bergen-Belsen, and a British moral purpose expressed through the liber-
ation of the camp, offered a structure to contain an otherwise overpow-
ering experience.
Along with the print media, the British newsreels contributed to
the construction of a narrative of British rescue. Pathe produced two
episodes dealing with events at Bergen-Belsen, and both empha-
sise British involvement. In the initial film, entitled German Atrocities
(1945), the presence of British troops at the scene is repeatedly under-
lined. Over shots of uniformed British infantrymen riding into the
camp on armoured vehicles, the commentary points to the role of
“our men” in the liberation. Referring to specifically British rather than

allied soldiers, this use of the possessive is contrasted with the category
“American”, which is differentiated by citing the US military’s sim-
ilar, but separate, experiences liberating Buchenwald. A second film
about Bergen-Belsen—An End to Murder (1945), released in late May
of 1945—focuses on the medical recovery of prisoners and the final
destruction of the camp. In this latter story the agency of the British
forces is made apparent in shots of camp infrastructure being razed.
Crowds watch as British troops shoot huge jets of flame onto blazing
outbuildings with equipment referred to in the narration as “British
flame-throwers”.
It is both a cliché and a truism to characterise the Holocaust as an
unknowable entity. Most commonly such statements refer to the unrep-
resentability of mass extermination, but other areas of experience
related to this moment fall into silence. During the final weeks of hos-
tilities a narrative about the place of Bergen-Belsen in the national life
of Britain was created, and this left little space for the particularity of
Jewish experience. Only the Jewish press offered a significant quantity
of (counter)-public discourse identifying the centrality of antisemitism to
Nazi ideology and its implementation. In regard to the Jewish experi-
ence of confronting the spectacle of genocide, however, this encounter
was never afforded any form of public recognition. While an instruc-
tion to bear witness to Nazi inhumanity, and an interpretative narrative
of Bergen-Belsen as “Britain’s camp” would offer some structure for a
non-Jewish spectatorship of the newsreels, Jewish audiences were offered
no reception discourse to provide a framework for thinking through the
experience of witnessing the suffering of co-religionists.
For Jewish news publications any discussion of the footage of Bergen-
Belsen’s liberation would necessarily require an emphasis on the specific
oppression of Jews. Given the newsreels’ stark omission of information
identifying the ethnic particularity of surviving prisoners, such a move
would involve a transfer of attention away from the narratorial assertion
of Britain’s central role in the triumph over barbarism. This manoeuvre,
if not wholly in contradiction to the patriotic address of the films, would
at least diminish its prominence. Rarely did the Jewish press—particularly
the Jewish Chronicle—seek to bring Jewish and British identities into
conflict. On the contrary, the capacity for Jewish religious difference to
endure as an element internal to British life was a key preoccupation of
the Jewish establishment: as an ideal Jewishness and Britishness would
212 G. TOFFELL
increasingly coalesce. Liberal pluralism was, at most, a marginal discourse

in British-Jewish political thinking, and unable to reconcile these two
identities in relation to the newsreels it may have proved a less problem-
atic editorial position to decline to comment on their content.
When discussing the exhibition of the newsreels with Jewish elders
there was some suggestion that the contemporary interpretive framework
imposed on the representation of Bergen-Belsen’s liberation continued
to affect the perceptions of those that recalled the original context of the
films’ release. Personal memory is notoriously fallible and any discussion
on the matter must remain highly tentative, but the discourse of several
individuals was marked by difficulties in talking about the footage as rev-
elatory of a specifically Jewish experience. Despite claims that the mate-
rial was “unforgettable” and that the newsreels were a significant topic of
conversation within Jewish communities, memories were often fragmen-
tary and my interlocutors sometimes struggled to provide little beyond
momentary flashes of detail, or descriptions of imagery since replayed
hundreds of times on television documentaries and news bulletins.
Initially somewhat vague about the experience of watching the news-
reels, the key to unlocking “Sarah’s” memories was the term “Belsen”,
and she became animated only once the camp was referred to by name.
Yet even when her recollections sharpened, her discourse rapidly shifted
to the realm of personal biography, expanding on an aunt’s role in
bringing Jewish children to England after the war. Other respondents
similarly reached out to sources external to the films. Although the
newsreels contained no documentation of industrialised extermination
“Sidney” made reference to Jews on transport trains and gas chambers;
imagery that entered the popular imagination at a much later date with
the transmission of the 1974 Genocide episode of Thames Television’s
The World at War documentary series and film dramas such Schindler’s
List (Steven Spielberg 1993). For “Laurence”, a volume from his per-
sonal library, The Scourge of the Swastika, offered a reliable reference
point for discussing the films. Published in 1954 by the British mili-
tary jurist Lord Russell of Liverpool, this explicitly positioned Nazi war
crimes within the context of a doctrine of racial supremacy.
A key feature of a British-Jewish cinema culture during the interwar
years was a distinct mode of critical reception. Established in the Jewish
press was a reception discourse that identified specific productions as
novel in their relevance to Jewish audiences, or appraised their worth as
a vessel to transport communal Jewish interests and concerns into the
visual field of a gentile public. Unable to acknowledge the centrality of

Jews to the logic of Bergen-Belsen in reviews, the films of the camps
could not be absorbed into this model. Over the previous two dec-
ades film had become the era’s essential form of mass communication.
Regrettably, at the moment when the technology of cinema converged
with the defining event affecting the Jewish people in modernity, the
recuperation of those representations into the news media of a Jewish
counter-public would be extremely limited.
The Post-War Shift

Significantly, it was not only the newsreels of concentration camps that
failed to be integrated into the conventions of a Jewish reception dis-
course. Coincident with this episode was a more general diminution in
emphasis on film’s potential to penetrate every corner of British society
and further an understanding of Jewish life. In contrast to the assorted
celebratory and jingoistic war movies that were produced in the decade
following Germany’s defeat, a small number of films gave some recog-
nition to Jewish suffering under the Nazis. Screening in Britain in 1946
one of these was the Swiss produced The Last Chance (Lindtberg 1945).
The title’s narrative involves the escape from Italy of three allied soldiers
(an American NCO and two British officers) who stumble into leading
a multinational group of refugees through the Alps to safety in neutral
Switzerland. Although rigorously universalist in outlook—the fugitives
are variously French, German, Austrian, Dutch, Polish and Yugoslav—
two of the refugees are Jewish (an old tailor named Hillel and his
niece, Channele), and the Jewish Chronicle was keen to stress this fact.
Reviewed in an extended article the piece was warmly received, being
judged in a subheading “An Intensely Moving Film” (“Tragedy of the
Refugees”, February 1, 1946: 19).
Whereas the Jewish Chronicle’s review pages had hitherto adopted a
boosterish tone when discussing the possibility of positive representa-
tions of Jews circulating before a non-Jewish audience, the language
used to assess The Last Chance took on an insular quality. Focussing on
the struggles of the film’s Jewish characters it was stated “In these two…
the world will see one aspect of what it is pleased to call ‘The Jewish
problem’” (ibid.). While the public sphere remained a prominent cate-
gory in the Jewish Chronicle’s reception discourse, some ambivalence
was expressed about the value of this space to Jews. For sure, it was
214 G. TOFFELL
recognised that gentile polities would determine the fate of European

Jewry, but the terminological formulations used by both press and
state to think through events were perceived as insultingly reductive.
Collapsed into a singular “problem” were the multiple complexities of
Jewish statelessness in the post-holocaust context, and the film’s reviewer
bristled at the ethical and intellectual inadequacy of such a conceptual-
isation. An experiential divide between Jewish and non-Jewish cinema
spectatorship seems to have been sharply felt at this moment, at least in
relation to representations of Jewish victimhood.
As the review moved on to examine a critical scene featuring Hillel
and Channele, it was explained that towards the close of the drama the
young girl witnesses her uncle shot dead by Nazi troops just as the party
are approaching the Swiss border. With Hillel seen praying in Hebrew
and Channele uncontrollably distraught at the loss of her only rela-
tive the performances were regarded utterly compelling, and a moment
when “the child runs about wildly and hysterically over the body” was
singled out as “insupportably affecting” (ibid.). The distribution of affect
amongst the film’s audience was, however, imagined as strikingly asym-
metric. Assuming an ethnic particularism to spectatorship, it was stated
such imagery was “for Jews, at any rate…heartrending in its poignancy”
(ibid.). Suggesting both that Jews would bring a distinct set of knowl-
edge to the text, and that gentile viewers may not empathise with the dis-
tress of explicitly Jewish characters, the limited potential for imagery of
Jewish suffering to advocate for Jewish interests was again underscored.
Several months after The Last Chance first appeared on British cin-
ema screens, Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946) received its London
premiere. A film noir concerning a United Nations investigator hunting
down a fugitive Nazi war criminal, Franz Kindler, to a Connecticut town,
the film was the first fiction production to incorporate documentary
footage of concentration camps within its narrative. The newsreels of the
camps had powerfully affected Welles (Barker 2012), and in The Stranger
they are used as a device to force Kindler’s dutiful wife to confront his
true depravity. In its review of the title the Jewish Chronicle recom-
mended the film to its readership, but also expressed some satisfaction in
its consumption by gentile audiences. Explaining the “film maintains that
underneath the servile whining of the Germans…the old idea of world
conquest still persists” (“Films of the Week”, August 23, 1946: 19), the
extensive distribution of this Hollywood product was seen to ensure the
threat of a National Socialist resurgence would achieve popular recogni-
tion. Again, then, the cinema was presented as an arena in which Jewish
collective interests would be amplified. As with The Last Chance, how-

ever, this capacity of film no longer figured as a significant preoccupation.
Little beyond a few lines were devoted to discussing the context of exhi-
bition, with more comment passed on Welles’ authorial status and the
aesthetic merits of the piece.
For Kahn-Harris and Gidley (2010) Britain’s Jewish communal lead-
ership remained committed to a “strategy of security” (13) for over a
century. From the Victorian period until the 1970s organisations such
as the Board of Deputies sought to make certain the legitimate belong-
ing of Jews to the national community through Jewish cultural assimila-
tion and demonstrations of fidelity to the values of British society. That a
Jewish reception discourse was preoccupied with the appearance of rep-
resentations of Jews before a gentile British cinema audience was an echo
of this orientation to social relations. Any recognition of Jewish con-
cerns could be understood to reveal, and to further, the secure position
of Jews in Britain. While this discourse would endure into the post-war
period, however, historic events immediate to the mid-1940s rendered
it inadequate to address the paradoxical position Jews found themselves
placed on the social landscape. Having served in all areas of the British
armed forces and participated in a highly patriotic national culture over
the duration of hostilities, now more than ever the mass of ordinary
Jews might identify as British citizens of a different faith. Yet a signifi-
cant experiential gap between Jews and non-Jews persisted. Rooted in
the events of the holocaust, and reinforced by the ongoing presence of
antisemitism in Britain (including anti-Jewish riots in British cities fol-
lowing the 1947 killing of two British Army NCOs by the Irgun group
in Mandatory Palestine) “an increasingly inward-looking and insecure
world view” (Kushner 1994: 223) has also been seen as marking British-
Jewish life at this time.
Although the critical reception of Jewish interest film continued to
retain discursive parameters established in the interwar years, its address
became anachronistic to a lived experience of Jews subject to social forces
both encouraging and forestalling identification with the nation. Further,
a drift away from concern with film’s potential as a vessel for Jewish
interests to enter the public sphere coincided with the beginning of a
downward trend in cinema-going. Cinema attendance in Britain reached
its all time peak in 1946, with over 1640 million tickets sold during that
year (see Jancovich et al. 2003). Yet rather than signalling the business
of film exhibition remained in rude health, the following decade saw
the industry enter a major decline. Rising ticket prices and new forms
216 G. TOFFELL
of leisure associated with economic recovery conspired to make the cin-

ema a less attractive option for consumers, and by the second half of the
1950s significant numbers of picture houses were being forced into clo-
sure. Overdetermined by unrelated events, the diminution of a Jewish
reception discourse came into effect simultaneously to the decentring of
cinema as a leisure activity.
To a significant extent cinema’s decline in popularity was contin-
gent upon cultural change associated with post-war suburbanisation.
With increased house sizes, and private gardens attached to dwellings
the domestic setting became an important site of leisure activity for an
expanding lower middle class. As aspirant for lower population densities
and leafier environs as their gentile neighbours, British Jews sought to
move away from inner-urban districts in ever-greater numbers. Often fol-
lowing radial routes organised around existing transport infrastructure
(underground rail lines, arterial roads), these flows out of the city had
been established prior to the war. In the immediately post-war period
London saw a fresh wave of Jews leave the East End and other working
class districts to join emergent Jewish communities in the fast-developing
outer suburbs of Enfield, Ilford and Gants Hill. That their co-religion-
ists in Leeds and Manchester were similarly migrating to the urban fringe
was a clear signal that by the second half of the 1950s notable quantities
of Jews were benefitting from a revitalised national economy.
Although film-going was declining in prominence in everyday cultural
life, it is possible to identify a post-war continuity to a material Jewish
cinema culture, even in suburban settings. By the late 1950s the con-
gregation at Ilford Synagogue had grown to such an extent that in 1959
High Holy Days’ services began to be held at the Odeon Ilford. Located
at a major intersection opposite Gants Hill Underground Station, and
with seating for 1000 patrons, the Odeon Ilford was suitably equipped
to meet the demand for additional communal space. Referred to by
worshipers as the “Cinemagogue” (Fenton 2017), this novel utilisation
of a picture house recalled the similar occasional use of the Rivoli and
Mile End Empire cinemas in the East End during the interwar period.
An arrangement that remained in place for over twenty years, the Odeon
Ilford served as an important communal hub throughout the time this
stretch of the London suburbs expanded became home to the largest
concentration of Jews in Europe.
Of course, plenty of Jews lacked the desire or capital to move away
from inner-urban areas, and meaningful numbers thus remained situated
in neighbourhoods such as Whitechapel, Cheetham Hill or Chapeltown

in the years following the war. Political consensus on the need for urban
reconstruction led to substantial quantities of public housing being
made available from the early 1950s, and Jews who secured a tenancy
on one of the new estates often saw little reason to uproot once they had
acquired a spacious modern dwelling. Clearly the communal centre of
gravity was now shifting away from primary sites of Jewish settlement,
with many religious and other communal institutions either closing or
moving to new foci of Jewish life, but some significant organisations and
businesses did elect to continue attending to established Jewish popula-
tions well into the mid-century. This included film exhibitors who recog-
nised the ongoing potential to generate profits by presenting occasional
programmes explicitly oriented to Jewish audiences. Prager (1990), for
instance, records a series of Yiddish films (including titles featuring Molly
Picon) screening at the Vogue Continental Cinema in Stoke Newington
during May of 1954.
Discussing the post-war fate of the Mayfair Cinema in Brick Lane, one
oral history interviewee—Janet—remembered childhood visits to the site
with her sister during the 1950s as a throwback to an earlier incarnation
of the East End. The audience, she recalled, were almost entirely Jewish,
many were advancing in years, and—to her mind—they revelled in the
anarchic atmosphere of the venue. Refusing to acknowledge the “fourth
wall” patrons were given to calling out to on-screen characters, shouting,
in Yiddish, “khoorva!” (whore!) at a femme fatale, or in English, “he’s
behind you!” as a murderer approached his victim. Some of her strongest
memories were of the circulating aromas of traditional Jewish foodstuffs
that the audience brought into the auditorium, such as the acrid tang of
pickled vegetables. Indeed, it was for this reason, along with the increas-
ing disrepair of the site, that eventually motivated the sisters to travel fur-
ther afield in their search for cinematic entertainment.
In common with a Jewish reception discourse, then, modes of
film-going established in Jewish communities during the interwar period
survived into the mid-century. However, what remained after the war
was less a coherent scene of Jewish cinema culture, instead comprising
a patchwork of social practices, some anachronistic, some an improvisa-
tory adaptation to a new context of Jewish life. Unwilling to give up on
longstanding leisure habits, the ageing film-goers of the Mayfair Cinema
ensured the space retained its prewar character as a zone of Jewish
expressivity, even to the detriment of alienating a younger generation of
218 G. TOFFELL
Jewish East Enders. In Ilford, in contrast, the appeal of an ethnically dis-

tinct leisure culture had significantly lessened for a more youthful Jewish
population, but the absence of communal infrastructure in this rapidly
expanding suburb necessitated the presence of a film exhibition space
in the collective life of suburban Jewry. The utilisation of a local cin-
ema for high-holiday services simply represented a practical solution to
an immediate communal problem, and the site reverted to an ethnically
unmarked space for film screenings.
Multicultural Imaginaries
Coterminous to film’s move away from a position of cultural centrality in
British life, and the fragmentation of Jewish cinema culture, mass migra-
tions of Commonwealth citizens from South Asia and the Caribbean saw
skin colour become the vital marker of alterity in Britain. Jewish self-per-
ceptions of difference to an imagined “native” British population were
subsequently less keenly felt, and as Jewish young people took advantage
of an increasingly accessible Higher Education sector and a buoyant jobs
market, those fantasies of mass assimilation conjured in the minds of a
Jewish elite of a previous generation achieved something like a lived real-
ity by the 1960s. For some British gentiles Jews would never lose their
Otherness, and a Haredi population would remain highly self-segre-
gated, but a majority of British Jews no longer experienced the economic
and social exclusion common to many during the interwar years, and the
alternative public spheres of that era fell into abeyance.
Contrasting sharply with the interwar years film and cinema-going
cease, at this point, to provide a useful optic through which to view
Jewish communal life. While the cinema remained imagined a compo-
nent of a universal public sphere television, particularly in its news and
current affairs formats, now occupied a far more prominent place in dis-
cussions of the formation of public opinion. In primary areas of Jewish
settlement, such as the East End, Jewish cultural life was irrevocably
denuded by the early 1970s, though it is notable that a number of film
exhibition sites that had once been Jewish social hubs did not simply ori-
ent programming to an ethnically non-specific audience. Throughout the
1960s a significant Indian and Pakistani population had migrated to east
London, and what was once The Mayfair Cinema in Brick Lane had con-
verted to The Naz, a venue specialising in South Asian film. Owned dur-
ing the mid-1970s by an enterprising Bengali businessman the site also
presented live entertainments such as South Asian musicians or Pakistani
wrestlers (often pitched against white opponents). Three other venues in

the area became viable businesses offering similar fare.
It is often a misplaced cliché to call for historical events to serve as
a pedagogic guide to current life. Social formations are temporally spe-
cific, and the solutions of the past are not necessarily applicable to the
problems of the present. Nevertheless, in an era when multiculture has
come under sustained attack, particularly, in the aftermath of the events
of September 11, it may be worth turning our attention to Jewish life in
interwar Britain when considering what is at stake in the retraction of an
offer of liberal pluralism.
A particularly indolent form of thinking in the popular debates over
mass migration is the notion of the Jews as a “model minority”. An ethos
of social assimilation was not a seed carried from Eastern Europe and
then nurtured into life by an immigrant generation. Many Jews experi-
enced communal and state pressure to “Anglicise” as a coercive act, and
the linguistic and cultural alienation felt between first and second gen-
erations must, in part, be assessed as a consequence of institutions inau-
gurated to iron out the “ghetto bend” in immigrant youth. Upward
economic mobility was similarly not a defining experience of British
Jewry until the years after World War II. Financial hardship, or even
impoverishment, was common, and a majority laboured in trades that
offered little beyond the means to live modestly. As a cultural form suf-
ficiently malleable to accommodate social difference the cinema emerged
as significant leisure institution of interwar Jewry. Its utilisation as a
social hub was a material response to a lived marginality. For the mass of
working class Jews life conditions changed only with a wider social trans-
formation, as this occurred so the cinema lost its relevance.
As an imagined a point of Jewish entry into the wider social collective,
film and cinema proved an uncertain route. Too often bodies marked
by difference were regarded as agitating for particularised interests. It
is important to acknowledge that boundaries defining what might be
understood as universally relevant, and thus legitimately public are not
fixed. Whereas domestic violence was once perceived to belong to the
private domestic sphere the feminist movement has worked to redefine
it as a matter of public health. It remains the case that access to rep-
resentation in the most prestigious and trusted areas of a universal pub-
lic sphere is not symmetric, and marginal voices struggle to be heard.
When producing or consuming our media we would do well to recall the
significance of recognition, and the consequence of exclusion. Modern
multi-ethnic multi-faith democracies are complex, and sometimes
220 G. TOFFELL
confusing, societies where commonality across populations can be dif-

ficult to discern. The social imaginary is, by definition, a shared space.
Fashioning a public sphere that accounts for and incorporates difference
should be understood as both an ethical imperative as well as the ground
upon which a fuller collective life might take root.
Bibliography
Army Film, and Photographic Unit. 1942. Seige of Tobruk. UK: Ministry of
Information.
Barker, Jennifer L. 2012. “Documenting the Holocaust in Orson Welles’s the
Stranger.” In Film and Genocide, edited by Kristi M. Wilson and Tomás F.
Crowder-Taraborrelli, 55–58. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.
Boulting, Roy, dir. 1940. Pastor Hall. UK: Charter Film Productions. 35MM.
Caven, Hannah. 2001. “Horror in Our Time: Images of the Concentration
Camps in the British Media, 1945.” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and
Television 21 (3): 205–53.
England, Len. 2002. “Mass Observation File Report No. 16, 7 January 1940.”
In Yesterday’s News: The British Cinema Newsreel Reader, edited by Luke
McKernan. London: BUFVC.
Fenton, Rosaleen. 2017. “The Religious History of the Gants Hill Odeon
Explored in New Exhibition”. Ilford Recorder, 29 January. http://www.
ilfordrecorder.co.uk/news/the-religious-history-of-the-gants-hill-odeon-ex-
plored-in-new-exhibition-1-4866466.
Jancovich, Mark with Lucy Faire, and Sarah Stubbings. 2003. The Place of the
Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption. London: BFI.
Jennings, Humphrey, and Stewart McAllister, dirs. 1942. Listen to Britain. UK:
Crown Film Unit.
Knight, Castleton, dir. 1945. The Second Battle of London. UK: Gaumont-British
Screen Services.
Kushner, Tony. 1989. The Persistence of Prejudice: Antisemitism in British Society
During the Second World War. New York: Manchester University Press.
Kushner, Tony. 1994. The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and
Cultural History. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kushner, Tony. 1997. “The Memory of Belsen.” In Belsen in History and
Memory, edited by T. Kushner, J. Reilly, D. Cesarani, and C. Richmond.
London: Frank Cass.
Lindtberg, Leopold, dir. 1945. The Last Chance. Switzerland: Praesens-Film.
35MM.
Losson, Nicolas. 1999. “Notes on the Images of the Camps”. October 90

(Autumn): 25–35.
Pathe News. German Atrocities. Issue 31, April 1945. UK.
Pathe News. An End to Murder. Issue 31, May 1945. UK.
Prager, Leonard. 1990. Yiddish Culture in Britain: A Guide. Frankfurt am Main:
Peter Lang.
Scott, Julian Duncan. 1994. The British Press and the Holocaust 1942–1943. PhD
thesis, University of Leicester.
Shephard, Ben. 2006. After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945. London:
Pimlico.
Spielberg, Steven, dir. 1993. Schindler’s List. USA: Universal Pictures, Amblin
Entertainment.
Thames Television. The World at War (Genocide). TX: 1974. UK.
Welles, Orson, dir. 1946. The Stranger. USA: United Artists Studios. 35MM.
Index
A Bergen-Belsen, 16, 206, 207,

Academy Cinema, 54, 89, 93, 106, 209–213
126, 133, 134 Betjeman, John, 160, 172
A Daughter of Israel (1925), 55, 67, Bial, Henry, 164
77 Bijou Picture Theatre, 44, 45, 96
Alexandra Picture Palace, 85, 88 British Board of Film Censors (BBFC),
alternative public sphere, 3, 15, 22, 4, 106, 154, 160, 180, 182, 183,
45–48, 55, 132, 142, 192, 193, 187, 190, 191, 196, 197
198, 218
Americanism, 91, 92, 151
Ancient Law, The (1923), 40, 65, 103 C
Apollo Picture House, 33, 78, 79 Cantor, Eddie, 107, 119–123, 142,
archival methodology, 12 191
Army Film and Photographic Unit Cesarani, David, 8
(AFPU), 207 Chapeltown, 11, 48, 91, 217
audience behaviour, 22, 30, 37, 38, Chaplin, Charlie, 86, 115, 116, 119
40–42, 217 charity fundraising, 50–52
Cheetham Hill, 10, 44, 48, 49, 71,
75, 85, 87, 93, 96, 101, 202, 217
B Chosen People, The (1925), 85, 86
Balcon, Michael, 152 cinema hoardings, 31, 33–35, 78,
Battle of Cable Street, 175 164
Ben-Ami, Jacob, 182, 186 Cinema House, 90
Ben-Dov, Ya’acov, 97, 99, 100 cine-variety, 42–44, 50
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), Cohen, Elsie, 54
69
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 223

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56931-8
224 Index
Cohens and the Kellys, The (1926), G

80, 81 Galsworthy, John, 104, 154, 155
Coles, George, 42, 148 Gaumont-British Picture Corporation,
culture of modernity, 22, 35 35, 36, 82, 101, 148, 152, 154,
160, 163, 168, 173
ghetto, 73–76, 80, 82
D Ghetto Film, 72, 74–77, 80–83, 89,
de Certeau, Michel, 46 92
Deutsch, Oscar, 5, 101, 150, 152 Golders Green, 9, 48
Dimbleby, David, 207 Golem, The (Der Golem 1920), 53,
64, 65, 68, 104
Golem, The (Le Golem 1936), 104
E Goldin, Sidney M., 86, 88, 89, 129
East End Goldman, Willy, 37
cinemas in, 2, 25, 26, 30, 34, 42, Gordin, Jacob, 83
43, 50, 56, 61, 62, 147, 201 Gramsci, Antonio, 92, 151
communal institutions, 21 Green, Joseph, 49, 84, 92, 93, 124,
jewish habitation of, 6–9, 73, 75, 128, 135
218 Greenberg, Lazarus, 25–27, 29
relationship to West End, 53 Greenberg, Leopold, 12, 169
Egocrat, 139, 140
Eternal Wanderer, The (1933), 16, 44,
90, 105, 176, 181, 182, 184– H
186, 188–194, 196–198 H&G Kinemas, 148
Habermas, Jurgen, 3, 47, 193
Hackney Pavilion, 73
F Hansen, Miriam, 15, 22, 23, 46, 91,
film exhibition in domestic setting, 190
102 Harlan, Veit, 166
film exhibitors, 30, 49, 147, 149, 151, Harrison, Tom, 1
202, 217 Hartland, George, 170, 171
Film Studies, 5, 12 Hebdige, Dick, 170
Flanagan, Bud, 5, 89, 90 Henriques, Rose, 27, 29
Forum Cinema, Chapeltown, 91, 93, Henriques, Sir Basil, 27
126, 150, 185, 191, 192 His People (1925), 55, 74–77, 80–82,
Forum Cinema, Villiers Street, 54, 90, 86, 118
104, 184 history of Jewish presence in the
Fraser, Nancy, 47, 132, 135, 190, 192 Britain, 6
Fuld, Leo, 44, 90, 184 House of Rothschild, The (1934), 49,
104, 154, 157–159, 165, 168,
169, 176
Index 225
Humoresque (1920), 72–74, 77 Lejeune, C.A., 157, 168, 169, 171, 172
Hurst, Fannie, 72, 81 Lewis, Ted ‘Kid’, 35, 42
Hyams, Phil, 147 Leylands, 11, 48, 56, 85, 88, 202
London County Council (LCC), 106,
183–185, 187, 190, 191, 194, 197
I London’s West End. See West End
Inside Nazi Germany: 1938, 179, 181 Low, Rachael, 5, 161
Lower East Side of New York, 22–25,
72–75, 77–82, 88
J Loyalties (1933), 104, 154–156
Jazz Singer, The (1927), 61, 65,
77–79, 81, 82, 114, 122
Jewish Chronicle, The, 12 M
Jewish middle class, 9, 10, 48–50, 102 Maida Vale Picture House, 49, 67–69,
Jewish Studies, 5 76, 79–82, 97
Jewish syncretic identity, 10, 11 Manchester
Jewish Times, The, 13 cinemas in, 56
Jewish World, The, 13 jewish habitation of, 9
Jew Süss (1934), 104, 154, 160–169, Marx Brothers, 113, 114
171, 172, 176 Mass Observation, 1, 2, 7, 41, 45, 52,
Jolson, Al, 78, 79, 114, 122 53, 204, 208
Mayfair Cinema, 34, 217, 218
Melody of Life (1932), 81, 82
K melting pot, 75–77
Kaddish (1924), 55, 65, 66, 68, 85 middlebrow, 49, 169, 170
Kipling, Rudyard, 170 Mile End Empire, 34, 44, 66, 91, 184,
Kracauer, Siegfried, 151 192, 216
Kuhn, Annette, 14, 43, 150 military conscription, 202
Mizler, Harry, 33
Modern Times (1936), 116
L Mosley, Oswald, 185
Land of Promise (Banim, Bonim Muni, Paul, 114, 115, 119, 142, 145,
1924), 97–99 186
Land of Promise, The (L’Chayim Myer, Morris, 13, 164
Hadashim 1935), 100, 101, 103
Last Chance, The (1945), 213–215
LCC. See London County Council N
(LCC) national film culture, 5
Leeds, 10 Nettler, Fred, 102
cinemas in, 47, 55, 56 New Scala Theatre, 53, 65, 86, 87
jewish habitation of, 10, 11 newsreel, 14, 16, 41, 42, 45, 176, 178,
Lees, Arnold, 168 180, 181, 188, 189, 203, 204
226 Index
British Movietone News, 178, 180, Rivoli Cinema, 31, 33–37, 39, 42, 43,
188 45, 48, 56, 62, 82, 89, 90, 93,
British Paramount News, 188 99, 123, 134, 201, 216
footage of concentration camps, Roman Scandals (1933), 122
206–214 Rosenblatt, Josef “Yossele”, 78, 79
March of Time, 106, 178, 179; Roth, Cecil, 4
Inside Nazi Germany: 1938, Rothman, Benny, 10
179, 181; The Refugee – Today Rothschild, Nathan Mayer, 9
and Tomorrow, 179
Pathe News, 210
S
Satz, Ludwig, 88, 118, 119, 128
O Schildkraut, Joseph, 118
Old King’s Hall, 26–29 Schildkraut, Rudolph, 74
oral history, 12–14 Schwartz, Maurice, 31, 33, 53, 77, 88,
Ostrer, Isidore, 5, 152 125, 166, 182, 186
Ostrer, Mark, 101 second generation of immigrant Jews,
8, 76
Sennett, Richard, 38
P Shandler, Jeffrey, 117, 127–131
Palaseum Cinema, 25, 34, 63, 85 Shildkraut, Rudolf, 118
Pavilion Theatre, 31, 32, 34, 38–40, Sloman, Edward, 74
45, 65, 66, 86, 87, 89, 117, 118 Soho, 52, 53, 168
Picon, Molly, 15, 43, 49, 93, 107, Sommerfield, John, 7
123, 125, 127–129, 131, 134, Souls in Exile (1926), 33, 77, 78
136–138, 140, 142, 217 Staiger, Janet, 13
Picture Show Annual, 113 Stamford Hill, 9, 48, 50, 51
Pommer, Erich, 146 suburbs, 9, 48, 49, 51, 56, 151, 216,
posters, 31, 32, 34, 35, 113 218
public space, 8, 22, 30, 140, 164
public sphere, 3, 4, 14–16, 22, 54–56,
134, 138, 140, 142, 153, 180, T
181, 190–193, 198, 202, 213, Taylor, Charles, 3, 54
215, 218, 219 Temple Pictorium, 85, 87
Ten Commandments, The (1923),
70, 71
R This is the Land (1935)
Red Bank, 9 Troxy, 34, 42, 43, 50, 52, 82, 125,
The Refugee – Today and Tomorrow 142, 148–152, 175
(1938), 179 Tucker, Sophie, 43, 201
Index 227
U Y
Uncle Moses (1932), 31, 84, 88, 89, Yiddish film, 3, 39, 54, 62, 83–91, 93,
91, 92 123–126, 128, 129, 134, 135,
urban landscape, 7, 31, 34, 202 181, 182, 194, 217
Yiddishland, 117, 123, 131
Yiddle with His Fiddle (1936), 49,
V 84, 92, 93, 123, 124, 126–128,
Vanderbilt, Cornelius Jr., 188 130–133, 135, 136, 140–142
Voice of Israel, The (1931), 89, 118 Young Palestine: Eretz Israel in 1926
(1926), 97, 99
W
Warner, Michael, 138–140, 191 Z
War-time evacuation, 203 Zangwill, Israel, 73, 75, 115, 156
Wedgwood, Josiah, 98 Zilberberg, Wolf, 126, 137
Weitzman, Chiam, 10 Zionism, 10, 27, 47, 89, 94–103, 120,
West End, 51–55, 88 195
Williams, Raymond, 126, 132, and visual culture, 94, 96
172 Zionist film, 15, 62, 94, 96–102, 184,
Wise, Rabbi Stephen, 154, 177 201

Jews Cinema

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jews Cinema

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Jews Cinema

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gil Toffell

Jews, Cinema and Public Life in Interwar Britain

Jews, Cinema and

ISBN 978-1-137-56930-1 ISBN 978-1-137-56931-8 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950510

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover image: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo

Some of the material from Chapter 5 previously appeared as

2 The Spaces and Places of Jewish Cinema Culture 21

3 Films of Jewish Interest 61

4 The Public Lives of Jewish Stars 113

5 The Jews Behind the Camera 145

6 Jewish Defence 175

7 Epilogue: The Decline of a Jewish Cinema Culture 201

BBFC British Board of Film Censors

Fig. 2.1 Old Kings Hall, Commercial Road, London (Image courtesy

It was within the horrifying context of a growing wave of political

© The Author(s) 2018 1

wider Mass Observation project (Hubble 2005). Yet in recording these

productions enjoyed. Yet in an era in which significant pressure was

comprise a single great exchange. Inhabiting the same social imaginary

Cinema and British-Jewish Historiography

The Historical Emergence of Interwar Jewry

semblance of a new Jewish life might be quickly acquired. Driving the

ridge of jerry-built property (its streets held up by fragile retaining

small but active community, mainly of Germanic origin, was in place by

Naturally, Jewish settlement in Britain was not restricted to its three

Sources of Data and Chapter Outline

London and Leeds. Data on Manchester was gathered from an extant

of the urban geography and sites of exhibition associated with a Jewish

recorded how the British-Jewish press devoted considerable attention to

Humphries, Stephen. 1995. Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-

Staiger, Janet. 1992. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of

The Spaces and Places of Jewish

During the autumn of 1931 the Jewish World newspaper published a

© The Author(s) 2018 21

In her landmark account of changing spectatorial relations in US

any relationship to the polity. As will be evident, Hansen’s insights will

Early Sites of Exhibition

of American cinema’s genesis, scholars have sought to reveal the specifi-

1903. The existence of the event is recorded in a song sheet containing

Fig. 2.1 Old Kings Hall, Commercial Road, London (Image courtesy of

“well ventilated”—an articulation of one of the key health anxieties of

developing, even within a tightly bounded geography, with cleaner more

Fig. 2.2 Film posters on Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1938

in the photograph contain Hebraic lettering or Jewish names (e.g.

Fig. 2.3 Apollo Picture House, Stoke Newington, London (Image courtesy of

Fig. 2.4 Rivoli Cinema, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s (Image courtesy of

Conversely, as much as exhibition sites extended into local geogra-

participating in musical numbers and volubly commenting on the

Fig. 2.5 Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s (Image courtesy

Running for a fortnight during May of 1924 E. A. Dupont’s (1923)

in a wide range of historical and geographic contexts, the actual content

acknowledge the “fourth wall” they harangued their on-screen political

size and prestige proved equally keen to complement their programmes

Marshalling family and friends into supporting roles, Fischer’s cinema

An Alternative Public Sphere

ideology of opposition, merely a desire to live out a contested social

numbers of supporters and equipped with stages for speakers to address

BBFC British Board of Film Censors

Fig. 2.1 Old Kings Hall, Commercial Road, London (Image courtesy

Cinema and British-Jewish Historiography

The Historical Emergence of Interwar Jewry

Sources of Data and Chapter Outline

The Spaces and Places of Jewish

Early Sites of Exhibition

Fig. 2.1 Old Kings Hall, Commercial Road, London (Image courtesy of

Fig. 2.2 Film posters on Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1938

Fig. 2.3 Apollo Picture House, Stoke Newington, London (Image courtesy of

Fig. 2.4 Rivoli Cinema, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s (Image courtesy of

Fig. 2.5 Pavilion Theatre, Whitechapel Road, London 1920s (Image courtesy

Beyond Primary Areas of Settlement

Films of Jewish Interest

Fig. 3.1 Eretz Israel Visualised (Advertisement in Jewish Chronicle, October 8,

Jewish Persecution and Jewish Personalities

Fig. 3.2 Advertisement for Loyalities (Jewish Chronicle, November 3, 1933.

The Public Lives of Jewish Stars

On several occasions the film’s technical accomplishments were praised.

A Star of the People